Chapter 16
Tabitha had assumed that once Michael’s funeral was past, she’d feel better, but somehow it hadn’t turned out that way. Last night, she’d slept rather poorly, and she kept thinking of the invitation to the funeral she’d received.
Why had Kelsie invited her? It didn’t make sense.
If the tables had been turned and Michael had chosen his marriage over his mistress, Tabitha wouldn’t have invited Kelsie to the funeral, that was for sure and for certain.
Had Tabitha, as Michael’s first wife, mattered that little?
Had Kelsie been so certain of Michael’s love that his first wife posed no threat whatsoever?
That possibility had stung the most, and she’d run through quite a few different possibilities in that sleepless night.
She’d wondered if Kelsie wanted to gloat or if her lawyer had misunderstood.
Maybe she didn’t even want Tabitha at the funeral, and if she had shown up, Kelsie would have gone into a fit and demanded to know who did this to her.
But after some light sleep and waking up too early, Tabitha felt no closer to answers.
“Gott, give me some insight,” she prayed. “I know not everything is my business, but show me if Kelsie meant well or not.”
But there was no impression, no sense of peace, no reassurance that she’d done the right thing by staying away from the funeral, and right now, what she wanted was some comfort from Gott.
Kelsie had won. She’d gotten Michael. He’d married her just as soon as he was legally divorced from Tabitha.
Was Tabitha supposed to go and comfort her in her loss now too?
The Amish would say yes. She must love her enemies, turn the other cheek, treat her with kindness. And Tabitha could readily admit that if she had any enemy in this world, it was the second Mrs. Logan, the one Michael loved.
That morning, she helped her father with chores, but she felt like she was moving through mud.
“You look terrible,” Daet said frankly as they headed back to the house.
“Danke, Daet.” She cast him a wry look.
“I mean you look tired. Are you sleeping?”
“I couldn’t settle last night,” she admitted. “I’m still thinking about Michael’s funeral.”
“It’s past, Tabby.”
“I know, but I don’t have any peace about it. I feel like I stepped wrong.”
“You could always visit Michael’s widow.”
Michael’s widow. That very term made her blood boil. Why did the second wife get to be his widow, and she was just the woman he hadn’t wanted to keep? But that wasn’t fair. What else were they supposed to call Kelsie?
“I don’t know, Daet,” she said. “But I have a busy day, so I should get moving.”
Before she could start, though, Benjie Bontrager arrived in an open-top, two-seater buggy.
The teenager quickly explained that his family had a new cria that arrived the night before, and its immunoglobulin levels were low.
He showed her the SNAP tests they’d done, and looking at the results of the disposable tests, she could see just how low the baby alpaca’s IgG levels were.
“I’ll come now,” Tabitha said. “I just have to swing by the clinic and grab a frozen plasma infusion. Keep the cria inside.”
An hour later, Tabitha arrived at the Bontrager farm.
The Bontrager family had only just started raising alpacas, and alpacas could be finicky.
With any new livestock, there was a learning curve, and Tabitha was reminded of Jonas and his desire to raise sheep.
He’d get his wish now. He was marrying a woman his family approved of, and his daet would sign over the land to let him get started.
She’d be called in for Jonas and Christina’s veterinarian needs, too, and that thought put a knot in her stomach.
Jonas would be married. He’d have kinner.
He’d have that family he wanted, and Tabitha would only be able to watch from the outside and wish him well.
Jonas moving on hurt in a completely different place in her heart—a deeper place.
It went beyond her ego and her anger and hit her right in that tender, vulnerable spot at the center.
The sun was bright and warm, and Tabitha tied her horse to the hitching post at the Bontrager farm as she looked over the small herd of grazing alpaca. They’d been recently shorn, so their heads and ankles were fluffy, and their bodies were shaved to give them a comical look.
“Gut mariye,” Tabitha called when she spotted Ellen Bontrager on her porch. She forced a cheerful smile to her face and pushed back her own heavy heart. This was why work was a blessing—it gave her something else that mattered to think about.
“Good morning,” Ellen called back.
Tabitha carried her bag and the thawing plasma into the Bontrager kitchen, where a little chocolate brown cria lay on a blanket on the floor.
She looked like a little melted puddle—completely flattened out, her long neck extended.
A towel was over her back. The morning was warm, but a newborn alpaca needed some extra help at this size.
“She’s very weak,” Ellen said. “We can get her on her feet, but she won’t stay there long. We’ve been bottle-feeding her, but she’s not gotten the colostrum that she needs.”
“Yah, I saw the tests,” Tabitha agreed. “We’ll get her a nice infusion, and she’ll get those antibodies.”
Alpacas were born with no immune system whatsoever.
They were a veritable blank slate. They got all of their antibody protection from that first mother’s milk, and the mother had rejected her.
If she didn’t get the infusion, she’d be vulnerable to every illness possible and would likely die.
Alpacas entered the world entirely unprepared for the ugliness.
Much like Tabitha had entered the Englisch world—her heart open, expecting love and faithfulness, and completely ill-equipped to handle the reality of what was waiting for her. If her mother had been alive, would Tabitha have had the same fate?
Her mother had a copper teapot, and she could still remember women sitting around their table, drinking tea steeped in that pot, talking in low tones about adult problems. Her mother had had wisdom to pass along. Tabitha knew that for sure.
Or would Tabitha have been convinced she knew everything anyway?
That was the arrogance of youth. Young people thought they knew it all and were cocksure in the face of danger.
Life would never flatten them—they were different.
They were smarter. They were pursuing their dreams, unlike their overly cautious parents.
Maybe it wasn’t being motherless that had left her susceptible to her own painful lessons. That was too easy of an excuse, and when she one day faced Gott, he wouldn’t be giving her those easy excuses either. Maybe it had just been her own stubborn pride.
Ellen’s two daughters stood at the kitchen sink doing breakfast dishes, and Benjie sat cross-legged on the floor next to the cria. Benjie was all of fifteen, and in some ways he seemed quite grown up, but there on the floor, he looked like a gangly boy. He pet the top of the alpaca’s head tenderly.
“She’s smaller than the other newborns we’ve had,” Benjie said. He spoke with authority. He’d obviously been there for all the other newborns. “She’s half the size.”
“She’s very little,” Tabitha agreed. “Can I get some warm water to finish thawing this?” Tabitha lifted up the bag of golden plasma.
“Yah, of course.” Ellen bustled about putting the kettle on the stove top to heat some water, and Tabitha knelt down next to the cria, trying to decide the best route to administer it intravenously.
“What is that?” Benjie asked.
“This is plasma. It’s from an adult alpaca’s blood,” Tabitha replied. “So it has all the antibodies that this baby needs because of all the immunity the adult built up over the years. We will put it into the baby’s veins, and the baby will have the same immunity.”
From adult to infant—and that protection would last a lifetime. Funny how little young ones appreciated adult experience, both in alpacas and in people. But that immunity and hard-won wisdom were necessary for survival.
Ellen came with a bowl of warm water, and Tabitha put the IV bag of plasma inside of it.
It didn’t take long for the plasma to thaw and gently warm.
Once it was ready, she found the jugular vein in the cria’s long fluffy neck—the easiest vein to find in an animal—and then used a straight razor to shave a spot so she could see clearly.
The baby started to struggle when Tabitha reached for the needle.
“Benjie, can you hold her for me?” Tabitha asked.
Benjie gathered up the cria in his lap and used both hands to keep her head still while Tabitha inserted the needle, saw the backwash of blood that proved she’d found the vein, and then removed the needle, leaving the catheter in place.
She used her teeth to tear off a piece of medical tape and taped down the tube.
“We’ll do a slow drip to start,” she murmured, adjusting the dial.
“She’ll be okay?” Benjie asked.
“Yah. Once she has the plasma, she’ll be ready for anything,” Tabitha said. “She needs that immunity, though, or even the tiniest illness could be lethal.”
“All because the mamm wouldn’t feed her,” Benjie said.
“Yah, that’s true. But that’s why she’s got you,” Tabitha said. “She’ll be a bottle baby, for sure. She isn’t tall enough to reach her mamm’s teats, even if we could convince the mother to take her back.”
Benjie looked over at his mother uncertainly. No farm wanted bottle babies on their hands, and Tabitha recognized the silent question he was posing.
“She’ll have to be your responsibility, Benjie,” Ellen said.
The boy grinned, then looked down at the cria in his lap. “I’m going to call her Scharzbendle.”
That translated from Pennsylvania Dutch to mean apron string, and Tabitha had to agree that baby alpacas did look rather stringy with their wobbly legs, long necks, and slim torsos.
“I like it,” Tabitha said.
“Let me get you some tea,” Ellen said. “Maybe a piece of pie?”
“Danke, I’d love one.” Tabitha secured the bag of plasma to the top of the table with some tape and sank into one of the chairs. She would spend the next couple of hours there at the Bontrager farm, making sure the cria responded well to the plasma.
“We heard about your husband’s death,” Ellen said. “I’m sorry.”
And for the first time since Tabitha had heard the news, she didn’t feel irritable at the condolences.
“We were divorced,” Tabitha pointed out.
“He’s still dead,” Ellen said frankly.
The girls peeked at Tabitha over their shoulders. This was a taboo topic, but Ellen had brought it up.
“Do you feel sad?” one of the girls asked.
“I do,” Tabitha admitted, and her throat felt tight again. She was starting to, at least. The numbness seemed to be gone, and in its place was an aching feeling. “I’m sad for everything I lost, and I’m sad for the mistakes I made. I don’t know if Michael found Jesus before he died either.”
“He wasn’t a Christian, then?” Ellen asked. “I thought I’d heard he was.”
“His family was Christian. I thought he was as well when I married him, but there is a difference,” Tabitha said. It was a distinction she’d learned too late.
“If he was living according to God’s laws, he wouldn’t have done what he did,” Benjie said. That was as close as he’d come to saying the words out loud. Cheating. Adultery. Sin.
“I agree,” Tabitha said. “We have to live out our faith—and we are known by our fruit. It’s a good lesson for all of us.”
And Tabitha was a Christian. She loved Gott, and she longed to live in a good and honorable way. She listened to Gott’s voice in her heart, but she’d been fighting that voice lately. That was why she couldn’t sleep.
Jesus said to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to love her enemies. Yet when her enemy had reached out and invited her to Michael’s funeral, Tabitha had not gone.
She knew what she had to do, of course. She didn’t want to, but if she wanted to be right with Gott, she’d have to. She’d stop by a phone hut, and she’d call that lawyer and tell him that she was willing to sit down and talk with Kelsie Logan.
And Gott help her, but Tabitha would do her very best to forgive her. Christians were known by their fruit, and it seemed that Gott had decided it was time. She prayed that meant he would also give her the strength to move forward.