Nothing Sacred

“I guess if he’s hiring a hooker…”

“Exactly.”

She was frowning; he could see her shadowy face reflected in the side mirror. “What does that have to do with Ellen?”

“Probably nothing,” David sighed, started the car. “Just a hunch I had.”

One that he likely wouldn’t have come up with if he didn’t have firsthand knowledge of a business that had shown him a much darker side of life.

“Which was?”

“That the guy thought Ellen was a prostitute.” He backed the car toward the road.

“That’s ridiculous!” Martha sputtered, peering at the spot where Ellen had been taken all those weeks ago, as though there would be some sign there, some mark that they’d missed all the other times they’d been there since the attack. “If it had been Shelley, okay, maybe I’d consider that she’d be mistaken for a, uh, professional woman. But not Ellen! She’s as homespun-looking as they come!”

“Sometimes that’s the act.” David’s instincts were screaming at him to shut up. “Not all prostitutes are hired off the street.”

“I know that,” Martha said. “I’ve seen the movies, too. There are women who work in expensive circles, who hire themselves out to—”

“And there are businesses,” he interrupted, choosing his words carefully. “Places a man can go to order the fantasy he wants. I just wondered if perhaps that’s what happened with Ellen. She’d been mistaken for someone else. Someone who was supposed to have been standing on that corner…”

Martha thought his idea inconceivable. He could tell by the almost pitying look she sent him. He saw it quite clearly with the help of an oncoming car’s headlights. And it probably was unlikely. Just an overactive imagination. Theories triggered by long-ago issues that still lurked inside him.

Still, it was just as well that she didn’t give the idea credence. He wasn’t nearly as sure about the possibility now as he’d been a few weeks ago. What he’d taken for divine guidance had been little more than a conclusion based on experience.

Not something he was comfortable admitting. How, then, did he tell the difference between the two? How did he prevent such errors in judgment from happening again? And hurting the people who depended on him to know the difference?

“How come you know so much about prostitution?”

“What?”

Had he been talking during his inner sojourns? Talking without awareness, just as he’d been unaware when she’d asked him a question earlier?

“What you were describing—the business, as you called it. How does a man of the cloth know so much about that way of life?”

He was a preacher. A man of God. He took his calling more seriously than his life. He couldn’t lie to her.

“I did a stint in an inner-city church for a while.”

Apparently accepting the explanation, Martha fell silent…and remained silent for most of the way back to her house. David was eager to drop her off, get home and spend some time in prayer and meditation. He was losing focus. Making mistakes.

He was just grateful that Martha Moore hadn’t guessed there was more than one answer to that last question.

“MAY GOD BLESS YOU and keep you in his care….”

Ellen didn’t want the service to be over. During this hour in church each Sunday, or really anytime Pastor Marks was around, she felt a little better. Like maybe she’d feel the sensation of peace again, sometime in her future life. If she made it through now. If she lived long enough.

Occasionally, when Pastor Marks was at her house, she actually felt laughter inside. During those first weeks after the attack, she hadn’t thought she’d ever feel light enough to laugh again.

Nothing had seemed the least bit funny.

“I’ll catch a ride home,” she told her mother as they were leaving their usual pew after the service. She sped away before her mom could question her. Ellen had no explanation for the feelings that compelled her to do what she planned to do next.

Pastor Marks was much more popular than he’d been when he’d first come to Shelter Valley almost a year ago. She had to wait a long time for all the people to go home.

“Pastor Marks?” She caught him in the vestibule between the church and his home. She’d waited until he left his office—the church secretary was still there and the finance committee, too, counting money.

But she couldn’t bear to go back to his house. Those were the first memories she had of that night and she didn’t ever want to see his kitchen again. So here she was, hanging around in the bushes like a vagabond.