Nothing Sacred

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The card of admittance that would buy “Mr. Sharp” a temporary identity—including a fake job at whatever legitimate company Shane owned. In David’s day, it had been a medical supply company, where he’d been a product manager. That business had been sold, but Shane had to be the one running the show.

  So Jeb—his old contact on the street—was no longer the guy who checked out potentials and very judiciously passed along the card. David would bet Jeb didn’t know, as he hadn’t, that the business hadn’t stopped when things got messy, but had merely changed names and faces and moved to a friendlier neighborhood.

  The men’s names were passed to the go-betweens in the chain by a very prominent politician who, due to Arizona’s strict election laws, was not allowed to solicit the funds he thought he needed to run a successful political campaign.

  At least, that was how it had played out back when David had been in the know. He hadn’t been following election laws lately.

  Of course, that card might not have the insignia. That could just be a legitimate businessman who was a customer of the dealership and already had a salesperson with whom he worked. David could be blowing this all out of proportion.

  The voice inside him didn’t agree.

  As he got up, excusing himself to look at the car Martha was discussing with the salesman, David watched as the businessman was handed an envelope. Along with a set of car keys.

  “Enjoy your drive…Mr. Sharp.”

  And David knew that there was more than a driver’s license in that envelope. There’d be an identity—business cards, maybe even a credit card. And there’d be a key. Probably not to the building in Shelter Valley. These guys were too good. Though they probably had no idea about Ellen’s rape, they would’ve been tipped off when Greg approached the last man they’d sent. Which might be why that man had suddenly found himself on an extended vacation. To get him out of the city to avoid any heat. It was one of the guarantees.

  Anonymity at all costs.

  The customer was always clean. Innocent.

  The thought almost made David puke.

  “SO THE NIGHT WAS a total bust?”

  They’d barely made it off the lot before Martha started in on him.

  A little overloaded on emotion, David had to take several deep breaths to remind himself who he was. And that while she was rarely hard on others, she was always hard on herself.

  “You know why you get so little out of life?” He cringed when he heard how the words sounded. He should’ve taken more deep breaths. About a hundred of them.

  “No, Preacher, tell me.”

  “Because you expect nothing, that’s why.”

  It was the truth, but he couldn’t remember a time he’d spoken so harshly to another person. Certainly not since he’d taken his vows.

  On one level he understood that they were both just releasing energy in a safe place. On another, David was losing patience with her attitude, which would continue bringing misery to her life.

  “It’s true,” he said, although he was fairly certain she wasn’t hearing him even if she was listening. “When you expect something, you work toward it at all times, even unconsciously. Everything you do, every choice you make, is based on that belief. Conversely, if you expect nothing, your choices aren’t based on anything solid, so they’re undirected. Inconsistent.”

  She said nothing. And in the dark, he couldn’t make out the expression on her face. Her hands were in her lap, clenched.

  His little speech had apparently been wasted on her.

  But not on him.

  We teach best what we most need to learn. He reminded himself of a lesson he’d been taught long ago.

  Yes.

  He expected great things of himself. So he had no cause to worry. No reason to believe that the past chasing behind him would ruin the present and future he’d created.

  He’d talk to Greg in the morning. Privately. Everything was going to be okay.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “BECAUSE SHE’D BEEN TOO exhausted the night before to face knocking on Shelley’s door, Martha didn’t approach her daughter until the next morning. She didn’t have anything pressing at work, and called Keith to let him know she’d be late. Her next call had been to Marybeth, telling her that she’d be bringing Shelley to school after the first class.

  She wanted time alone with her middle daughter, not only so the other kids couldn’t eavesdrop; but also in the hope that she could somehow find a way to reach the child she’d apparently lost without even being aware of it.

  “What?” Shelley asked, coming into the kitchen after Ellen had left with the other two. “What’s wrong?” Shelley’s pretty face, twisted with disdain, was barely recognizable, and her once-forthright brown eyes gave away nothing of the thoughts Martha used to be able to read so easily.

  Todd! He should be here. Helping her. He and Shelley had always been so close. So close, in fact, that Martha had had to warn him not to play favorites.

  “Have a seat.”

  She’d made orange tea. It was Shelley’s favorite. And chocolate chip muffins. Thinking they’d have a woman-to-woman chat. Shelley’s behavior called for punishment, but Martha was more concerned about the cause of that behavior. And yelling at the kid, which she badly wanted to do, was not going to garner her that information.

  She couldn’t help Shelley without it.

  Bringing the plate of muffins and cups of tea to the table, she tried to ignore her daughter’s sullen expression.

  She’d once heard the saying that a mother’s pain never stops. Today, she understood.

  “Have a muffin.” Setting them down, she put a smaller plate in front of Shelley. And one at the seat perpendicular to her.

  “I don’t want any.”

  Martha got napkins. Poured tea. Pushed Shelley’s cup toward her.

  “Have one,” she said again. “They’re chocolate chip. Your favorite.”

  “I said I don’t want one.” Staring at some spot on the floor, Shelley didn’t even look at the fresh-baked muffins as she bit out the words.

  Okay. The girl had a right to her choices.

  “It’s orange tea.”

  “I can smell it.” But she didn’t lift her hunched shoulders or move her hands out of her lap to take a sip.

  Well, this was a great success. Breaking a muffin she didn’t think she could swallow, Martha dipped it into tea she didn’t really even like. She chewed the bit of soggy muffin and winced as it went past the lump in her throat.

  She had no idea what to say next. How could she possibly hope to find out what was driving Shelley without putting her on the defensive even more than she already was?

  There had to be something she could say to reach her. Some way to engage the emotions Shelley had turned off.

  Should she talk about Ellen? Todd?

  Or just tell Shelley that she understood? That she was hurting, too? That she loved her and would do anything she could to help her through this time.

  Because she did love the purple-haired punk. As much now as she had when they’d first put her, a squirmy wet, beautiful baby, in her arms in the birthing room.

  Shelley stood. “The little tea party was nice, Mom, but I gotta get to school.”

  It was the sarcasm that did it.

  “Sit down.”

  Shelley sat. And wasn’t quite able to hide her uneasiness.

  Okay. Martha still had the touch. They were getting somewhere.

  “I got a call from the high school yesterday. Marybeth said I excused you to go visit with Stacy for the afternoon.”

  “Bitch.”

  Martha barely noticed her daughter’s language. “I have to tell you, Shell, I’m not thinking too highly of you at the moment. Stacy? Your stepmother? Really, didn’t you think it would hurt enough to find out you were lying, forging my signature, cutting school, going God knows where? Why on earth was another slap necessary?”

  She had not rehearsed a single one of those words. Nor plan
ned on the quivering in her chest that was making breathing difficult.

  “Who’s the boy Pastor Marks saw you hanging all over?”

  Shelley’s eyes, narrowed and sharp, pinned her. “He told you?”

  Martha didn’t think a reply was necessary.

  “Bastard.”

  Yeah, this was going just like she’d planned. She was in complete control. Getting her offspring in order.

  “Who is he, Shell?”

  “No one.”

  After her diatribe, that was the only response she could expect. But she wasn’t going to accept it. Something mattered to Shelley. Something had to matter to her. And Martha had to figure out what that something was.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said, pushing her little muffin plate aside. “You want to get out of here this morning, be with your friends, tell them all about how the bitch and the bastard narked on you. Okay. I get that. But you aren’t leaving here until we talk. Keith is prepared for me to be gone from the office all morning—until Monday if necessary. I’m prepared to sit here a long time.”

  Shelley said nothing. For five full minutes. And then ten. Half an hour passed and other than Shelley shifting in her seat several times and heaving frequent long sighs, the room was silent.

  Sitting there with her daughter, Martha found a strange semblance of peace. She and Shelley were actually together, in the same room, and they weren’t fighting. She was close enough to her daughter to hear every breath she took.

  And the morning was giving Martha another gift she’d never have been able to take for herself. An opportunity just to sit. To slow down. Relax. Breathe.

  And think.

  There were no ready solutions—that would’ve been too much to ask—but she found herself welcoming the time to think during the first part of the day, when she was rested, rather than at night when she was harried and worried and exhausted. Morning or night, the problems were the same. They just seemed more manageable at 9:00 a.m. than at midnight. Take Shelley, for instance…

  “Okay, what?” The girl had lost none of her attitude.

  “Tell me about this boy.”

  “His name’s Drake.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Martha had now had half an hour to relax. To feel calm and in control.

  “Have you slept with him?”

  “Goddamn it, Mother!” Shelley jumped up.

  “Sit!”

  “Why? What are you going to do if I don’t? Man-handle me? Push me down?”

  Martha stood face-to-face with the girl, ignoring her heart as parts of it seemed to chip off and fall away. “You are sixteen years old, Shelley. In the eyes of the law, still a child. In my custody. If you’d rather not follow my rules I will call Greg Richards myself, right now, and have you taken in to be made a ward of the state. It’s your choice.”

  She had no idea where the words came from. How. Or even why. But she’d said them. And though it was hurting her more than anything she’d suffered these past few years, she would stand by them. It was Shelley’s only hope. The girl had to learn that life came with rules, no matter what your age.

  Her daughter looked at her through hooded eyes. But she did look at her. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “You know me, Shel. What do you think?”

  Only after Shelley sat back down did Martha follow suit. She couldn’t fall apart yet. The job had only begun.

  “Have you slept with him?” she asked, and braced herself to hear the answer she already knew.

  “Yes.”

  There. See? That didn’t hurt so badly. Not on top of everything else.

  Okay. Yes, it did.

  It really did.

  “What’d you want me to do? Wait to get raped like Ellen?”

  “What I want doesn’t matter right now.” Martha said what she could. Anything more significant was going to make her cry. And that wouldn’t help Shelley.

  Oh, God, why? Todd, do you see what you’ve done? Her sweet sixteen-year-old daughter was sleeping with, as in undressing and having sex with, a creep in leather and chains with purple hair.

  Her sweet sixteen-year-old daughter had purple hair.

  Had she also contracted one of those awful diseases Martha had heard about?

  “Did you use condoms?”

  “Of course, Mom! I’m not an imbecile. I’m not getting some disease or pregnant or something that would ruin my life.”

  Shelley cared about her life.

  It was the best news Martha had heard in a long, long time.

  BECAUSE SHE’D TOLD Shelley that David had talked to her, Martha called him from her cellphone right after walking her still-belligerent daughter into the school later that morning. Ostensibly Martha was on her way to work. In reality, she was driving around town, one block after another, not even sure where she’d been.

  Or where she was going.

  She reached him at the church office.

  “You had to tell her,” he said when Martha apologized for ruining any credibility he’d hoped to gain with her daughter. And probably her friends as well.

  Or at least the ones she was hanging with now. Not that any of them attended Shelter Valley Community Church.

  “I told her that if she didn’t come to me, I was going to you,” he reminded Martha. “She now knows I mean what I say.”

  Martha was fairly certain she’d established the same understanding with Shelley that morning. At least she hoped so.

  “She’s been smoking dope and taking ecstasy,” she related, still in the numb void she’d slid into at some point when her conversation with Shelley had become too painful to bear. “I told her that if I ever found it on her, in my home, anywhere near her, or saw her high, I was calling the cops and turning her in immediately.”

  “Which means you’re going to have to do it.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Counseling might be a better first choice than giving her a police record.”

  “I want my daughter safe and healthy, David,” she said. “With the belligerent state Shelley’s in, relying only on counseling is too risky. She could lie her way through sessions, take nothing from them and overdose before I catch her a second time.”

  Stopping the car on a side street under a tree, Martha turned off the engine. She was starting to shake.

  “And she begins counseling next Monday,” she added. She’d called and made the appointment while Shelley had been sitting right next to her. She and her daughter were fighting this together. Whether Shelley intended to participate in the battle or not.

  “Remind me not to get in your way when you set out to do something.” The admiration in the pastor’s voice was almost her undoing.

  “I also told her that if she sleeps with Drake again, I’m charging him with statutory rape.”

  “Good for you,” David said softly. And Martha started to cry.

  OUT OF BREATH FROM HER sprint across campus, Ellen was almost at her car when he caught up with her.

  “Hey!” He grabbed her arm, pulled her around.

  “Stop!” She screamed. And then again. “Stop! Let go of me!” She could hear the shrill sounds but she couldn’t silence them. Couldn’t see. She could only feel.

  Cornered. Scared.

  “Stop!”

  “Ellen, it’s okay! I’m not touching you! Ellen? What’s wrong with you? Did I hurt you?” The sweet concern in Aaron’s voice slowly penetrated the fog of panic as his quiet questions just kept coming. Over and over.

  She became aware of other students milling around in the parking lot that Thursday afternoon, turning away and pretending not to look, gradually leaving. She wondered if she knew any of them.

  Aaron didn’t leave. Even though she wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t touching her, but she knew he was there. She could feel his presence. She’d always been able to feel it. As though he were as much a part of her as her own hands and feet.

  This was the third
time he’d approached her that week. And the pressure was making her crack.

  Because, since that horrible night that had changed her life forever, she’d been a crackpot.

  Still, so many times since the night she was raped, she’d dreamed of Aaron’s touch. In her sleep, his gentle touch wiped away all traces of the obscene hands that had invaded her body….

  “El?” He bent down to look at her lowered face. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  She wanted to. So badly.

  But she couldn’t. Even if she made up her mind to tell Aaron, she’d never get the words out. She’d tried. With Mom. Pastor Marks. Her counselor. Ellen opened her mouth, but nothing ever came.

  The horrible thoughts and visions and feelings and memories were trapped inside her forever.

  “El?” He took a step closer. “I’d like to hold your hand. Would that be okay? If I just held your hand?”

  Oh God. He was so sweet.

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll just stand here then. Until you’re okay. For as long as it takes.”

  She couldn’t let him do that. Ellen raised her head.

  It was hard looking at him—really looking at him for the first time in months. It hurt so much she had no breath for a couple of seconds. While she’d changed irrevocably, he looked exactly the same.

  Endearingly, perfectly the same. Studying him, seeing in his eyes the other part of herself, recognizing the spirit and soul gazing back at her so tenderly, Ellen started to sob. Great wrenching sounds that embarrassed and horrified her. But they didn’t stop.

  “Come to me, baby, come to me,” Aaron said, standing firm in the sight of her agony, holding out his arms.

  She wasn’t strong enough to deny him. Or herself. Not anymore. Aaron’s love was what she’d needed since the whole terrifying nightmare began. He might withdraw that love, might be disgusted when he heard what had been done to her body, but that was a chance she’d have to take. It would kill her. But she was dying, anyway, without him.