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decided to have a man-to-man talk with Joey, advising him about sex and the precautions he had to take. A couple of days later, Velva overheard Joey talking to his brother Danny. Joey wanted his brother to go with him to the drugstore. He said he needed condoms, but was too embarrassed to buy them for himself. Later, she questioned Danny. Yes, he’d bought them for him.
    He said Joey had plans to take Pixie to a motel that night. She told Teresa, “I wonder what this Stella wants with Joey. I mean, he’s not a boy who’s ever shown much interest in sex. And she’s had already had two children. I just can’t figure what the connection is.” Soon Joey stopped coming home at night, sometimes for a couple days at a time.
    Teresa and Velva tried to put their heads together. Their only option was to try to give him gentle advice. Yelling at Joey would only alienate him. Once Velva had given him hell for leaving fast food containers around his bedroom. He’d gone outside and sat on the backyard swing, sulking like a hurt child. It was on Christmas Eve, 1991, that Velva began to notice how his appearance was changing. He spent the holiday with Velva and her family. Pixie wasn’t with him that night. Velva gave him socks and underwear and flannel shirts.
    He’d always been clean cut, but now his hair was over his ears and he was sporting a scraggly beard. “Your razor break?” Velva asked him.
     
    “Pixie likes it on me,” Joey said. Then he disappeared for several weeks, After the first few days, Velva and Teresa took turns calling the Sextons. Sometimes the parents answered the telephone, sometimes one of the older children. It was always the same response. “No, he’s not over here.” Had they seen Joey? “Yeah, he was here with Pixie.”
     
    They left messages for him, but he never returned the calls. The family began checking the places they knew he frequented. The whole family joined the search. They took turns dropping in at Canton Center Mall, walking from store to store, hoping to find him shopping or just hanging out. Teresa visited the house on Caroline, but the Sextons said she’d just missed him. One day, their father Lewis thought he saw him drive by in a car. He followed the car for several miles until it pulled into a driveway, but it turned out to be a look-alike. Then, in January, 1992, Joey called Danny. “Pixie’s pregnant,” Joey told Danny.
     
    He said was going to marry her. He claimed he’d used the condoms, but there must have been some kind of accident. A few days later, Joey showed up at Velva’s with Pixie. He wanted all the phone numbers and addresses of relatives. They were planning a wedding, he said, in February, just a few weeks away. They planned to marry on Valentine’s Day, 1992. Velva went to the basement to get some clothes out of the dryer and collect her thoughts. Joey followed her. Velva began crying, searching for a way to talk some sense into him. “Aunt Velva, don’t you think my mom would want to be a grandma?” he asked. She grabbed his hand. “Yes, but she’d also want you to be careful. “
     
    “Careful of what?”
     
    “You don’t know this family.” She’d heard the cult rumors from her sister Teresa. “But I love Pixie.”
     
    “I love you, and believe me, I want you to be happy. But I also want you to think things out.” As February approached, Teresa, Velva and the rest of the family certainly did their share of thinking. They did it out loud in telephone conversations and family visits. They began comparing observations, particularly of Pixie’s children. Except for a couple of primitive words, everyone agreed, the girl Dawn wasn’t talking, at age 3. She showed no interest in toys. Mostly, she just huddled next to her mother, staring blankly, a bottle always in her hand. “There’s something wrong with those kids,” Sam said the first time he saw them.
     
    “They’re too backward,” Joey’s grandfather said. Teresa recognized