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it. No one will care whether I can read from the Torah or not if I can build and mend the things they need.”
    “Would you be content just to follow in my husband’s footsteps, knowing what the angel Gabriel told me about you?” Mary asked.
    “If that is God’s will, then certainly I will be content, Mother. We have a good life here. I feel God will call me to something else, though I do not know when that will be. Until then, I can be content right here.”

    Three weeks later, Joseph took ill. It started with a deep cough, but soon he was too weak to rise from bed.
    Then the Sadducees came, two of the temple priests arriving all the way from Jerusalem.
    “We’ve come to talk to Jesus.”
    That could only mean trouble. Sadducees did not journey such a distance just for a pleasant chat with anyone, much less a boy of Jesus’s age.
    “He’s away,” Mary said, glad to be able to speak honestly. Jesus had returned on his own to work in Sepphoris that morning. “What business can you have with my son?”
    Their insincere smiles tightened the knots in her stomach.
    “We merely want to talk,” the older one said. “We’ll return at a better time.”
    Late that evening Jesus returned, sweaty and covered with the dust of the road. Mary told him that the Sadducees had come to see him, and he snorted and sat near the basin at the door to wash his feet. “So?”
    “You are oblivious to danger,” she wailed, and plunked a basket of bread on the table.
    “I am determined to spread the truth.”
    “The truth as you see it.”
    “To anyone who will listen.” He sat on a cushion at the table.
    “Jesus, you are old enough for the authorities to treat you as a man. Even though you have not recited from the Torah, they can punish you.” She saw nothing but truth and childlike innocence in him, no matter how much his wisdom belied that innocence. But not everyone would agree with her.
    Mary needed help, and there was only one place to find it. She persuaded her husband Joseph to write to her uncle. Mary’s uncle had the same name as her husband, so they usually identified him by his hometown: Joseph of Arimathea. Her mother’s youngest brother, Uncle Joseph was only five years Mary’s senior, so he seemed more like a cousin or older brother to her than an uncle. Growing up as children, they had played together on family visits. Her first taste of tragedy had come the year before her own betrothal, when Uncle Joseph’s wife had died in childbirth. They were so close; she had felt his pain as her own.
    With each passing day, Mary watched the road for a messenger bearing a reply from Uncle Joseph. She sensed approaching danger, a feeling of something ominous in the air of Nazareth. The people of the village seemed to draw silent at her approach. Even the rabbi avoided her. Her husband Joseph was far too ill to travel now, much less take Jesus and her away from danger, as he had taken them to Egypt so many years ago when the monster Herod slaughtered the babes. Now duty called upon her to tend to her sick husband, no matter what. They were all stuck in this place as the wolves circled in.
    The day after the Sabbath, Jesus remained in Nazareth as the work in Sepphoris had stopped for a few days. Mary gave her husband some soup and then came out of the house to look up the road again. In the distance, two figures on horseback rode toward the village. Their horses’ hooves raised clouds of dust, obscuring their appearance. Mary ran to find her son. This had to be the Sadducees returning.
    She found him in the village square teaching, with some of the other village children squatting at his feet. Older passers-by scowled, evidently wondering what sort of mischief Jesus was implanting in those innocent heads.
    She grabbed his wrist. “Come quickly.”
    As they began to scurry inside the house, Mary looked up the road one last time. She could now recognize her uncle Joseph. The second rider must be his son, Daniel. In tears,