Chapter 21
Tabitha hopped down from the buggy, and she couldn’t help but notice the disapproving look Mary Peachy cast her before she stepped back into the house. What did Mary think was happening here?
“Does your mamm think—” she started.
“Mamm is just being protective,” he said. “She knows we’re only friends.”
Tabitha wasn’t so certain about that. Women could communicate volumes with a single look, and that had been a heavy one.
“Let’s just stay here where your mamm can see us from the window,” Tabitha said. “That might put her mind at rest.”
Jonas looked over his shoulder toward the house, then nodded. “You’re right—appearances matter.”
She could feel the slight emotional distance between them now, and it would only get worse.
“So what happened with Kelsie?” he asked.
“She told me that Michael wasn’t being faithful to her either,” Tabitha said. “And apparently, he used to throw me in her face from time to time, telling her that I was such a wonderful housekeeper and all that.”
Jonas wrinkled his brow. “Are you?”
“Nee!” she laughed. “And danke for recognizing that. I was never the homemaker of any man’s dreams.”
“In your defense, you have other skills,” he said.
“And he threw that in her face too,” Tabitha said. “For me, he always told me that I was too awkward, not Englisch enough.”
The joking evaporated from his eyes. “Tabitha, you were a catch. You know that, right? You were beautiful, smart, funny, and a good Amish girl.”
“Up until I left the faith,” she murmured.
“But you were still a Christian,” he said.
“The older folks don’t think that matters,” she said.
“But I do. I’ve seen enough Amish folks who keep the rules and have no love in their hearts, and enough Englischers who are as fancy as can be and yet would give the shirt off their backs to help others.
It’s Gott in our hearts that makes the difference, not the cut of our shirts or the buggy we drive. ”
That was very progressive of Jonas, and Tabitha looked at him in surprise. “You didn’t always think this way.”
“Maybe I’ve grown.”
“You’ll scare your parents if you say that to anyone but me,” she warned him.
Jonas smiled at that. “Yah, I know it.”
“Is Christina more progressive?” she asked.
Some color touched his cheeks, and he shrugged. “She is a little, yah.”
So that explained it. It wasn’t because of Tabitha. It was because of the other woman he’d all but promised himself to. Well, good for her. She’d get a very good man—the best.
“But she isn’t very progressive,” Jonas qualified. “She nannied for an Englisch couple during her rumspringa, and so she saw some different ways of doing things.”
“That’s good,” Tabitha said. “I learned a lot by getting to know people from different backgrounds too.”
Jonas fiddled with a suspender thoughtfully, and there was a beat of silence. “So what about Kelsie? What did she want, exactly?”
“Apparently, her therapist suggested she talk to me,” Tabitha said.
Jonas squinted at her.
“I saw a therapist, too, after the divorce, so I understand it,” she clarified. “A therapist just helps you to look at things more clearly. And I suppose her therapist wanted her to speak to me to find some sort of . . . closure? Healing?”
“Gott is the Great Healer.”
“Yah. That’s why I came home.” A lump rose in her throat.
All that Englisch freedom had come with incredible heartbreak.
And her own therapy had helped her to make sense of a betrayal that never should have happened, something she was grateful for, but she wasn’t exactly healed from it yet, either, was she?
“Besides having another affair, apparently Michael was making sure that Kelsie never felt confident with him either,” Tabitha went on.
Memories of Michael came back like a punch to the gut.
When his attention was focused on her, it was like sitting in sunlight.
But then he’d get distracted and dismissive and critical, and life got very cold and dark.
And she’d blamed herself for not being more graceful, for not knowing how to dress or how to do her hair and makeup.
She’d blamed herself for her Deutch accent and her inability to make close friendships with Englischer women.
“The point is,” Tabitha said, “I’d always thought he just wasn’t happy with me and that he’d found the woman for him in Kelsie.”
“And that wasn’t the case,” Jonas said.
“Nee, it wasn’t. Or maybe he was just a man who would never have been happy, no matter who he chose.”
“Seems foolish to me,” Jonas said. “If you marry a woman, focus on her.”
Christina. Tabitha pushed back the temptation to be jealous. Nee, she’d told him to find someone, and he’d done that. She was probably a lovely woman, and Tabitha was not going to step on her toes, even from here.
“That’s the best way to live, I think,” Tabitha said, and she swallowed hard. “And speaking of living that way, I hope you will tell Christina that I pass along my heartfelt congratulations on your wedding.”
“We’re not engaged yet,” he said.
“Then when you do get engaged, let her know that,” she said. These words weren’t easy for her to say.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do that.”
“And be good to her,” Tabitha said earnestly. “We women don’t know how to process it when the man we love withholds his heart from us. It hurts us, and we spend years trying to figure out what happened, where we messed up, why he did what he did.”
“Michael was a liar,” Jonas said. “I don’t care if we aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead. He was a liar. He told you what you wanted to hear, and he went about doing whatever he wanted to do. That’s the explanation.”
“I know it,” Tabitha said, the old anger simmering up inside of her. “For a long time I thought maybe he’d been emotionally wounded as a child or denied something he’d needed growing up, but I knew his family rather well, and I can’t see them doing that. He simply chose to be a liar and a cheat.”
“I’m glad you can see that.” Jonas dug his toe into the earth. “So now that you’ve seen Kelsie, are you done with it?”
Was she? Tabitha rolled that question over in her mind.
Now that she’d sat down with Kelsie and seen that she wasn’t superior somehow, it did help.
It made Tabitha feel better about herself, but it didn’t explain why Michael had preferred this other woman to her.
Why he’d snuck around to see her. Why he’d texted her loving messages late at night.
Why couldn’t Michael have been decent like Jonas?
Why couldn’t she have waited and not given her heart away to Michael?
“I want to be done with it, but I’m still angry,” Tabitha admitted. “I don’t want to carry this anger with me. Trust me, I don’t. But it’s still there.”
“I don’t blame you,” Jonas said. “But he’s facing Gott now, either in mercy or in judgment. If Gott has forgiven him, who are you to begrudge it? And if he has found judgment instead, then Gott is dealing with him.”
She met his gaze and knew he was right. Michael’s betrayal was in Gott’s hands now, and she had to let it go.
The side door opened again, and Tabitha looked over Jonas’s shoulder to see Mary on the step. They’d talked long enough—Mary was making her point clear.
“Mamm, I’ll be a minute,” Jonas called.
“Nee, your mamm is right,” Tabitha said with a shake of her head. Then she raised her voice. “Mary, I’ll be on my way. Danke for giving me just a few minutes. I’ll see you all on Service Sunday!”
“See you then!” Mary called back cheerfully enough, but there was a strength in her tone that told Tabitha where the woman stood.
Jonas crossed his arms over his chest and eyed Tabitha irritably. “Don’t feel chased off.”
“I don’t.” She schooled her features into a calm smile. “Danke for the Christian advice. I heard it and have taken it to heart.”
“It wasn’t meant as Christian advice,” he said irritably. “It’s advice from a friend who cares about you.”
She fought some rising tears. Jonas had no idea how much their friendship would change, did he? Yet she did. She’d been married before, after all.
“Okay, well . . .” She dropped her gaze. “Have a good day.”
She untied her horse and got up into her buggy. She waved to Mary again first, then allowed herself one more look at Jonas. He stood there with arms crossed over his broad chest, staring at her balefully.
“We’re friends, Tabby,” he said.
“Always,” she replied, and she flicked the reins. It was time to get back to life as she knew it. Jonas—Gott bless him—was moving on.
Later that evening, after dinner and cleanup, Tabitha found herself in the midst of a knitting circle of elderly, widowed ladies in Sarah Mae’s home, a fifteen-minute buggy ride away.
Tabitha’s knitting left a lot to be desired, as did most of her handcraft skills, but this particular group of women had embraced her as one of them when she’d needed friends most.
Sarah Mae had a plate of thumbprint cookies on a table in the center of the room, and she was knitting a complicated sweater pattern—something to be sold, not worn by the Amish.
Mary Riel and Miriam Lapp were both working on wool socks, and Aent Dina was knitting a little green frog that she’d give to one of the kinner on Service Sunday.
“We are very sorry for your loss, dear,” Mary said, lifting her eyes from her knitting, her fingers still flying.
“Are we?” Sarah Mae raised a white eyebrow. Tabitha smothered a smile at that. Sarah Mae had had a difficult marriage to a man who had terrorized the family, and she’d admitted to the group that when Gott had taken him, it had been a painful relief.
“It is a difficult loss, regardless,” Miriam said pointedly, and Sarah Mae sighed.
“It is,” Sarah Mae agreed. “But you have the benefit of not relying upon his income to feed you and a houseful of kinner.”
“True,” Tabitha said softly. Sarah Mae was ever the pragmatic, but she’d had to be. A lifetime of experiences formed a woman.
“How do you really feel?” Sarah Mae asked. “We won’t judge you.”
Tabitha shook her head slowly. “I feel . . . everything all at once. I do feel sad he’s gone.
I’m worried that he wasn’t right with Gott when he died.
I feel angry at all he put me through, and a strange, sinful little feeling of victory that he put his next wife through the same thing. I shouldn’t feel that way,”
“Nee,” Sarah Mae turned her eyes back to her knitting. “Vengeance belongs to the Lord. But it’s natural.”
“Best to pray that Gott takes away those natural tendencies,” Aent Dina said quietly.
But Aent Dina had never been married. She’d never been betrayed or cast aside.
“What is she like?” Miriam asked, her knitting needles stilling. “The other woman.”
“She’s . . .” Tabitha shrugged. “She’s angry at him, like I am. And she seems to think we have a bond now that he’s done it to both of us.”
“Do you have a bond?” Aent Dina asked, looking up curiously.
“We aren’t as alike as she likes to think,” Tabitha said. “She’s a woman who cared nothing for marriage vows—not so long as they were someone else’s. She was a willing participant in an affair. I’d never do that.”
“Good,” Sarah Mae murmured. “You need to have moral lines you will never cross.” She lifted her gaze to meet Tabitha’s. “Never.”
Tabitha blinked, sensing the weight of the words. “Of course!”
“Even if he loved you, and he married another woman he didn’t love,” Sarah Mae added.
All of the women were looking at her now, and Tabitha felt some heat in her cheeks.
In a community the size of Shepherd’s Hill, word did travel, but she hadn’t realized that she was still being talked about in relation to Jonas.
Because that was certainly who Sarah Mae was referencing.
Tabitha had thought they’d nipped that in the bud.
“What are you getting at?” she asked cautiously.
“We heard that Jonas has a match in Ohio,” Aent Dina said. “Word travels.”
“Yah, that part is true,” Tabitha said, “but he doesn’t love me. We’re friends. So you can all rest easy there.” She forced out a little laugh.
“Keep it that way, dear,” Miriam said quietly.
“You all advised me to back off,” Tabitha said, looking around the circle. “And I spend much less time with him now. You must have noticed.”
“We also notice how he looks at you,” Sarah Mae said. “That man has feelings for you that go much further than pals.”
“I can’t help how he looks at me,” she protested. “Maybe you’re misinterpreting it.”
Sarah Mae gave her a gentle smile that somehow made Tabitha’s cheeks feel even hotter.
“And it doesn’t much matter when he’s marrying a perfectly lovely woman from Ohio,” Tabitha added, “does it? Actions speak louder than pining looks do. He chose her, and he’s going to be proposing soon. Everyone is expecting it. He’s as good as engaged.”
“But not engaged yet?” Aent Dina asked with a frown.
“Not yet.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Dina admitted. “That might change things.”
“Dina, she’s right,” Mary interjected. “He’s as good as engaged, and that matchmaker is involved.”
Tabitha turned her attention back to her needles, carefully adding more stitches to her scarf.
The women entered into a discussion about how engaged Jonas really was, and if a promise to promise actually counted toward anything at all, and they seemed to forget Tabitha for the moment, which was a relief.
The truth was, Jonas was moving on, and Tabitha was a woman of principle.
Gott was not surprised by this timing, and if Jonas was meant for Christina, then it meant that Gott would have another man for her.
Even if that hurt right now. Even if she couldn’t imagine another man she’d be willing to hand her heart to.
Eventually. Once her heart healed from . . . all of this.