Nothing Sacred

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Becca would be wearing the very latest in shoes. Even now that she was the mother of two very active toddlers, Becca somehow managed to be high-fashion from her spiked short hair down.

  And Martha had always thought her friend’s polished appearance, compared to her own more casual style, was because Becca hadn’t been dealing with hungry children in the morning.

  Becca spoke with a clear, calm voice.

  “I think our job here, ladies, is to present a strong, unafraid example to every single person—man, woman and child—living in this town.”

  Martha chewed a bite of salad and succeeded in swallowing it.

  “Absolutely.” Phyllis placed her napkin on the table. “Bonnie, treat every woman you meet as though she’s the victim because, in a sense, she is. We all are.”

  The worried lines on Tory’s face smoothed. Martha noticed that only because the younger woman was seated right across from her. “I’m glad you said that,” she said to Phyllis, her eyeliner drawing attention to the innocence in her eyes, an innocence she’d retained in spite of the abuse she’d suffered from her ex-husband before coming to Shelter Valley. “I’ve been feeling that way and thought it was just me.”

  “No way,” Randi interjected. “I haven’t skated without Zach since it happened.”

  “If we act afraid, we’re going to scare the children,” Bonnie said. “We need to be smart, to make sure that everyone knows not to be out alone, especially at night, but we can’t let this guy take away our freedom.”

  “Hasn’t he, though?” Beth’s quiet question spoke volumes. “He’s taken away our ability to feel safe.”

  “No, he hasn’t,” Becca answered. “We can still be safe. Happy. We just have to be more vigilant about looking out for ourselves. And each other. It’s not a bad reminder.”

  “David Marks sure did a good job of handling the situation at church on Sunday,” Bonnie said. Martha had noticed that Bonnie was singing in the choir again. She’d quit shortly after she and Keith had found Pastor Edwards, for the second time, in the arms of a married parishioner.

  “He didn’t pull any punches about the fact that there’s evil in the world,” Beth said, “yet somehow I came away feeling completely secure.”

  “I couldn’t have done it better—or probably even as well—myself,” Phyllis said. “It’s all a matter of attitude. We create our own realities. We have it in our power to be whoever and whatever we want. If we believe we’re safe, we’ll act accordingly, and we will be.”

  Oh, God. Now her friends were spouting that crap, Martha realized. Hadn’t that been exactly what had led Ellen into trouble in the first place? Believing she was safe?

  Pastor Marks would say that Ellen hadn’t believed. She’d just taken safety for granted. Martha thought it was all a bunch of nonsense.

  Becca didn’t seem to be saying much, either, thank goodness. Like Martha, she wasn’t falling for the preacher’s stuff. Apparently some needed it more than others and to each his—or her—own.

  “Father John talked about it on Sunday, too,” Tory was saying. “He told us all to pray for protection—and to take sensible precautions.”

  As she’d been doing throughout most of the meal, Martha kept her mouth shut. Nope, she was definitely not heroine material.

  “So, are you all locking your doors at night?” Cassie asked when everyone had finished eating.

  Every woman there nodded.

  And, in spite of anything any of them might say, that really told the truth about what had happened to their town.

  Dessert started out a somewhat subdued affair, but Cassie’s homemade lemon pie was too fabulous to resist. Martha still didn’t join in much of the conversation floating around her, only enough to keep her friends from getting suspicious, but she was eventually able to let the affection and energy in the room take the edge off her defensiveness. She was able to feel a reassurance and security; it was what she bestowed on her children and what her friends, in their own ways, bestowed on her.

  “I have an announcement to make.” Bonnie stood up, was looking around at each one of them, a grin on her face as her secret trembled on her lips. Beth’s knowing smile gave it away.

  “You’re pregnant,” Randi said.

  Turning her slim body right and then left in an exaggerated model’s gesture, Bonnie nodded. “Almost three months.”

  “Congratulations,” Martha said, rounding the table to be the first to give her a hug. “Keith never said a word.”

  The year before, Martha had come too close to having an affair with Keith Nielson. It had been a tough time, showing her things about herself she didn’t care to see. Now she was nothing but happy for Keith and his sweet wife. Martha almost laughed out loud.

  “He didn’t know until last night,” Bonnie told her, and then looked at the rest of them. “You know I had such a hard time getting pregnant with Katie, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

  “Or yourself, either,” Becca guessed. Bonnie’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. But not for long. The other women in the room weren’t going to allow that.

  And before any of them left that afternoon, they had Bonnie’s shower completely planned—date, place, theme and all.

  Despite everything, Martha was glad to be alive. To be part of it all. To live in a town like Shelter Valley.

  FACING THE TALL first baseman from South Phoenix, Tim Moore wound up and put every bit of energy he had into the pitch. The guy was their number-four batter. He’d get him in three.

  “Ball!” The umpire’s voice rang out embarrassingly loud.

  “Shit,” Tim said, spitting at the ground. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Your mama’s gonna be mad if she hears you talking like that,” Gray Woods, Tim’s catcher, said, coming up to the mound.

  “Then it’s lucky for me my mama didn’t hear,” Tim snapped. Not that it mattered. Moms didn’t really do much about stuff like teenage boys cussing and looking at magazines. They left that junk to dads, which meant Tim could get away with it.

  Gray leaned in. “He backed up from the plate.”

  Tim nodded. He knew he’d thrown a strike. He couldn’t believe the ump had fallen for the visual illusion.

  “He ain’t gonna hit it,” Gray predicted. “Don’t throw the next one so fast and the ump’ll see better.”

  Tim nodded again. Chewed his gum while he waited for Gray to get back to his crouching stance behind the plate. He wound up.

  “Stee-rike!”

  Damn straight it was. This time Tim glanced at the bleachers. Mom was there, of course. She always was. Screaming her fool head off as loudly as any dad would’ve done.

  And the pastor. He hadn’t missed a game this season, although it was only the first Saturday in March, so he couldn’t brag too much about that yet. And Keith Nielson was there, too. Ever since Tim had broken his leg last year and Keith had taken him and his mom to the hospital and then spent the night with them, Keith was always at his games when they played in Shelter Valley.

  “Throw the ball!” some jerk from the bench hollered out.

  Placing his middle finger just right, Tim held the ball up as though getting ready for a windup. He couldn’t tell if the kid knew what he’d done or not, but it didn’t much matter. Tim grinned, anyway. And threw the ball.

  He struck out a total of sixteen guys during that multicity-league game. Not quite half of the at-bats, but he was getting close. And he’d pitched a shutout. Pretty good for a beginning-of-the-season game. Good enough to make it to the big leagues.

  “Good game!”

  “Way to go, buddy!”

  “Congratulations, man!”

  After the game, Tim walked through the crowd on the field, receiving slaps on the back, grinning the whole time.

  Baseball was cool.

  Life was cool.

  Until it was just him and Mom in the car, heading home for another Saturday night at the Moore residence.

  “You want to stop for burger
s?”

  “Nah,” Tim told her, although, back at the field, that was all he’d been able to think about. But the girls would just bitch about the fat.

  Who the hell cared about fat, anyway? Except his skinny sisters.

  “We could order pizza.”

  Ditto the fat. “Nah.”

  “How about some ice cream, then?”

  Saturday night at the ice cream shop with his mom. “No, thanks.”

  Mom smiled over at him, and that look in her eyes made him feel like he was still a kid—in a good sorta way. “We need to celebrate, honey. That was your first shutout of the season.”

  Yeah. And it was getting dark, too. “Chinese sounds good,” he said. There was a little place that had opened the year before, around the corner from them. Tim suggested they stop there.

  “I thought you didn’t like their food.”

  “Yeah,” he lied. “It’s great! Especially the egg rolls.” He hated their damn egg rolls. Hell, he hated their food, period. But they were quick.

  And he wasn’t that hungry anymore, anyway. Besides, he had a stash of Doritos in his room. And a copy of Playboy that Sly had just ripped off from his old man. And if Tim got through that, there was always the Internet.

  Eating chips for dinner was a helluva lot better than being out with Mom after dark. Or knowing his sisters were home by themselves. He might throw one helluva pitch, but there was only so much a fourteen-year-old kid could do against some big honkin’ guy bent on torturing his family.

  Sometimes Tim really hated his dad. The bastard should be here, protecting the family, instead of leaving Tim to do it all.

  THAT SECOND WEEK in March, Martha got, in total, maybe twenty-four hours of sleep. And that was restless at best. For the first time in her life, looking at herself wearing exercise shorts and a crop top in the mirror on Saturday evening, she thought she was too skinny. She’d eaten about as much as she’d slept that week.

  Not that she’d let on to anyone else, but she had a knot in her stomach that seemed to be taking up whatever room had been there. And every single time she closed her eyes, her mind raced with images of a man out in the world, free to inflict further damage. A man who’d changed her daughter’s life. Who’d locked Ellen so deep inside herself, Martha wasn’t sure the girl would ever be released.

  So stressed at the unfairness of it all, the helplessness, Martha had locked herself in her room right after dinner—cereal and toast tonight, since she and Tim had stopped for burgers after his game in Phoenix that afternoon. She’d thought perhaps a hot bath with chamomile bubbles, accompanied by the warm glow of a lavender-scented candle and George Winston playing in the background, would help unravel, if only for an hour or two, the tension that was giving her a permanent migraine and taking away her ability to find humor in anything.

  She, who’d always been able to look at life with a touch of sarcastic amusement.

  “Mom!” Martha heard her name over the sound of water draining from the tub.

  Rebecca, apparently too lazy to actually walk to her mother’s closed door, was hollering at her from some other part of the house.

  Which meant Martha had to go to her door, open it and poke her head out into the brightly lit hall. “Yes?”

  Rebecca poked her head out of her own door several feet down the hall. “Phone.”

  Martha hadn’t even heard it ring. “Thanks,” she told her youngest daughter. “Turn off the hall light, would you?” she asked before closing her door.

  At least with Rebecca, Martha didn’t usually have to ask twice.

  She picked up the mobile phone in her room. “Hello?”

  The bath hadn’t worked. She’d been about to exercise. But maybe a talk with one of her friends would ease the strain.

  “Hi, it’s David Marks.”

  “Pastor!” Martha’s heart jumped, her throat tightening. The last time he’d called… Where were her kids?

  “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “I don’t have bad news.”

  The kids were all here. Except Shelley. And she was spending the night with Monica. Safe and sound.

  Martha sank down onto the bed. He didn’t have bad news. Thank God. She stood up again. Then why was he calling?

  “I’ve been struggling with a…situation…” He started out slowly. “Not sure what to do…”

  “Oh?” She couldn’t think what he might be struggling with that had anything to do with her, but she had to be polite. She thought about lying down to do some leg lifts.

  “It…has to do with you,” he said. “At least indirectly.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve prayed about it and now feel sure that I should go ahead with my original thought and approach you.”

  If he planned to ask her out, he was going to be sadly disappointed. Even if God had ordained a date, she refused to go.

  And…

  “It’s about Ellen’s attack.”

  Martha sank to the floor, her back against the side of the queen-size bed she’d once shared with her husband. “What about it?”

  “I have some suspicions, an idea or two that I’m fairly certain warrant a follow-up.”

  She sat forward. “You do? What? You’ve talked them over with Greg?”

  “No, I haven’t.” The pastor’s hesitancy slowed her down. “That’s the thing,” he continued, sounding almost unsure of himself—which wasn’t something she’d ever noticed in him before. David Marks was the most self-possessed person she’d ever met. “These suspicions. I’d rather not tell Greg about them.”

  Asking why not was the obvious reply. “Okay.”

  “I just felt obligated to let you know that I’m doing a little checking on my own.”

  “Okay.”

  “And hope you’ll agree not to mention this conversation to anyone yet.”

  At this point she’d agree to just about anything to get some answers. To catch the bastard and hang him by his… “I’ll agree on one condition.”

  He paused, then asked, “What’s that?”

  “That you let me help.” She was going crazy, looking over her shoulder every time she left the house, watching her children do the same. Worrying every second that they weren’t safe….

  Worried about her friends. And the students at Montford.

  Suspecting every man she saw who was a stranger to her. And some who weren’t.

  “I can’t do that.”

  She stared at the floor.

  It was time to have her carpet cleaned. “Why not?”

  “I…”

  David Marks without words. Interesting.

  A preacher with secrets. At the moment she didn’t care.

  “That’s my deal, Pastor,” she said, because she was sure she had the upper hand, and because she was worried about hanging on to her sanity, and doing something would help.

  He didn’t have to know she’d give him her silence, her faithful service to his church, the free and clear title to her home if he wanted those things in exchange for Ellen’s attacker.

  He didn’t say anything. Martha started to feel better for the first time in weeks. Like maybe she wasn’t completely powerless, after all.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” That had been easier than she’d expected.

  “Yeah, but you have to promise not to ask questions.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t a preacher. Her word wasn’t as binding as his, was it?

  Not that, in her experience, preachers’ words were all that binding.

  “Can you go to Phoenix tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Of course.” She could go tonight—just give her two minutes to pull on some shoes. She looked down. And clothes.

  “I’ll pick you up at one,” he was saying. “That’ll give you time to feed your kids after church.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  It was only when she hung up the phone that Martha realized she was going to be spending far more time than she wanted to with the new preacher. Alone.


  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I DIDN’T SEE SHELLEY in church today….”

  David kept his mind focused outside himself as his Explorer sped between Shelter Valley and Phoenix. He was not looking forward to this particular trip back to his own hometown.

  “She went to San Diego with Monica Wilder and her parents,” Martha said, maintaining, in her tone, the face of friendliness she’d been wearing since he’d picked her up. Her arms, crossed over her chest, told their own story. “I wouldn’t have let her go this close to midterms, but she’s been hanging out with this girl, Whitney Hines, a lot lately, ignoring Monica, who’s been her best friend since preschool.”

  “Whitney Hines?” David asked, frowning. “I don’t think I’ve ever met her.” He’d met another Whitney, though. One who was much more sophisticated and mature—and less innocent—than a Shelter Valley teenager would ever be.

  And he wasn’t going to think about that.

  “They don’t attend church,” Martha was saying. “I don’t really know that much about her, except that, until this year, Shelley and her friends all stayed away from her.”

  “Where does she live?” A new family to visit.

  “I think it’s just her and her dad, and they live outside town someplace. From what I’ve heard, he’s a laborer at the cactus jelly plant.”

  One hand dropped off the steering wheel he’d been clutching as David mentally took up the challenge of these unknown parishioners.

  “Did you ask Shelley why she changed her mind about the girl?”

  “Of course,” Martha said, and David welcomed the hint of the acerbic tone he was used to. Martha Moore all sweet and soft was a bit disconcerting. “She claims she just didn’t take the time to get to know her, and now that she has, she really likes her. They have biology together.”

  “Have you met her?”

  “Nope.” Martha shook her head. “I’ve asked her to invite Whitney over, but so far she hasn’t. And now that Shelley has her license, she and Ellen share the second car and I have less of a chance to meet their friends on the way to and from activities.”

  Martha didn’t seem happy about that turn of events, and David didn’t blame her.