Nothing Sacred

Rape wasn’t something she could talk to her daughters about over the phone.

And then she was in the living room with her two younger girls, sitting on the floor with them, one under each arm, their backs against the couch. She’d pushed the coffee table away, turned on a fire in the gas fireplace. And tried to take comfort from the familiarity around her. The books on the bookshelf, just as they’d been for so many years. Books filled with wisdom.

And escape.

Tim had disappeared. She had Pastor David Marks to thank for that. And knew, somehow, that her son would be told what he needed to know.

“She was bruised.” Shelley was the first to speak.

“I didn’t get to see her.” Rebecca’s long, gangly legs were pulled up to her chest. “She was in a car accident, wasn’t she?”

Martha swallowed.

“Did someone die?” Rebecca’s sweetness tore at Martha’s heart. She smoothed a hand down the side of her daughter’s head, gaining what strength she could from the feel of her silky black hair.

“Is the car totaled?” Shelley asked without any inflection at all. The sixteen-year-old knew a car was not the problem. “Was it Ellen’s fault?”

Martha took a deep breath, lowered her hands, taking a young hand in each of hers.

“Girls, Ellen was—” Her throat closed. She couldn’t do it. Didn’t want her daughters to see the tears she couldn’t seem to control now that she was home.

“What, Mama?” Rebecca’s reversion to the name she hadn’t called her mother since she was six told the whole story.

Shelley didn’t say a word. Martha had a feeling she knew.

How did she say this delicately? Disguise something so ugly to make it palatable for fifteen-year-old ears?

“She was raped tonight.”

Not at all how she wanted to say it. Not at all what she wanted to say. Not to them. Not ever. Not to anyone.

She didn’t mean them to, but tears slid slowly down her cheeks, unchecked by hands that were still holding tightly to her daughters’. She’d talked to doctors, to the sheriff. She’d talked to David Marks. But hearing the words in the presence of her children made them suddenly real.

“HOW ARE THEY DOING?”

The pastor was waiting for her in the kitchen when Martha pushed her way wearily inside an hour later.

“Okay for now,” she said. “I gave them each one of the sleeping pills I got from Dr. Anderson.”

“Sounded like Rebecca took it hard.”

The girl, in her childhood innocence, had done the things Martha had denied herself. She’d yelled. Denying Martha’s words. She’d paced. She’d spat words that Martha hadn’t even known she knew. She’d wished a man dead, over and over again. And, eventually, she’d sobbed her heart out.

“I’m more worried about Shelley,” Martha confessed, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. The same chair Keith Nielson had sat in almost a year before, after they’d returned from a trip to the same hospital in Phoenix.

Tim had broken his leg. And Martha’s boss had taken over, helping her through the crisis. In spite of the fact that, with his wife thinking about leaving him, he’d been in a crisis of his own. Keith and Martha had kissed that night.

“I was impressed with her sensitivity and maturity,” David Marks was saying.

“She’s scared to death.”

“That’s understandable,” he said, bringing Martha a cup of coffee and sitting down opposite her. It had to be at least two in the morning. “It’ll pass.”

Martha shook her head and took a sip, hoping it was decaffeinated. “Life scares her. That’s why she always acts so tough.”

“She’s lucky she has you.”

Martha smiled tiredly, thanking him for that trite little statement. Because it didn’t feel little at all.

Silence settled over the kitchen. Martha wasn’t ready for it. But knew that it had to come anyway. Activity was over for now.

“I don’t think this was an ordinary incident—if there is such a thing.”

His words fell into the quiet of the night, inciting an anger that had been usurped by exhaustion.

“I’ll agree with you there,” she said, some of the rage infiltrating her tone. “Nothing ordinary about having your daughter attacked.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the lateness of the hour showing in the slump of his shoulders, the redness of his eyes.

Tapping her knee with one finger, he said, “I mean the attack itself,” he said quietly. “It’s suspicious.”

She couldn’t take any more tonight. Ellen had been raped. Couldn’t it just be an ordinary rape? Couldn’t they leave it at that? Martha was too worn out to consider anything more.

“How so?”

She should offer him something to go with the coffee. Toast. Eggs. A good stiff drink.

Except that he was a minister who taught the benefits of moderation.

Did that mean someone who went to his church couldn’t drink in front of him?

Not that she had anything in the house. She’d thrown all the stuff away the day Todd left. Afraid her kids might get into it.

Or that she might.

David Marks was still sitting there staring at the floor, wrinkled shirt untucked from his jeans, not looking like any preacher she’d ever known. He seemed to be choosing his words with care.

“When Ellen didn’t play rough, he stopped being rough on her, as though he only wanted to do that if she did.”

Yup, Martha had been right. Her mind couldn’t take this in, couldn’t analyze, couldn’t even consider what he seemed to be saying.

“Generally speaking, rapists are cowards,” he said next.

And she’d always thought cowards were harmless.

“They pick on victims weaker than them, which gives them a feeling of strength.” He spoke slowly, softly, lulling Martha’s exhausted mind into listening.

“They use that strength to keep their sense of power alive. It feeds on itself. If there’s a break in the adrenaline rush, fear can just as easily take over and feed them, too. That’s why they tell women in self-defense classes to be firm and unafraid. Their show of confidence will often serve to disconnect the attacker from his strength, giving the victim a chance to escape. Sometimes it’s even enough to make the rapist turn tail and run.”