Rebekah started to write an explanation, but Father waved away the stick. “You think I won’t know what you’re going to say? You were veiled when he was offering to marry you, so I had to agree to marry Akyas the same way. But I’ve agreed now, so what’s the big mystery?”

Again Rebekah started to write, but only got as far as “His mother and grandmother and . . .”

“But it’s completely different!” Father said. “He had three women examine you, and they got a good look at your face. You said yourself that her face was half hidden under her hair.”

Rebekah wrote, “She’s not a leper.”

“Oh, good. I always wanted to marry a non-leper.”

Rebekah almost wrote a sharp retort, but she knew better and stayed her hand.

“I know what you were going to write. I’m deaf, so I can’t be too fussy.”

That was what she was going to write. But she had to pretend it wasn’t, so instead she wrote, “A link with Ezbaal’s family is a good thing, and . . .”

“And I had to agree to let her worship her own gods, because they had agreed to let you.”

She wrote: “It’s all my fault, I know . . .”

“It’s not your fault. It’s Pillel’s fault, with all his talk about making an enemy of Ezbaal. Suitors get rejected all the time, and it doesn’t make them enemies!”

She rolled her eyes. The answer to that one was very long and tedious to write, and Father already knew it by now.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

So she flung her arms around him and kissed him hard on the cheek.

“What was that about?”

She parted from the embrace and took his cheeks between her hands. “You are a wonderful father who saved me from a marriage that would have made me miserable.”

“You’re talking too fast for me to read your lips.”

“I love you.”

“Yes, well, you should. The sacrifices we make for our children. The things we give up, so that they can be happy.”

And with that she could leave his tent again, knowing that she’d be summoned back in no time.

Truth to tell, she was puzzled by this business of Akyas marrying Father with a veil on. For all her reassurances to Father, she had to agree with him that it was strange. If Ezbaal was retaliating for the fact that Rebekah had been kept veiled, it was petty and spiteful of him or else he had a mean sense of humor. And if he wasn’t, if there really was some reason to keep Akyas veiled, then it wasn’t right to keep it from Father. A man had a right to know whom he was marrying, didn’t he?