“What do you think the priesthood is,” said Father, “but the power to bind in heaven with words said here on earth?” He shook his head. “Now your mother herself is back, and yet my curse remains. I will never hear her voice again.”

Rebekah knew that the priesthood didn’t work that way, but she couldn’t see any point in arguing with him any further. The sadness in him seemed like a weight, bending his shoulders. But Mother leaned out and took his hand and kissed it, and some of the weight seemed to lift again.

“She forgives me,” said Bethuel. “She disagrees with me about God, but she agrees that if I was going to raise you to serve him, she could not have been here. Now she can’t change what you believe—she isn’t even going to try.”

“Your god blesses you,” said Mother. “Even though he doesn’t know my name, he’s a good god for you.”

“We see the world differently,” said Father. “But we agree on the most important thing—that you and Laban are at the center of it.”

Rebekah picked up the writing stick. “I wish you had trusted me more,” she wrote. “I would have served God anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” said Father. “You never know what would have been. And besides, when I made these decisions I didn’t know what kind of child you were going to be. And maybe you wouldn’t have become the woman you are, without Deborah and without your dependence on me and Laban, which you would never have had, not the same way, if your mother had been here. You are today what you became because of choices in your past. If those choices had been different, how can you be sure you’d be the same person now? No, our lives have taken their course. We can’t change where the river flowed yesterday. We can only choose where it will flow today.”

There were a thousand things she might say, arguments against his decision, complaints about how he himself didn’t actually live by those wise words, but was constantly trying to outguess the past. The truth was, however, she did not want to argue. She just wanted to have peace in her family. So that she could get to know her mother as well as she knew her father and brother. So they could be whole.

That’s why she smiled and hugged her father and kissed him and wrote to him words that were only true by intention: “I forgive you. You did what you thought was right.” And then the words that were true indeed: “I’m glad my mother is here. I’m glad that we’re all together now.”

There were kisses and tears and embraces for a little longer, and then she left.