Chapter 1
The buggy wheels hit a rut and Tabitha's notebook bounced on the seat beside her, flipping open to the pages where she'd written everything Aunt Mercy had told her about marriage. She shot out a hand to catch it before it flew to the floor.
The pages fluttered in the breeze from the open side, and she pressed her palm over the neat lines of her own handwriting as if she could hold all those careful words in place.
"Stay put," she told the notebook. "You and I have important work to do."
Her horse flicked an ear but kept a steady pace along the road that led toward Honor and Jonathon's farm. Bare trees lined the fields on either side, their branches thin against the pale sky. The world felt quiet, but Tabitha's mind did not.
Aunt Mercy's pages were already full. She’d learned from Aunt Mercy not to rush in and not to listen to what other people told her. But also that love grows. That had all sounded very nice and very sensible when Aunt Mercy said it, but the more Tabitha stared at the words, the more questions they raised.
She wouldn't rest until she got advice from all her aunts. One aunt was not enough, not for a decision that would decide the rest of her life. And the thing about aunts was that they never agreed on anything.
Mercy had said one thing, Honor would say something completely different, Joy would contradict them both, and Hope would add something that made the whole thing more confusing than it had been to begin with.
That was the problem with asking for advice from people who all thought they were right. They probably each were, in their own situation. But Tabitha needed to find the part that was true for everyone, the thread that ran through all of it, and pull it out carefully without losing the rest.
That was something she was confident she could do because it required someone with sharp eyes and an excellent memory with the ability to stay calm when relatives started saying contradictory things.
If she didn't do something very clever, she'd be milking cows forever—milking them every morning while it was still dark, and every evening when she was tired and her arms ached, and listening to her brothers Josiah and Ben talk about milk yields and feed prices until she lost her mind entirely.
She loved her family. She did not love the dairy. The only way out of a life filled with cows was marriage. It seemed everyone else knew that, but she’d only just found out.
Once she married, she would move to her husband's place, and then, if she chose carefully, there would be no more cows. Maybe a few chickens. Chickens were fine. Chickens didn't stand on her feet or swish their tails into her face.
But that meant she had to choose the right husband and get it right the first time. There was no starting over if she discovered after the wedding that he secretly wanted to start his own dairy.
She nearly laughed when she thought about asking Aunt Favor. She’d tell her to make sure you lived a great distance from your in-laws. But not everyone would have in-laws like Harriet and Melvin.
Her stomach gave a small twist. What if there was no clear way to know? What if she was doomed to make a terrible mistake no matter how many notebooks she filled?
"Stop it, Tabitha," she muttered. "Just get to Aunt Honor's and ask your questions."
She took a breath, steadied the notebook on the seat, and flipped it to the fresh page she had labeled Aunt Honor. With one eye on the road, she glanced at those questions, each one underlined.
How did you know Jonathon was the one? What would you tell your younger self? What matters most in a marriage? How do you know the difference between love and just liking someone?
She read them over, mouthing the words. That was a good start. If she could get Honor to answer all of those, and if she wrote it all down, then she could compare it with Mercy's pages later. Maybe she’d make a chart.
And after Honor, there would be Joy. Joy's house was always full of laughter. Surely Joy would talk to her. Then Hope, then Favor, then her own mother, Cherish, although she already knew what Mamm would say. She would say, "You can't plan love, Tabitha, you just recognize it when it arrives," which was not especially helpful for someone who very much wanted a plan, a proper one, written down, with columns.
She'd also heard the story about Honor and Jonathon—or most of it. Bits came through over the years the way things always did in a large family, in snatches and half-sentences that stopped the moment a child walked into the room. From what she'd gathered, there had been some kind of running off together when they were young, Florence being dramatic about it, and then everything eventually settling down. Adults thought children didn't notice these things. Adults were wrong about that constantly.
But hearing snatches and hearing the whole truth were two very different things, and Tabitha intended to hear the whole truth. The real version. The one with all the parts still attached. She was nearly sixteen now, which meant she was practically an adult herself, and if adults could know things, so could she.
In the distance, the shape of Honor and Jonathon's place came into view, low buildings and a sturdy house surrounded by bare garden beds. Smoke rose from the chimney and drifted straight up. She guided her horse around the bend and caught sight of another buggy ahead of her, moving at a steady clip in the same direction.
She frowned and leaned a little to the side to see better around the horse. "Who is that?"
The buggy ahead turned onto Honor and Jonathon's driveway. Tabitha blinked. "Maybe Honor's hosting a quilting circle," she said. "That would be terrible timing, but there might be some nice food.”
Today she wanted Honor to herself.
She pulled gently on the lines, giving the buggy ahead space, then turned into the driveway after it, the narrow strip of earth lined with tracks from where Jonathon had moved equipment recently. She eased the buggy to a stop a short distance behind the first one and watched as a man climbed down and turned to help a woman from the seat.
He shifted and the light caught his face, and it was like seeing a familiar face from a different angle.
"Matthew Wilkes," she whispered. Jonathon's younger brother. He lifted a small girl down from the buggy—Lana, Grace and Matthew's daughter. Then Grace stepped down, and Lana clung to Grace's hand.
Matthew was like an uncle to her. He was Ada’s nephew and had lived at her grandmother’s house for years, and he worked at the Baker Apple Orchard.
Tabitha's fingers tightened on the reins. None of them looked as if they were there for an afternoon of visiting. Their buggy was crowded with bags. Matthew had one slung over his shoulder already, and Grace carried another. There was a third bag on the seat that Matthew reached for.
An odd hush settled over Tabitha's excited thoughts. People bringing that many bags were not just stopping by. It looked like they were staying for a while.
She watched as the front door of the house opened and Honor stepped onto the porch. Tabitha's notebook slid a little against her arm, forgotten for the moment.
Something was going on.
She gathered her notebook and climbed out of the buggy.
Matthew turned, his face lined and tired, and shifted one of the bags higher on his shoulder.
Grace stood close to Lana, her shoulders drawn in, her fingers tight around the handle of the bag she carried.
Tabitha looked at them. Then at the bags.
