Page 40 of Day Break

I poured another cup of coffee, then asked him if he wanted more. He shook his head, so I moved over to sit beside him.

He turned the laptop towards me. “You can log in to your email, and I’ll show you how to print what you need.”

When I just looked at the screen, he added, “I’ve logged you in as a guest. It won’t store any of your information.” He motioned to the top right of the screen.

It was the same browser I’d used on the jail’s computer, so I could tell he was telling the truth. I relaxed a little.

I went to the email website and typed in my account information and wasn’t shocked at all when there were only two emails in the inbox.

Two pieces of proof of my existence. I opened the first email, and my baptism certificate filled the screen. I’d gotten a copy from the court documentation. I glanced over at Lane, who was frowning at it. Then his eyes turned to me, and I watched as understanding flooded them.

My shoulders sank slightly as he turned the laptop towards him and printed the document out. Thankfully, he didn’t speak. I watched every step he made so that I could repeat it for the next document.

“I know you believe that this changes things, but it doesn’t,” he said, turning the computer back towards me. “I know a lot of Mormons.”

I nodded. “Yes, there are a lot of regular Mormons,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I was born into a smaller sect. The kind you see and read about in the news.” I kept my eyes on the screen as I opened up my divorce papers. I quickly printed them out without showing Lane the screen.

The truth was, I didn’t mind him knowing about me being born into the FLDS. What I did mind was him knowing who I had been married to. My ex-husband’s name would lead to the knowledge of where I had been for the last year.

“Okay, the cult kind?” Lane asked slowly. “FLDS?”

I glanced over at him and gave him a quick nod. “We moved here from Utah about ten years back. After our sect was raided. We… escaped,” I said, standing up. “Where is the printer?” I asked.

“In my grandfather’s study.” He motioned to the room I had been thinking of as the library.

As I moved across the space, memories flashed behind my eyes, as if I was watching my life on a screen in my head. The moment my mothers, aunts, cousins, had bathed me, braided my hair, dressed me in my white wedding dress, and placed the thin veil over my face. I’d been twelve. Twelve years old. Yet, that night, I was called wife for the first time.

I’d been lucky. My new husband, a man who already had three wives and was more than three decades older than I was, had decided that first night that he had too much business to attend to to lie with me.

That next night, I hadn’t been as lucky. Years would go by as I lay there, unsure of what was really going on before I was finally enlightened. I can’t remember what actually caused the scales to fall from my eyes. Maybe it was after one of his many beatings or after one of his bed sessions, as I had come to call them.

Suddenly, I knew without a doubt that everything was wrong. Everything he did to me. Everything around me. The fact that I didn’t even know who my parents were was wrong. The fact that I was surrounded by children who were married and having babies. That I had been married off as a child bride. It was all wrong.

Then the compound in which I had grown up and in which we still lived had been raided. I remember running in the darkness. Hiding. Being shoved from behind by my husband because I didn’t move fast enough as we snuck away in the middle of the night.

As we disappeared into the darkness, I realized that I had been separated not only from my family and the only life I’d ever known, but from any help I could ever hope to get. I would never escape the madman that I’d been given to.

I wasn’t sure how I had avoided becoming a parent to dozens of children like all the other wives I spent my early days working beside. I didn’t really understand the reproductive system of my own body, let alone that of a man’s. I never looked at my husband’s form when he came to me. Never wanted to.

Over the years, he grew older and larger, as life at our new home was very easy for him. He spent most of his time on a computer in the large room we called the home office. There were more than a dozen computers in the cool space.

I was only allowed in there to serve him food. He worked on his laptop day and night. Sometimes he’d disappear for days at a time, leaving me all alone.

When he was there and things didn’t go well, he’d hurt me. When things did go well, he’d hurt me in other ways. Ways I’d learned to block out for so long.

Almost ten years after escaping the New Haven compound to Washington State, I was once more ripped from my home in the middle of the night. Law enforcement officers with guns and bright lights busted into my home and searched the massive house that we’d lived in for years by ourselves. This time, I had been alone, and everything Elliott had warned me would happen did.

“Hey?” I jumped at the deep voice behind me, shaking me from the memories.

I hadn’t realized I’d been standing in front of the printer, staring down at the printed pages through blurry eyes. Quickly, before Lane could see my tears, I wiped them away. I grabbed the pages and held them to my chest.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.

“Yes.” I turned to go, but he stopped me by putting his hand gently on my shoulder.

I hadn’t allowed myself to think about my past for a long time. The papers in my hands were to blame for the memories. Seeing my old name. Seeing my past. I was ashamed of it all. Ashamed of who I was, even now.

“Are you okay?” Lane asked again, this time a lot softer.