Nothing Sacred

Okay.

A week after the arrest of Ellen’s attacker, David was walking on the church grounds instead of eating the chicken-and-mayonnaise sandwich he’d thrown together for his lunch. He’d left the sandwich behind in his office.

“You knew it was going to be okay.”

It’s always going to be okay.

He hoped so. The news of Shane’s operation had hit Shelter Valley—and Phoenix. And while Shelter Valley had been famous for a day, David’s involvement had been minimized, his good name preserved.

And Ellen’s protected.

He’d heard that Becca Parsons had a committee working on an Easter celebration in the town square to celebrate the town’s ability to get the big jobs done. And still maintain Shelter Valley’s identity and purpose as set forth by Sam Montford—the first settler and founder of the town.

“You led me to this town.” David sat on a white iron bench that circled one of the avocado trees on the back of the lot.

Because you asked.

“I asked?”

To be free of the past. To move forward in the work you were meant to do.

Was he free of the past? Would he ever be?

Yes.

David blinked. Startled. When he got answers to questions he hadn’t directly asked, he knew they were significant.

Leaning back, legs stretched out in front of him, he focused on the warm, early-April air touching his skin, on the sound of the pigeons cooing on the orange tile of the church roof, the smell of the roses blooming along the back wall.

And closed his eyes.

His sight turned inward. To that place where questions were not a threat and answers became clear.

His mother was still alive, he knew, deteriorating rapidly. She still refused to see him.

Was that going to change in the next little while? Heart quickening, he couldn’t deny the possibility. Anything was possible. It was one of the first truths he’d accepted that had changed the course of his life. He would call the nursing home this evening. And in the morning. And twice a day for as long as it took.

And what about Martha Moore?

Was she some kind of test? A way of proving to himself, once and for all, that he was a man in control of his baser instincts? That he was not tainted by the blood of his father?

The choice he’d made to associate with women like Whitney and others had been prompted by the fear that he was

no better than his old man, that he could not trust himself around innocent women, that he could, if he lost control, do to a woman what his father had done to his mother.

But he knew better than that now. His choices were no longer made out of fear. So why then, he wondered, did he still believe he should never marry? Never have a family of his own?

Never have sex?

David sat straight up. Opening his eyes.

Oh, my God. Was this why he’d been sent here? He’d wanted to be freed from the past. He’d never expected to find out that he’d been wrong. He’d only hoped to be relieved of the insidious guilt that still attacked him at unexpected times.

He could see himself so clearly in that moment. And felt sorry for the pathetic guy sitting there. The guy who’d used his past as an excuse not to deal with an aspect of his life that was painful for him.

It had been easier to go without sex than to face all the mistakes he’d made. The things he’d done that he couldn’t undo. The things he’d lost that he could never regain.

When had all of that changed? he asked himself, sitting there with the brightness of the sun stinging his eyes. When had it suddenly become worth facing the past so that he could have a future?