Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer by Escape Page B

eighteen, they told the men to leave. The police told them they did not have the power to make the girls return. Nor had Linda and Claudel broken any laws.
    My father said he would leave, but he wanted to talk to Linda first. He needed to know that she was all right, and he asked an officer to tell her he was very upset. Linda still wouldn’t speak to him. Then my dad said that if Linda would talk to him, he would agree to leave her alone and let her do what she wanted.
    Linda relented.
    When he finally had the chance, my father asked her why she had done this. Linda said she was finished with the religion and nothing he could say would make her change her mind. Dad tried to talk her into coming back, but she refused. He finally left with the other men.
    Linda and her friend knew they had to flee that house before the men came back for them. Someone smuggled them into Salt Lake City. The hunt for them soon became an obsession within the community. It took several weeks, but Linda was finally spotted.
    Alma, a boy who had fallen in love with Linda at school, headed to Salt Lake to try to find her because it was the most logical place for her to hide. He was on the opposite side of the religious split and there was no way they ever would have been allowed to marry. By this point, the split had completely severed the community in two. All association between one group and the other was unacceptable. Uncle Roy had kicked three apostles out of the FLDS, and they had established their own church. We no longer went to the same dances or celebrated community holidays together.
    After Linda escaped, Alma left the community, too. His father had a house in Salt Lake City, so he moved there to look for her. One day he saw her working in J.B.’s, a chain restaurant, and so he got a job there, too. Alma helped Linda get her sea legs in Salt Lake. She didn’t know how to use the city bus system, so Alma taught her how to find her way around town and bought her a bus pass. Though Linda was not in love with Alma or even attracted to him, they spent nearly every moment together because she was so lonely and so fearful of being on her own.
    Word somehow reached my father that Linda had been found in Salt Lake City. Dad got in touch with Alma and then showed up at J.B.’s to talk with Linda. She realized she would have to deal with him. There was no way she could spend the rest of her life running from her father.
    Dad had one demand: he wanted Linda to speak with the prophet. He promised her that after she talked to Uncle Roy, he would leave her alone. Linda agreed.
    When they met, Uncle Roy told Linda that although she had fallen away, she could redeem herself by marrying “a good man.” Linda said thanks but no thanks.
    The prophet exploded and berated her.
    Since Linda had no intention of being saved, Uncle Roy turned to my father and asked if he had any suggestions.
    Dad said that there was a young man in Salt Lake who had taken an interest in her. My father said he worried about Linda’s safety in the big city and thought it might be a good idea for Alma to marry Linda.
    In the prophet’s eyes, Linda was now useless to him. But Alma was on the other side of the religious split. If Linda married this boy and managed to convert him to Uncle Roy’s side, it could be worthwhile. There had been several marriages already where women were given to men on the other side of the split in hopes of converting the men. If one of the women converted instead, her family condemned her and considered her as dead. But the door was always open to her return. She could renounce her marriage and win back her salvation if she came home and let the prophet assign her to another man.
    The boy and his father were subsequently called into Uncle Roy’s office. The prophet told Alma he wanted him to marry Linda. The boy’s father refused because his son was seventeen and had yet to finish high school. But Alma did not want to lose the prophet’s blessing.