Nothing Sacred Read online

  About what he believed.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Ellen said, wrinkling her forehead under the cropped and sprayed blond bangs. “Sure doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Pastor Edwards would say.”

  A compliment, indeed. David smiled at the slim teenager.

  Tim, once again engrossed in his handheld electronic game, was making noises to emulate the crashes and high-speed chases he was attempting to control.

  “Pastor Marks.” Martha frowned at her son but said nothing to him. “Please tell my daughter that you get paid to say these things.”

  Okay, he had his work cut out there. “I get paid to preach,” he said. “I don’t get paid to believe.”

  Even Shelley was listening to the exchange.

  Martha sat back, arms crossed over her chest, and such a clear I-told-you-so expression on her face that he couldn’t bite back his next words, in spite of his better judgment.

  “And I do believe.”

  “Point to the pastor,” Shelley said under her breath.

  Martha sat forward. “So what about before you joined the ministry?” she asked.

  He’d left that part of his life behind. Forgiven himself. Forgotten.

  “I graduated from high school,” he said, repeating the story by rote. “I went to college, got an undergraduate degree in social work, took a job with a private corporation, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. A friend of mine jokingly suggested one night that if I was so filled with lofty ideas, I should have studied theology. His words struck a chord that wouldn’t be silent.”

  “Cool,” Tim said. “So you became a minister then?”

  David grinned at the boy. “After three years of intense study, yes.”

  Martha stood. “Yes, well, it’s been nice—”

  The phone on the end table beside Rebecca rang. The skinny young teen with the pitch-black hair in a ponytail handed the mobile receiver up to her mother.

  With scarce intimate knowledge of this family, there was no way for David to guess who was on the other end of the line, receiving Martha’s pleasantly delivered message that her children were busy and couldn’t come to the phone. But if he were a betting man, he’d bet last week’s entire paycheck that the caller was not in her favor, despite her friendly tone. Before the phone had rung, Martha had been concluding David’s visit.

  The sudden whiteness of her cheeks only heightened his curiosity.

  “Oh,” she said, turning her back on the curious eyes of her children. Seconds later, she admitted, “Yes, they’re here, but—”

  “It’s Dad,” Tim said quietly, head lowered as he glanced up at his three sisters.

  “I know—” Martha began again. She was obviously cut off a second time by the persistent caller.

  Ellen nodded. Rebecca draped her leg over the end of the couch and swung it back and forth. Motionless, Shelley sat there with no expression whatsoever. All three girls were watching their mother.

  “I’m not—”

  None of the kids seemed particularly worried—other than perhaps Ellen. As she looked at her mother, her eyes filled with a warm compassion. David was beginning to associate that quality with Martha’s eldest. None of the children seemed particularly eager to connect with the voice at the other end of the line, either.

  Most interesting to David was the complete change that had come over the woman who’d topped the list months ago as his hardest sell in his new job. She was assertive, at least on the surface, but there was a vulnerability, a lack of self-confidence he didn’t recognize at all.

  He’d felt drawn—no, guided—to her from the beginning. Compelled by the sense that she needed help she would never ask for. Her current reaction strengthened the inner resolve that had kept him trying, in spite of no success, for months.

  “Fine. You’re right.” David was surprised to hear the words. And even more startled when Martha turned and, without another word, passed the phone to Ellen.

  “It was good of you to come by.” She spoke to David immediately, loudly enough to camouflage at least part of her daughter’s telephone conversation.

  He stood, taking the hand she offered. But he wasn’t ready to be dismissed so easily.

  Or to leave when there might be a crisis unfolding. “You’ve got your hands full here,” he said. “I’ve got two very able ones—and some free time.”

  Her expression distracted, Martha shook her head. Pulled back her hand. “I’ve been managing this brood just fine for more than four years, Pastor Marks. But thanks.”

  Behind her, Ellen, lips pinched, gave the phone to Shelley, whose dark spiked hair was a sharp contrast to her timidly offered hello.

  “I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t doing a terrific job,” David said, returning his gaze to the woman trying to get rid of him. He refrained from reminding her that he’d asked them all to call him David. “Just that I’m here and I’ve found that almost everyone can benefit from a lightening of the load sometimes. I’m quite proficient at mowing grass, fixing cars or even seeing that there’s dinner on the table if you ever have to be too many places at once. And I can help out on very short notice.”

  Head turned slightly to the side, Martha was obviously attempting to hear both conversations at once—the one in which she was engaged and the one going on behind her. Shelley’s voice had grown even softer than Ellen’s. Mostly she appeared to be listening without saying much at all.

  “Not usual duties for a preacher,” Martha remarked, although rather than sounding impressed by his efforts she seemed annoyed.

  Or maybe it was just her daughter’s conversation that was having that effect on her.

  “I’m also fairly adept at just listening without offering advice, if that’s what’s needed.”

  Behind her, Rebecca flopped over to the middle couch seat to take the phone from her sister. “Hi, Daddy, how are you?”

  The start Martha gave was almost indiscernible.

  So it was her ex-husband, just as Tim had predicted.

  “I have lots of friends,” Martha told him now. “But if there’s ever a time when I can’t reach one of them when I need help, I’ll be sure to keep your offer in mind.”

  She was wearing a smile that looked painfully forced.

  Rebecca had grown silent behind her. The ponytail that was almost constantly bobbing was oddly still now.

  “I’d love to see Tim play ball sometime,” David said, before the boy’s mother could order him out of her house—which, he suspected, was coming next. He didn’t want to leave while the family was so obviously upset. There must be something he could do. Some counsel he could offer. “I used to be a little leaguer myself.”

  Pushing buttons on his video device and biting his lower lip, the boy didn’t seem to hear.

  “Half the town comes to see the games,” Martha said. “There are usually teams playing every night of the week during the season. There’s only one lighted field in town so you can’t miss it, and the games always start at seven.” She barely took a breath. David had the impression that she was trying to prevent a moment’s silence during which he’d be able to hear Rebecca’s conversation with her father.

  Not that she was having much of one. Like her two older sisters, the girl had grown very quiet. But while Ellen and Shelley were staring at their laps, Rebecca kept glancing nervously at the back of her mother’s head.

  “I haven’t seen you at Bible study once since I’ve been here,” he said then, realizing the inanity of the comment as he spoke the words. He was really grasping.

  And more determined than ever not to leave until he knew that this single-parent family was going to be okay.

  “I quit going almost a year ago.”

  About the time she’d found her former pastor in the arms of a married parishioner?

  David knew why Martha Moore was one of his hardest souls to reach. She and her boss, Keith Nielson, were the two who’d walked into Pastor Edwards’s office and seen his hands fondling the nake
d breasts of the mother of teenage sons. The wife of a prominent Shelter Valley businessman.

  Martha and Keith had taken the pastor at face value when he’d said it would never happen again. When he’d told them he’d confess to his wife, begged them to let him salvage a marriage that he valued.

  They were the two hardest hit when Edwards was discovered with the same woman a second time—in an even more compromising situation—and forced out of a job he’d held for decades.

  Edwards had lied to her. To the whole town.

  And, in his own way, David Cole Marks was guilty of the same thing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DISTURBING near silence that had permeated Martha’s living room as her children, one by one, heard what their father had called to tell them grew even more intense when Timothy took his turn on the phone.

  Martha had known that would happen.

  She desperately wanted the do-gooding man who was currently filling the job of preacher to have left her home before then.

  She needed to be alone with her children, to be able to tend to the shock and hurt on her daughters’ faces.

  But Preacher Marks was still standing in the room, mentioning something about a new choral production for the next Christmas season, when Tim took the phone. Her son didn’t say much more than his sisters had while his father was on the line.

  There were some things that didn’t change, and Tim’s fearful respect for his father’s authority was one of them.

  It lasted, as Martha had known it would, right up until Tim slammed down the phone.

  “That’s disgusting!”

  She would’ve liked to remind him to take better care of their things.

  “Tim.” Martha turned to him, to all four of them, needing to help them with something that couldn’t be helped, but determined to try, anyway.

  And needing to be alone with them. And with herself.

  “It’s gross!” Tim blurted at her, his brown eyes glaring. The girls were all staring up at her, as though expecting her to make some incisive comment that would put everything into place.

  She wished she could have accommodated them.

  Everyone except her seemed to have forgotten the preacher standing behind her.

  “Calm down for a second,” she said evenly, scrambling for a way to hold life together long enough to get rid of Marks. This was Moore business. Shelter Valley business. Not Marks business. “Why don’t you go start the car, Ellen, and we’ll go into town for some ice cream.”

  It had worked when they were little.

  And they’d all been glad when she’d brought home sundaes the week before.

  “He’s a big fat jerk,” Tim said, standing there with his arms folded across a chest that was just beginning to take on masculine form. His glance, traveling among his sisters, landed on Ellen. “Having a baby at his age, with a girl who’s practically your age, is just plain sick!”

  The words cut Martha to the quick.

  Her daughters, with moist eyes and unsmiling mouths, looked lost. Broken.

  Four years ago, Todd had left them high and dry—except for the checks he sent—for a girl just a couple of years older than Ellen. One of his students. At Martha’s request, he’d gone with her to see Pastor Edwards. They hadn’t even had one full visit before Todd had stated that he had no interest in patching things up with his wife. He wanted out.

  Away from her.

  From their kids.

  Looking up, Martha caught the empathy aimed at her from the eyes of the stranger who’d come, grudgingly invited, into their midst.

  For one brief second, she wanted to die.

  “YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE my mom,” Ellen Moore said, walking the preacher out to his car shortly after Tim’s outburst on Sunday afternoon. “She’s not usually so…unfriendly.”

  Ellen couldn’t bring herself to call her mother rude. She loved her too much. And she understood.

  As much as a twenty-year-old kid could understand a mother’s heartache.

  “Don’t worry about it,” David Marks said. “I can see she’s an impressive woman. She’s carrying around a ton of emotional responsibility and doesn’t seem to be dropping any of it.”

  The look in his eyes gave Ellen an odd sensation. One she barely recognized. It made her feel safe. Protected.

  She hadn’t felt that way since her father left.

  “It’s just that Mom and Dad went to Pastor Edwards for counseling. He was Mom’s last hope after she found out Dad was having an affair with one of his students.”

  Ellen glanced quickly back at the house as she said the words, knowing that her mother couldn’t hear, but feeling guilty anyway. As though she were betraying her somehow.

  “And then she was the one who found Pastor Edwards doing the very same thing Dad had done. She took it really hard.”

  Ellen wanted the new pastor to understand. To not hate her mother. Or judge her. There wasn’t a woman in Shelter Valley who was a better person than Ellen’s mother. There wasn’t another woman more deserving of the help Pastor Marks was offering them.

  And Ellen knew they needed it. Even if her mother was too hurt to figure that out.

  “It’s okay,” David Marks said again, smiling at her. Ellen smiled back, kind of surprised that she could after what they’d just heard. “If you’re worried I’m going to give up on her, you needn’t be. I don’t give up. I just get more determined.”

  “Okay.” Ellen nodded.

  “And, Ellen,” he said in a low voice. “I meant everything I told you in there. What your father did has nothing to do with you or the other kids. Or your mother. It’s not reflection on any of you. It’s the result of his own selfishness or insecurity, not some inadequacy on your part. Okay?”

  The permanent knot that had taken up residence in Ellen’s stomach unwound a little further. She felt like an idiot but couldn’t stop grinning at him as she stood there, watching him open his car door.

  “Anyway,” she said as he hesitated with one leg inside the car, raising his brows as he watched her, “I know you were only trying to help us. And you did. Help me, I mean. I never know what to do with all the bad feelings about my dad, and the stuff you said gave me some things to think about. The idea that it’s about him and not about me—I like that. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” the pastor said, giving her another smile. “I’m here anytime any of you need me. Just call. Okay?”

  Embarrassed, and happy, too, she nodded. And then turned and ran back to the house.

  Life had just gotten a little easier.

  SHELLEY HURRIED UP the hill, hoping Drake would still be there. She’d had a hard time getting away from home that afternoon with Mom upset and all, but every time she thought about Dad’s phone call, she knew she’d do whatever it took to see Drake. Her mom thought she was at her friend Monica’s house. Shelley still hated the lies, couldn’t get used to telling them to her mother, but today she needed Drake more than ever.

  And he didn’t like it when she made him wait, as if she was more important than he was. He had a thing about Shelter Valley girls thinking they were better than him and his friends, who mostly lived in a housing project outside Phoenix.

  What if Whitney had been on the hill that afternoon? Everyone knew she wanted Drake. And he’d been staring at Whitney pretty intently on Friday night. Her stomach tensed with fear, Shelley remembered turning around from paying Drake’s friend, to see that look in Drake’s eyes as he stared at Whit. Whitney had been more out of it than normal, standing there in forty-degree weather with her shirt off, dancing like she was the hottest girl in town, even though Whitney was one of the least popular girls in school.

  Of course, Shelley reminded herself as she ran out of breath three-quarters of the way up the hill, he’d looked at her even more intently when she’d taken off her sweater and unbuttoned her own shirt….

  Eyes narrowed as she peered through the five o’clock Arizona dusk, she tried to see if Drake was at th
e top of the little hill nestled between two bigger hills in the desert outside Shelter Valley. Still too far away to hear voices, she could see some shadows. But she wasn’t sure one of them was her new boyfriend.

  Oh, God.

  She needed him so badly. Needed to feel his arms around her. Needed to know that she was loved.

  “Please, God,” she whispered as she tried not to let her lack of breath slow her pace. “Let him be there. Especially tonight, let him be there. Without Whitney or anyone else. Let him be there waiting for me.”

  She’d been hesitant to join his friends in their kind of fun, but this afternoon the preacher had made it all clear. “Things happen for a reason,” he’d said as he was leaving. “It’s up to you to see the signs and know how those things can help you.” He’d all but told her she’d been meant to meet this boy who’d never even stepped foot in Shelter Valley before this year. He and his friends could help her.

  Tonight, more than ever, she just needed a little time to forget.

  SINCE THE DAY SHE’D BEEN hired as program director for MUTV, Martha had loved her job. Today she hated it. Monday mornings were generally not her favorite anyway. Tim resisted the transition from weekend to school day more than most, which meant she’d already fought World War III before her workday even began. And today, just one week and a day after the good preacher of Shelter Valley Community Church had been in her home to witness the unveiling of yet another humiliation in the life of Martha Moore, she was supposed to trot on over to his place for a production meeting.

  She’d been dreading the encounter so much she’d given herself a whopping headache and permission to skip church the day before. She’d expected the kids to celebrate the opportunity for a day off, as well, but Ellen had insisted on going. And on taking the younger kids with her.

  Other than feeling like a slovenly mother shirking her responsibilities, Martha had thoroughly enjoyed the time to herself.