Chapter 15 | A House Divided
Several nights passed. Then more.
The loosened rows held. I noticed, though I did not comment on it.
By the next week, the days had turned warmer. The soil dried faster between irrigations. The vineyard had slipped into its usual rhythm of pruning, lifting, watching, waiting.
And yet—things still felt on edge.
I had counted the knives on the hook—three. Checked the pitch jar—heavy. Run the flat of my palm over each new seal.
Across the room, Lavi slept curled like a puppy, blanket tangled in his fist. Abba’s snores drifted from the next room.
Everything was as it should be.
Which was precisely why I did not trust it.
I had seen Baruch with his bowl in the doorway, half in, half out as always—watching the rows like the darkness owed him a debt.
I told myself the house was held together by small obediences: latch the gate, bank the coals, set the weight back in its tray. If each thing held, the rest would follow.
That night, something didn’t.
I fought sleep for a while, then drifted off—only to wake at a sound.
Not a crash, but a scrape—clay against stone, soft and careful.
I took the lantern from its hook and went down the steps to the storage chamber, the flame trembling in the glass.
The door was not latched.
Cold slipped into my bones.
I pushed it open.
The smell hit first.
Pitch. Fresh. Wrong.
Lavi stood between the amphorae. One jar leaned crooked from its place. The clay seal lay broken at his feet. His fingers were dark with pitch.
For a moment, we only stared at each other.
I had woken so fast, I hadn’t noticed he was not there.
“What are you doing?”
He froze.
Nothing about him looked accidental.
“I was—” He swallowed. “I was only trying to set it right.”
“Set it right?” I stepped forward and lifted the jar upright. The seal had been pressed back badly. Air had already kissed the wine beneath.
Understanding moved through me slowly.
Then all at once.
The light jar, the missing weight, the cut trellis, the loosened stacks, and the smeared pitch.
“You,” I said. “It was you.”
His jaw clenched. He did not deny it.
“I wanted you to see,” he said.
“To see what?”
“That he’s bad.”
The words rang hollow in the chamber.
I opened my mouth to ask who—then understanding snapped into place.
“You were trying to frame Baruch.”
He lifted his chin, small and defiant. “You told your abba if you found out he was sabotaging things, you’d send him away. You said you didn’t care how long he’d been here.”
The air thinned.
“And so you decided to help me along?” My voice was dangerously calm.
“He killed Penelope!” Lavi burst out. “He lied. You didn’t do anything about it. I wanted you to know what he really is.”
“So you cut my ropes?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
“You loosened seals?”
“Yes.”
“You hid the weight?”
He nodded, tears forming now. “I thought if enough went wrong, you’d finally send him away.”
The weight of it pressed into me.
“And did you think,” I asked slowly, “about me?”
He blinked.
“Did you think about the vineyard?” I went on. “About how we survive? About what happens when orders are spoiled and coin does not come in? Did you think about any of that in your little revenge plot?”
“Well, no, I—”
“No,” I snapped. “You didn’t.”
My voice rose without my permission.
“This wine is compromised. We cannot sell it. That rope you cut cost us hours of labor. The weight you hid made me question my own books. You set this house against itself for no good reason.”
“I was angry!” he cried.
“So am I!” I shouted.
Everything bore down at once: the thinning stores, the near-accusation of Baruch, the tax I could not pay, the talk of miracles I refused to entertain, the Law that held and did not heal—and the boy I feared losing, now claiming vengeance in my name.
“You decided you were judge,” I said, voice shaking. “You decided you knew better than I did.”
“I only wanted him gone!”
“And what about me?” The words tore out of me. “After everything I have done to hold this place together—after I took you in—you repay me by destroying it from the inside?”
His face crumpled.
“I thought you’d send him away,” he whispered.
“And now,” I said, something in me snapping clean through, “we are out wine and coin because you could not master your temper.”
I seized the jar and held it out between us. It was heavy, solid, full of loss.
And then, without thinking, I hurled it against the stone floor. It shattered with a crack that echoed off the walls. Wine flooded out in a dark rush, thick and shining in the lantern light.
I grabbed another—one I already knew had been tampered with—and smashed it too.
Clay split. Liquid bled across the dirt.
Lavi turned away like he couldn’t stand the sight of my anger.
“Look at it!” I cried. “Look at what your righteousness has bought us!”
He flinched back as if I had struck him.
The chamber smelled of waste and bitterness.
“You have ruined them and more!” I shouted. “All of it. For spite.”
His shoulders folded inward.
“I was trying to protect you,” he whispered.
“And instead,” I said, the sentence cutting even as I spoke it, “you have proven you cannot be trusted.”
Silence—thick and final.
The moment the words left me, I felt them land.
Irreversible.
Footsteps sounded above us—Baruch’s split heel slap.
Lavi looked at the spreading wine, then at me, something in his face shuttering. He took one step toward me. I did not move.
When he looked at me again, it was all there—fear, confusion, anger, shame—everything I felt too.
Then he turned and ran—through the courtyard, past the torchlight, into the dark.
The gate banged once. Then nothing.
In a single moment, my anger collapsed into horror.
What had I done?
I screamed, “Lavi!” But it was too late.
The torches pitched shadows like waves. All I could hear was the thin whine in my ears and the soft, awful gurgle of wine bleeding into soil.
A hand caught my arm. Baruch’s.
“Let me go!”
“Wait—what’s going on?”
“Lavi,” I said. “It was him—he was trying to frame you.”
“Frame me?”
“Make it look like you were sabotaging things—stealing weights, cutting ropes—because he said you killed his sheep!”
He let out a short, disbelieving sound. “I told you it wasn’t me.”
“I know—”
“I didn’t cut your ropes,” he said, voice low and rough. “But I’ve cut other things I wish I hadn’t.”
“What does that mean?” My throat was sand.
His jaw worked. He stared toward the lower terrace.
“The sheep—the little ewe the boy fed stems to. He called her Penelope.” His mouth tugged. “So did I, after a while.” He cleared his throat. “She slipped from the ledge a few weeks ago. Broke both forelegs. I found her before the lad did.”
My stomach turned.
“You told me it was a wolf.”
“I did,” he said, the words heavy. “Because I cut her throat clean and quick. It had to be done. I didn’t want him looking at my knife and seeing only the end of things. I thought a wolf would be kinder.” He swallowed. “He must have seen me.”
The torch sputtered.
My anger no longer knew where to live.
“Why not tell me?”
“I’m not good with saying,” he muttered. “Better with doing. I’ve watched the boy since he came. I keep a step behind near the ravine. I mend what he forgets to tie. I try to be where trouble goes first.” He swallowed. “I should have told you.”
A flicker in me loosened—something tight around a smaller, truer ache.
But, shame doesn’t help a lost child find his way home.
“Then help me now,” I said. “You know these paths. Take Yoram and the lantern. Search the goat track and the fig terraces. I’ll take the east wall. If you find him—call.”
Baruch nodded once, already turning to bellow names like commands. His hand brushed the knife at his belt and he flinched from the feel of it, like it was a hot brand.
I sent the others in pairs. Pressed a spare lamp into Abba’s shaking hand and told him he could search the courtyard and the lane and then sit and pray—please, please pray.
I blew one lamp low and left it in the vines where Lavi liked to hide when he played fox in the rows.
I set a cup on the wall—water and a fig.
And I whispered his name into the dark over and over until it sounded like a psalm with no other words.
The wind through the vineyard moaned like a creature in pain. I stood among broken vines and spilled wine, my hands shaking so hard I could barely breathe.
Wine had soaked into the earth first. Then my tears.
And somewhere beyond the terraces, Lavi was alone in the dark.