Nothing Sacred

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Because the biggest part of her suffering was yet to come. And David sensed that these next few days and weeks would determine her ability to recover, to live a normal life or ever love again. He knew far more than anyone realized he did.

  This is why I’m here. He understood that now.

  He just wasn’t sure he was ready for the journey ahead. Or the possible consequences.

  He knew only that his fate had been determined that long-ago day when he’d asked for this spiritual path and promised to do all it required of him. He’d traded hell for peace, and if, now, that peace cost him some time in hell, he had no choice but to pay.

  HEART FROZEN Martha sped toward Shelter Valley Community Church and the four-bedroom rectory immediately behind it. From the moment her first child had been born, she’d been dreading one of those calls. The kind that started with “I’m sorry…” insert “Martha, Mrs. Moore, Ms. Moore, Ma’am.” It had played itself out in all those ways and more over the years.

  She’d just never imagined it coming from a preacher.

  That had to be good news. If Ellen were dying, she’d be on her way to the hospital, not waiting in the big house behind the church. There’d be emergency personnel around, not a minister.

  Of course, he’d said Ellen needed a doctor and refused to see one….

  Panic made Martha’s movements jerky as she turned the last corner.

  It had to be good news that her daughter had been capable of making that decision.

  But why would she? Ellen didn’t have a fear of doctors. So why would her daughter suddenly be averse to…

  There were no vehicles other than the pastor’s green Explorer at the house. No ambulance. No flashing lights.

  That had to be good news. It had to be. Martha couldn’t face anything else.

  And then David Marks opened his kitchen door and Martha had her first glimpse of her beautiful daughter, huddled there with a blanket around her shoulders, eyes filled with fear and incomprehension—and a desperate plea for her mother to make things better. And what little bit of faith Martha had been hoarding deep inside died right then and there.

  MARTHA HELD ELLEN in her arms all the way to the hospital in Phoenix. The girl had tried to tell her mother what had happened, but David had done most of the talking. Enough for Martha to know Ellen needed immediate medical attention.

  Talk could come later.

  Ellen had refused to go to the clinic in Shelter Valley, and Martha hadn’t been able to ignore her battered daughter’s plea to keep her rape a secret. She didn’t want people’s pity or concern, didn’t want their questions or assessing looks. Martha had insisted on calling Greg Richards, though. The sheriff of Shelter Valley had a job to do. A crime to solve, the likes of which Shelter Valley had never known before.

  One of their own had been violated. Right there in the town’s safe and protected limits.

  Greg said he’d meet them at the hospital in Phoenix.

  “Dr. Anderson’s waiting for us in the emergency room,” Martha told David as he drove with a calm she envied down the long dark stretch of highway between Shelter Valley and the nearest big city.

  The only person other than the sheriff that she’d called had been her best friend, Becca Parsons, who’d arranged for the doctor to meet them at the hospital. In the meantime, they’d given Ellen some over-the-counter acetaminophen with an added sleep aid. Ellen was obviously floating in and out, but she was listening to her mother. Martha could tell by the movement in her daughter’s ribs against her own, the tightening of Ellen’s hand squeezing hers. Ellen didn’t want to see a doctor. Martha didn’t blame her.

  “You’ve met Becca Parsons and her little daughter, Bethany,” Martha said to David, rubbing her hand across Ellen’s back. The girl had refused to let her mother go home and get fresh clothes for her. Or to borrow a T-shirt and shorts from Pastor Marks. She’d refused to let her clothes be taken from her body.

  She’d refused to let her mother go, period, which was why Martha—in spite of seat belt laws—had a twenty-year-old child in her lap. Let some cop try to stop them and give her a hard time about it.

  “Of course I know them,” David was saying. “As the new mayor, she gave me my official welcome to town.” He barely took his eyes from the road, but Martha felt his glance in their direction. “Will and I have played golf a time or two.”

  Martha wondered why Becca hadn’t mentioned that.

  “Dr. Anderson’s the one who helped them have Bethany,” Martha said now, hoping to reassure her daughter, somehow, that miracles did happen. That everything was going to be okay.

  Reassure her child of something she knew in her heart was not the truth.

  “After twenty years of trying, the impossible became possible, thanks to Dr. Anderson’s care and compassion.” If nothing else, she was filling the car with something besides the agony in her arms. In her daughter’s heart.

  The hope that sometimes life did work out for the best. The belief that good people did win. That justice would be done.

  Ellen’s fingers relaxed their grip on Martha’s blouse, just for a second. The tightness in Martha’s heart eased for that second, too.

  “And now they have Kim, too.” David’s words were matter-of-fact.

  The little Korean boy Becca and Will had adopted the previous summer. “Yeah.”

  “Each is an example of faith,” he said softly.

  Ellen whimpered and Martha moved her hand from her daughter’s back to the hair that was still caked to her head. Martha swallowed back nausea. God, she needed some time alone with her baby.

  To bathe her. To help Ellen feel clean again.

  “Faith?” Because of the child in her arms she had to restrain the intensity of the anger his words instilled. But she did so with great difficulty. Who did he think he was? Preaching, even now! She wanted to scream at him to drop it. “You got that one wrong, Preacher,” she said, rocking Ellen gently as the girl moaned again. “Becca had long ago lost faith and given up any hope of having a baby. Bethany’s arrival was sheer luck. Or the twisted humor of fate.”

  The same fate that was playing with them now? As they drove Martha’s sweet daughter to see how much damage had actually been done—and to prevent any consequences from the hell she’d suffered while Martha was at home, oblivious, nagging Tim to do his math homework.

  “Will never lost faith. Or gave up hope.”

  The words weren’t loud, but they were firm.

  Martha couldn’t reply. She didn’t feel like arguing. Let the man have his fantasies about the power of faith and hope.

  She couldn’t afford them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT by the time they got home. After the doctor had taken care of her, Ellen had met with a police artist who’d come to the hospital and she’d given a description of her attacker. Then she’d swallowed something to help her sleep—and she’d been dead to the world in the back seat of the Explorer before they left the lights of Phoenix behind. A counseling appointment had been arranged for the following afternoon. Martha anxiously stood by as David pulled her sleeping daughter out of the car and carried her into the house.

  “What’s going on?” Shelley was there, wide-eyed and looking younger than she had in years, as they came into the foyer.

  With a quick hug for her teenager who’d been so full of anger lately, Martha said, “In a minute,” and led David through the sprawling single-story house to Ellen’s bedroom.

  Shelley was right behind them, and without saying a word, helped her mother undress her sister and get her into bed, while David spoke quietly to the other two kids out in the hall. Rebecca had appeared shortly after they’d come in. Tim, if he’d been asleep, had obviously heard them and woken up.

  “Where’d these clothes come from?” Shelley whispered, uncharacteristically folding the garments and laying them carefully on the dresser.

  “The hospital.”

  God, Martha wondered, how was she g
oing to do this? How could she tell her kids what had happened to their older sister? How could she help any of them live with the fear that had been permanently introduced to their home that night?

  How was she going to get through these next minutes when what she needed to do was crawl under the blankets and cry until there were no tears left?

  Shelley didn’t ask what had happened. The kids all knew what Martha had known when she’d received the call from David Marks earlier that evening. There was some sort of emergency with Ellen. Martha had called from the hospital to tell them she’d be home soon—bringing Ellen—and that they’d talk when she got there.

  Rape wasn’t something she could talk to her daughters about over the phone.

  And then she was in the living room with her two younger girls, sitting on the floor with them, one under each arm, their backs against the couch. She’d pushed the coffee table away, turned on a fire in the gas fireplace. And tried to take comfort from the familiarity around her. The books on the bookshelf, just as they’d been for so many years. Books filled with wisdom.

  And escape.

  Tim had disappeared. She had Pastor David Marks to thank for that. And knew, somehow, that her son would be told what he needed to know.

  “She was bruised.” Shelley was the first to speak.

  “I didn’t get to see her.” Rebecca’s long, gangly legs were pulled up to her chest. “She was in a car accident, wasn’t she?”

  Martha swallowed.

  “Did someone die?” Rebecca’s sweetness tore at Martha’s heart. She smoothed a hand down the side of her daughter’s head, gaining what strength she could from the feel of her silky black hair.

  “Is the car totaled?” Shelley asked without any inflection at all. The sixteen-year-old knew a car was not the problem. “Was it Ellen’s fault?”

  Martha took a deep breath, lowered her hands, taking a young hand in each of hers.

  “Girls, Ellen was—” Her throat closed. She couldn’t do it. Didn’t want her daughters to see the tears she couldn’t seem to control now that she was home.

  “What, Mama?” Rebecca’s reversion to the name she hadn’t called her mother since she was six told the whole story.

  Shelley didn’t say a word. Martha had a feeling she knew.

  How did she say this delicately? Disguise something so ugly to make it palatable for fifteen-year-old ears?

  “She was raped tonight.”

  Not at all how she wanted to say it. Not at all what she wanted to say. Not to them. Not ever. Not to anyone.

  She didn’t mean them to, but tears slid slowly down her cheeks, unchecked by hands that were still holding tightly to her daughters’. She’d talked to doctors, to the sheriff. She’d talked to David Marks. But hearing the words in the presence of her children made them suddenly real.

  “HOW ARE THEY DOING?”

  The pastor was waiting for her in the kitchen when Martha pushed her way wearily inside an hour later.

  “Okay for now,” she said. “I gave them each one of the sleeping pills I got from Dr. Anderson.”

  “Sounded like Rebecca took it hard.”

  The girl, in her childhood innocence, had done the things Martha had denied herself. She’d yelled. Denying Martha’s words. She’d paced. She’d spat words that Martha hadn’t even known she knew. She’d wished a man dead, over and over again. And, eventually, she’d sobbed her heart out.

  “I’m more worried about Shelley,” Martha confessed, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. The same chair Keith Nielson had sat in almost a year before, after they’d returned from a trip to the same hospital in Phoenix.

  Tim had broken his leg. And Martha’s boss had taken over, helping her through the crisis. In spite of the fact that, with his wife thinking about leaving him, he’d been in a crisis of his own. Keith and Martha had kissed that night.

  “I was impressed with her sensitivity and maturity,” David Marks was saying.

  “She’s scared to death.”

  “That’s understandable,” he said, bringing Martha a cup of coffee and sitting down opposite her. It had to be at least two in the morning. “It’ll pass.”

  Martha shook her head and took a sip, hoping it was decaffeinated. “Life scares her. That’s why she always acts so tough.”

  “She’s lucky she has you.”

  Martha smiled tiredly, thanking him for that trite little statement. Because it didn’t feel little at all.

  Silence settled over the kitchen. Martha wasn’t ready for it. But knew that it had to come anyway. Activity was over for now.

  “I don’t think this was an ordinary incident—if there is such a thing.”

  His words fell into the quiet of the night, inciting an anger that had been usurped by exhaustion.

  “I’ll agree with you there,” she said, some of the rage infiltrating her tone. “Nothing ordinary about having your daughter attacked.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the lateness of the hour showing in the slump of his shoulders, the redness of his eyes.

  Tapping her knee with one finger, he said, “I mean the attack itself,” he said quietly. “It’s suspicious.”

  She couldn’t take any more tonight. Ellen had been raped. Couldn’t it just be an ordinary rape? Couldn’t they leave it at that? Martha was too worn out to consider anything more.

  “How so?”

  She should offer him something to go with the coffee. Toast. Eggs. A good stiff drink.

  Except that he was a minister who taught the benefits of moderation.

  Did that mean someone who went to his church couldn’t drink in front of him?

  Not that she had anything in the house. She’d thrown all the stuff away the day Todd left. Afraid her kids might get into it.

  Or that she might.

  David Marks was still sitting there staring at the floor, wrinkled shirt untucked from his jeans, not looking like any preacher she’d ever known. He seemed to be choosing his words with care.

  “When Ellen didn’t play rough, he stopped being rough on her, as though he only wanted to do that if she did.”

  Yup, Martha had been right. Her mind couldn’t take this in, couldn’t analyze, couldn’t even consider what he seemed to be saying.

  “Generally speaking, rapists are cowards,” he said next.

  And she’d always thought cowards were harmless.

  “They pick on victims weaker than them, which gives them a feeling of strength.” He spoke slowly, softly, lulling Martha’s exhausted mind into listening.

  “They use that strength to keep their sense of power alive. It feeds on itself. If there’s a break in the adrenaline rush, fear can just as easily take over and feed them, too. That’s why they tell women in self-defense classes to be firm and unafraid. Their show of confidence will often serve to disconnect the attacker from his strength, giving the victim a chance to escape. Sometimes it’s even enough to make the rapist turn tail and run.”

  Great, so he was saying that Ellen only needed to yell at the guy instead of getting scared and she’d have been spared the atrocities that had changed her life forever? If Martha had taught her daughter self-defense, then Ellen would still be young at heart and innocent and relatively carefree?

  God, Martha didn’t even know if her daughter had been a virgin. She hadn’t been able to bear asking.

  “In the same vein, being rough keeps the adrenaline going, gives them courage.”

  He wasn’t done yet?

  This was far more than she needed to know. Did preachers take some course in Rapist 101? Or maybe Criminal 101? “So what’s your point, Preacher?”

  “Ellen’s attacker treated her gently when she quit fighting him.”

  Oh. Well, leave it to him to find something to be thankful for. She’d feel irritated with the whole idea—except that she was thankful.

  It wasn’t much. But it was something.

  “There’s another fact that’s bothering me,” he said.

>   Now what? Resting a head that felt twice its normal weight on her hand, Martha looked at him. She should be going to bed, letting him get to bed. Just as soon as she could manage to stand up.

  “I’m not sure Ellen mentioned this to Greg, but when she first told me the story, she said something about the man trying to give her money when he dropped her off.”

  “She told Greg,” Martha said. “He found it odd, too. But not as odd as the guy dropping her off in the first place.” At Ellen’s request, the bastard had driven her daughter to the church when he’d finished with her. Two things to be thankful for on this god-awful night. The preacher was having an effect on her.

  But only because she was so weary.

  “So we’re dealing with a guy who commits crimes and then feels remorse about them,” she continued. “Greg says it’s almost a classic composite of one of the four basic criminal types.”

  David didn’t say anything. Just refilled her coffee cup and stayed with her.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Being here.” She didn’t know what she would’ve done without him tonight. And didn’t know who else she could have leaned on so completely. He was a man whose job was to see to his parishioners; it was nothing personal. He’d do the same for anyone. A paid professional, just like the doctor who’d attended to Ellen that night. And the sheriff. And the counselor who’d stopped in briefly and was seeing her again tomorrow.

  Martha told herself she was at no risk of making more of it than it was—depending on someone again, the way she’d depended on Todd.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was six in the morning on the East Coast.

  “I have to call her father.”

  David grabbed the cordless phone off the wall cradle. Handed it to her.

  She stared to dial, then hung up. Tried a second time. She hadn’t talked to her ex-husband since his call weeks before to tell them about the baby. She rarely spoke to him anymore.

  But every single time, he made her crazy.

  Crazy with pain. And anger. And all the things he’d left her with that she didn’t understand.