A group of kids. Martha had been mentally traveling in far worse circles.
“What were they doing?”
“Laughing, eating chips, heading to their cars, I guess, though I didn’t notice any.”
“Did she see you?”
“I called out to her but she pretended not to hear.” David’s arm pushed against hers as he paused, and Martha wasn’t sure if the movement was accidental or on purpose. She accepted it either way. “When I asked her about it later, she basically told me to mind my own business.”
“Sounds like my Shel.” Martha sighed. “So why didn’t you tell me this before now?”
He shrugged. “From what I hear, kids head out to the desert a lot, have picnics, mess around.”
“They do.”
“I couldn’t assume this was anything different.”
“So why are you telling me about it now?”
He didn’t answer.
“Because you know it was something different.”
“I don’t know.” David shifted, changed driving hands. Martha’s arm felt the chill of the car’s air. It wasn’t a welcome feeling.
“But you suspect.” She watched him carefully.
“Not enough to start running to parents like some tattletale. I’ll never develop trust among the young people that way.”
“What about their parents?” She didn’t withhold any of the anger she was feeling. “Their trust doesn’t count?”
“Of course it does.” His arm was back. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a mistake this time. “I talked to Shelley. I told her that if she came to me, I was honor bound to keep whatever she had to say confidential, but that if she didn’t, the next time I saw or heard anything I was going straight to you.”
That was something. Not enough. Not in light of everything she’d found out that day. But it was something.
“Martha?”
“What?”
“If I’d come to you a month ago, and you’d gone to Shelley, and she’d told you they were just hanging out, drinking soda, eating chips, you would’ve believed her, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And do you think, for one second, that no matter what was going on, she’d have told you anything else?”
God, Martha hated it when he did that. “No, I guess not.” She wanted to be able to say yes. But she couldn’t.
“So the only thing that would’ve resulted from telling you would be my loss of Shelley’s—and probably the other kids’—trust.”
“I guess.”
“At least this way, there was a chance that I’d prove my trust by keeping silent, and she’d come to me with whatever was really going on. She knew her older sister already trusted me. Was it too much to hope she might, too?”
If one believed in hope. “Probably not.”
They’d reached the outskirts of Phoenix. “There’s more.”
“I had a feeling there might be.”