Keturah dismissed her objections. “Don’t be absurd, Rebekah. I may be a wife here, of sorts, but I’m not the wife.”

Rebekah did not say that technically a concubine was more servant than wife. “I’m not the wife either,” said Rebekah. “I’m the son’s wife.”

“But he’s the son, and that makes you the wife. The one who will bear the birthright boy.”

“May God grant that prayer,” said Rebekah.

“If he hasn’t already,” said Keturah.

Did she really say what Rebekah thought she said?

“Oh, don’t blush and look shy. Isaac has been shockingly chaste. I assumed the reason he married you so quickly was because he couldn’t wait a moment longer!”

Rebekah looked away, not wishing to continue that line of discussion. “I wonder what I should call him.”

“Your baby?”

“Your husband.” She had always thought of him as Uncle Abraham, but now he was her father-in-law.

Keturah laughed loudly. “Oh, everybody calls him Father Abraham except me, I just call him Abraham. In public. What I call him in private is private.”

She grinned as if she was dying to tell. But Rebekah continued to look off into the distance and said nothing to encourage that topic, either.

So Keturah went on. “And Isaac, of course, he just calls him Father.” And then, as if it were a secret: “One thing you have to know—in this camp, what Father Abraham decides is what will happen. He talks to God, you know.”

“So I heard,” said Rebekah dryly. “But that’s how it is with every herding family. The patriarch is the judge and lawgiver. He’s what a king would be, in a city.”

“Only the kingdom is very small,” said Keturah, laughing.

“In this case,” said Rebekah, “the kingdom is very large.”

“Well, for a camp I suppose it is, but I’ve seen the cities of the coast.”

“Really? All of them?”

“I’ve actually been in Gerar.”

“It must have been impressive,” said Rebekah. “I hear it’s almost a tenth of the size of Byblos, and Byblos is large enough to be considered a good-sized town in Egypt.” Rebekah felt just a little bad about letting herself get caught up in a contest of words with Keturah, but there was something about her that just made Rebekah want to argue.

“Oh, I know, all those magnificent places, so far away. Abraham’s been to Egypt, you know.”

“I’ve heard stories,” said Rebekah.

“But still, how can you call Abraham’s camp a large kingdom, if you’re going to go comparing Gerar to the cities of Egypt!”

“Because Uncle Abraham’s kingdom is the whole world, Keturah,” said Rebekah.

Keturah looked at her as though she were out of her mind. “Well, I think King Abimelech of Gerar would have a different opinion.”