Sometime, without her being aware of it, Martha’s daughter had grown up.
“What did she tell him?” That she hated him? That he wasn’t hers?
Ellen pulled back to look at her mother. “She told him he’s the son of a rapist.” Tears dripped steadily down Ellen’s cheeks as her gaze held her mother’s. “She said—” Ellen stopped to catch her breath “—she said he was the spitting image of his father. That when she looked at him, she saw his father. And that he was a danger to all good girls.”
Oh, my God. He’d been Rebecca’s age.
“Surely he knows that’s not so….”
Ellen shook her head. “I think it’s all mixed up in there, the things he understands as an adult, and the things the kid in him never recovered from. The things he feels about himself.”
The blood started to pound in her veins as Martha thought of the man she’d first seen earlier that evening, sitting in that chair as though he wasn’t there at all. His mother had just died. The mother he hadn’t seen in twenty-three years.
How could he not be affected by the things that had happened to that young man? He was still suffering the aftermath. Still being punished for a crime he didn’t commit.
“Think of it, Mom,” Ellen said, wiping her tears as she sat cross-legged, facing Martha. “A young man with hormones. Remember what you told me about all that? How a young man dreams about…about sex? How these feelings are so strong in him that sometimes it might seem as if he’s going crazy with need?” The earnestness in her daughter’s face as she repeated what Martha had told her on that long-ago outing to Phoenix touched the parts of Martha’s heart that she’d been trying to hide. “I’m not surprised David, at some point, turned to hookers to assuage that need. God knows he couldn’t trust himself to ever try to share those feeling with a ‘nice’ girl.”
Ellen’s perspective made everything sound so nonthreatening. So…okay.
But solicitation of a prostitute was not only morally unacceptable conduct, but in the state of Arizona, it was also a felony. Not one with much punishment attached. But still a felony.
“He made a mistake, Mom,” Ellen said, as though reading her mother’s mind. “It’s not as if he’s done anything like that in years,” she added. “He said he quit before he went to the seminary.”
So what did he do now? Have affairs with his parishioners?
Ashamed at her own thoughts, Martha stared at the colorful checkered squares on the quilt she’d bought when she no longer had to share her bedroom with a man.
She’d certainly done nothing to dissuade David from kissing her, and while she’d known for certain from their kiss that he’d been experiencing those feelings, he’d never done anything to shame himself. Or her.
But he’d lied. By omission, he’d lied to them all.
No wonder he’d been so hesitant about helping her and Ellen.
Of course, he had helped them. With no guarantee that he wouldn’t be caught in the fray and lose the life he’d built for himself.
She didn’t know what to think anymore.
“Mom, you need to look at Shelter Valley very carefully.” Ellen’s voice held a maturity Martha had never heard before. “And look at me just as carefully,” she said, holding her mother’s gaze steadily with a strength and resolve that made Martha swallow. Hard. “What happens to us is not who we are, Mom.” It looked like she was trying to smile, but her lips were trembling too much. “Who we are is on the inside and that doesn’t change unless we let it.”
Martha thought about Ellen’s words. There was no refuting them. But how did she follow them to a conclusion that would help her know what to do?
“I was raped.” It was the first time Martha had heard her daughter say the words. Tears filled Ellen’s eyes again, but this time they didn’t fall. “But that doesn’t change who I am. Shelter Valley had a prostitution ring running right here in our midst. But that doesn’t change who we are, what kind of people we are, what kind of town we run. David was the son of a rapist—and more, of a crazy mother—and for a while, he let that change him inside. But then, after he went to the seminary, he realized that he didn’t have to live that way, and became again, that fifteen-year-old boy who honored and cared for the young girl he held. He became that boy so much, he just stopped being with women at all.”
“He told you that?”
Ellen nodded. “He didn’t want me to be afraid of him since he had his father’s blood.”
Oh God. Oh God. Arms around her ankles, Martha rocked slowly forward and back.
“You, me, Tory and Beth, Becca, David and all the people who’ve come here over the years, we’re all survivors, Mom. That’s what makes Shelter Valley the place it is.”
She was right. Completely. Her little girl had grown up to be a very smart young woman.
“David belongs here,” Ellen whispered, touching her mother’s cheek with a gentle finger. “He deserves us. And we deserve him, too….”
CHAPTER TWENTY
MARTHA WAS IN CHURCH early the next morning. With all four of her kids. Sitting in the front row.