Nothing Sacred

“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.