Full Circle by Davis Bunn Page B

prospect of babies dying if they didn’t change directions.”
    Shadows drifted east until twilight’s gentle blanket slipped over their resting place. The temperature dropped with the sun. Adam saw his breath as he said, “So they gave the project to you. Smart.”
    â€œThey had just started to organize the farmers of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya when the drought hit. The areas where water remained plentiful were growing flowers that required enormous amounts of handwork. Asparagus, artichokes, some fruit trees. But the biggest crop by far was coffee. We continued where Oxfam had been forced to stop, building drying sheds, set-ting up a sorting operation and cold-storage facility for cut flowers and out-of-season vegetables.”
    Adam massaged the fingers going cold in the frigid dusk. “How many people were you helping, Kayla?”
    She was quiet for a time, then used the hand that was still gloved to swipe at the edges of her eyes. “Almost a hundred villages. I wish you could have seen it when we were going strong.” Her voice was not broken, not really. Just trembling hard, as though revealing the joy was only possible if she shared the sorrow as well. “We would go into the villages to deliver their quarterly paychecks. They would line the road. If you can call a dusty track through the veld a road. They sang us in, they sang us out. This region, the north of Tanzania and the south of Kenya, is mostly Kikuyu and very strong Christian. They gave us names. They called me . . .”
    Adam reached over and enfolded her in his arms. She did not actually cry. Adam understood. She was strong, and the sorrow was old. She just needed a moment to collect herself. Oh, yes. He understood all too well. When she started to straighten, Adam released her, knowing she needed to rely on her own strength. After all, she was going back. She had to fight this battle to the bitter end. Alone. She was going in seven days.
    The internal reverberation increased to the point that his voice was almost as unsteady as hers. “We need to be going.”

chapter 13
    T he road crested a rise so high Adam caught a final teardrop of sunset gold amid the crown of trees. They descended with a tumbling river for company. A valley opened, wide enough to welcome both them and the river. Steep-sided hills brooded on all sides, bearing their cloaks of night like sentinels from an age of armor and warlocks, of seers and white-bearded kings. The sun was gone from this realm, yet the sky maintained its abundance of dusky hues. At the vale’s heart rose a village of stone that glowed in the final light. The dominion of Broadway began with a sign declaring its royal charter of 1134. The central road deserved the village’s name, for it was wide as a four-lane highway, yet paved in stone as ancient as the houses. At the village’s heart was a coaching inn, with a domed entrance where carriages drawn by six matched steeds had once passed. Planted at the roadside was a sign declaring in Gothic script that the inn was the oldest in all England.
    Kayla spoke for the first time since leaving their rocky haven. “Let’s stay here.”

    Kayla had not taken so much time dressing for a dinner in a long time.
    Her bathroom was almost as large as her bedroom. A huge tub stood on four lion’s paws beneath a window she soon frosted with steam. She used all the hotel’s wide array of free gifts—herbal shampoo and bath salts and conditioner and lotion, all from the same shop that supplied Buckingham Palace. She dried her hair, combed it carefully, and held it away from her face with her mother’s jeweled clip. Kayla had decided not to take the jewelry pieces she had inherited from her mother to Africa, which was the only reason she still had them in her possession. Her watch, a graduation present from her father, and the one necklace she had in Dar es Salaam were gone now. In the weeks