The bitterness flooded her heart again, driving out all other feelings. That was the most galling thing about it—that Father had sent Mother away . . . for her. That can’t be true. Father can’t have been that stupid. Did he really think she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the living God and gods of stone and wood? Between the God of Abraham and a silly god like Asherah?

“You’re the only one I can trust, Deborah,” Rebekah murmured.

“Everybody loves you so much,” said Deborah. “Nobody would ever hurt you.”

How odd, that this statement could be the truth, and yet somehow they had all managed to conspire together to do exactly that. To hurt her so deeply that as she lay here on her bed all she could wish for was to die, so she didn’t have to live in a world where something like this could be done to her, and there was nothing she could do about it. Fifteen years stolen from her, broken and deformed and misshapen by loss and lies. Her whole life so far. And no reason she could think of to ever leave this tent again. Whom could she look in the eye? Who could speak to her, and she would believe them?

Only God.

And now that she thought of him, she couldn’t help but ask him: How could you let such a thing as this happen? It was all done for your sake, wasn’t it? And you stood by and let them tell me these lies and never whispered the truth to me, not even in my dreams. You could prompt me left and right when it came to strategies that would keep me from marrying a man who might raise my children to worship false gods, but you couldn’t just once say, “By the way, Rebekah, your mother isn’t quite as dead as people have led you to believe.”

She rolled over on her back, the tears suddenly dried, her heart empty.

The words of her own bitter, hateful prayer stung her to the heart.

I turned down the noblest man among all the great houses of the desert, and all for exactly the reason Father sent Mother away. What would I have done, if Ezbaal had agreed to let me raise my children to worship God, and then I caught him teaching my sons to sacrifice to Ba’al? I couldn’t divorce him, the way a man could divorce a woman. I would have had to stay and watch and hate him for leading my sons away from the truth.

That was the choice Father faced. And there he was, and Mother, too, watching me make exactly the same choice Father had made. What did Mother think, when I refused to marry Ezbaal for precisely the same reason Father sent her away?