Unfinished Business

it’s almost too ludicrous to believe. Even if we had been intimate, it wouldn’t have had anything to do with rape. You were only two years older than I was, and we loved each other.”
    “That was the problem.”
    She put a hand on her stomach, kneading a deep ache. “I’m sorry, so sorry. How miserable you must have been. And your parents. Oh, God. What a horrible thing for anyone to go through. But who in the world would have had you arrested? Who would have—” She saw his face, and her answer. “Oh, no!” she moaned, turning away. “Oh, God!”
    “He was dead sure I’d taken advantage of you. And he was dead sure I would ruin your life.” And maybe, Brady thought as he stared out over the fields, he wouldn’t have been far off. “The way he put it, he was going to see I paid for the first, and he was going to do what needed to be done to prevent the second.”
    “He could have asked me,” she whispered. “For once in my life, he could have asked me.” She shivered against a quick chill. “It’s my fault.”
    “That’s a stupid response.”
    “No,” she said quietly. “It’s my fault, because I could never make him understand how I felt. Not about you, not about anything.” She took a long breath before she looked at Brady again. “There’s nothing I can say that can make up for what he did.”
    “There’s nothing you have to say.” He put his hands on her shoulders, and would have drawn her back against him if she hadn’t held herself so stiff. Instead, he massaged her knotted muscles, patiently, with his competent physician’s hands. “You were as innocent as I was, Van. We never straightened it out, because for the first few days I was too mad to try and you were too mad to ask. Then you were gone.”
    Her vision blurred before she blinked back the tears. She could picture him all too easily—young, rebellious, angry. Afraid. “I don’t know what to say. You must have been terrified.”
    “Some,” he admitted. “I was never formally charged, just held for questioning. You remember old Sheriff Grody—he was a hard-edged, potbellied bully. And he didn’t like me one little bit. Later I realized he was just taking the opportunity to make me sweat. Someone else might have handled it differently.”
    There was no use bringing up the way he’d sat in the cell, bone-scared, helplessly angry, waiting to be allowed his phone call, while the sheriff and Sexton consulted in the next room.

    “There was something else that happened that night. Maybe it balanced the scales some. My father stood up for me. I’d never known he would stand up for me that way, no questions, no doubts, just total support. I guess it changed my life.”
    “My father,” Vanessa said. “He knew how much that night meant to me. How much you meant to me. All my life I did what he wanted—except for you. He made sure he had his way even there.”
    “It’s a long way behind us, Van.”
    “I don’t think I can—” She broke off on a muffled gasp of pain.
    He turned her quickly. “Vanessa?”
    “It’s nothing. I just—” But the second wave came too sharp, too fast, doubling her over. Moving fast, he scooped her up and headed back for the house. “No, don’t. I’m all right. It was just a twinge.”
    “Breathe slow.”
    “Damn it, I said it’s nothing.” Her head fell back as the burning increased. “You’re not going to cause a scene,” she said between shallow breaths.
    “If you’ve got what I think you’ve got, you’re going to see one hell of a scene.”
    The kitchen was empty as he came in, so he took the back stairs. At least she’d stopped arguing, Brady thought as he laid her on Joanie’s bed. When he switched on the lamp, he could see that her skin was white and clammy.
    “I want you to try to relax, Van.”
    “I’m fine.” But the burning hadn’t stopped. “It’s just stress, maybe a little indigestion.”
    “That’s what we’re going to find out.” He eased down beside her. “I want you to tell me when I hurt you.” Very gently, he pressed on her lower abdomen. “Have you ever had your appendix out?”
    “No.”
    “Any abdominal surgery?”
    “No, nothing.”
    He kept his eyes on her face as he continued the examination. When he pressed just under her breastbone, he saw the flare of pain in her eyes before she cried out. Though his face was grim, he took her hand soothingly.
    “Van, how long have you been having pain?”
    She was ashamed to have