“Oh, I didn’t say I believed the stories. Though now that I see you, the part about your being beautiful enough that someone might kill for you—I believe that.”

This was going too far. Whether he meant it that way or not, his last statement could be taken as a threat against Isaac, and Rebekah wouldn’t have it. She turned to her husband. “Shouldn’t we go to your father, Isaac, and let him know that we’re here?”

Ishmael would not be so easily deterred. “Look how she deflects praise—beautiful and modest.”

For once Isaac answered for her. “She’s a virtuous woman.”

Ishmael turned and muttered something to his sons, who tried to contain their laughter. Though few heard the words he said, it was obvious that whatever joke he made had been in response to Isaac’s calling her virtuous. There was no way not to be insulted.

Except that Rebekah had heard his joke. She had spent years learning to hear even muttered remarks, so she could write them down for Father. If she were to keep this from becoming a quarrel—or a sign of cowardice when Isaac did not turn it into a quarrel—she would have to respond to the insult directly.

So she faced the onlooking crowd and said, loudly, “I think you might not have heard my brother-in-law say, ‘That explains why she’s barren.’”

The shocked silence grew, if possible, even deeper. Ishmael blushed to have his words openly repeated—it was, truly, a churlish thing to say—and the smiles disappeared from his sons’ faces.

Until Rebekah laughed. “You silly man,” she said, as if he had only said something playful, rather than an insult designed to diminish her and her husband in everyone’s eyes. “Don’t you know that the Lord takes his time when he’s about the business of creating the next generation to have the birthright? It does no good to try to hasten the Lord. I’m sure there’s a story about that floating around somewhere.”

She knew perfectly well there was—the story of how Sarah, despairing of ever having a child, gave her handmaid Hagar to Abraham to have a child on her behalf. The son born from that union was Ishmael. His existence was owed entirely to Sarah’s trying to “hasten the Lord.”

He understood her perfectly, of course, and nodded at her for having landed a blow in their little war of words.

“Well, I can see I’m going to enjoy visiting here a lot more often than before,” said Ishmael. “Finally there’s someone I can joke with who answers me gibe for gibe.”

Rebekah could not resist deflating his patronizing attitude. “What gibe?” she asked innocently—so innocently that everyone laughed.