Nothing Sacred

“What time?”

“Around six. I wanted to get there just after dinnertime.”

She was filming until five-thirty. “Perfect. You want to pick me up here or should I meet you someplace?”

“I’ll come to your place.”

And she’d be ready.

This was for Ellen. For her family.

Somehow, she was going to find a way to get them all through this, heal their wounds and put their lives back together.

Moms could always make things better.

SHELLEY CUT SCHOOL AGAIN Wednesday afternoon. She used to get nervous when she walked into the office with the notes on which Whitney had forged Martha’s signature—notes explaining that Shelley needed to be excused from school for counseling sessions, doctor and dentist appointments, or for having been ill. She hardly even thought about it anymore. Today the excuse was a trip to Phoenix to see her new stepmother, who was just in town for the day. She’d come up with that one herself. And didn’t even blink as the school secretary raised her brows when she read the note.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Except getting out to the hill. Drake was going to be there by one and if she wasn’t there and he started using and some other girl was around, he’d end up spending the afternoon with her instead of Shelley. He always apologized later. Once, when she’d been fed up and couldn’t bring herself to forgive him, he’d even cried.

The solution was obvious. Shelley just had to make sure she was around before he started using. Every single time.

That was okay. Because being with Drake was all she wanted.

And the things he and Whitney introduced her to were cooler than she’d ever imagined. She was sure it was more of that meant-to-be stuff the preacher talked about—the way she and Whitney had been assigned as Chemistry lab partners. When Shelley had agreed to steal lab results from some other kids, so the two of them could cut school and go to the hill, Whitney had promised to leave Drake alone. Shelley felt she could handle life again. Nothing seemed scary or impossible when she was with Drake, getting stoned and lost in his funny smile, his intense blue eyes, his arms.

She could even handle the sex if she was stoned enough. She’d hated it the first time. Drake had hurt her where she’d never felt pain before. Of course, it had still been okay. Because she loved him. And all the while he was doing it, he was telling her how much he loved her.

Besides, it had been Drake. Not some jerk off the street that she didn’t know and didn’t want touching her.

Anyway, lately, it had gotten better. She’d even come a couple of times.

Her father could just go to hell. She didn’t need him at all anymore. And soon she’d be stoned enough so that Ellen and Mom and everything that had changed would fade away.

She made it to the hill in time. Drake and his pals were just starting to light up and pass around the pills. Plopping down on the grass beside him, Shelley relaxed and waited for her turn. Drake’s arm came around her immediately, claiming his ownership. If this was her future, she could live with that.

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, visiting with an elderly woman, Edith Walton, who’d fallen and broken her hip, David tried not to notice any resemblance between her and the woman he hadn’t seen for twenty-three years. She had the same small, fragile build. The same almost triangular face. He wondered if, twenty years before, Edith had dark hair instead of silver. And if his mother was silver-haired now.

Of course, this woman was about twenty years older than Elizabeth Cole. And she’d lived a less tortured life.

“My granddaughter’s Monica Wilder,” Edith said. “She comes to visit every Sunday and repeats your sermons almost word for word.”

The most recent of Edith’s breaks had happened just weeks before, but with her severe osteoporosis, she’d been pretty much housebound for a couple of years. She needed a wheelchair to get anywhere far and didn’t like to trouble her aging husband with hauling the heavy thing around.

“I’m glad to know she’s paying attention,” David told the woman now, with a grin. “Sometimes I wonder if I should cut a CD of my best sermons for the kids to play at bedtime.”

Edith laughed. And then winced. David helped her adjust the leg brace as she lay on the hospital bed that had been moved into her living room.

“That’s better,” she said seconds later, resting back against the upraised mattress, a light film of sweat on her forehead. “Thank you so much, Pastor. You’re very gentle.”

“You’re welcome,” David told her. “My job’s a lot easier than yours at the moment.”

“That may be,” the woman said. “But I’m not so sure. You’ve got a lot on your

shoulders, taking on this town’s mistrust. And now that we seem to have a rapist here…” Edith shuddered.

Seating himself in the chair by the woman’s bed again, the chair that had been vacated by her husband of almost sixty years when David arrived, he took Edith’s hand. “We don’t know that he’s still here in town, or that he was ever anything but a stranger passing through.”

Silent, she seemed to consider that. And then nodded. “I can’t help wondering how everyone at Big Spirits is taking the news.” Glancing out the front window, Edith looked more sad and lonely than David had seen her in all his months of visiting.