Chapter 33
Tabitha watched Jonas as he strode away, and she felt like her heart was tearing out of her chest. She knew he was marrying another woman.
She knew it, so why was she letting herself feel anything more?
She was no better than Kelsie right now, allowing her feelings for a man to grow while she knew full well that he had made promises to another.
Would she be able to sit down in a quilting circle with Christina one day, happy for her friend for having found a delightful wife? Would she feel perfectly comfortable repeating this conversation to the woman who would become his wife?
Tabitha knew she wouldn’t. Because the truth was, she was still very much in love with Jonas. But he’d chosen a different life, and he was doing the right thing by walking away.
“Gott, forgive me,” she whispered.
She may have loved him first, but that didn’t matter a bit in Gott’s estimation of things.
What mattered was whom he married. Tabitha would never do what Kelsie had done.
Her feelings didn’t matter in this situation.
If she wanted a man to be faithful to her, if she wanted a man who she could trust to be fully honest and keep his word, then she had to be that same kind of woman.
Promises mattered. Daet was right that men could not be stolen, and even if they could be, she wasn’t a woman who’d try.
Tabitha bowed her head and looked at Michael’s grave somberly.
“Good-bye, Michael,” she said. “I hope you found mercy.”
She hoped that he’d died with his heart stretched toward Gott, longing for mercy, forgiveness, and a new nature.
She hoped that one day in heaven, she’d see her ex-husband whole, those missing bits of his heart restored, and his sights firmly fixed upon his Savior.
But that was Gott’s domain, not hers. Thankfully.
Her heart felt lighter, somehow. She was deeply sad about her own losses, but she realized that she no longer carried the anger and resentment toward Michael.
There was something so final about a grave.
His time on earth was complete, but she still had years—if Gott was willing—ahead of her.
She had a life to live, and people to help, and her own choices to make.
And if she wasn’t careful, she could make Michael’s mistakes in her own life, believing that her feelings justified destroying another woman’s happiness.
And her feelings weren’t reason enough for that.
Nothing was. There was right, and there was wrong.
Danke, Gott. The bitterness was gone, and she knew that was Gott’s doing, not her own. And she was thankful, too, that she and Jonas had stopped when they had.
Tabitha headed toward the pavement. The driver would be back for her soon.
Perhaps the path to becoming an untrustworthy person who broke hearts was easier to slip down than she’d thought.
Everyone thought their situation was so unique and special.
But was it? Not really. Jonas didn’t want to end up a man with secrets and infidelities like Michael, and Tabitha didn’t want to be a woman of the same ilk either.
It took two. She had forgiven Michael, but the next step was to see to her own actions and make sure she stayed pure.
A clean conscience mattered far more than any earthly reward, even if the cost was heartbreak.
Later that evening, Tabitha sat at the kitchen table, Rose and Amanda opposite her, and their father standing awkwardly by the counter, his baby granddaughter in his arms and a scowl on his face.
“I told him to be careful with you,” Daet said. “I specifically told him!”
The baby whimpered, and he bounced her gently, murmuring softly—a complete contrast with the baleful look on his face.
“I’m not sure it was as simple as that, Daet,” Tabitha replied. “Don’t be angry with Jonas. He’s doing the right thing.”
“The right thing would have been to carry on with his life and let you do the same,” Daet said. “He didn’t need to drag your heart into it.”
As if Jonas had a choice in whether or not she fell in love with him. That had happened already. The only trouble between them was that they’d admitted to it now . . . and he wasn’t free to do anything about it.
Tabitha hadn’t meant to spill any of this to her family, but her sisters had wanted to know what happened at the gravesite, and somewhere along the way, Daet had overheard, and now she sat with her family at the kitchen table with her heart in tatters.
This was the kind of visit she remembered Mamm having with women from the community—the kind where hearts lay on the table along with that copper teapot and the scattering of pretty china teacups.
And somehow, the loss of that teapot hurt more today too.
She’d misplaced it back when she hadn’t appreciated the security of her family’s comfort and sympathy.
Well, she certainly appreciated them now.
“You and Jonas have been close for a while, though,” Rose said.
“Yah,” Tabitha agreed. “We just clicked. We became very good friends, but the timing here is all wrong. I’m the one who told him to go find himself a wife—and he did. Christina sounds like a wonderful woman, and they are two good people who deserve each other.”
Amanda shook her head. “You’re telling me that Jonas is going to marry her even knowing that he’s in love with you?”
“That part isn’t my business,” Tabitha replied.
“That part is foolish,” Amanda retorted, spinning her glass of meadow tea in front of her. “I’m no marriage expert—I’m new enough to the institution—but you can’t marry one woman while loving another. Does he think his wife won’t notice?”
“She’ll notice, all right,” Rose agreed quietly. “A woman isn’t happy unless she’s got her husband’s whole heart, and she’ll feel it if she doesn’t.”
Amanda nodded. “My point exactly.”
Daet adjusted the baby in his arms and patted her diapered rump in a steady rhythm.
His lined face relaxed as he looked down at her.
He was a surprisingly doting grandfather now that he had his first grandchild, and Tabitha had noticed that this baby girl had softened Daet more than all three of his daughters did combined.
“Tabitha, you are free to marry now,” Daet said. All three women turned to look at him, and Daet shrugged. “She is.”
“That’s true, you know.” Amanda turned back. “You can marry again with the church’s blessing.”
“Am I the kind of woman some nice Amish man will want?” Tabitha asked. “When it came right down to it, regardless of our feelings for each other, Jonas chose a sweet Amish woman who will be a traditional wife. Apparently, she’s a very good quilter.”
Her voice broke then. Amish men wanted women who’d keep their home and raise their children, not vaccinate their cattle and treat a sick hog.
“If I could find a husband, so can you,” Amanda said.
“Tabitha, you’ve got so much to offer,” Rose said. “If you give us the okay, Amanda and I will set to work rummaging up some quality men.”
The thought was an exhausting one.
“I’m in love with another man.” Tabitha wiped a tear off her cheek. “It wouldn’t be fair to anyone to do that just yet.”
Amanda leaned across the table and squeezed Tabitha’s hand. “You’re doing the right thing, though. You’re respecting the promises that Jonas made, and you aren’t trying to steal him out from under Christina.”
“Men are not stealable,” Daet said. “How many times do I have to say this?”
“I was about to say the same thing,” Tabitha said with a bitter laugh. “Jonas had a choice to make, and he made his. Now, I will lick my wounds and see who Gott has in store for me.”
“Someone kind and decent,” Rose said.
“Someone who will glow with pride when he tells people you’re a veterinarian,” Amanda said.
“But not too much pride,” Daet said. “That would be sinful.”
“Just a little bit of pride,” Amanda said. “Just enough to be truly grateful for Tabitha.”
“That would do,” Daet agreed.
The baby wriggled and started to whimper. Daet adjusted her to his shoulder, but she didn’t stop the fussing, so Daet carried her over to Rose.
“I think she needs her mamm,” Daet said with a gentle smile.
Rose gathered her daughter up in her arms and turned away to adjust her nursing-styled cape dress so she could feed her daughter with a flap of fabric falling discreetly over the baby’s head.
“I appreciate that you all want to help,” Tabitha said, her throat tight. “And maybe I’ll be ready for that help later, but right now, I just need to be sad.”
Tabitha was the kind of woman who loved hard.
Her heart came with her loyalty, and it wasn’t easily dislodged.
She’d loved Michael with that kind of force, and while he’d never truly appreciated the gift that was her heart, it had been his all the same.
That divorce had been like cutting off a limb.
It was a wound that took a lot to heal, and now that she’d fallen in love with Jonas, her poor heart wasn’t going to simply let go and move on.
She could feel it. Her love was the stubborn kind, and she would very likely go on loving Jonas for the rest of her life, unless Gott worked a miracle and set her heart free.
But Jonas needed no forgiveness from her.
He was a good man making a moral choice, and he owed her nothing.
Her struggle with Jonas wouldn’t be to forgive him; it would be to stop loving him from a distance.
And that would likely be the hardest of all.
When her sisters went home to their husbands, and Daet went out to drive Aent Dina to a neighboring community to visit with her sister, Tabitha was left alone in the house, and it was then that she let the tears come.
She cried softly at first, and then she was wracked with heaving sobs.
She was crying for Michael, who had somehow lost the most important part of himself, and she was crying for Jonas, who she’d love for the rest of her days.
And she cried for herself—a woman who was created for a lifelong love, but who seemed to hand her heart to exactly the wrong man every time.
But if there was one thing she’d learned over the years, it was that Gott still loved her, and he was still working things out for her good. Even when she couldn’t see it or feel it. Even when the man she loved was going to marry a perfectly delightful woman in Ohio.
Gott was good. But life was sometimes horribly, horribly cruel.