The girl was Mercy and she remembered the day she’d sat in the field of flowers. But they hadn’t been daisies. Most had been light purple, a few others had been red and—
Oh. Details clicked together in her mind. Oh my God. ‘Poppies,’ she murmured.
‘I think they’re daisies,’ Rafe said. ‘Poppies are red.’
She looked over her shoulder to see him placing two steaming mugs on the coffee table. He’d brought them in on a tray, which made complete sense – and made her glad she hadn’t said anything about his being able to carry both mugs one-handed.
‘At least they’re supposed to be daisies,’ Rafe added. ‘Gideon is good at many things. Painting . . .’ He waggled his hand in a so-so gesture.
‘These are daisies because Daisy made him paint,’ Mercy said. ‘He changed the flowers because he had Daisy on his mind. The flowers were actually purple and red.’ She pointed to the young girl sitting in the field of flowers. ‘That’s me.’
He approached her warily, as if worried she’d bolt. Which was probably fair. ‘I thought so. I moved it out of sight when you left. I was a little . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I missed you.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. You did what you needed to do. I understand.’
‘I was still unkind to have run away.’
‘Well, maybe a little,’ he allowed.
Her lips twitched. ‘All right, then.’ She returned her gaze to the painting, sobering. ‘This day actually happened. I was nine years old. It was a week before Gideon’s thirteenth birthday.’ She rubbed the heel of her hand against her heart again because the memory hurt. ‘There was a field of flowers beyond the gates of Eden. We were expressly forbidden to go there, but we could see it when the teachers took us on field trips outside the gates. The purpose of the trip that day was to gather roots for the healer. We kids were cheap labor, I guess.’
‘But you got tempted by the flowers,’ Rafe said and she shot him a startled look.
‘How did you know?’
He pointed to the painting. ‘Because you’re sitting in them.’ His voice held more than a note of ‘duh’.
‘Good point. Well, I got caught. I was good at avoiding harsh punishments as a kid because my stepfather, Amos, was a gentle man.’
‘Sounds like you cared about him.’
‘I did. He never laid a hand on me. He was a good man.’ She frowned, troubled. ‘I hope he wasn’t punished because Mama and I escaped. Although we were part of Ephraim’s household by then.’ She shook her head, dislodging the notion for now. ‘Anyway, I got caught and the punishment for going to the flower field was severe and out of Amos’s hands. A week in the box.’
‘What was the box?’ Rafe asked grimly.
‘What it sounds like. It was a little outbuilding, an outhouse actually. But its only use was for punishment. They’d lock the person in with no light for a week. Twice a day you’d get food and water.’
‘Mother of God,’ he whispered. ‘They put you in there? At nine years old?’
‘No, but only because Gideon stepped up when they were about to throw me in. He took my punishment. Spent a week in that goddamned box.’ She swallowed hard. She really didn’t want to cry any more, but the tears were pushing against her throat. ‘It was freezing cold at night and blistering during the day. And because the punishment was meant for me, he was only given the food and water rations that I was supposed to have gotten.’
‘They starved him.’ Rafe’s voice was hoarse.
Guilt grabbed at her, and she had to fight it back. Yes, Gideon had taken her punishment, but none of them had deserved it. Not ever. Years of therapy had taught her this. If only she could truly believe it. ‘Yes, they starved him. They let him out on his thirteenth birthday. I remember him coming into the light, how he shielded his eyes. How gaunt he was. My mother cried. So did I.’ She ran her fingertip along the top of the painting. ‘That night, he had his fight with Edward McPhearson.’
‘The man who tried to rape him.’
She nodded. ‘He was the blacksmith and Gideon was to have been his apprentice. He fought the man off, even as weak as he was, coming off a week of malnutrition and dehydration.’
‘McPhearson hit his head on his anvil and died.’
‘Right. And then Ephraim led some of the community’s men in a mob, intending to beat Gideon to death. That’s when Gideon fought back. Stabbed Ephraim’s eye. That’s why he wore a patch.’ She remembered his face in the airport with a shudder. ‘I don’t know when he got the glass eye. I only remember him wearing a patch.’
‘That was the night your mother broke Gideon out of Eden.’
‘Yes. The last time I saw him, he was being led out of the box.’
‘Not your fault, Mercy. You were only nine years old. Plus Ephraim took your mother right after that, didn’t he? It was a traumatic time. I’m not surprised you blocked things out.’
‘Head knows, heart still feels guilty.’
He said nothing for a long moment, then sighed. ‘I get that, too. Do you want the painting?’
She shook her head, hard. That day still haunted her. ‘No, thank you. But the field was not daisies, that’s what I was trying to tell you. It was poppies. Mostly purple poppies. Purple opium poppies.’
He stared for a moment, before his eyes flooded with understanding. ‘Oh. They’d moved from a cash crop of marijuana to opium.’
‘I think so. That was why we kids weren’t allowed in the field. Not many of the adults, either. Only the highest-ranking wives were allowed. I think they were the harvesters.’
Rafe stared at the painting before turning his gaze on her. ‘Did you mean what you said last night? That you want to help catch Burton?’
She blinked at him. ‘Yes, of course I did. Why?’
He backed away from her until he reached the whiteboard. ‘I’ve been keeping myself occupied since you left.’ Abruptly he flipped the board, revealing a bulletin board on the other side.
Mercy froze, her legs wobbling beneath her. The bulletin board was filled with photos, maps, and documents. Front and center was Ephraim Burton, glaring out of Eileen’s wedding photo with his one good eye, his other patched because Gideon had stabbed him.
Haltingly she took a step forward, then another, until she was a foot away, silently studying each photo in turn. There was a mug shot of Ephraim’s brother Edward from thirty years before. Ephraim’s senior class yearbook photo, in which he’d worn a bow tie. He was barely recognizable, he was so young. But there had been cold calculation in his eyes even then.