The food was prepared, if not perfectly, then as best it could be on short notice early in the spring, when they were still living from last year’s harvest. Rebekah took her place on a rug in her tent, with Deborah tending to the flap. A quick instruction to a serving girl, a longer wait during which Rebekah tried to decide whether she wanted to make a good impression or a bad one, and then her guests were there, clapping their hands outside the tent.

Deborah opened the flap and admitted them; Rebekah rose to her feet to greet them with kisses. The grandmother introduced herself as Ethah and promptly seated herself in Rebekah’s own place—but of course the old can do what they like. Ezbaal’s mother did not let go of her shoulders after their kisses, instead holding her at arm’s length to look closely at her face. “You put a veil over that?” she said.

Rebekah only smiled in a way she hoped was enigmatic, and said, “What name should I call you?”

“You must call me Mother, of course,” said the woman.

Whereupon Rebekah resolved to call her by no name at all. She would not be tricked into intimacy so easily as that.

She turned to greet Ezbaal’s sister and found the woman to be different from the other two—taller, as tall as Rebekah, but with her hair so arranged that it served almost as effectively as Rebekah’s veil to hide her face. The woman’s hands trembled, and she could scarcely bring herself close enough to kiss Rebekah’s cheeks. What—someone here who was even more nervous than Rebekah? Why? She was not being examined by women who were deciding on her worthiness as a bride.

Or was she?

For the first time it occurred to her that there might be more to this visit from Ezbaal than merely to see if Rebekah might be an appropriate bride. After all, there were two marriageable men in Bethuel’s household, too. Laban, of course, was too young to be married to a mature woman like this. But was it possible that Ezbaal had brought his sister with an eye to trying to entice Bethuel to marry again?

It was rather odd that Father never married again after Mother died, thought Rebekah. Rich men often took several wives, yet Father had married only the one woman. Why hadn’t anyone brought a sister or daughter to visit him before?

“And what is your name?” asked Rebekah. “Or am I to call you sister?”

“Never that,” said the woman in a voice that sounded husky, as if she had been weeping. “Call me Akyas.”