Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [114]
In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not Allen knew. I’d been dodging his calls for a while, but not long after my miscarriage, my priesthood responsibility knocked at my door and I could no longer ignore him. He wanted me back in Short Creek, and he called to let me know that Uncle Warren was instructing me to come home. Uncle Fred, too, had said that it was time for me to return. I’d been gone much of the winter—nearly three months.
“I’m not coming back,” I told my husband.
“I’ve changed,” Allen insisted. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“I can’t,” I told him. “I don’t love you and I don’t think I ever will.”
Allen began to send cards and letters in an attempt to sway me, and when his efforts failed to bring me back, I later learned Uncle Warren telephoned my sisters’ husbands and told them that I could not stay with them any longer. Teressa wanted to keep me with her, and she’d tried to do everything she could, but she had zero influence. Even her husband could not sway Uncle Warren. Everyone was afraid to go against his power. Not long after Warren’s call, Allen informed me that he was going to drive up to Canada to see me.
I felt like a deflated balloon when I saw him step out of his truck that first day of March, a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He said he’d missed me so much, but I couldn’t say the same. There was pressure from every direction, and the decision to stay in the marriage was not mine to make. Uncle Warren, Uncle Fred, and even my mother were urging me to come back to Hildale to carry out my responsibilities as Allen’s wife. It was as though I was being pushed into this marriage all over again, and I didn’t want to succumb. I knew that if I agreed to get into his truck that day, there might not be another chance to get away from Allen. I had fought hard, but here I was again, back at square one.
I could feel that familiar lump forming in the back of my throat as I fastened myself into the passenger seat and waved farewell.
“It’s going to be okay,” Allen assured me as he turned the key in the ignition. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
From the first few moments of the drive, I could see that he was making a huge effort, trying to start over and make me fall in love with him. I decided that the only way it was going to work was if I was completely honest, so I told him what I’d been keeping from him for so many months.
“I was pregnant, and I had a miscarriage,” I announced, as we drove south along the highway. “And it wasn’t the only one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked in a soft voice, slowing the truck to look in my direction.
“I didn’t want you to know. I was having such a hard time being pregnant in the first place, and I didn’t want you to know or Mom or anyone.”
It was clear that Allen was hurt, even though he managed to maintain his composure. But his sadness was not for what I’d been through; it was for himself and the fact that he was not going to be a father. The way he spoke only heightened the guilt that I already felt, as if he was trying to make me see that I’d done something bad. As I sat there listening to him place responsibility for the miscarriages solely on me, I felt upset that he wasn’t taking time to understand how I was feeling. The only thing he wanted to do was blame me for them. The conversation slowly shifted away from this painful topic as I sat silently in the passenger seat watching the mile markers fly by.
Allen had set his mind on making our drive back to Hildale a kind of second honeymoon, and he promised that he would try harder to respect my feelings. I wanted to believe that he meant it. We’d been on the road for a while when we exited the highway in Lava Hot Springs, a riverside resort town in southeast Idaho, halfway between Salt Lake City and Bountiful. He had booked a room at the Lava Hot Springs Inn, where we would spend the night. The rooms, some of which had jaw-dropping views of the Portneuf River, had comfy big beds and huge bathtubs.
The emotional drama of the day had worn me out, and I dressed for bed the