Chapter 19
Tabitha took her buggy to the town of Shepherd’s Hill the next day and walked from the buggy parking lot behind the grocery store to the Dutchman Café up the street where the lawyer had said Kelsie would meet her.
Tabitha had been antsy, and she’d left too early—and had now arrived too early too—and was tucked in a booth in the back where she had a view of the parking lot. A glass of cold water sweated in front of her, and she tried to calm her knee jiggling under the table.
She had never met Kelsie, although she had seen a couple of pictures on social media. She knew that Kelsie was lithe, pretty, and young, and Tabitha had felt the sting of not being good enough in comparison to her ever since the day she’d discovered what was going on.
Would the woman even show up? She might have changed her mind, registered a few regrets.
Heaven knew that Tabitha had just about changed her mind about this meeting three times on her way into town.
A red coupe pulled into the parking lot, and Tabitha couldn’t quite make out the driver.
The car parked within Tabitha’s sight line, and a tall, slim woman wearing jeans and a black blouse got out.
She had a pair of large sunglasses on and curly, reddish hair that hung in shoulder-length limp waves. Kelsie Logan.
The car made a soft beeping sound as it locked, and Kelsie headed across the pavement. She looked in Tabitha’s direction, then looked again, face paling. Then she headed for the front door.
This was it.
Gott, be with me! Tabitha prayed in sudden panic.
But there was no way to leave now, not without passing Kelsie, so Tabitha sat in the booth and waited while a waitress greeted her, and Kelsie pointed in Tabitha’s direction.
Tabitha raised a hand in acknowledgment, and Kelsie passed other tables and diners until she got to the booth where Tabitha sat.
Sitting while Kelsie looked down at her made Tabitha feel small, but it didn’t seem right to stand up either. So she sat there, chin tipped upward to look at her.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” Kelsie said, smiling faintly. “Thanks for doing this.”
Tabitha didn’t answer, and Kelsie slid into the seat opposite her. The waitress came over to take their order then.
“Um . . . can I just get a coffee?” Kelsie asked.
“Same,” Tabitha said. She didn’t want to draw this out any longer than necessary, and when the waitress finished pouring two cups of coffee and left again, Tabitha put some sugar and a creamer into hers and slowly stirred.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to the funeral,” Tabitha said after a moment. “I didn’t think it was right for me to be there. That was a time for family.”
Kelsie nodded. “I understand. I just thought I should invite you. You were married to him too.”
This was the first time that Tabitha and Michael’s wedding vows had seemed to matter one bit to the other woman, but Tabitha wouldn’t say that.
“You and I have never talked,” Kelsie added.
“Why would we?” Tabitha asked. “You do understand that you helped blow up my marriage, right?”
Kelsie’s cheeks pinked a little bit. “Yeah. I do.”
“So why would we talk to each other?” Tabitha fixed her gaze on Kelsie’s face, her earlier nervousness starting to dissipate.
“My faith tells me that I need to forgive you, but I’ll admit that I’m not there yet.
I don’t feel friendly toward you, Kelsie.
We’re not some sort of family unit here.
You were the woman my husband was sleeping with behind my back.
You knew he was married. You got Michael—you won.
But that doesn’t mean you and I are connected in any way. ”
“I know, but . . . well, if there had been children, we would have spoken. That’s all I meant.”
“Thank Gott there weren’t,” Tabitha replied.
“I’m getting off topic. I don’t know how to talk about any of this,” Kelsie said. “The reason I wanted to talk to you is . . .” She licked her lips. “I found out he was cheating on me too.”
There it was—the reason for this little visit.
Tabitha spread her hands. “Well, he wasn’t cheating with me, if that’s your fear.”
“No, with a woman from work.” Kelsie took a sip of her black coffee, and her hands trembled. “I know who it was.”
“Oh.”
“A twenty-two-year-old new hire to their engineering company,” Kelsie said. “Her name is Freya.”
Tabitha saw some layers to Kelsie’s sadness now. She’d lost her husband, but it could be argued she’d lost him before he died, just in a different way. Tabitha knew that specific kind of grief all too well.
“I caught him talking to her on the phone really late one night, and he was telling her that he—” Her voice caught.
“He loved her. And when he saw me, and he knew I’d heard, he wouldn’t talk about it.
I was furious. I’ve never felt that kind of rage before.
I could have killed both of them together. Literally. With my bare hands.”
“Yah, I know the feeling,” Tabitha said, giving Kelsie a wan smile.
She’d felt a similar anger when she found out about Kelsie.
“Freya is the reason he was skydiving,” Kelsie went on.
“I can’t prove it, but I know he didn’t like taking big risks unless he wanted to look strong in front of a woman.
And lately, he was trying to act all young and hot.
The skydiving was a team-building exercise, but if it weren’t for Freya, he would have stayed on the ground with some of the others.
I just know it. In here.” She tapped her chest. “He was showing off to her.”
Tabitha thought back to Michael as she’d known him.
He’d had a vulnerable side to him that had been endearing.
He’d needed a lot of reassurance, though.
And it turned out that the one to make him feel strong and important had been Kelsie, not Tabitha.
And now it seemed that his neediness had made him turn to still another woman.
“Look, Kelsie,” Tabitha said with a sigh, “Michael had his own personal issues. Now, I could point out that it wasn’t smart to marry a man who lied to his first wife and cheated on her with you and then expect him to turn into a Boy Scout.”
“I suppose not,” Kelsie said.
“Michael had a gaping hole inside of him that no woman could fill, but he figured we should. I don’t know what he was looking for, but Freya wasn’t going to be the one to finally make him feel complete either. He was really insecure.”
Was that why Kelsie had come to meet up with her—to get some reassurance? If so, it seemed a little twisted. Couldn’t she go talk to a friend or her mother or an aunt or someone? Didn’t Englischers have their own female communities for hard times? Why Tabitha?
“He used to tell me that he loved me all the time,” Kelsie said, her voice wavering.
“I don’t say this to hurt you. But I mean .
. . it was overboard. Apparently, it’s called love bombing.
He poured all this affection and attention on me, and I thought that it must be something really special.
I was na?ve and stupid. I thought that made the cheating on you okay. ”
Tabitha swallowed a lump in her throat and dropped her gaze. That had been love and affection that he hadn’t been bestowing upon Tabitha anymore. She’d been so lonely, frozen out.
“But then once we were married, he started getting really critical of me,” Kelsie went on. “He talked about you a lot.”
“Me?” Shocked, Tabitha looked up. “What about me?”
“Oh, that you were so educated and smart,” Kelsie said. “You were a veterinarian, and you had gotten top grades.”
From what Michael had told her, Kelsie hadn’t been the academic type. She’d been a struggling ballet dancer, working part-time as a waitress. She was younger and worldly in ways that Tabitha could never be, though.
“He would tell you that?” Tabitha asked.
“All the time,” Kelsie said. “And he said that since you were raised Amish, you knew how to cook and clean and can peaches and . . . darn socks, I guess.”
Tabitha couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s ironic. I’m not exactly known for my homemaking skills around my community.”
Since coming home, she’d been trying to learn to quilt just to have a way to fit in with the other women. But Tabitha’s quilting was subpar. She was good at other things—namely, at veterinarian medicine.
“So let me get this straight,” Tabitha said. “He left me for you, and then proceeded to tell you how I was so superior to you in these particular ways?”
Kelsie’s face colored. “Yes.”
What a cad. Michael had been a master emotional manipulator. Her therapist had described him that way many times, and Tabitha had never fully accepted that Michael would be trying to make her feel smaller. But he’d certainly tried when it came to Kelsie.
“When I found out about you and Michael, I told him he had to choose—and I meant that he had to choose me,” Tabitha said.
“But he told me that you were effortlessly graceful and that you could fit in with his colleagues’ wives so much more easily than I could.
He said I was awkward, I dressed badly, and I made him look stupid. ”
Kelsie winced. “He didn’t admit that he was involved with Freya, but he did comment several times that she was sweet and innocent, and she made him feel young again.”
Tabitha shook her head. “Are you seeing a pattern here?”
“I am.” Kelsie sighed. “My therapist said it would be good for you and me to compare notes, so to speak.”
So Kelsie had a therapist too. That was probably good. Englischer women had to sort through their issues somehow.
“Which is evidently why you wanted to see me.”
Kelsie nodded.
“Was Freya at the funeral?”
“Yes. Not that I invited her. She came with a bunch of their coworkers. And she was all puffy and weepy, and gave a little spontaneous speech about how there would never be another man like Michael.”
Kelsie met Tabitha’s gaze, and they shared a bitter smile. Tabitha could only imagine how well that went over.
“There will be many more men in this world like Michael,” Tabitha said. “May Gott protect us from them.”