What an odd way God has of answering prayers you didn’t even know enough to ask.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Everyone was being so careful of her that Rebekah feared she might live the rest of her life confined to her tent, with no one but Deborah to speak to. Finally, by nightfall, she realized that having lashed out at everyone, if things were to be set to rights she would have to begin.

She began at the beginning. With Father.

Yes, he had lied to her. But that did not erase the love he had surrounded her with, the trust he had shown her. It did not change the fact that he had also needed her, when she and Laban reopened the door of language to him. One lie did not undo a lifetime of love. One lie, told over and over again, did not become a thousand lies. It remained the one, looming ever larger until it threatened to crush them all, but still only one, undone in a single moment of truth.

She clapped outside his tent, in case someone was with him who might hear. And, yes, the flap was opened by Akyas. Mother.

“Oh, Rebekah, thank you for coming. He can’t sleep. You have no idea how unhappy he is.”

“I know how unhappy I am.”

“You were right, Rebekah. To set up a grand moment of unveiling—it was wrong. But Ezbaal and I were afraid that if we told anyone in advance, Bethuel would send me away. We needed his oath first, in order to have a hope of restoring our family.”

“Believe me, Mother, I’ve thought this through a hundred different ways, and bad as this was, I couldn’t think of a better one.”

“This wasn’t my plan, you know. When I came. I really did come here in order to see you. To see what you had become.”

“Well, you saw me at my finest today.”

“You have a sharp tongue, that’s sure. You found exactly the words to shame everybody.”

“Now that I’ve got the punishment down, I need to work on the part about judging fairly.”

Akyas embraced her. It still felt awkward to Rebekah. Their bodies didn’t meld together out of long custom the way hers did with Deborah’s. Still, it was a start. It felt natural to call her Mother. Nothing false about it, the way it had been when Ezbaal’s stepmother tried to get Rebekah to call her by that title.

“Do you want to be alone with him?” asked Mother.

“No,” said Rebekah. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s where you should have been all along.”

“That doesn’t make it easier to have me there when you talk to him.”