Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [140]
His grandfather came to see him every day and offered him support.
Lamont took strength in his grandfather’s encouraging words, but he was worried. He had run out of money and the hotel was asking him to leave. Grandfather Barlow instructed him to return to his father’s house and contact Uncle Warren’s as soon as he could.
It took several tries before Lamont finally reached the prophet.
“How are you, Lamont?” Warren asked. “I got your letter of confession.” Lamont held his breath, hoping the prophet approved of what he’d written. “Did you sign the document?” Warren asked, referring to the court affidavit.
“Yes, I have,” Lamont answered politely.
For a moment, there was dead silence on the other end of the line. “Well, you can move back into your father’s house,” Warren instructed.
“Oh, I’m already at Father’s,” Lamont said.
“You are?” Warren asked, sounding surprised.
“Yes, Grandfather instructed me to move in.”
“I see,” Warren said, pausing again before delivering the decision that would seal Lamont’s fate. “Well, you’ve lost your priesthood. You will need to be rebaptized. Keep the spirit of God.”
Lamont’s heart sank as he heard the click on the other end of the line. The conversation had lasted less than thirty seconds. He’d done everything the prophet had asked. He’d stayed at the hotel. He’d written the letter of confession. He’d even signed that horrible paper to help Warren bring back the woman who’d escaped with her kids. The guilt from that was overwhelming, and still he was being punished.
When Lamont had first looked at the legal document, he’d felt torn. On the one hand, he was defeated and he’d lost his business and his family, and he just wanted to go home to a place that was familiar. On the other hand, he knew that by signing the paper he would be making enemies with the only family that he had outside the FLDS Church, not to mention that he would let down this young woman who was trying to protect her children. I sensed there were issues that Lamont had with his family in Salt Lake, and while he didn’t want to burden me with them, I could tell that he’d been deeply hurt.
Signing that paper had been wrong on so many levels, and it was clear from how Lamont spoke that it was the greatest regret of his life. In that one phone call to Warren, all of his hopes of getting a family and living his faith were dashed. His sacrifices were deemed irrelevant, and he was back at square one. The prophet had given him no indication of when he could expect to be baptized, especially since Warren had discontinued the practice as part of the community’s punishment for erecting the monument to Uncle Roy. Lamont feared he would never rejoin the priesthood, let alone have the chance to marry, but he didn’t want to be homeless again. Unwelcome in Salt Lake City, he had no other choice but to stay at his father’s house for the time being.
He hung up the phone with Warren, realizing he may have made the biggest mistake of his life for nothing. For months he just existed in the community, not sure how he would ever prove faithful or worthy. That fall, he received more devastating news. Warren had sent a message to say that he had lost a future in the priesthood and there was no hope for him. Lamont had done nothing to provoke this latest retribution. He had stayed under the radar, but his usefulness to Warren was done and it was apparent more than ever that his desperate desires to be a faithful member of the community had been used. He had been nothing more than a pawn and Warren had waited for the legal case to which they had tied Lamont’s name to die down to deliver this final blow. Climbing into his truck, Lamont set off for the barren lands of the Arizona strip. The wide-open desert was the one place where he found peace and could think things through. It was late November and a chill had set in, but Lamont was too distraught to notice. A war raged inside him as he fought the