“It wasn’t supposed to be forever,” Ephraim murmured. That was what Marcia had said to the Founding Elder council the night before she disappeared with her two children. Later, Waylon had publicly claimed that she’d escaped through the gate but had fallen down a ravine, taking the children with her, probably trying to escape a wild animal. But the animals had found her anyway, Waylon had claimed. He’d found their remains at the bottom of a ravine more than a week later.

Ephraim had been more than suspicious at the time, but Waylon didn’t lie. Or so he’d thought. I should have known better. Both when Waylon claimed Marcia and the kids were dead and when he’d claimed Gideon was dead. And then later, when DJ had claimed Mercy was dead.

I should have known they were all lying.

Because it was a farce. Nobody in the history of Eden had actually been devoured by an animal of any kind. It was simply a way to strike enough fear into the hearts of the membership that they wouldn’t try to escape. They killed dissidents themselves and mauled the bodies to look like they’d been “devoured.” Waylon had even produced three bodies that might have been Marcia and the kids.

But the remains had been too scavenged to tell for sure.

Ephraim had believed it at the time, even though he’d killed and mauled enough troublemakers himself to know the score. But he’d wanted to believe that Marcia had run. He hadn’t wanted to accept that her own husband could order her death—and the deaths of his two children.

Marcia and Pastor’s own daughter had been about to turn twelve and would have been given to one of the men in marriage. She hadn’t been able to bear her own daughter being “abused,” and had tried to get Pastor to make an exception, but he’d refused. It would cause anarchy, Pastor had said, and he was right.

Looking back, Ephraim wondered if Pastor had known the truth. Now that Ephraim knew that Waylon had lied about finding Gideon’s body, he assumed that Waylon had lied about Marcia’s kids, too. But if Pastor had known, he hadn’t let on. Instead he’d appeared truly grief-stricken, taking Waylon’s son under his wing.

Ephraim wondered if Marcia was still alive, and if so, if she would hide him if things got hot with the Feds. It had been twenty-four years. Bernice and Bo would be thirty-seven years old by now. He’d been angry at the time that she’d taken Bernice away. He’d been angling to be the one who got her for his own wife.

Whatever. The truth remained that Pastor treated DJ as a son, and even knowing that DJ had lied about Mercy might not change Pastor’s mind. If that happens, I’ll change the mind of the entire community. Ephraim would be the wronged party and he’d convince the membership to attack both Pastor and DJ and he’d sit back and laugh as he watched the membership take their revenge.