Full Circle by Davis Bunn

his mother. “The Eve Arnold prints.”
    â€œYou can’t imagine what it was like walking in and seeing those images from my childhood all over the office walls.”
    â€œActually, I can.”
    Adam did not seem to hear her. “I talked with Mom yesterday. She said to find another lonely old woman. I don’t know if it was from a dream or not. But the words resonated like the other times. So I did it.”
    â€œYour visit with Dr. Beachley,” Kayla said.
    â€œI’m taking her to some church service at her old college tonight. I forget what it’s called. The last service before the students go home for Christmas.”
    â€œAdvent,” Kayla supplied. “It’s a very special occasion, the high point of the school’s winter calendar.”
    â€œYou should have seen her face when I offered.” Adam looked so sad. He might have been talking about the professor, but his thoughts were clearly on another old woman, one much farther away. “Dr. Beachley used to go with her son, but he’s been relocated to Edinburgh. The rest of her family are either too far away or busy with kids.”
    This time Kayla did not resist the urge. She took hold of his arm, moved in close, and said, “You just come with me before we both freeze to the spot.”

    She took him to her mother’s favorite café. For the students who used it daily, the place was just another cramped café set down just another narrow cobblestone lane. The air was filled with end-of-term chatter and steam from the old-fashioned cappuccino machine. Everything was done by hand. The ceiling was so low Adam could not stand upright. The tables were rickety and piled with students’ bags and scarves and hats and mittens. The benches were the same as when Kayla had come as a little girl.
    The man behind the counter resembled the ruddy-faced gentleman who had served her long ago, and the concoction was still made in the time-honored fashion. Chocolate was scooped from a tin bearing the crest of the company that had imported chocolate for eleven generations of English kings. He used a reed whisk to whip the liquid to froth. The shop became filled with the perfume of the Spice Islands and redolent with the memories of a mother who used such moments to describe the voyage their chocolate had made. Devonshire cream and Channel Islands milk were steamed to perfection. Tall glasses with wire frames were filled two-thirds with chocolate, then topped with an inch of creamy foam.
    Kayla had not been in the shop since the last time her mother took her. It was just too painful to come alone. To ask her father would have meant explaining, and that would only have opened his old wounds as well as her own. Kayla paid the man, then carried the glasses back to Adam’s corner table.
    Light through the lead-paned window turned his hair both russet and gold. Adam looked like the perennial graduate student, one whose stipend had long since run out. His hair fell over his ears and his frayed shirt collar. His navy jacket was substandard, especially for someone who worked for her father’s firm.
    Kayla seated herself across from him. “Drink.”
    He did as she ordered. He blinked and licked the froth from his upper lip. Drank again. “Wow.”
    â€œYou like it?”
    He took a deeper swallow. “What is this?”
    The same deep welling came over her, such that she reached across and took his hand. Just friends, she reminded herself. Because that was all it could ever be. She had no heart left to give to a man. Especially a complete stranger. The words fluttered and rustled through her brain like autumn leaves in winter’s first wind. Just friends.
    Adam looked down at her hand holding his. He set down his glass. “Did I say something right?”
    â€œMy mother brought me here. Long after she graduated, she kept coming back to visit friends who had once taught her.”
    â€œLike