Chapter 32 | Together
Later, when the others drifted away in clusters—some to speak in excited bursts, some to sit in silence as though any sound might shatter what had happened—I returned to the vineyard.
I was tying back a sagging vine when I felt him behind me—not close enough to crowd, not far enough to pretend he wasn’t there.
“You’re doing it wrong,” James said.
I did not look up. “Then you’re welcome to try.”
Silence stretched. I waited for the laugh, the comment, the inevitable step forward.
None came.
When I finally turned, he was watching my hands—not with amusement, but something closer to consideration.
“No,” he said slowly. “You’re not.”
I straightened, dusting my palms against my skirt. “That’s a first.”
His mouth twitched. “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
The words caught me off guard. I tied off the vine anyway, more tightly than necessary. “Then say what you came to say.”
James leaned back against the post, arms folded—not claiming the space, only occupying it. “I used to think you didn’t like me because I was loud.”
I snorted. “That’s not untrue.”
He smiled, but it faded quickly. “But that’s not it, is it?”
I said nothing.
“You think a man like me would come in and rearrange your life,” he went on. “Decide what stays and what goes. Call it leadership when it suits me.”
He wasn’t wrong. I tipped my head, not quite agreeing, not quite denying it either.
He looked at me then. “You think I’d make you smaller.”
The vineyard hummed around us, the sound suddenly too loud.
“I have worked too hard to keep my footing,” I said quietly, “to hand it over to someone who thinks strength only sounds like his own voice.”
James nodded once, taking it as confirmation rather than accusation. “Then let me say this plainly.”
He stepped closer—but still did not touch me.
“I don’t admire you in spite of your strength,” he said. “I admire you because of it.”
I stilled.
“You don’t need a man to fill your space,” he continued. “You’ve already done that yourself. And I would never—” His voice roughened slightly. “Never dim what God Himself lit.”
I searched his face for humor, for bravado.
There was none.
“Your strength doesn’t threaten me,” he said. “It steadies me.”
The wall inside me did not collapse all at once.
But a stone loosened.
“You talk a great deal,” I said.
“And you don’t seem to mind,” he replied, his voice softening, a faint smile touching his mouth.
I turned back to the vines, my hands trembling now—not from anger, but from the unfamiliar weight of being seen. And something else.
James stayed where he was.
And I took it in, this realization that he was not trying to stand in front of me, but beside me.
~
By the time the sun sank lower, we found ourselves on the terrace wall, the last light warming the stone beneath us. Below, the vineyard looked scarred but standing, the leaves whispering softly in the wind.
James glanced over the rows. “How are things holding here? The vineyard… the taxes. Silas?”
I let out a faint sigh. “The vines will live,” I said. “Some rows took more damage than others, but most of it’s recovering. We’ll cut back what we have to. It will cost us the season, but not the land.”
He nodded, eyes still on the rows below. “And the taxes?”
“Due soon,” I said. “Too soon.”
“What about Silas—still trying to convince you to marry him?”
I glanced down at my hands, hiding a small smile. “No. In fact, I heard he married another.”
James turned sharply. “Married?”
“His family arranged it. A woman with silver enough to satisfy them.” I hesitated. “And I think he finally realized this vineyard is no longer easy to circle like a starving wolf.”
A corner of James’s mouth lifted slightly. “The Sons of Thunder frightened him off, then?”
Despite myself, I smiled. “It would seem so.”
“Abba has returned to the fields some,” I added. “And between you and the others being here so often…” I shook my head faintly. “There are easier households to trouble.”
“Good,” James said quietly.
He glanced at me then, some of the heaviness easing from his face. “So—no more suitors, then?”
“Was there an abundance before?” I asked.
“I would have thought there’d be a line at the gate,” he said, almost smiling. “Men waiting to be argued with daily.”
“You said you admired my strength.”
“I do,” he said. “But, I’m not most men.”
I didn’t argue at that.
After a moment he said, “Will you be well then? What will you do?”
I lifted my arm, the bracelet resting where I had finally begun to wear it. “Sell my mother’s bracelet,” I said, and hated how steady I sounded. “I still have it. I tried to sell it once—but the debt had already been paid.” I looked at him. “I never knew who.”
He kept his gaze on the bracelet, not my face.
“You don’t owe a name,” he said. But then he smiled and gave it anyway.
“Mira, Malka, Ruth, Joanna, my ima—the women—they pooled what they had. I saw that they knew where to send it.” His mouth tilted.
“They said to tell you it was part of ministry… and family.”
The wind lifted my hair against my cheek. For several seconds, I couldn’t find my voice. “You should have told me.”
He shook his head. “Mercy keeps no account.”
I looked down at my wrist, and the silver caught the last light like a small moon. Ima’s laugh stirred in my chest the way a bird stirs in a thicket. “Then I’ll sell it now,” I said, though the words tasted like ash. “Posts, rope, new cuttings—”
“No.” His answer came steady and certain. “Don’t sell it.”
I looked up sharply.
“We’ll figure it out together,” he said—no swagger, only resolve. “Abba’s boats can bring posts from the far side. Andrew knows a man with healthy cuttings above Magdala. John ties a knot that can keep a house on in a gale.” He spread his hands, work-scarred and open. “And I have… hands.”
“Together,” I repeated, and the word felt bigger than the terrace could hold.
He nodded toward my wrist. “Let that stay what it is—joy kept, not coin melted.”
I looked at the bracelet again and pressed it against my heart. “Baruch Hashem.” I whispered. “Blessed be the Name.”
James’s smile reached his eyes at last. He touched the stone beside me with his fingertips—not my hand, not yet.
Together.
The word settled deep inside me. For a moment, I could only stare out across the rows, the fading light catching on the leaves. Then another thought came, quiet but insistent.
“James.”
“Mm?”
I kept my eyes on the vineyard. “Now that we know—truly know—that Jesus is the Messiah…” I hesitated. “What does that change?”
He didn’t answer at once.
I went on, quieter, “Do we still keep the Law as we have? Or… is it something else now?”
The question felt heavier spoken aloud.
James paused for a moment. “We still follow God,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”
“But how?” I asked. “I thought I understood. But now...”
He glanced at me then. “So did we.”
A small, humorless huff slipped out of me. “That’s not reassuring.”
His mouth twitched. “It shouldn’t be.”
Silence lingered between us again.
“I don’t think we’ve been wrong to keep it,” he said after a moment. “But I think we’ve been wrong about what it was pointing to.”
I trusted what he said, but still didn’t fully understand it.
“And now?” I asked.
He looked out over the vineyard, the wind moving through the leaves. “Now… we stay with Him,” he said. “We listen. We do what He says.”
“That’s all?”
“For now,” he said.
~
Not long after, James came back.
I saw him before he reached the gate—his stride quicker than usual, something restless in it.
My hands stilled on the basket I was sorting. “James?”
He slowed when he reached me. For a moment, he looked at me like he was measuring what to say, or how to say it.
“What is it?”
He glanced toward the rows, toward the open sky beyond them, then back to me.
“He’s gone.”
I didn’t know who he meant at first.
“Gone… where? Who?”
“Jesus. He led us out past Bethany,” James said, quieter now. “He spoke to us there—told us to go… to make disciples of all nations. To teach what He taught us. To carry it forward.”
My fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the basket.
“And then?”
James exhaled, something like awe still threading through it. “And then He blessed us… and He was taken up. Right before us.” His gaze lifted again, following what was no longer there. “Until the clouds hid Him.”
The vineyard felt suddenly too still.
My gaze dropped, fixing on nothing. “So… you’ll go.”
It wasn’t a question.
I felt it before he answered—felt the space already forming, the distance stretching between us like a road I could not follow.
“You’ll leave,” I said, softer now. “Go where He's told you to go.”
James stepped closer. “Talia—”
“It makes sense,” I pressed, the words coming quicker now. “You should go. You have to go. This is what you’ve been called to—”
My voice caught, and I hated it.
I swallowed, willing it to hold.
James reached for me then, his hand gentle as it came to my face, his thumb brushing just beneath my eye like he was touching something fragile.
“Look at me.”
I did.
His expression softened—not with pity, but with something deeper. Something certain.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
I felt rooted to the ground..
“But you said—”
“I will go where He leads me,” James said. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean I walk away from you.”
His hand lingered at my cheek, grounding, unwavering. “It means we figure out how to walk it together.”
“Together?” I repeated, quieter.
A small, almost disbelieving smile touched his mouth. “I thought I made that clear.”
“This doesn’t feel clear,” I admitted.
His thumb brushed lightly again, slower this time. “Then let me speak plainly.”
He paused, looking down for a moment, then back at me.
“Marry me.”
Everything in me held still.
“I don’t want to keep standing on the edge of this,” he went on, voice low. “I don’t want to keep wondering how long I’m allowed to stand this close to you without crossing a line I have no right to cross.”
My pulse stumbled.
“And I don’t care to spend my time on the road wondering who might decide to step in where I hesitated,” he said. “I would rather see it settled.”
A faint warmth rose in my face despite everything.
“And—” His hand lifted, his thumb brushing lightly across my bottom lip.
My heart felt like it might beat right out of my chest.
“I don’t think I can wait much longer to kiss you,” he added, softer now.
A quiet sound escaped me—half startled, half something else entirely.
“James—”
“I’m serious,” he said. “I don’t know what it will look like yet,” he said. “But I know I don’t want to go anywhere without knowing you’re mine—and that I’m yours.”
The vineyard blurred for a moment—not from tears, but from the sheer weight of it all pressing in at once.
“You’re asking for something very simple,” I said quietly, “in the middle of something very complicated.”
James smiled wide now, unabashedly. “I’ve never been accused of waiting for the right moment.”
I searched his face, looking for hesitation, for doubt—anything that might make this easier to question, but there was none.
Only that same steady certainty.
My voice softened. “And when you go?”
“When I go,” he said, “I”ll go knowing where I belong.”
His gaze held mine.
“And I’ll come back to you…. And to Lavi” He glanced down then, bending to gather a small handful of soil, letting it fall slowly back through his fingers. “And to this.”
The tension in me eased.
I let the silence stretch a moment longer than I needed to.
“Are you going to answer me,” he said at last, a hint of impatience threading through, “or am I to walk away with my head down like a sad animal?”
A small smile tugged at my mouth. “After all this time,” I said, “after all our arguing… now you want to marry me?”
“I do,” he said.
I lifted a hand to my chin, dragging my finger and thumb along it, giving the appearance of deep thought, truly only drawing out the moment.
“Hmmm.”
Then I looked up at him—at the man I had fought, and questioned, and somehow come to trust.
The man I loved.
And I smiled, bigger than I maybe ever had, and said, “Yes.”