Unfinished Business - Nora Roberts Page 0,55
in his, he pulled her to her feet.
“Where are we going?”
“In here, where there’s a comfortable couch. Sit.” He eased her down, then put his hands on her shoulders. His eyes were dark and searching on her face. “Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“I wanted to wait until you were recovered.” He felt her stiffen, and shook his head. “Don’t do that. As your friend, as a doctor, and as the man who loves you, I want to know what made you ill. I want to make sure it never happens again.”
“You’ve already said I’ve recovered.”
“Ulcers can reoccur.”
“I didn’t have an ulcer.”
“Can it. You can deny it all you want—it won’t change the facts. I want you to tell me what’s been going on the last few years.”
“I’ve been touring. Performing.” Flustered, she shook her head. “How did we move from composing to all this?”
“Because one leads to the other, Van. Ulcers are often caused by emotion. By frustrations, angers, resentments that are bottled up to fester instead of being aired out.”
“I’m not frustrated.” She set her chin. “And you, of all people, should know I don’t bottle things up. Ask around, Brady. My temper is renowned on three continents.”
He nodded, slowly. “I don’t doubt it. But I never once remember you arguing with your father.”
She fell silent at that. It was nothing more than the truth.
“Did you want to compose, or did you want to perform?”
“It’s possible to do both. It’s simply a matter of discipline and priorities.”
“And what was your priority?”
Uncomfortable, she shifted. “I think it’s obvious it was performing.”
“You said something to me before. You said you hated it.”
“Hated what?”
“You tell me.”
She pulled away to rise and pace the room. It hardly mattered now, she told herself. But he was sitting here, watching her, waiting. Past experience told her he would dig and dig until he uncovered whatever feelings she wanted to hide.
“All right. I was never happy performing.”
“You didn’t want to play?”
“No,” she corrected. “I didn’t want to perform. I have to play, just as I have to breathe, but …” She let her words trail off, feeling like an imbecile. “It’s stage fright,” she snapped. “It’s stupid, it’s childish, but I’ve never been able to overcome it.”
“It’s not stupid or childish.” He rose, and would have gone to her, but she was already backing away. “If you hated performing, why did you keep going on? Of course,” he said, before she could answer.
“It was important to him.” She sat on the arm of a chair, then stood again, unable to settle. “He didn’t understand. He’d put his whole life into my career. The idea that I couldn’t perform, that it frightened me—”
“That it made you ill.”
“I was never ill. I never missed one performance because of health.”
“No, you performed despite your health. Damn it, Van, he had no right.”
“He was my father. I know he was a difficult man, but I owed him something.”
He was a selfish son of a bitch, Brady thought. But he kept his silence. “Did you ever consider therapy?”
Vanessa lifted her hands. “He opposed it. He was very intolerant of weakness. I suppose that was his weakness.” She closed her eyes a moment. “You have to understand him, Brady. He was the kind of man who would refuse to believe what was inconvenient for him. And, as far as he was concerned, it just ceased to exist.” Like my mother, she thought with a weary sigh. “I could never find the way to make him accept or even understand the degree of the phobia.”
“I’d like to understand.”
She cupped her hands over her mouth a moment, then let them fall. “Every time I would go to the theater, I would tell myself that this time, this time, it wouldn’t happen. This time I wouldn’t be afraid. Then I would stand in the wings, shaking and sick and miserable. My skin would be clammy, and the nausea would make me dizzy. Once I started playing, it would ease off. By the end I’d be fine, so I would tell myself that the next time …” she shrugged.
He understood, too well. And he hated the idea of her, of anyone, suffering time after time, year after year. “Did you ever stop to think that he was living his life through you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was dull. “He was all I had left. And, right or wrong, I was all he had. The last year, he was so ill, but he never let me stop, never let me