Chapter 6 | Back at Home
The days after the wedding blurred into weeks, and the weeks into seasons. Vines have a way of swallowing time whole—buds swelling into clusters, clusters ripening into fruit, fruit pressed and sealed into jars before the cycle begins again.
One year, spring storms stripped the vineyard. The next, scorching heat withered the leaves. Still, the vines clung to life. So did I. We were both stubborn that way—scarred but standing.
The sabbatical year—Shemitah—came and went, and we obeyed as we had been taught—no pruning, no harvest for profit, no careful accounting of what grew on its own.
What the vines offered freely was left for the poor, the traveler, the animals.
We lived off what had been stored and whatever God saw fit to provide.
The vineyard looked wild that year, untended and uneven, and I told myself it was faith—not waste—even when my hands itched to set things right.
So I found other ways to keep them busy.
I mended walls that had nothing to do with the vines.
I scrubbed jars already clean, rewound twine, sorted tools that did not need sorting.
I copied figures from old ledgers into new ones, not to tally profit, but to remind myself that order still existed somewhere in the world.
I walked the rows without shears, naming what grew and what did not, pressing my worry into prayer and my restlessness into obedience.
Some days it felt like I spent more strength holding back than I ever did working.
It was harder labor than tending had ever been.
And yet—stillness has a way of making room for things you’d rather keep buried. The memory of that noisy family by the sea returned more often than I cared to admit.
I had been back to Capernaum more than once—quick trips, head down, coin counted, business finished. I ran into Malka a few times, and once I even saw Mira in the press of the market. We exchanged words, the kind you offer when you feel you ought to say something, but do not know what.
And James… I saw him too—once, from a distance, swallowed by a crowd near the water.
His laugh carried even over the noise, and the sight of him struck me like a stone to the ribs.
He did not see me. Or if he did, he gave no sign.
I told myself it was better that way. I kept my visits brief after that, made my purchases, paid what I owed, and turned my feet home before my thoughts could wander.
Still, sometimes he came back to me uninvited—when someone laughed too loudly or a voice called a name with that same careless confidence. His face would flash before me—broad grin and sharper tongue. I pushed the thought aside quickly. I had more important things to think about.
Like taxes. Never-ending taxes.
Collectors circled like vultures, never satisfied.
Every harvest demanded more coin; every season, another excuse.
A broken amphora here, a missing tally there, and suddenly I owed what I could not pay.
I kept my accounts sharp as blades, argued when I dared, but the weight pressed heavier each year.
And men like Silas knew it. A tax collector by trade, he had a way of seeing where strain would turn to fracture—and arriving right before it did.
One morning after a particularly bad storm, Abba called to me from the courtyard.
“You have a visitor,” he said, his voice low, eyes narrowed.
“It’s not Si—” I stopped when I saw him.
Silas filled the doorway, too fine for it—and fully aware.
His robes were of fine wool, too clean for our mud.
His dark hair was oiled and combed back, his beard trimmed neatly.
A jeweled clasp held his mantle together.
His smile was polished, but his eyes lingered too long, like he measured what he could take.
He had been circling our family since the year after Ima died, always arriving with a jar of honey or a basket of dates, sweetness trying to disguise the rot beneath. He spoke openly of marriage long before I was of age—first as a compliment, later as a strategy.
Over the years, his reach had crept closer. First the land along the lower ridge. Then the stretch above us. I had watched his men working both sides of our vineyard. Our rows sat between them, and with each passing season, I felt it more clearly.
Not interest, but intention.
When Abba’s strength began to falter, Silas’s visits doubled. And when the vineyard began to show the strain he had long been counting on, he arrived with a new claim in his eyes—as though my future had already been signed in ink.
I had seen the way his gaze crawled over our land, our jars, our home, calculating. I had felt the chill in his voice when I refused him the last time. He had smiled—always smiling—but his hand on my wrist had tightened just enough to warn me what he was capable of behind closed doors.
I did not trust him.
I did not want him.
And yet the Law gave men like him room to maneuver—and gave women like me very little space to refuse.
By the Law, Abba should decide my marriage, not I.
But he had long since handed the real burdens of this house to me—soil, stone, survival.
He would hand this choice to me too, even if he didn’t say it aloud.
So if Silas believed he could claim me by legal right, he would soon learn that I might live within the Law, but I would not be trapped by it.
“Talia,” he said smoothly, like we were old friends. “I came to see the damage. And… to speak with you of something else.”
I wiped dust from my palms and stood straighter. “We are fine. Thanks be to Adonai.”
Silas inclined his head, though the holy Name seemed to sour on his tongue. “Indeed, thanks be to Adonai. Yet storms such as this—well, they leave more than splintered branches. They leave debts. Repairs. Delays to your yield. And with taxes coming due…” He let the sentence hang like a noose.
I said nothing.
“I would be honored to relieve your burden.” His voice softened, cloaked in feigned concern. “You would not have to manage all this alone. A woman should not carry such weight without protection.”
I folded my arms.
He stepped closer, lowering his tone. “You are strong, Talia. Stronger than most men I know. But even the strongest vines will snap if the weight is too heavy. Join your household with mine, and you would have security. Your abba would not want for care. Your vineyard would flourish.”
The words pressed against me like a net. Men like Silas call what they offer protection. But I have learned that protection sometimes means possession. Uncle Eleazar taught me the Law makes a fence; men like Silas build cages and call them the same.
Abba cleared his throat behind him. “You should consider it, daughter,” he murmured, rubbing his chest the way he did when pain burned him.
My jaw tightened until my teeth ached, but I kept my eyes on Silas.
“I appreciate your concern,” I said, voice like stone. “But we will manage.”
Silas studied me with the look of one who had expected refusal but not finality.
He bowed his head, lips curving in that same polished smile.
“The offer stands. For your sake, I hope you will not wait too long. Taxes accumulate. What you owe today will be more tomorrow, and Rome is not known for patience.”
When he left, I stood in the silence, fists clenched until my nails cut into my skin.
Abba sank onto the bench, face gray, breath shallow. “He is not wrong, Talia. You are doing more than one should. The vineyard… the taxes… I fear I am no help to you.”
My anger faltered at the weariness in his voice. His hand pressed to his chest again, trembling.
“You do what you can,” I said quickly, kneeling beside him. I hated the quaver of pity in my voice.
“I should do more,” he whispered. “Since your ima… I’ve let it all fall on you. You deserve better.”
“You are my abba,” I said firmly. “And you are sick. Your place is here. Mine is to work. God sees. He provides.”
I tried to steady myself with the words, with the rhythm of duty and devotion. “We have followed the Law. We have sacrificed as commanded. I will speak to Uncle Eleazar—he will tell us what to do. Until then, we keep going. We keep working. Always.”
Abba closed his eyes. I could not tell if it was agreement, or surrender.
~
That evening, after the amphorae were sealed and the last of the workers gone, I went to my uncle’s courtyard.
He sat beneath his fig tree, back straight, humming a psalm as he mended a sandal strap.
His beard was streaked with gray, his eyes sharp but kind, and his laugh came easily, like water bubbling from a spring.
“Talia,” he said, eyes lighting the way they did when I was small. “You’ve been wrestling vines again, I see.”
I sat. “They behave like children.”
“Then give them good teaching,” he said, amused. “A little pruning, a little patience, and never outside the halakhah. That’s how we keep a house—and a people—standing.”
“Yes, Uncle,” I said with a sigh. It always seemed I could come to him with the weight on my shoulders—or at least that I needed to. He was the strong pillar I leaned on. And he leaned on the Law—on God. There was no foundation stronger than that.
He looked me in the eyes. “What’s wrong child?”
I hesitated. His voice had steadied me since I was small. “The vineyard is… surviving,” I said at last. “But no more. Taxes rise. Jars crack faster than I can replace them. And still I feel I’m missing something. What am I doing wrong?”
He leaned back, rubbing his beard. “Wrong? You? You work harder than ten men. But work alone does not make vines fruitful. You must trust the order God has given—His Torah, His patterns. The same way we prune, not because the branch wishes it, but because it must be done for it to live.”
His words sank into me like stones—weighty, immovable, strangely comforting.