The Thunder Between Us (Hearts of the Twelve #2)

Chapter 1 | Bleeding Vines

I looked down and saw blood on my hands. It wasn’t new to me. I ripped cloth from the hem of my skirt and wrapped it around my palm—tight, quick, no fuss. The pruning blade had slipped again. A careless angle, too much pressure. Abba would’ve scolded me if he were here to see it.

But he was inside, as always—not working, not helping—tending a hurt no healer could name and one I could only hope would ease.

I scolded myself instead. Not because I’d bled, but because I’d rushed.

Work punished haste. Work demanded respect.

The sun had barely crested the Galilean hills, but already it pressed down like a yoke on my shoulders. The air was heavy with the scent of dust, green vines, and the sharp tang of sap bleeding from fresh cuts. And now metal-scented blood from my carelessly cut hand.

Beneath it all lingered another note—the faint, herbal perfume of crushed thyme that reminded me of Ima’s hands after cooking.

Though she had been gone so long now, I sometimes feared I had forgotten exactly what she smelled like, what her face looked like.

I hated that it blurred in my memory and no matter how hard I tried to fix it in my mind, it would not come into focus.

Her absence lingered like a shadow that never quite left.

She had loved the vineyard. She always said it made her feel connected to the land—and to God.

The vineyard clung to the hillside like something stubborn and alive. Grapevines stretched in long, ordered rows, their tendrils curling around stakes like they were holding on for dear life. Leaves shimmered silver in the breeze, edges curling where the dew had burned off too fast.

Stone terraces stepped their way down toward the valley, each row held in place by low walls.

The vines were old, and they showed it in their twisted trunks and deep roots that split the soil like fingers grasping for water. New growth reached upward, green and hopeful, but it only came because someone had pruned hard in the winter.

That someone was usually me.

I moved through the rows with practiced efficiency, knife in hand, fingers stained from sap and dust. Every vine had its place. Every branch had its purpose. Too much growth invited rot; too little meant hunger come harvest. Order and balance were everything.

Baruch worked a few rows below me. He had been with the vineyard longer than I liked to admit—longer than my ima had lived, longer than my abba had truly stood upright in the work.

He knew the land by feel, not measure, and could tell from the soil alone whether a vine needed water or patience.

He remembered which stones liked to shift after rain, which posts had to be braced before the wind turned mean, which tools would fail if I let them go one more season.

He was a heavy man, broad through the middle and shoulders, with sun-darkened skin and thick dark hair that never seemed to lie flat no matter how often he shoved it back.

His beard was usually uneven, his tunic perpetually wrinkled, as though he had slept in it more nights than not.

He always looked faintly irritated, like he had just swallowed something that wouldn't go down.

Abba called him faithful. I called him enduring. I still did not know much about him, not really—not what he loved, or whether he loved anything at all. He disliked most things openly and complained about nearly everything. Loudly. Constantly.

Still, Abba insisted we keep him on.

Near the press shed, a few young men labored side by side, their voices carrying when the wind was right.

They were built for the work—lifting baskets, hauling stones, quick on their feet.

They were village boys, known enough to be trusted.

They listened, did what was asked without complaint, and worked for what I could afford to give.

And then there was Lavi.

He could usually be found trailing behind me with a basket nearly too big for him, dark curls plastered to his forehead with sweat.

He was five—maybe six; I didn’t truly know—and determined to prove himself useful.

He gathered fallen grapes, carried water skins, ran messages to Baruch without being asked—then looked to me, waiting for a judgment.

“Is this one ready?” he often asked, holding up a cluster too small to matter, too green at the stem.

“Not yet,” I told him. “Give it time.”

He nodded solemnly, time to him something that could be measured in a jar and stored on a shelf.

When the sun climbed higher, I paused at the edge of a terrace and set my ledger across my knee.

The page was already marked with figures—oil, twine, repairs, wages—each line a small truth I could not afford to ignore.

If a wall fell, I paid for stone. If a tool broke, I paid for iron.

If I hired hands, I paid in coin I could feel thinning even as I counted.

The vineyard did not run on good intentions. It ran on hands, weather, timing—and on whether I made the right choices before the wrong ones found us.

It was my responsibility, and I would not let it fail.

More than soil and branches, it was our home, our lifeline, our history, our pride.

Every season it tested me—asking more than I thought I could give, yet never forgiving slackness.

I had learned to match its rhythm. Twist. Clip.

Pull. Drop. Step. Repeat. The rhythm steadied me.

Before I began each morning, I whispered the Shema—“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The words steadied my heart as much as the rhythm steadied my hands. The Law ordered my days, as surely as the sun and rain ordered the vines.

It shaped everything—the way we rose, the way we worked, the way we rested. It was in our hands, our homes, our prayers.

Even in the vineyard, I felt its pulse. The land was not mine to own but to tend, and what I gathered was never mine alone.

It was the pattern of our lives—woven into bread, labor, and soil.

Obedience steadied the world, the way the trellises steadied the vines.

My uncle, the rabbi Eleazar’s voice echoed in memory: “The vineyard is God’s classroom, child.

Prune the vine, prune the heart.” He never touched the shears himself—manual labor was beneath a man like him.

A man of the Law—but his words had shaped me since I was a girl.

He taught in the synagogue, not the vineyard, yet I carried his lessons out here among the rows.

To me, they were one and the same: discipline, obedience, faithfulness.

Uncle Eleazar had no flexibility when it came to the Law. But my ima… she did.

I remember one Sabbath when a traveler stumbled into our courtyard—dusty, limping, his arm bound in a rag dark with blood.

My uncle had been visiting, seated under the fig tree, quoting psalms with a distant air of holiness.

When Ima knelt to tend the stranger’s wound, he warned, “It is the Sabbath, Miriam. The Law forbids work.”

She didn’t even look up. “And would you have me let him bleed until sundown?” she said, her tone gentle but sure.

She tore a strip of fabric from her hem, dipped it into the water basin, and pressed it carefully against the man’s arm.

“There,” she murmured, tying it firm. “God gave us the Law to teach us love, not to keep us from it.”

The traveler’s eyes filled. He kept repeating blessings as she brought him bread and a cup of water—“God bless you, woman. Shalom, shalom.” When he finally left, he turned at the gate and lifted both hands in thanks.

Uncle Eleazar had fallen silent by then, watching him go. Ima only shook her head and smiled, half to herself. “The Law builds a fence,” she said softly. “But a fence should always have a gate.”

I snapped back from my recollections and returned my attention to the work. A tear wet the corner of my eye, but I wiped it away before it could fall. I had no time for tears.

Someone needed to tend the vines when Abba could not. I carried more than was ever meant for shoulders so young. I was the only one of my parents’ children to draw breath beyond the womb. The others never did—lives gone before they could begin. The last taking Ima with him.

After that, Abba grew less able with each passing season—some days slowed by weakness, other days by a silence that sat heavy between us. I tried to honor him as I had been taught, but strain has a way of sanding down even good intentions—especially when there is no one else to carry the weight.

And so I worked. Because there was no one else to.