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last mile was all uphill. Josh was still unwilling to go to counseling. Instead, she told friends that he gave her a list of things that would have to change in their marriage “so he won’t be stressed . . . and everything will magically be all right.”
    Josh accused her of spending ninety dollars on groceries instead of the thirty she’d really spent. Her garden had yet to come to fruition, and Josh complained that watermelon at twenty-five cents a pound was too expensive, but then he spent more for one that was smaller.
    “You have utter contempt for me because I don’t have a job!” Josh shouted at Susan. He accused her of thinking he wasn’t a man.
    She denied it, but it did no good.
    Josh no longer went to church. “We were with our friends while they were doing family scriptures and he looked bored, uninterested, and like he was finding reasons to leave the room,” Susan wrote.
    Kiirsi Hellewell recalled how Josh would make it almost impossible for Susan to go to church. “He’d belittle her, and tell her she shouldn’t pay tithes or go to church. He would fight her over everything she did as far as her faith. When she was trying to get the kids up and ready for church by herself, Josh would say things like ‘You want to go to boring, boring church with Mommy—or do you want to stay home and have cake with Daddy?’ ”
    He often criticized her to the little boys, and young Charlie sometimes shouted at her, “Can’t you see I’m busy—trying to work?” Words he echoed from hearing his father’s complaints.
    Susan’s life was getting harder and harder.
    “I don’t know how you can help, except talk with me,” she emailed a close friend. “And be another individual that would know about the situation if questioned b/c things went crazy later. Sad that I’m this paranoid.
    “My huge problem is I don’t know what to believe or what to do. I don’t want to divorce or separate or take the kids somewhere and [he’d view] that as an act of war . . . My current tactic is to pretty much not make waves and try to ignore the problems. I read mystery books checked out at the library and [try to] be a good mom for the boys. I came home from work on Sat. and felt so depressed that I couldn’t make a decent dinner for my boys.”
    Susan was concerned that Charlie and Braden weren’t getting enough protein. Hot dogs were the only meat products she could afford, although she sometimes had eggs on hand. Beans and rice took several steps to prepare—culling, soaking, and a long time cooking. Often she was just too tired to do all that.
    She was frustrated that Josh didn’t stick to the food budget he demanded of her and then made impulse purchases like “cheap donuts and individual yogurt servings.” Susan would have suffered his wrath if she dared to buy something like that. She wouldn’t have anyway—but that money could have gone to buy meat for the boys. She did her best to give the boys a proper diet with what she had in her cupboards.
    “I just kept trying to disguise their food with sour cream and catsup, etc.,” she emailed. “And I finally laid [ sic ] down on my bed and went to sleep around 7 P.M. I had only gotten 4 hours sleep the night before so I’m sure Josh just thought I was tired . . . I took another nap (out of depression) the next day, but I’m sure he has no clue/doesn’t care.”
    In retrospect, it’s easy to ask why Susan didn’t just leave Josh. How could she stay in such a punishing relationship? She would have been welcomed by her own family in Washington State. But unless a woman has been there—and so many women have—it’s difficult to explain.
    Although Susan avoided Steve Powell, even he seemed sympathetic on one of their visits to Puyallup, telling her that his whole family knew how badly Josh treated her. That was unexpected support from a surprising source, but it didn’t make Susan less wary of Steven. When she and Josh had moved from