Indeed, Rebekah was surprised to see that some of Father’s servants had actually turned their backs, and most of the rest were looking at the ground as if they could not bear to look at Akyas. What could possibly be wrong? Rebekah turned to look at her, and still could not fathom their response. Akyas was far more beautiful in daylight than she had been by lamplight. With her hair pulled back from her face, the shape of her face was full and gently rounded, with lips shaped to smile and eyes filled with silent delight. She seemed, in fact, to be oblivious to the embarrassment of Father’s servants, and by her expression one might think that they were reacting with the kind of appreciation that had greeted Rebekah’s unveiling.

Father, too, was looking at the ground, and Rebekah knew from his posture and expression that he was either very angry or deeply embarrassed. Or both.

Meanwhile, Laban stood there with his eyes so wide with surprise that he might have been looking at some divine apparition. He kept looking from Akyas to Rebekah and back again, until finally he laughed nervously and said, “Come on, Rebekah, you have to have noticed.”

“Noticed what?” asked Rebekah.

“The two of you,” said Laban. “I mean, you’re as alike as two ewes.”

Whatever that meant, since shepherds prided themselves on knowing each sheep from all others in the flock.

Rebekah felt Akyas’s arm around her shoulder, and Akyas’s voice near her ear. “Do you think she’s grown up to look like me, Laban?” asked Akyas. “I see much of her father in her as well—it has only made her prettier, I think.”

What did she mean by that? She spoke as if she were . . .

“I don’t know what I’ve done, Ezbaal,” said Father, his voice low and grave, “to deserve such a bitter prank as this.”

“This is no prank,” said Ezbaal. “When her husband cast her out for no greater sin than praying for Asherah’s protection over her daughter, she eventually came to my father, who quietly adopted her as his daughter—as my sister. It was all handled with discretion—we wanted no fight with a man as powerful as her husband was, especially with the mighty Abraham as his near kinsman. She came with me as my sister, with no other purpose in mind than for her to catch a glimpse of her beloved boy all grown now, and the girl she gave birth to fifteen years ago now in the first bloom of womanhood. It was you, not I, who proposed marrying her.”