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I am reunited with my parents in a boardroom within the hospital. I ask them to take Matthew for a while until things get straightened out.
I am not arrested, not right away. The entirety of New Hope leadership is eventually. Melanie, Adam’s wife, everyone.
New Hope makes national news. What happened to me, what happened to other Sirens, to other girls— the things that went on within the cult, as they’re calling it— are all speculated upon.
Even though not many people within its confines actually talk, still…it’s amazing how close the media comes to painting an accurate picture.
Eventually, I am arrested on a whole host of charges. I was an accomplice. The question is: was I willing? I was a minor player for some, but not much of it, and that helps. My court-appointed attorney turns out to be somewhat decent. It helps that he’s attracted to me, and that I know the right buttons to push to get him to see things my way, but he’s confident that I’ll end up with a slap on the wrist: probation at best, house arrest at worst.
Matthew and I are forced to move. The Feds confiscated all of the church’s assets, our home being one of them.
It’s not all bad. Thanks to all of the media attention, someone, or many someone’s actually, set up victims’ funds accounts, and thousands of people all across the world donate. Matthew and I end up in an apartment. We do all right. That’s not to say I feel safe. I don’t. Most nights I don’t sleep. I probably won’t, not until the trial, not until I find out my sentence, and maybe not even then.
It’s Adam’s word against mine as to the murder of my husband. He had the perceived murder weapon in his possession. His attorneys have no proof I committed the actual crime, only a timeline and that I was an accomplice in covering it up. Given the abuse that I suffered at the hands of the church, my behavior can nearly be explained away. In addition, when it came out that Adam and the church leadership were drugging not just me but the majority of its members, their w
ord isn’t worth much. And it makes sense that there would be blank spots in my memory.
I don’t know what the future holds. I hope soon that I can finally drop the mask, exit stage left, and explore who I might be when I no longer have to pretend.
Matthew often asks if I have to go away like Sean did, and this morning over breakfast was no exception. “I might have to go away for a little bit,” I say. “But not forever.”
“Is it because you were bad?”
“No,” I tell him, and what I say afterward is mostly the truth. “It’s so that I can learn to be good.”
Chapter Thirty
Elliot
Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Montgomery, Alabama
It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. My father always liked to use that phrase; he heard it often in the Navy. He said you do what you have to do. He said in Vietnam the enemy was particularly tough because they realized they didn’t have to win. They only had to not lose. I used to think there was no in between, but now I can see I was wrong.
It’s a tangled web we weave as humans. I am no stranger to that. My father also said a sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. Information was my tool. When the Feds wanted to bring down a particularly profitable cult, the path led them to me. I wasn’t involved with New Hope, but I certainly wasn’t innocent either. That’s how they get you.
They wanted insider information that only I could give, and in turn for the forgiveness of my trespasses, I agreed. It’s amazing what one will agree with when their back is against the wall.
It started with Melanie Anderson. Nathan hand-delivered her to me, which put me on the FBI’s radar to begin with, or so the story goes. If he’d never brought her up to my apartment, I could have stuck with plausible deniability. Prior to this, I had no direct connection with the church. But Nathan wanted the deal made—as did Melanie Anderson. I was lonely. We had sex. And that was that. Both Nathan Foster and Melanie Anderson in their own ways, and for different reasons, thought they could trap me into signing, but they were in turn only ensnaring themselves.
When the FBI came knocking, I offered up Marcia Louis, first, and then unbeknownst to me, my father used his political connections to usher a plea bargain on my behalf. Of course, none of us knew how over our heads we were. If I had known I was going to experience what I did, or how close I was going to come to being wiped out, I probably wouldn’t have agreed. I never wanted to have a price tag put on my head. I only wanted my family back and a clean slate. In turn, I provided names of buyers. I destroyed the lives of some very influential and infamous people. You can’t offer up names of cartel leaders, the mafia, names of key players in Big Pharma, and expect for either you or your family to come out unscathed.
Most of us think if we reach toward the things we want, if we join the church, if we make the sale, if we get the guy or the girl, then and only then will we be fulfilled and happy. What most people don’t realize, myself and New Hope members alike, is that need can be exploited. Desperate people agree to desperate things.
I could see this in Vanessa Bolton. She seemed to be lying every bit as much to herself as she was to me. She thought she could play their game and come out on top. She thought if she played her cards right, freedom from the business, from the lies, from whatever it was she’d gotten herself into, would absolve her. She thought she could win. She was wrong about that, of course, but most incorrect things also contain an element of truth. There are bad outcomes and less bad outcomes. But no one wins in situations like these. Not really.
Just ask my neighbor, Mrs. Dunn. She too was arrested, and she too was helping the Feds. While I’m not aware of the specifics, I do know that she was never sentenced. She posted bail and was released, so whatever she gave them must have been good.
I learned a lot while here in prison. I learned that her real name is not Vanessa, nor Amanda. It’s Bethany. Whoever she is in real life, I like to think she offered me a bit of that in our time together. I heard she accepted a plea deal and was given probation. That makes me proud. I never doubted her ability to work the system.
As for me, I’ll serve thirty-six months here for selling my formulas on the black market. It started out pretty straightforward: I needed to sell the formulas, considering their short shelf life. I didn’t want to get bogged down with government red tape and yet here I am paying the price, half-saved by other people’s misdeeds.
Afterward, I’ll be ushered into life on the outside by way of the witness protection program. I’ll never spend another day in the lab. In my new life, I will not spend my days as a chemist. It’s also likely I’ll never see my wife or my daughter again. This is perhaps the toughest part to swallow, that to protect them I had to drag them into the mix. They were taken from our home in the middle of the night. They’ve had to move and assume new identities, for their safety. On good days, I like to remind myself that a fresh start might be good for everyone involved. Wouldn’t it be good for us to have finally found happiness, to have finally found what we were unable to give to each other? I don’t know.
On hard days, I tell myself there’s always Instalook. It won’t be easy, but knowing Emily, if I look hard enough, I’ll find her there.
Last week, I had my attorney get a package to Bethany—a fictional story written under a nom de plume, a recounting of the way things went down, which is to say was not so fictional at all. Only she will know what certain things meant or why they played out the way they did. It’s like the two of us created a language no one else would understand. But the truth is like that sometimes, hidden and elusive even to those who lived it.
My story was meant to be both an apology and a thank you. I may have wanted Emily, I still want her. But I needed Vanessa. In the end, she was the only one who was ever loyal to me. She told me to get out of that hotel room not realizing it was too late for the both of us. She risked her life to send those texts, and that gives me hope. I’ve come to appreciate the people we pretended to be, and at the end of the story, when I told her I think of her often, it was the truth.
