Read Online Full Circle by Davis Bunn - Free Book Online

smoke, a jacket, two pairs of slacks, three dress shirts, two ties, and an overcoat. Adam did as she had instructed, biting down on his worries over the cost. Only once did he look at a price tag. It was enough for a quiet cry of very real pain.
    For Kayla, time became split into tiny fragments. The day’s every nuance could be extracted and examined. She saw the dust motes dance in light from the narrow rear windows. She tasted the waxy oil used on the wall panels. The salesman whistled a rambling tune as he pinned Adam’s trousers. Kayla recalled playing with her dolls on the same ancient Persian carpet while her mother sat in the chair where she was now, talking with her father as the salesman stood him upon the same stool that Adam used.
    Kayla had always assumed she would grow up and find a man just like her father. She had thought the pimply-faced young men of school would one day vanish, and in their stead would be her prince. Then it was university in America, and young men with brash voices who spoke of the money they would earn or the power they would wield, and how Kayla would fit so beautifully into their futures. Ambition was their calling card. Their intelligent gazes and strong features and easy confidence proclaimed that they had been born to claim the future.
    Her last year at school, Kayla had begun fearing that her chance at any true passion had been whispered on a night when she had not been listening. Or perhaps her life’s mate had smiled at her at one of the endless stream of parties, and she had been too preoccupied to see, and any meaningful dreams had been buried with her mother.
    Then a classmate had shared plans of a year in Africa. She was going to work for Oxfam on their Fair Trade project, helping small farmers gain a greater share of the revenue from their products. The next day, Kayla had signed up for what she thought would be a sort of working vacation. Instead, she had found a passion worthy of investing her life.
    Or so it had seemed, until the man she thought she knew had walked away with her project’s funding. And broken her heart in the process.
    Which had brought her home. To this. Sitting in her mother’s chair, watching a stranger walk to the changing room and hand his new clothes back through the curtain.
    She blinked away the sudden stinging and smiled as the salesman returned with a silver tea service. She cleared her throat and asked, “How do you take your tea?”
    â€œI have no idea.” Adam swept aside the red-velvet curtain and reemerged in a new shirt and slacks. “I don’t have much experience with drinking tea in a shop.”
    â€œYou’ll find there’s not much difference from drinking it anywhere else.”
    â€œVery funny.” He sat on the seat next to hers, the tiny round table between them. Just as her mother and father had once sat. Kayla had loved to pour the tea, setting the silver strainer over the cup just as she did now . . .
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Kayla?”
    Kayla felt the harmonies of planets in parallel orbit, just from Adam speaking those three quiet words. She knew tension had redrawn the angles of her face. She knew her chin had jutted in a fashion that made her look old. And her lips were tightly compressed. She had seen the expression often enough in her mirror over the past ten months.
    Kayla needed both hands to steady the pot and pour the tea. “I was thinking of Africa.”
    Adam took the cup, let her add milk, declined sugar. “Tell me where you are.”
    Perhaps it was the way he spoke that last word. Where you are . Where her life is now . Not in the past. This very moment. She set down the pot, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “I drink a lot of tea in Africa. The water isn’t safe unless it’s boiled, and even boiled it still tastes horrid. So I drink tea all day long. All Westerners do. Tea or coke or bottled water, and sometimes the shipments