Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [110]
Teressa jumped in to support me. “We’ll take really good care of Elissa and keep her encouraged.”
My downward spiral had alarmed her greatly, and while she didn’t say anything to me, the fact that she’d been willing to allow me to attend this meeting with Uncle Warren showed how seriously she took my condition. Uncle Warren was not particularly fond of Teressa. She did not have a high standing in the FLDS and was considered trouble because of her strong will. So at first Uncle Warren was resistant. He had told me that I needed to go home and learn to obey Allen. But my sister and I persisted, and eventually Warren agreed to call Allen and hear his position over the speakerphone.
“I just don’t feel like she should go,” Allen said. His denial infuriated me, and I wanted to shake him through the phone. But I tried to keep sweet, hoping that Teressa and Roy could help to persuade him.
“I have either got to have time or space to go and regenerate, or else I can’t do this anymore and I want out,” I said, directing my comments at Uncle Warren. “I just want out.”
After more back-and-forth, Uncle Warren finally conceded, saying that if it was all right with Allen, I could go. Allen sighed. He was obviously unhappy with Warren’s words, but he had enough sense not to push any harder. Reluctantly he agreed, but before I could get too caught up in celebrating, Warren reminded me that I needed to remember my duties and the commitments that I had made. I happily accepted.
I could hardly contain my joy as I packed my clothing and readied myself for the trip. What I hadn’t told Allen was that I was pregnant for the third time. If he’d known, there was no way that he would have agreed to let me go. I didn’t know how or when I would eventually break the news, but it didn’t matter. I was on my way to Canada.
We hurriedly left town before Allen could change his mind, but what I didn’t realize when we left was that our ride to Bountiful would turn into a family reunion of sorts. Unbeknownst to me there had been a lot of contact among my family members. Both Kassandra and Teressa had been in touch with our brother Craig over the past month.
It had all started when, out of the blue, Craig called Kassandra at the prophet’s compound in the days before her escape. A while back, Kassandra had obtained Craig’s address and secretly sent him a care package that included her direct phone number at Uncle Rulon’s house. More than a year passed before he finally called her in late October 2002. He’d learned of Rulon’s death and felt compelled to get in touch with Kassandra to see how she was faring. It was a miracle that she was still in the same room with the same phone number, since it was common for the prophet’s wives to be moved around and their phone numbers to be changed.
This was the first time that anyone in our family had spoken to Craig since he left in 1996. He was upset when he later heard about all of the difficult times our family had been through. He had no idea that Mom and her youngest kids had been taken away from Dad and that she’d been reassigned to Uncle Fred. The news of my marriage to Allen also infuriated him. Craig encouraged Kassandra to stay strong and not give in to pressure to remarry. While Craig was committed to helping those of us still in the FLDS, he saw Justin’s situation as the most urgent.
I didn’t know it when we set out for Bountiful, but my older siblings had hatched a plan to move Justin to Oregon, where Craig and now Kassandra were living, so Craig could help him. They decided that we would pick up Justin and drive him to a mutually agreed upon place, from which Kassandra and Ryan would take him the rest of the way to Craig’s house.
Before we even got to Kassandra though, we would see yet another old family member. Our first stop would be in Salt Lake City to catch