Rebekah realized at once that this was the good choice, for no one else in camp would be bearing him grandchildren—it was a name for her alone to use, at least until she had children who could speak.

“Grandfather,” she said, “I hope you’ll pray that I conceive a son very quickly.”

“I pray for that every day,” said Abraham. “I don’t know how long I have to live, and I want my grandson close to me.” He coughed—a weak, empty cough that seemed to shake his whole body to produce only the slightest of sounds. “I don’t mind this nonsense of camping out at Lahai-roi for now, but when that first son is born, you two will come home.”

Finally Isaac spoke. “Thank you for the invitation, Father,” he said. “I’ll consider it.”

“Why do you defy me?” asked Abraham.

Isaac said nothing.

Abraham spoke to Rebekah. “I won’t have this boy growing up soft. Too close to his mother. Women can’t help it, they treat their boys as babies far too long, and it breaks their spirit. I indulged Sarah because she treasured Isaac, but at what cost to him?”

She could hardly believe he was criticizing Isaac this way in front of her. The tension between father and son was so thick that Rebekah felt as though she could hardly breathe. But then, as she thought about it, Isaac wasn’t the only target of Abraham’s soft, sharp words. How dare he assume that just because she’s a woman, she would be too indulgent with her son?

Maybe nobody else stood up to Abraham in this camp, but Rebekah had no intention of turning over her firstborn son to this old man to raise. “You aren’t suggesting that you intend to take our son away from us and raise him yourself?” asked Rebekah.

Abraham coughed again, then laughed dryly. “Oh, that would be sad, wouldn’t it. A baby raised by an old man who has to sit in the sun just to keep his body from getting as cold as death in the middle of the day.”

“We’ll do all things according to the will of the Lord,” said Isaac softly.

Abraham spoke to Rebekah instead of Isaac. “He sounds obedient, doesn’t he? But I know defiance when I hear it.” He turned to Isaac. “And I’ve done nothing to deserve that attitude from you, my son. Nothing but give you all that I have.”

Rebekah could not keep still. “He wasn’t defying you, Grandfather, he—”

“‘According to the will of the Lord,’ he said,” Abraham echoed. “Meaning that unless I’m prepared to say the Lord told me they must live with me, he’s not going to do it.”

“That’s not at all what he meant. That’s—”

“That’s exactly what I meant,” said Isaac.

The words hung in the air like the aftermath of a thunderclap.