grandparents loved their daughter. I was sure they had believed her
account of me. So I had surrendered them. It was too late to reclaim
Grandma—she was suffering from Alzheimer’s and would not have
known me—so I had come to see my grandfather, to find out whether
there would be a place for me in his life.
We sat in the living room; the carpet was the same crisp white from
my childhood. The visit was short and polite. He talked about
Grandma, whom he had cared for long after she ceased to recognize
him. I talked about England. Grandpa mentioned my mother, and
when he spoke of her it was with the same look of awe that I had seen
in the faces of her followers. I didn’t blame him. From what I’d heard,
my parents were powerful people in the valley. Mother was marketing
her products as a spiritual alternative to Obamacare, and she was
selling product as fast as she could make it, even with dozens of
employees.
God had to be behind such a wondrous success, Grandpa said. My
parents must have been called by the Lord to do what they have done,
to be great healers, to bring souls to God. I smiled and stood to go. He
was the same gentle old man I remembered, but I was overwhelmed by
the distance between us. I hugged him at the door, and gave him a long
look. He was eighty-seven. I doubted whether, in the years he had left,
I would be able to prove to him that I was not what my father said I
was, that I was not a wicked thing.
—TYLER AND STEFANIE LIVED a hundred miles north of Buck’s Peak, in
Idaho Falls. It was there I planned to go next, but before leaving the
valley, I wrote my mother. It was a short message. I said I was nearby
and wanted her to meet me in town. I wasn’t ready to see Dad, I said,
but it had been years since I’d seen her face. Would she come?
I waited for her reply in the parking lot at Stokes. I didn’t wait long.
It pains me that you think it is acceptable to ask this. A wife does
not go where her husband is not welcome. I will not be party to such
blatant disrespect.*
The message was long and reading it made me tired, as if I’d run a
great distance. The bulk of it was a lecture on loyalty: that families
forgive, and that if I could not forgive mine, I would regret it for the