“Excuses. Look at your brother. He is deaf in one ear. He adapts and so will you. Quit pouting and fight.” Resentment warred with the reawakening of my long-held ambitions, so I kept my body still and my jaw locked. Baz rocked back on a heel, bringing his massive arms to cross over his barrel chest. But when he began speaking again, he seemed to shrink. “My first wife died. Do you remember? She died as she gave birth to my . . .” He stopped and cleared his throat. “To my firstborn. My little son, who never took a breath.”
It had been long before I was born, but my father had told me of Baz’s loss and that it had been the reason he left Shiloh all those years ago to follow my family to Kedesh.
“I was shaken to my core. Everything I loved taken from me in the space of a heartbeat. I wasn’t even there,” he said, a fragile edge to his deep voice. “I was off on a mission with your father when my wife went into early labor. I never got to see her again or tell her how much I loved her. I never even held my child.”
All these years I’d admired Baz’s strength and loyalty to Yahweh and to my father, had thrilled at the opportunity to be trained by him before I was of military age, and had even fought alongside him in my short stint as a soldier. But I’d never once taken the time to consider the man inside my hero.
“After her death, I told your father I’d never leave Shiloh again. That I would stay there and work in your grandfather’s vineyard for the rest of my days. But Darek wouldn’t have it. He refused to let me wallow in self-pity. And I’ve never once regretted taking that first step, even though it burned like a rusty knife to my innards and left me hollowed out. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years doing what Yahweh wills, under your father’s command. As a result, I believe he led me here, to Sarai and my girls, who now fill that empty place to overflowing. You’ll never discover what blessings are in store for you if you don’t stop hiding here, licking your wounds.”
“Malakhi? There you are. I’ve been searching all over for you.” The feminine voice startled me, instinct causing me to attempt a glance over my right shoulder. When I saw nothing more than the usual shadowy barrier, I was reminded why returning to service was such an impossibility, and why I could never step into my father’s sandals like Baz insisted. I shifted around until I was able to discern the identity of the woman at my side.
It was Lailah, Rivkah’s older sister. I’d known her since I was born, but she was almost six years older, and therefore had had little to do with me. Having been married now for nearly ten years, she had a number of children and was a constant swirl of activity as she tended the wide array of duties she’d assumed after her mother had died. I very much doubted that we’d ever had an actual conversation, so for her to seek me out was a strange occurrence indeed.
She smiled up at Baz, but the gesture was tight, almost pained. “May I speak with Malakhi alone?”
Baz nodded, and with one last speaking look to me—one meant to communicate that I would do well to heed his advice—he walked away, leaving me alone with a woman who looked far too similar to the girl I’d once yearned to marry.
She twisted her hands together, her unease apparent. “My father asked his scribe to come get you, but I wanted to speak with you first, so I offered to come in his place.”
The note. Rivkah. I folded my arms across my chest, glad Lailah could not see the pulse that had begun pounding at its center. She bit her lip and looked past me. “My father has received word of her.”
“Has he?” I said, my tone admirably even. “She is alive?”
“As far as I know.”
Traitorous relief washed down my spine and every one of my limbs. “Where is she?”
“He hasn’t told me. All I know is the missive was carried here by a Levite.” A flare of frustration tightened her features, and I refused to let my eyes linger on the shape of her cheekbones or the graceful curve of her brow, in some ridiculous attempt at capturing a glimpse of Rivkah there. “He won’t tell me anything at all. He came home from the city gates that evening and went straight to the roof. He’s been on his knees up there hour upon hour every day, insisting that others tend to his duties while he prays. I’ve tried everything to get him to at least eat something, but he refuses everything but water.”
He’d gone four days without food? Whatever was in the missive must be disturbing indeed. “And now he wants to speak to me? Why?”
“I have no idea.” Aggravation seemed to have taken up permanent residence on her face, which unfortunately reminded me all over again just how much she and Rivkah resembled each other. “But when you speak to him . . .” She furrowed her brow. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
She hesitated, tugging at the seams of her gray tunic. “My father has spent the last five years in mourning. He asks nearly every visitor to Kedesh if they’ve seen her. He’s paid a number of people to search for her. And there have been clues like this before, whispers of someone having seen a girl with similar features in a marketplace, living with another tribe, or in some foreign temple. One man even claimed that he’d tracked her to Hebron and took my father’s silver on a quest to return her.” She scoffed. “Of course no one ever saw that man again.”
I’d had no idea Amitai had been so relentless in his pursuit of his wayward daughter. No wonder he appeared so broken down. Clinging so fiercely to hope all this time must have been exhausting.
“Don’t encourage this,” Lailah said. “I beg of you. Every time his hopes rise, they are dashed to pieces. At this point it is little more than torture. I fear another crushing blow may destroy him, push him over the edge. Whatever he has to say to you, please find a way to discourage another fruitless search.” Her mouth pressed into a hard line. “I loved my sister, but she was selfish and prideful and set on having her own way, regardless of how it affected the rest of us. You know, perhaps even better than I do, that she chose to leave. She does not want to return or she would have, years ago. He needs to let her go. For good.”
CHAPTER
nineteen
I returned with Lailah to the home she, her husband, and their children shared with Amitai. She directed me to the roof, where she said her father had spent the majority of the last few days. I took the stairs slower than I would have in other circumstances, pondering how to honor Lailah’s request while being sensitive to the brokenness of a man who’d lost a beloved child. After four days without food, he would be weakened, perhaps even faint, but he was still the presiding authority of Kedesh and deserved my honor and respect.
However, it was not a broken man I found on the roof, with shadows beneath his eyes and grief sitting heavily on his shoulders. A man who more closely resembled the Amitai of my youth greeted me with open arms and a wide smile.
“Malakhi! Thank you so much for heeding my summons.” Though the big man no longer towered over me as he clasped my shoulders in his meaty palms, the priest who’d governed Kedesh since I was a boy would always seem a giant in my mind. Shocked by the changes since I’d last seen him, pallid and weak-kneed after the Levite handed over the message, I could do little more than stare with my mouth agape.
“Come. . . .” He slung an arm around my shoulders with a chuckle that told me he’d noticed my confusion. “Let’s break bread together, and I will explain why I’ve called you here today.”
Lailah must have been mistaken about the fast Amitai had been undertaking, as the spread laid out on a blanket under a canopy was nothing less than regal. And the man who led me to it was full of vigor, not someone who’d been subjecting his body to deprivation. Although profoundly confused, I was never one to turn down a meal, so folding myself down onto a cushion, I accepted a warm round of fragrant bread to dip in the dish of salted olives mashed with spiced olive oil. He filled my cup with barley beer and then spoke a blessing, his rich voice giving thanks to the One who created the grain and the fruit we would partake of together.
Although I expected Amitai to inquire after my family as he usually did, he set aside all niceti
es in favor of delivering his pronouncement. “I have heard from Rivkah.”
I nearly choked on the large bite I’d taken and was forced to wash down the lump with a gulp of beer before speaking. “You’ve heard news of her? Or from her?”
Amitai’s eyes lit with delight. “From her.”
A pulse of something painful began to tick beneath my ribs. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” His nonchalant reply took me off guard.
“Is she safe?” I asked. “Is she returning?”
“I do not know.” With the shrug of his shoulders, his mouth tipped upward in an unmistakable, albeit bewildering, expression of joy. “But Yahweh does.”
Dumbfounded, I blinked at him. “What do you mean? I thought she contacted you.”
“She did. She sent a message with a Levite who was traveling from Golan to our city. It has been nearly a month since she sent the missive, from what I understand.”
“She lives in another city of refuge?”
“The Levite said she was only traveling through, possibly with a traders’ caravan.”
“The one she left Laish with?”
“One can only surmise.” Regardless that Amitai seemed to have little information on her actual whereabouts, his expression was one of unmistakable triumph.
Had this message finally pushed the priest past the brink of sanity, as Rivkah’s sister feared? I mulled over my words carefully before I spoke, keeping Lailah’s plea in the forefront of my mind, along with her story of unscrupulous men fleecing him during his desperate search.
“Is it possible the note is a deception? Someone presenting false information in hopes that you will pay them to look for her?”
“So.” Amitai grinned. “You spoke with Lailah.”
I cleared my throat, frustrated with my blatant transparency. “She is concerned.”
He laughed and reached for another piece of bread, then scooped a bit of the olive mash into his mouth with a satisfied hum. “This tastes even better after four days of nothing.”
After taking a long draft of beer, he continued. “My oldest daughter is so much like her mother,” he said. “Which is why she slipped into her role so easily when my wife died, even though she was still little more than a girl herself at the time. The fact that she and her husband stayed with me, instead of moving into his family’s home, and have raised their little ones beneath my roof fills my heart with gratitude. She gracefully took on the mantle of responsibility for her brothers and sisters, along with filling the void my wife left as the helpmate of the head priest in Kedesh. She is skilled at ministering to the manslayers and the families of the Levities in my charge but at times can become so entangled in details that she loses sight of the greater picture. Where she sees the theft of a few pieces of silver in my quest for news of Rivkah, I see one step closer toward the goal of bringing her home. It does not matter if I have to sell everything I own, Malakhi. The mountains will fall into dust before I will ever give up on my daughter.”
I ran my hand over my beard, contemplating. I’d left Amitai’s house that morning five years ago assuming that the grieving man had accepted his daughter’s disappearance as permanent. I certainly had. But while I’d been spending my time honing my mind and body for battle in order to bury any remnant of my tattered hopes and dreams, Rivkah’s father had spent his days clinging to every shred of hope and dreaming of the day he’d see his daughter again.
“Do you plan to send someone to Golan to search for clues as to her whereabouts?”
“I do,” said Amitai. “You.”
Like the strike of iron against a stone anvil, his words made my ears ring. I swallowed hard against the bark of confused laughter that lodged in my throat. “Me?”
“There can be no better man to do so than her betrothed.”
My jaw went tight. “She left me. Went off with another man. The contract between us was broken.”
Amitai watched me for a few moments, his gaze curious. “And yet you have not married.”
I thought of Ayala and her pretty round face, her soft curls and gentle laughter. “That is soon to be remedied.”
“Yes, there are rumors to that effect.” His brows lifted as he scrutinized me, and I wondered how he’d heard such speculation when I’d only seen Ayala twice now. “But it is not to be.”
I bridled the instinct to snap at this honored man of Yahweh. “And why is that?”
“Because I have spent the last four days on my knees, Malakhi. I have fasted and prayed. And it is only you Yahweh brings to my mind.” He leaned forward, his eyes intent on me. “You must go and find her.”
“I am injured,” I said. “There are plenty of others more capable.”
“But none who care for her like you do.”
My shoulders went stiff as I met the priest’s gaze, portraying outward calm while battling the urge to demand how he could have known the extent of my interest in Rivkah. “She was my brother’s wife. . . .”
“And you honored him well, Malakhi. You did. But I am her father. Do you think I did not see how you went from relentlessly pestering her to suddenly following her everywhere with your eyes?”
A flush of embarrassment swept up my neck. “She was . . .” I cleared my throat. “She is very beautiful. And I was only a boy.”
“Yes, you were. And I assumed that once you matured, your infatuation would fade and other young ladies would catch your eye, which is why Darek and I agreed to join her with Gidal. I watched with admiration as you smiled and congratulated your brother on his betrothal, even though I suspected you still harbored a small tenderness toward her.”
What no one could have known was that I’d hidden on the rooftop of a vacant home for an entire night and half of a day after her betrothal to Gidal was announced, emerging only when I had collected myself enough to wish my brother a blessed marriage with some semblance of sincerity.
Amitai continued, his expression as compassionate as if he’d watched me struggle through those long hours. “When you stood next to him at his wedding with nothing but pride on your face and then found a couple of girls your own age to speak with during the feast, I felt sure I’d made the right decision. But in the weeks that followed I noticed you seemed to be taking deliberate pains to avoid Rivkah and Gidal, so I guessed that you had stepped back purposefully, to guard against dishonoring your brother or my daughter.”
My heart thundered louder and louder as all my secrets were laid bare. How had the man with so much on his shoulders even noticed my youthful infatuation with his daughter? Let alone my decision to stay far away from both of them out of respect for my brother?
Something niggled at my mind that I’d thought I had buried. If you hadn’t desired her, you would have been in the orchard with Gidal that day. You would have seen the serpent. He wouldn’t have died.
“I did not say anything at the time because I did not want to embarrass you, son. But I knew my Rivkah would be cared for, even though you were still young. And you were strong enough, even then, to be her match and to win her heart over time, which is why I insisted on the levirate marriage in the first place.”
“None of this matters, Amitai. She left. She did not want me.” The admission burned my throat. “She saw me as nothing more than a child and a yoke around her neck.”
“Perhaps that is true, although I suspect much more was behind her decision to walk away. When her mother died, Rivkah seemed so . . . so lost. So broken. I’d taught her to read and write a couple of years before, and I encouraged her to develop those skills, to throw herself into satiating her keen intellect instead of withering away. And her talent for language was so startling that eventually I could not teach her alongside the other Levites for fear they would be discouraged. But even with the distraction of learning to be a scribe, the wound that formed the day my wife passed from this life never seemed to heal. She curled into herself even further.” He stopped, blinking a sheen of tears from his eyes.
“I’ve
come to realize over these years that Rivkah got lost somewhere between my grief and my duties,” he said. “Perhaps if I’d listened better to her heart all along she would not have become so bitter and possibly would not have run from us.” He paused again to take a drink from his cup before continuing. “Do not misunderstand me, Malakhi. I do not regret betrothing her to you. Yahweh made it clear to me even then that it was the correct path. But I should have explained my reasons better, helped her understand that my decision was born of love.”
“You are only human, Amitai,” I said. “You did the best you could for her. And you are not Yahweh; you could not know her mind. It was her decision alone to leave.”
“I know. And I did everything I could to find her.” He turned to the south, unmistakable longing on his sorrow-lined face. “Every day I stand here on the roof before I pray and just watch the road, imagining she will appear. . . .”
The ache in my throat flared hotter, for in those early days of her vanishing I too had stood atop my mother’s inn and peered into the distance, hoping to catch a wisp of movement among the trees.
“But . . .” With a loud clearing of his throat, he composed himself. “Enough sorrow and regret. I have spent the last four days up here fasting, praying, begging the One Who Sees for answers. And now I know that, for sure, at least one of my prayers has been heard.” He gave me a wide smile, regarding me with amber-brown eyes brimming with inexplicable peace—peace that I was suddenly quite envious of. “And when you find her—and I know you will find her—I have no doubt that more answers will follow.”
Amitai reached into his belt and withdrew a narrow roll of papyrus, cut no longer than the palm of a hand. I hesitated for a few breaths before unrolling the strip. On it were only two words written in a hand that even I, with my untrained eye, knew well from the ketubah document that was still hidden in my bedchamber.
FORGIVE ME.
CHAPTER
Until the Mountains Fall Page 13