Full Circle Page 2

  Her father turned to look out the rear windows. Something in his demeanor left Kayla certain he was no longer listening.

  Peter Austin had a caesar’s profile. At nearly sixty he still possessed a full head of silver-white hair. His eyes were deep-set beneath a strong ledge of a forehead. A melodious voice balanced the strength, revealing the man’s calmer side. The openness. The ability to care very deeply. Kayla noticed the subtle changes she had missed the previous evening. His eyes were ringed by sleepless worry. The skin over his cheeks looked like aged parchment. “Are you all right, Daddy?”

  “Kayla, this is highly confidential.” He closed and folded his paper, then slowly stroked his tie. Deliberate actions, intended to add emphasis to his words. “Our company is in serious trouble.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No. Of course you don’t. What is far more disturbing, neither do I.”

  She followed him out of the kitchen and into the front foyer. “I need to do this, Daddy.”

  “You are far too dark from your time spent in the sun and much too thin. And this morning you resemble your mother to an impossible degree.” Peter Austin buttoned his jacket and pulled the lapels down tight, the financial warrior preparing his armor. “Let me phone Joshua and I’ll meet you in the car.”

  Oxford Ventures, Peter Austin’s company, was located in a sprawling Summertown manor that Kayla’s mother had rescued from ruin. Amanda Austin had found the manor while pushing her baby daughter around Oxford in a pram. Summertown was the city’s Victorian quarter, started in 1850 when university dons were finally permitted to marry and move out of their college quarters. Until then, professors had followed the medieval practice of remaining single until their teaching days were over. Following the change and continuing until the First World War, the dons filled what had previously been farmland with stately redbrick homes.

  As Peter Austin turned onto Oxford’s Ring Road, he said, “I’m having lunch with a new man. An odd sort. You might like him.”

  “Am I only attracted to odd men, Daddy?”

  Her father did not rise to the bait. “My phone call just caught Joshua in the process of firing him. I suspect that battle is not yet over. Perhaps you’d care to join us for lunch?”

  It was hardly a ringing endorsement, as far as Kayla was concerned. “It’s hard to think beyond the board meeting just now.”

  “All right, daughter.”

  “Besides which, I have an endless list of things I can’t find in Dar es Salaam, all of which we desperately need.”

  “Must you be leaving again soon?”

  “I have to, Daddy. You know that.” But she did not want to add to her father’s woes, particularly not before the board meeting. “So tell me about this new man. What is his name?”

  “Adam Wright.” Peter Austin turned through the arched stone entrance. Sunlight lanced through the parade of winter-bare elms and speckled the drive. “I met him at a conference in Washington. I was so taken with him that I skipped most of why I made the trip and then offered him a job. Joshua was livid.”

  This was unlike her father. While her mother had filled Kayla’s young years with her various passions, Peter Austin was a rock. He took a measured approach to all of life, while her mother became swept up in one enthusiasm after another.

  The wind shoved at Kayla as she climbed from the car. The cold slipped through her coat and struck at her very bones. As they walked the gravel drive, she saw that her father’s face once again bore a grave expression. The two of them were lost in very different mental universes. Kayla asked quietly, “Do you miss Mother?”

  Peter Austin blinked slowly. “What a question.”

  “Do you?”

  “Every day.” He climbed the front stairs behind her. As the front door opened on its electronic hinge, he added, “Which makes your being away so very difficult.”

  Kayla entered the reception hall and froze.

  The walls displayed a collection of Eve Arnold prints.

  Peter Austin stood and watched his daughter take a slow circuit of the room. She stopped by the placard explaining that the photographs were part of a display of Magnum Photos, on loan from the Tate Gallery. Kayla stopped before one of Marilyn Monroe and said, “I remember this one.”

  “Of course you do. It was your mother’s favorite.”

  A signed reproduction had hung in her mother’s dressing room. Eve Arnold’s photographs had been another of her mother’s many passions.

  Peter Austin said quietly, “You are more like her than you will ever know.”

  Kayla understood him completely. “I couldn’t possibly stay here in England, Daddy.”

  “We could be very happy, you know.”

  “My work is there.”

  Kayla found herself recalling something from the year her mother died. One of those small items easily forgotten, and so piercing to remember. Kayla had been standing outside her mother’s hospital room and overheard Amanda Austin tell her husband how he never looked more handsome than when he smiled through his sorrow.”

  Peter Austin smiled at her in just that way. “I am very proud of all you have accomplished, Daughter.”

  Kayla took a nervous breath. “Let’s hope the board feels the same way.”

  chapter 3

  Mom? Hi. It’s me.”

  “Oh, my. Is it Sunday already?”

  “No. Thursday.” Adam’s top-floor office had formerly housed four junior analysts. The other three desks were now empty. The long narrow room was brightened with skylights and furnished in flowing Swedish lines but remained a far cry from the executive quarters two floors below. “How are you?”

  “Adam, you know what we decided.” His mother’s voice was soft but relatively strong. Eleven o’clock in Oxford was six in the morning, Maryland time. His mother had always been an early riser. Nowadays, this was her clearest hour. “You agreed it was best if we spoke once each week.”

  “Only because I didn’t want to leave after another argument.”

  “You have to be strong, son.”

  He did not want to hear her go through all the reasons for his being four thousand miles away from her bedside. So he changed the subject with, “Mom, I got the job.”

  “Well, of course you did.”

  “This place is in serious trouble. I don’t know what’s wrong yet. But I’m thinking major meltdown.”

  “So they need you even more than you expected.”

  “The way things look, I might be home pretty soon.”

  “Did you find anything that might be the sign we spoke of?”

  “Maybe. The entire building is filled with Eve Arnold prints.”

  The sound from the other end of the line was so alien, Adam feared his mother was choking. “Mom?”

  “Eve Arnold? Really?”

  Adam realized she was laughing. He tried to remember the last time he had heard the sound. “They’re holding a retrospective. They’ve got Marilyn’s picture, you know the one, she’s leaning against Clark Gable’s car from The Misfits. It’s downstairs in the reception hall.”

  “That was always my favorite.”

  “How did you know? I mean, about the sign.”

  Adam expected her to respond with one of her standard edicts, as in, A life without faith is only half lived. Or, Blindness of the heart can be cured with one small act. Words he had been ignoring for years.

  Today, however, she said, “The veil between heaven and earth seems to be diminishing. From time to time, there are the most astonishing moments of crystal clarity. I can see the door ahead, and it is wide open. Angels pass through and speak with me.”

  He set an elbow on the table and leaned his forehead upon his fist. She had never spoken openly of this before. Even so, after twenty-five months of crises, he should have been ready.

  His mother went on, “There is a glory in suffering. I wish the lessons had come in some different form. But they haven’t. At least for me.” Her breathing rasped acros
s the distance. “This is why I asked you not to call but once a week, son. We knew it would be a trying time. But we also knew this was the right move.”

  “You did.”

  “No, Adam. No. We both knew this. You have seen me through the impossible. You have had your own trial by fire. You must be strong now. Find a future without hospitals and suffering. For both of us.”

  “I need to be there with you.”

  “You are. Now I want you to do something else for me. Find another old lady who faces her own trial. Give her a rea-son to smile.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’m very proud of you, son. Call me Sunday.”

  Kayla had been granted three minutes with the board. She needed only two. Their gazes were rifle barrels that shot down her words before they were fully formed. But what truly silenced her was her father’s demeanor. Peter Austin, her strongest ally and constant support, stared blankly at the conference table. His bearing matched his suit, dark and gray and all the life starched out. Nothing he might have said could have impacted her more.

  Kayla was reduced to proper formality. She apologized for having lost the company’s capital. She apologized for having hired a charming thief. She neglected to mention she had done so only because they had insisted upon her bringing in a business manager. She apologized for delaying her return. She had hoped her team could pull things together and survive. They almost did. Kayla passed around details of their current financial situation, which showed clearly that a relatively small injection of further capital would bridge them into success.

  She then left the boardroom. Her unspoken request dangled in the air like a spinning target, waiting to be shot down. Kayla could almost smell the gunpowder as she shut the conference room door. Not one of the board members had even glanced at her handout.

  She took a slow tour of the building, ostensibly to examine the Arnold prints. In truth, they merely gave her something to look at while she moved about. She had never imagined the board would turn her down flat. She had expected a severe dressing-down and a check reluctantly written for a fraction of what she needed. Even that would have granted her the chance to work out terms with their African bankers. But to receive nothing was unthinkable. Kayla walked the halls, surrounded by her mother’s soft presence, and tried to breathe around the gaping wound. Nearly two years of struggle. All her hopes. Gone.

  She was midway along the upstairs hallway when the change finally struck home. She could hear a man struggle through a phone conversation because that was the only sound. Normally the building’s top floor possessed a sort of joyful pandemonium. Her father’s junior employees played like human skyrockets, their frenetic excitement a force that infected the entire building. But not today. Kayla found herself drawn toward the open door. She saw a young man hunched over his desk, his forehead planted upon his fist. His accent was American. She heard that he spoke with his mother. The conversation was clearly tearing him apart. Finally he hung up the phone, took a hard breath, and used both hands to drag his hair from his face. Kayla retreated unseen.

  She carried the young man’s distress back downstairs. She realized the same anxiety was reflected in almost every face she passed. Oxford Ventures had always been a special place, full of her father’s vibrant optimism and power. Normally, the air was electric with potential. The company’s reputation among the business community was legendary. Peter Austin did not merely invest other people’s money. He made things happen.

  Kayla retreated into a little alcove just outside her father’s private office. When Kayla had been twelve, and her mother’s pending departure had filled their home with shadows, her father had fitted this out as her little niche. An eighteenth-century wormwood writing desk, just twenty inches wide, had been positioned against one wall. Peter Austin had bought her a Victorian occasional chair with scrolled arms and extra padding in the seat. Her father had then presented Kayla with her very own key to his private filing system and showed her how the bottom drawer with its polished mahogany front had her name in the little brass frame. The drawer was hers to stow whatever she wished, and no one, not even he, would dare touch a thing. They had never mentioned the reason for these gifts. Nor why the secretaries had gathered in the doorway and smiled at her. Nor why everyone in the company gave her such a warm welcome whenever she arrived.

  Mrs. Drummond, her father’s secretary, an unflappable woman who had been with Peter Austin for nineteen years, gave Kayla her customary greeting of a solemn nod. As though Kayla had been in the day before and not absent for almost a year. Mrs. Drummond possessed little ability for familiarity.

  Slipping into her alcove and seating herself at the desk brought Kayla no relief. The bulletin board above her desk was filled with work from her last visit home—financial projections and spreadsheets and photographs, all of which had been packed into the glossy brochure she had produced for her investors.

  All lies.

  She was still seated when her father returned from the boardroom. “A rather curious thing.”

  “What, Daddy?”

  “This young gentleman I was telling you about. He seems to have caught Joshua unawares.” He knocked gently upon the side-wall, another gesture from their past. Even in the most frantic of days, he would tap the wall as he passed, just letting her know he was there for her. “I have the distinct impression Joshua was not altogether sorry I insisted we give Adam a chance.”

  This was so like her father. At the worst moments of their life together, when the entire world seemed blanketed by shadows, her father would search out something good to share with his daughter. Kayla was flooded with memories of other such times. “I’m so sorry, Daddy.”

  He gave his distinct smile, warm and sad and loving, despite the world falling apart around him. “Mrs. Drummond, ask the young man to join me.”

  chapter 4

  The Eve Arnold prints followed Adam back down to the chairman’s office. His mother once described Arnold as a simple woman who used her camera to reveal the humanity behind the gloss. Adam had often thought the description applied equally well to his mother. But Eve Arnold had been granted an impossible chance and used it to fly straight to the stars. There the similarity ended.

  The chairman’s suite occupied what once had been a pair of south-facing lounges. The secretary greeted him with, “Please go straight in, Mr. Wright.”

  “Thank you.” The prints were here as well. Behind the secretary’s desk hung the famous shot of John Hurt, used as a cover of Life magazine. His mother had kept the same shot in her darkroom.

  Which was why Adam almost missed the striking young lady seated in a narrow alcove. Adam’s first thought was that she was being punished for something terrible. She had to be. She possessed the saddest eyes Adam had ever seen.

  “Do come in, Mr. Wright,” said Peter Austin.

  But what Adam wanted was to walk over and tell her he would make it better. Which was ridiculous, of course. Adam had far too much experience at being caught in the snare of helplessness.

  As he entered the office, the chairman asked, “Will you take coffee?”

  “Thanks, I had some upstairs.”

  “With Joshua? Did you indeed.”

  The chairman’s inner sanctum occupied a corner lounge. Bay windows illuminated two walls. The office was rimmed by oak wainscoting. Above the panels hung another series of photographs, only these were not part of the Eve Arnold collection. They were recent and in color.

  Peter Austin stopped in the process of shutting the door, watching as Adam approached the closest picture. “You know this view?”

  Adam responded with a nod.

  “Please take a seat. You have traveled to Africa, Mr. Wright?”

  “Other than one failed trip to Hollywood, I’ve never been anywhere.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that journey when we last met.” Peter Austin settled into the chair across from him. “Be so kind as to tell me what you see in the photograph, Mr. Wright.”

&
nbsp; “Mount Kilimanjaro,” Adam replied. “This was shot from the Tanzanian side. Probably on the road leading from the air-port to the capital.”

  “How very remarkable. And you say you’ve never . . .” The chairman turned at a soft knock on his open door. “Kayla, do please join us. Let me introduce you to Adam Wright.”

  Kayla spared him one more glance before walking over to the same spot where Adam had just stood. Then she turned and gave the room’s other photographs a slow and careful sweep.

  Adam drank in the sight of her. She did not belong here. No matter how nicely dressed she might be today, she was alien to this world. Her features were deeply tanned. Her short hair was Arabian black, silken and dark and laced with copper highlights. She was a desert cat, a lynx who spared little attention for her appearance.

  Peter Austin said, “For the past two and a half years, my daughter has directed a relief project headquartered in Dar es Salaam. She sent me these photographs but has never seen them here before.”

  Kayla turned back and said, “Shame on you, Daddy.”

  Only when the chairman smiled at his daughter did Adam realize how much the man had aged since their meeting in Washington. Peter Austin replied, “You leave us for over a year, my dear, you are bound to come home to a few surprises.”

  Her father’s old Mercedes was so quiet Kayla could hear the clock ticking. Peter Austin had been involved in a bad accident before Kayla was born. As a result, he rarely drove except to and from the office. The boxy Mercedes was eleven years older than Kayla and had been driven less than twenty thousand miles. It was not so much a car as a vessel for memories. Kayla leaned against the headrest and recalled her mother doing the same thing. Amanda Austin liked to pull her shoes off and prop her stockinged toes on the dash. It seemed to Kayla that she could still smell her mother’s perfume imbedded in the old leather.

  Kayla could feel the cold radiating off the window beside her face. The late-afternoon sky was shod in a light as pale as childhood fables. The lands held to an emerald cast, the hills soft and woolly as the sheep dotting the pastures. Kayla’s mind saw not one landscape, but two. Overlaid upon the stone-lined roads and quiet hamlets was a harsh realm of ocher dust and barefoot children and donkeys plodding under impossible loads.