Margo gasped, all the color draining from her face. “What? No. That’s impossible.”

“That’s why Pastor didn’t come for you. He believed you were dead,” Tom said. “No one is sure who those people were, but Waylon brought back the remains of a woman and two children.”

“No.” Margo shook her head violently. “No. Waylon would not do that.”

“He did.” Tom was insistent, but gently so. “He did again when Gideon Reynolds escaped eight years after you did.”

“Gideon? I don’t . . .” She looked away, thinking, then her gaze flashed back. “There was a little boy whose mother came to Eden, not long before we left. His name was Gideon.”

Tom nodded. “His younger sister was Mercy. She was only a year old when you escaped. But if you saw that news program on the serial killer, you saw her, too. Mercy Callahan was thirteen when her mother got her out. Mercy was married to Ephraim Burton for a year.”

Margo looked as if she’d be sick. “Not him.”

Her reaction made Liza’s stomach churn, thinking about what Mercy had suffered.

Margo twisted her fingers together, nerves on display. “That’s why I ran. My daughter was going to be twelve. I hated that rule. I tried to get Ben to change it, but he wouldn’t. I knew that my daughter was going to be given to one of those brutes and . . . I couldn’t let that happen. Neither could Waylon. So he got us out.”

“Who made the rule about twelve-year-olds being married?” Tom asked.

“Ben did, but it was because of Ephraim. He got several of the younger girls pregnant. Ben couldn’t say Ephraim was a pedophile, because Founding Elders were important. They were church leaders. So Ben changed the rules so that Ephraim’s raping of young women wasn’t a crime. It was a . . . sacrament.” She spat the word. “I couldn’t stand it, but I also couldn’t change it. Within a few years of being in Eden, it was like the men started believing that women were subhuman. I hadn’t wanted to stay there, hadn’t wanted to go there to begin with, but Ben had promised it would only be temporary. That we could leave when the scandal died down. Maybe six months. A year at the most. But he got used to the power. They all did, I think—the Founding Elders, I mean. Except for Waylon. The others liked having women subservient to them. I begged Ben to revoke the marriage law, not to marry Tracy off when she was still a child. He said he couldn’t make exceptions, even for his own child.” Her face grew hard and angry. “Maybe he did know that the kids weren’t his. I don’t know. I just knew we had to get out. Waylon made it happen.”

“You didn’t report Eden when you escaped,” Liza said.

“Yes, I did!” she cried. “But when I told the police where to find them, they said there was no sign of anyone there. Waylon was angry when I told him. He asked if I wanted all of them to go jail. I did, except for Waylon. He was the only one of the Founding Elders who didn’t have a standing warrant for his arrest. He’d served his time. He wouldn’t have gone back to prison.”