“Everyone will speak of it,” said Rebekah to Ezbaal. “Neither of you has authority over the people from the villages. And even in your households, no one could resist telling. It would be cruel of you to punish them for it.” She turned to Deborah. “Come with me to our tent, will you, Deborah? I’m tired of all this company. And now that Father has a wife to govern the women of the camp, I don’t have any duties. So I’ll have plenty of time to sit in the dark and figure out just which parts of my childhood were true and which were false.”

Only Laban broke the silence that fell as Rebekah and Deborah walked away. “You big selfish baby!” he called.

She tried to ignore him. He was distraught. Emotional. Nothing he said would be true.

“They didn’t plan this to hurt you! They were all doing the best they could to do the right thing, only there was no right way to do it!”

She whirled to face him, and this time turned her fury on him, the one person she had spared before. “I’m the big selfish baby? Go dry your eyes, Laban, and tell me who the baby is.”

It was a terrible, unfair thing to say, and she hated herself for saying it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She was being a big selfish baby. Laban had told her the truth—the only one in her life, it seemed, who ever had—and all she had done to him, to anyone, was to lash out and try to hurt everybody as much as possible. She was ashamed, and yet at the same time she was frustrated that she had not hurt them more. Surely there must have been something she could say that would tear their lives to pieces the way they had shattered hers. Something that could make them all feel as empty and foolish and worthless as she felt right now.

Deborah parted the tent door for her, and before Deborah could get inside herself, Rebekah had thrown herself on her sleeping rugs and burst into huge, wracking sobs. Mother, Mother, Mother, she said silently, perhaps murmuring the words sometimes, too. Mother. Mother.

After a while, Deborah came and patted her arm. “I’m not really your mother,” she said. “I wish I had been. But then they might have taken you away from me.”

Rebekah finally turned her thoughts to the sufferings of someone who was not herself. Deborah, who grieved for her lost little boy all these years, all fifteen years of Rebekah’s life. Akyas must have grieved for me the same way. And Father, did he also grieve for the wife he lost? He had said so, many times. Was that true, then? He sent her away, but loved her still, missed her, mourned for her.

Sent her away for my sake.