Chapter 20
Jonas sat on the step, a wriggling little kitten in one hand and a bottle in the other.
The black-and-white ball of fluff had been crying feebly in the barn, and he’d had to do some digging to even find the little guy.
It looked like one of the barn cats had had kittens and misplaced one.
He was skinny, dirty, and smelled a little bit, but he was now sucking earnestly on a bottle of kitten formula, little paws kneading the air.
Everyone needed to be picked up and dusted off from time to time, and he was glad he’d gotten to the kitten before it was too late.
“How’s he doing?” his mother asked, looking over his shoulder.
“I think he’ll be okay,” Jonas replied. “We have to trap that cat and get her spayed, though.”
The mother was a kitten from a previous litter. Catching and spaying or neutering the kittens was a constant job. Normally, to save on vet bills, they’d just spay the females, but they’d obviously missed one.
“That we do.” His mother lowered herself down onto the step next to him. “You’ve been quiet since you got back from Ohio.”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” he replied.
“Thinking about Christina?” she asked.
Tabitha was at the top of his mind today, but he didn’t think his mother wanted to hear that.
She’d said that she might meet up with Michael’s widow, and he hoped she wouldn’t do it.
He couldn’t imagine what it would take to sit down with the woman who had participated in destroying her marriage, and he’d been praying for Gott to give Tabitha strength and clarity, and to keep her from being hurt more than she already was. Call him protective—maybe he was.
So instead he asked, “How did you know that Daet was the right one to marry?”
“Oh . . .” She smoothed her hands over her apron. “Not all of us are blessed with much choice. Your daet was the only one who asked me home from singing.”
“So you married him.”
“I wanted a family of my own, and your daet was a wonderful man.”
“You didn’t . . . I don’t know . . . fall in love with him?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I suppose I did, but I love him more now than I did when I was young and innocent. I’ve seen your daet on good days and bad.
I’ve seen him working so hard to find a job that he was out until after dark.
I’ve seen him pretend he wasn’t hungry so I could have the last pork chop when I was pregnant.
I’ve heard him tell the same jokes over and over again, and I’ve listened to him snore every night for forty years.
Living a whole life with someone is a different kind of love than the brand-new, heart-pounding, twitterpated feelings. ”
“Yah.” He sighed. And that was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
A lifetime with a woman—the good times and the bad, standing together through it all.
The kitten spat out the nipple, and he sat the little thing up to breathe for a moment or two.
It mewed pitifully, so he offered the nipple again, and it went back to drinking.
“Christina sounds like a wonderful woman,” Mamm said. “I’m sure she’ll make an equally wonderful wife.”
“She will,” he replied. “I know she will. It’s just . . .”
His mother looked over at him sympathetically. “Does Tabitha want what you want?”
“Right now, she’s dealing with other things.”
“Like her husband’s death.”
“Her ex-husband’s death, yah.”
“Ex-husband . . . I don’t know how that works. We don’t believe in such things. There are husbands, and there are late husbands. There is nothing else.”
“He married another woman, Mamm.”
“Then I’ll add bad husbands to that list, but I stand by it,” she replied.
Except his mother had never had to deal with an unfaithful man.
Daet had been loyal and loving. He’d prioritized his wife and children.
He’d worked hard to provide, and he always came home.
There was some luxury in that position. It was the kind of life many Amish women lived, but not all of them.
But that was the Amish position on marriage—it was for life, for better or for worse. It was a very sober choice, indeed.
“There’s something that happens when you marry a man,” Mamm said reflectively.
“The vows change things. I can’t explain it, it’s just a fact.
When the Bible says that two become one flesh, that is just what it feels like.
And when that marriage is torn apart, it’s like tearing off a limb.
Tabitha’s pain is very real, and I understand how difficult that would be for her.
But she is also grieving a loss right now. ”
“He was terrible to her,” Jonas said. “I think she’s already done her grieving.”
“That’s hard to tell,” she replied. “But he was her husband, and now he is dead. When someone dies, it isn’t like they never existed.
There is no undoing the life she lived with him, or the way she loved him, or even the way he hurt her.
For a time, they were one flesh. And then she was left with a bleeding, aching loss. ”
Jonas winced at his mother’s phrasing. “She’s stronger than you think, you know.”
Was Tabitha still grieving her marriage? He hoped not. Michael was a bad husband and a worse man, in Jonas’s humble opinion. She should forget him, leave him in the past. Michael certainly hadn’t spent any time remembering Tabitha. He’d up and married his mistress the minute he legally could.
“You still have feelings for her,” Mamm said.
It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t answer it. The kitten wriggled again, and he pulled the nipple out of its mouth. Frothy formula was gathered around his mouth, and he blinked up at Jonas.
“Does she have feelings for you?” Mamm asked.
Jonas glanced at his mother. This was a more personal conversation than they normally had, but who else could he discuss it with?
Daet was too focused on Jonas doing the right thing—marrying Christina and moving forward with his life.
It was like he didn’t care much where Jonas’s heart lay.
Did Daet have no memory at all of falling in love?
He offered the kitten the bottle again, but he seemed full. His little belly was rounded, and he blinked sleepily. Jonas stroked his head with one finger, and his eyes pinched shut.
“She does,” Jonas said, “but things are complicated for her right now. Maybe you’re right about Michael’s death.”
“So the timing is wrong,” she concluded.
The timing was dismal, she was right about that.
If only he’d stayed home. If only he’d been more patient.
If only Tabitha were further along in grieving her marriage.
He’d wanted her to forget her past, but that wasn’t possible.
She’d have to move through all these feelings, and she was still in the middle.
“Yah, I think that covers it,” he said with a sigh.
“And when she’s finished working through her grief and her complicated feelings about Michael’s death?” she asked. “What then?”
“I don’t know.”
Mamm nodded. “That’s good that you’re being honest.”
When Tabitha had dug through her complicated feelings, dealt with her grief, faced her anger, and gotten her balance back, would she still feel the same way about him?
And what did she feel, exactly? Maybe he was just imagining that she felt the same way he did. They’d respected those lines. They hadn’t crossed them. In the truest sense of the word, they were only friends. But Jonas longed for more.
“Sohn, you might be a handsome man with a good future, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll have an endless supply of marriage options in front of you. In fact, finding someone you can marry is a very precious thing.”
“It’s been a drought for me lately, so I understand that.”
“Like I said, I didn’t have more options than your daet,” Mamm said.
“We didn’t have many people in our community, and of the single men available to me, there was one I had been sweet on who didn’t return my feelings.
And there was your daet who felt the same way I did about him.
Finding someone who feels the same way—that is a treasure. ”
“I know.”
Or it would be a treasure if he could be sure of Tabitha’s feelings.
“Sohn, pining for Tabitha when you’re just about engaged to another woman is wrong,” she said.
“I know that, too, Mamm. I’m not pining.”
“Be sure that you don’t,” she said. “Christina seems like a good woman, and you shouldn’t squander what you have with her over someone who hasn’t chosen you. Tabitha has not chosen you, Jonas.”
Jonas nodded. “That’s a good point.”
She couldn’t before now, and even with her ex-husband’s death, she wasn’t in a position to be able to do it. Not yet.
“So what happens if you ruin this opportunity with Christina?” Mamm asked seriously.
What would happen if he pulled out of the agreement and said he changed his mind?
“I’ll tell you what will happen.” She turned to face him.
“Christina will move on. And she will tell her family, her friends, the matchmaker, her bishop, and everyone exactly why she moved on. She’ll tell them that you had feelings for a friend and could not get over them in order to marry her.
She’ll be sad and a little heartbroken, but your reputation will be sullied beyond repair in Ohio.
Nellie Stoltzfuz is a careful matchmaker who will never match you with another woman again. You wouldn’t be trustworthy.”
He felt the sting of those last words. His mamm believed very seriously in people being worthy of trust, and that it was earned. She was right, of course. Nellie got results, and she didn’t work with people who weren’t serious.
He was spared from having to answer when he spotted the mother cat trotting around the side of the house. She must have left her other kittens in some safe little burrow somewhere because she was alone.
“Look who’s joining us,” he said.
Mamm held her hand out and made some shushing noises. The cat paused and then came toward her.
“There you are,” Mamm said, scooping up the cat. “You have a baby you abandoned.”
She put the cat’s nose next to the kitten. The cat sniffed at him, then gently picked him up by the back of his neck with her teeth. She jumped down from Mamm’s lap and slipped away.
“She’ll put him with the rest of the litter,” Mamm said. “Here’s hoping we can find them all and get them fixed. Your daet is going to hate that we have more kittens.”
Was the conversation over, then? His mother reached up and put a hand on his cheek affectionately.
“Be careful in your choices, sohn,” she said. “Your mother looks at you and sees your heart. But the rest of the world? They look at you and see your actions. Remember that.”
A horse’s hooves and a buggy’s wheels sounded on the drive, and he looked up to see Tabitha with reins in hand. He stood up faster than he’d meant to. He shaded his eyes, and she reined in next to the house.
“Hi, Tabitha,” Mamm called, staying pointedly next to Jonas.
“Hello,” Tabitha said. “How are you?”
“Oh, we’re doing all right,” Mamm replied. “And you?”
“I—uh—” She cast Jonas a veiled look. “I was hoping to talk to Jonas for just a few minutes, if you could spare him.”
Jonas sauntered over to the buggy, leaving his mother on the step. Tabitha’s gaze moved uncertainly over his shoulder, and while he couldn’t see behind him, he knew Mamm was standing guard.
“Mamm, I won’t be long,” Jonas said, turning to give her a reassuring smile.
Mamm sighed and her gaze flicked between them, but she turned back into the house. He knew what she was thinking, and she had nothing to worry about.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I went to see Kelsie.”
His stomach dropped, and he searched her face for the damage done.
“How did it go?” he asked, his voice low. As he met her conflicted gaze, something inside of her seemed to melt, and her eyes misted with tears.