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That had been the first of many visits. Sometimes he'd chopped wood. Sometimes he only stopped over to drop off a carton of food. Once, he'd trimmed her hedges. Maybe about every fifth time, he knocked on the door, waited for a response that never came, then wrote a note. 

She'd saved them all. 

Seth Zimmerman might have gone to prison for killing Peter Miller, but he wasn't a bad man. The rumors were that Peter had attacked Bethanne Hostetler and Seth had stopped it. No one but Seth and God knew for sure what happened next. All that had been proven was that the two men had fought, Peter had fallen and hit his head on a rock. 

Since she knew just how much could happen when no one was watching, Tabitha reckoned almost anything could've transpired. Truth had a way of getting twisted and turned when it touched the bright light of day. 

Returning to the present, she rested her head against the window's frame and watched Seth some more. After yet another thwack of the ax, he put it down and stretched his arms. Then he turned and looked her way. Stark, steel-blue eyes met hers. 

And took her breath away. 

Tabitha gulped. 

There was no kidding herself now. Seth knew that she'd been watching him. Probably felt her eyes on him every time he'd come out. He knew she watched him but didn't have the nerve to even say hello. 

He probably thought she was the same woman he used to know. His teacher who had been barely three years older than him. The woman he used to tease about mice and bugs while she pretended to be too mature to tease him back. 

Thinking of all the kindnesses he'd done, all the gifts and food he'd given her, Tabitha went to the kitchen and filled one of her baskets with homemade bread and a jar of the strawberry jam she'd put up at the beginning of summer. 

She braced herself, then walked to the door. It was time to go outside and thank him in person. At last. 

Yes, she knew a lot about fear now, and her heart and head weren't in as good a shape as they used to be. But that didn't mean she didn't know right from wrong. Besides, even if something bad did happen between her and Seth Zimmerman, Tabitha knew she could take it. 

She'd learned that there was an awful lot that she could take.

CHAPTER TWO

After depositing his ax in the back seat of his truck, Seth eyed the pile of wood he'd just chopped. Would it be enough for Tabitha? He wasn't sure. Last night's temperatures had hovered close to forty degrees, and the weather reports said that a cold front was on the way. 

He hated the idea of her being cold. 

Actually, he hated the thought of Tabitha suffering at all. She was such a tiny thing and had already been through too much. Leon Yoder had been a mean son of a gun. Just about everyone had given him a wide berth, Seth included. And everyone had been shocked when their new schoolteacher consented to marry him. She'd been only seventeen. 

Back then, Seth was one of her students. He'd been fourteen, anxious to pass his graduation tests and get out of school. But he'd also had an awful crush on his teacher. She was so sweet and so pretty with her long brown hair tucked neatly under a crisp white kapp. He'd spent hours wondering what her hair looked like around her shoulders. He knew he wasn't the only boy thinking about things like that, either. Why, the whole class had fallen in love with her. It had been a very dark day when Miss Tabitha announced that she was getting married and that her fiancé didn't want her working anymore. 

Eight months later, when Seth had spied her at the market, Tabitha looked like a different woman. Her plump cheeks had thinned, her perfect skin had grown pale, and most of the light in her brown eyes had faded. And a little more than a year after that, she'd worn a haunted expression as Leon announced that his wife was with child. Tabitha had stood so stiff by his side that Seth reckoned a strong wind could break her in two.