Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [168]
I could see the concern on Roger’s face, but I was committed to not taking Mom’s calls. I was in the middle of a legal meeting at his office when my cell phone ring. The room fell silent as I pulled it from my purse and placed it on the conference table. We all knew who it was; Mom’s calls always showed up as “unknown caller.” Watching my cell vibrate on the conference table, I felt lured to answer it. But I fought the urge and let it go to voice mail.
Dialing in to retrieve the message, I pushed the speaker button and placed the phone on the table.
“Hey, Elissa,” Mom’s voice rang out. “This is your mother. I just wanted to call to say hello.” Listening was extremely painful, and my stomach twisted, but along with my anxiety was my anger at Mom for letting a year and a half go by without getting in touch. All eyes were upon me as I tried not to cry, but I was unable to hold back once the voice of my baby sister came on the line.
“Elissa, I love you and miss you,” Ally said. At that moment, I realized that there was no way that I could talk to them. I knew what Mom was going to say if I phoned her back. She’d use my heart against me, and I wasn’t sure I could stay that strong.
Over the next seven days Mom continued to test my willpower. It was difficult to ignore her repeated calls, and at the end of the week I allowed Roger to change my phone number. The timing of the calls was particularly awkward. That week, I was preparing for my wedding to Lamont. A bishop from the mainstream Mormon Church had agreed to marry us, and while it sounds bizarre, the only people who could attend the ceremony were members of law enforcement and lawyers.
I was very pregnant at the time and did my best to look the part of a blushing bride in a white blouse and skirt that Greg’s wife helped me put together. Brock and his associate Jerry Jaeger from the Washington County District Attorney’s Office drove up for the ceremony. I later learned that Brock and Jerry had spent the morning driving to jewelry stores with Lamont and Roger to find me a wedding ring. In the end the three lawyers helped Lamont pick out a ring that I absolutely loved. So many people had gone out of their way to make this a special day for us, but it was hard and lonely not to have family there. Still, there was something noteworthy about having all of these attorneys who were now my trusted friends at my wedding. I’d been taught to fear people like them my whole life, but in such a short time all that had changed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FACING WARREN
I am not the prophet.
—WARREN JEFFS
As November rolled around, the prospect of testifying at the preliminary hearing on the twenty-first loomed large on the horizon. Over the weeks I’d had at least five attorneys offering explanations of how the legal system worked, and what the defense attorneys would be allowed to do. I was nervous, and made more so by the fact that my due date was just two weeks away, and I feared I was going to go into labor in the middle of my testimony. It wasn’t just the typical anxiety and settling into a new system that most newlyweds experience. Lamont and I struggled with our son’s loneliness as he was forced to say good-bye to his friends from home. We also had doubts about how to proceed and wondered if we were making the right choice for our family and our future.
I was still having moments when I doubted whether I could go through with it at all. In early October, I’d learned that the sexual abuse I’d suffered at the hands of Allen hadn’t been the first time I’d been taken advantage of by a man. Fearing that in Warren’s lawyers’ efforts