“I miss your mother too, you know,” said Abraham. “Every hour of every day, I have things I want to tell her. And ask her. And show her. It’s as if I lost half myself.”

Once again Isaac said nothing, and this time Rebekah knew enough to keep silent herself.

Abraham, therefore, was the one who broke the silence, explaining to Rebekah, “Isaac doesn’t like it that I took Keturah as a wife.”

“I’m perfectly happy for you,” said Isaac. “I appreciate your waiting until Mother was buried.”

His voice was completely level, not a hint of sarcasm, but Abraham recoiled as if someone had thrown something at his eyes.

“Your mother is my wife forever,” said Abraham. “Worlds without end, she’s half my self.”

Isaac said nothing.

Again, Abraham directed himself to Rebekah. “He was always with his mother like a moth around a flame, darting everywhere but never very far.”

Abraham seemed to expect some kind of answer from her, but as long as Isaac wasn’t answering, Rebekah did not want to say anything more. She had already gotten herself into enough difficulty.

But no one was speaking, and Abraham was looking at her with such intensity that she could no longer keep still. “I wish I could have known him as a child,” said Rebekah. “But I grew up hearing legends about his birth.”

“Ah, the legends, the stories,” said Abraham. “The myths, the outright lies. Gossip. Slander. Scandal.”

“Miracles, that’s all I heard,” said Rebekah.

“Truly?” asked Isaac.

“In my father’s house,” said Rebekah. “I once heard something else from visitors, but in my father’s house, there were no stories but of God’s goodness to Abraham and Sarah.”

“Then you heard the truth,” said Abraham. “God has blessed us beyond all measure.”

Again a silence fell, but at least this time it didn’t follow some jab from one of the men, or some foolish statement of Rebekah’s. It seemed contemplative.

“I wish I had known her,” said Rebekah.

They both knew she meant Sarah. “She was born to be a queen,” said Abraham.

“I thought it was her older sister who—”

Abraham interrupted her with a sharp dry laugh. “Qira. If she was a queen, so is every ewe in the flock. So much strength, but all of it devoted to getting her own way, and none of it to serving her husband or her children.”

“Father likes to tell about Qira,” said Isaac, “because it always amazes him how different two children of the same father can be.”

Again a silence fell, and for some reason Rebekah thought that this was the awkward silence following a thrust in their duel. But who did the stabbing this time? And who was stabbed?