Chapter 6
A warm summer breeze tugged at Tabitha’s kapp strings as she walked briskly down the gravel road that led to the phone hut.
She tapped the neighbor’s hanging sign for fresh baking and meadow honey as she passed it, and it creaked on its hinges.
The smell of honeysuckle and cut grass surfed the wind that ruffled her skirt.
It was a beautiful morning, and the walk was familiar.
At least twice a day, sometimes more, she went to check her answering service just in case someone needed emergency veterinarian services.
While she truly loved her work, it wasn’t filling her up the way it had before.
There was a little space before the brim .
. . and that was a new feeling. Maybe it was because Rose had a baby girl now named Eliza, and while it was still a rather big secret, Amanda was newly pregnant too.
There was a time when Tabitha had asked her sisters to provide her with nieces and nephews to dote on, and they were doing just that.
And it was wonderful! She was glad. She couldn’t wait to teach those kinner everything she could about animal care .
. . but even that felt a little empty. They weren’t her babies—they were her sisters’.
“What is wrong with me, Herr Gott?” she whispered. Where was this discontent coming from? Was she just missing Jonas?
Jonas was a good friend—but he had developed into more than a friend at this point, which was even more reason for him to go to Ohio. She couldn’t marry again, and he deserved a loving family of his own.
That’s what she told him, and what she told herself too.
But she missed him all the same. He’d gone off to Sugarcreek a few weeks ago to meet some potential matches set up by a rather gifted matchmaker named Nellie Stoltzfuz, who had developed quite a reputation for making solid matches.
Jonas had written to Tabitha once since he arrived in Ohio—a rather long letter describing how the community out there differed from Shepherd’s Hill, and how he missed her, and how this still didn’t feel right to him.
It didn’t feel right to her either. Not in her heart, but her heart couldn’t steer her on this one.
Now that she was Amish again, she wasn’t able to remarry while her ex-husband lived.
There was right, and there was wrong. It didn’t matter that she’d developed some strong feelings for Jonas. He wasn’t hers.
Tabitha couldn’t reply to his letter. It wouldn’t be appropriate for him to be receiving letters from an unmarried woman in Shepherd’s Hill while he was supposed to be finding himself a wife in Ohio, now, would it?
The neighbors had a little pond in the corner of their pasture, and a family of ducks quacked from somewhere hidden in the surrounding reeds. She’d spotted a passel of ducklings earlier, and she squinted to see if she could spot them again, but she couldn’t, so she kept on walking briskly past.
Every day, just as she checked her phone messages for emergency veterinarian calls, Tabitha checked the mail to see if Jonas had written again.
Would he tell her if he found a match? Or maybe he’d decide against all of them and just come home and be her friend again—her best friend, her place to land softly, and her biggest comfort these days.
But that was selfish of her to hope for, because if Jonas did that, he’d never have a loving wife of his own.
He’d never cradle his own children, or watch them grow, and teach them right from wrong.
. . . He’d miss out on everything. And while Tabitha was missing out because of her own choices, Jonas deserved all of those joys.
A real friend would want those blessings for Jonas. And she was working on that.
The phone hut wasn’t far now. She could see the big elm tree that sheltered it rising above the other trees that lined the road.
It was a tree that had been towering there for as long as Tabitha could remember.
That tree always gave her the feeling that some things could stay rooted and not change. But everything changed eventually.
Yesterday’s funeral had taken more out of Tabitha than she had anticipated.
She knew Tom from working on his herd now and again, but she hadn’t known him well.
He’d had strong views about what was good for his cattle, and there were times when she’d give her honest, science-based advice and he’d utterly ignore it and do things his own way.
They were his cattle, and he could do as he pleased, but it was still frustrating.
And yet the loss of Tom Yoder was a distinct one in the community.
He’d been an honest, straight-talking man, and he had everyone’s respect, including Tabitha’s.
Tabitha’s father, Abram, had been one of his friends too.
They used to sit together in camping chairs after church and discuss the finer points of the Scripture that had been preached.
Tom and Abram both had strong opinions, but they’d both been able to back them up with copious amounts of Scripture, and they gave each other something to think about, at the very least.
Tabitha had to wonder about the reading of the will, though, because she’d need to speak with whoever had inherited about the illness that was spreading through the herd.
She’d done the testing, and while it wasn’t bacterial, it was viral.
Bovine viral diarrhea, to be precise, and it was a serious and very infectious illness.
She’d have to ask. Maybe Daet would hear.
Although Rose was the first to get most of the gossip in their family, so she might be the right one to ask about the will, ironically enough.
Tom’s death was heartbreaking, but it would also be a reluctant springboard for new beginnings for whoever had inherited the family land.
Tabitha Schrock was a woman who could appreciate a new beginning. She’d left the faith when she married her ex-husband, Michael, but the marriage hadn’t lasted. He’d broken her heart. She’d filed for divorce. And Tabitha had come home.
The memory of their divorce still ached sometimes. Marriage vows were stronger than civil divorces in the Amish church, and that meant Tabitha couldn’t marry again while Michael lived. So he could move on with another woman, but Tabitha’s path forward would be a single one.
But she did have her veterinarian career, which filled a lot of her time and her focus.
Veterinarian work as an Amish woman was different from the way she used to work in the Englisch world.
She had no cell phone for emergency calls, and if someone needed her right away, she got a frantic knock on her door.
For calls that could wait a few hours, she’d get a message left on her voice service.
Back in the Englisch world, she traveled around in a pickup truck.
Now, she went from farm to farm in her own horse-drawn buggy.
Everything in the Amish world took longer, but in the slower pace there was depth and meaning too.
Plus, with her return home to her Amish community, she could feel that she was where Gott wanted her.
It came with sacrifice, but also the calm, reassuring certainty that she was doing what Gott wanted.
When Tabitha arrived at the phone hut, nestled in the shade of that big elm tree, the parking area was empty.
She opened the door and let herself inside the stuffy, sun-warmed little building and sat down on the stool.
It smelled of sawdust from the rough walls with a hint of floral from the scented candle that had been tucked on the windowsill.
A telephone was in the center of a table, and there was some scrap paper, some nubs of pencils, and a corkboard across from it that held a local map and a pin poked in their location to help people when making appointments or plans for a driver to pick them up.
There was also a list of trusted Amish drivers with phone numbers next to them for that purpose.
Tabitha dialed her voice message service number and listened for the prompt, then dialed her password.
“You have one new message. . . . Hello, Ms. Schrock. This is Daniel Murphy. I’m an attorney in Pittsburgh, and I am calling on behalf of my client, Mrs. Kelsie Logan. If you could give me a call back, my number is . . .”
Tabitha froze. Kelsie Logan.
That was a name she hadn’t heard in some time, and if she’d gone the rest of her life without hearing it again, she’d have been satisfied. Kelsie Logan was the other Mrs. Logan. What on earth could Kelsie possibly want?
But Kelsie now had an attorney . . . that was worrisome. Tabitha rubbed her hands over her eyes. A few possibilities about what that might mean spun through her mind, none of them pleasant.
She looked down at the piece of scrap paper where she’d jotted down the lawyer’s number. For a moment, she considered leaving the call for a day or two. There was no rush, was there? Just because the Englisch world moved at lightning speed didn’t mean that Tabitha had to respond just as quickly.
But she wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about it either, so she dialed the number and waited while it rang twice.
“Daniel Murphy.”
“Hi, Daniel, this is Tabitha Schrock. I just got your message.”
“Ms. Schrock, yes.” His voice was prim, professional.
“Thank you so much for returning my call.” She heard a door shut.
“As I said in my message, I’m Mrs. Kelsie Logan’s lawyer, and she was the one who asked me to contact you.
Considering your relationship to each other, she wasn’t comfortable making the call herself. ”
“Understandable,” Tabitha said. “What does she need?”
“I don’t know of a gentle way to put this, so I’m just going to say it. Michael died.”
Tabitha’s breath caught in her throat. The words skimmed over her and didn’t quite land. She took a wavering breath.
“Ms. Schrock?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Michael Logan, your ex-husband, passed away two days ago in a skydiving accident. There was a problem with the parachute. It didn’t open, and he died on the scene.”
“He’s dead?” She could hardly believe it. Michael was gone? She didn’t like him, but she had loved him. Despite all he’d done, it was difficult to root all the love she’d felt for the man out of her heart. She couldn’t imagine a world where Michael wasn’t in it.
“Yes, ma’am,” Daniel said, softening his tone. “Kelsie wanted you to know about his passing, and she wanted you to have the funeral details as well in case you’d like to attend.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Tabitha replied.
“Write down the information anyway,” he said. “You might change your mind, and there is obviously no obligation to attend, but Kelsie wants you to know that you will be very welcome.”
Tabitha did as he suggested and jotted down the information, but why on earth would Kelsie want her late husband’s ex-wife at his funeral?
Kelsie would have her own friends and family there, and Michael’s as well.
Michael’s parents, his brothers, his cousins .
. . He’d had a big family, none of whom had fought for his marriage to Tabitha when he’d been cheating on her.
They believed in staying out of other people’s business, even if those other people were desperately in need of help.
No one would be expecting Tabitha to show up and mourn the loss of the man who had ruined her life.
Except for Kelsie, apparently.
“I don’t understand why I’m being invited,” she said slowly. “You do realize that I’m his first wife, right?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m aware,” Daniel replied. “She said she wanted to sit down and talk to you.”
Tabitha’s knees felt weak at the thought. Kelsie wanted to sit down and chat after everything that had happened? What would she want to discuss? Did Tabitha even owe that to the woman who had helped to tear apart her marriage?
“What does she want to talk about?”
“She didn’t say. All that she told me was that she felt it was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do would have been not to sleep with another woman’s husband,” Tabitha replied curtly, then she pressed her lips together, frustrated with herself for having said that out loud. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay. This is a difficult time, and I understand that this is shocking news. I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
“It wasn’t my loss, Daniel,” she said with a sigh. “It was his wife’s loss. Please relay my condolences, but I won’t be attending the funeral, and I have no desire to talk with her.”
Kelsie might not have had any respect for those marital vows, but Tabitha did. And Kelsie was Michael’s rightful widow. He’d married her.
“I’ll let her know. Thank you for speaking with me,” Daniel said.
“Of course.”
As Tabitha hung up the phone, her mind spun. Michael was dead. . . .
She wanted to see Jonas—tell him about it, string it all out into a line with him so that she could make sense of it. Jonas knew about the heartbreak, the slow piecing together of her sense of self afterward, and out of anyone, he’d understand her tangle of emotions.
But Jonas was in Ohio—finding a wife.
And the next thought hit her like a punch in the stomach. Michael was dead, and that meant that for the first time since those ill-fated vows a decade ago, Tabitha was free. And she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.