Full Circle (18 page)
When they entered the front parlor, the professor's delight was evident in her voice. “Young Master Wright. And you brought Kayla. How splendid. I fear you shall need to make your own tea. Mrs. Brandt has gone off to do some Christmas shopping for her grandchildren.”
“We don't need anything.”
“Stuff and nonsense. It will do us all a world of good. You know where everything is, Master Wright.”
Adam sounded oddly formal. “I'd appreciate it if you'd call me Adam, ma'am.”
“Adam. The good china resides in the cupboard beside the boiler. And see if there's not a fresh packet of Scottish shortbread in the pantry. My dear, perhaps you would be so kind as to turn on a lamp or two. The daylight is failing as fast as my eyes.”
Kayla switched on lamps made from whalebone and bronze. The light formed golden islands in a room of shadows and soft edges. The world beyond the gauze curtains was dappled gray.
“That's much better. Come sit down and tell me how you are.”
Kayla took the horsehair chair opposite the round side table from the professor. “The day has been incredible.”
“I take it from your expression that this incredibleness is not altogether good.”
“No.”
“Nor welcome.”
“That's a harder one.”
The professor reached over and patted her hand. “My dear, I wish I could tell you what it means to have you sit here with me. It is as though my fondest recollections have grown wings and flown into the present to keep me company.”
Kayla found the internal tumult calming somewhat. “Mother loved coming to see you. I remember when it was cold outside, you let me sit at your table and color in my books.”
Dr. Beachley cleared a corner of one eye. “You were such a dear child. And so very much like your mother. The resemblance was quite astonishing. Then and now.” Dr. Beachley beamed as Adam brought in a tray. “How nice. I'm sure your young man has prepared a splendid tea.”
Kayla felt an automatic desire to reject the words
your young man
. Especially today. But she remained silent as Adam set the tray on the table between them. He served tea to the ladies, then drew over a chair and poured another cup. By then it was too late, the words drifting in the parlor's cozy atmosphere.
Your young man.
The professor asked Adam, “Have you been working on your topic, young man?”
“Yes.” Adam drew out the yellow sheets from his jacket pocket. He unfolded them carefully. “I'm not done yet.”
“With such questions, the answers may require a lifetime to be fully realized.” Her demeanor had altered subtly. The professor accepted the pages and set them on the table beside the tray. “I shall inspect these later. Can you summarize your findings for me?”
“I had to split the issue,” Adam replied. “First I needed to figure out how I got the initial parameters so wrong.”
“Not wrong, young man. Merely flawed. You did the best you could at the time. But you have grown
beyond
where you were. You now recognize your initial boundaries as inadequate. You seek to
redraw
your parameters. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“So. Flawed how?”
Adam set his cup back on the tray and bundled his hands into his lap. “I established parameters for love based on pain. Which meant I assumed love was the same as loss and helplessness and rage.”
“I don't understand.” Kayla pointed at the pages on the tray. “All that work you were doing, I thought it was about Geoffrey working for my father's company.”
“I don't know how it all fits together. But my gut tells me that it does.”
The professor pressed gently, “You were speaking of how you had equated love with pain.”
“Not consciously. But that's how I structured my life. I wasn't going to be hurt. So I kept love out.”
The professor fumbled in the process of settling her cup on the tray. “So there are two parameters you are now questioning, are there not?”
“That love does not always bring pain.” Adam's forehead creased with the effort of seeing the answer. “And I've been wrong to try and remain in total control.”
“Oh, I say,” the professor murmured. She reached over and gripped the cane leaning against the arm of her chair and began kneading the top. “Well. It would be unrealistic to assume that if you open your heart, your mind, the very essence of your being to another, that you can remain free from pain. Would you not agree?”
Adam rocked the entire upper half of his body. “Yes.”
“And yet there is the willingness, at least with some, to
accept
this risk of pain. How is that possible? Whatever would make such a peril worth taking?”
Adam continued to rock. Back and forth. His hands locked in his lap. His gaze inward. Distant.
“So. That is a question for another time. Now, young man. You said you had confronted another issue besides the flawed parameters themselves.”
When he cleared his throat, it sounded as though he was fighting against something locked around his air passage. “I need to figure out how to establish boundaries of love that are based on love, and not on fear. Not on experience. But on hope.”
Kayla felt as though she had become locked into an invisible cage. One fashioned by gentle words and a room of soft light and soothing shadows. She wanted to lash out, to remind them of what she had just discovered that day. To draw the discussion back to the jagged edges of a man who stole everything and now worked for her father's enemy.
Instead, she was ensnared by a high-backed chair and a retired professor and a man who rocked now in silence. She wanted to weep, she wanted to reach out and grip this man so hard she could draw the goodness from him. Find in herself the ability to search as he was doing. Because she knew with utter certainty why Adam had wanted her to be with him here. And why he sought these impossible answers.
Impossible that he would ask this of her. To love. To hope. To reach beyond everything she had endured. Even today. Impossible.
Dr. Beachley allowed the silence to blanket them all for a moment, then said, “Knowing the proper question, defining the issue, is the essential element here. You have done a commendable job of that, young man. As I said, the answers may take a lifetime, or they may come with a blinding flash of realization. But you are asking what you must in order to grow beyond the past.” Her hands were joined on the cane, softly rubbing the ivory handle. “I would award your first tutorial the highest possible grade.”
Adam tasted a smile. His gaze drifted up but did not quite connect with Kayla's. “Thank you.”
Dr. Beachley broke the moment by turning and asking, “From your earlier comment, young lady, might I assume there is a different issue than Adam's that has brought you here today?”
Adam looked at her now. “I'll tell her if you want. But I think you should.”
“Tell her?”
“About Derek and your project.”
“Geoffrey,” she corrected faintly.
Adam nodded. “Geoffrey,” he agreed.
“So,” the professor said. “Now I have two students. How excel-lent. Some queries proceed so much better if they are shared.”
Kayla found no logic whatsoever in speaking about the day with this woman who was a friend of her mother's yet a stranger to her present life. But the act of listening to Adam had left her without the ability to close herself off. What was the word that Adam had used? Parameters. The boundaries of her life had been fractured, such that Kayla found herself relating the day, and then answering further questions about her project and her father's company and their involvement, and the theft. And where she had just come from. And what she had just witnessed. She spoke in parcels that were rather breathless and often not in complete sentences. The professor listened with an intensity matched by the force within Adam's dark gaze.
When Kayla finished, the professor said, “Before Adam's first tutorial, I mentioned a dilemma another of my former students is currently facing. One for which I had no answer save prayer. But what I have heard from you two today, I can only take as a sign that here in this room lies the solution to my former student's problem. She is a biochemist doing quite remarkable research on the eradication of pain. Yet she has been severely scalded by some underhanded dealings.” She kneaded the head of her cane, staring into the distance. She then took a long breath and straightened in her chair. “On that matter I must speak with her and come back to you. In the meantime, I shall begin your next assignment by sharing with you a bit of history. The house you see here was purchased with your father's help.”
“Daddy never said anything about that.”
“Oh, he didn't actually reach into his wallet and hand over the sum required. But my husband and I were working on the question of blood coagulation. They were heady days, so many different issues coming up, the advent of new methods of healing and diagnosis that rocked the foundations of medicine. We met in the lab, two postdoctoral students who were passionate about being at the forefront of this new vanguard. And we made an astonishing discovery. Quite unexpectedly. Really a matter of shared intuition rather than normal scientific procedure.”
Adam muttered, “Intuition.”
“Value that word most highly, young man. But we shall speak of it another time. For now, yes, my husband-to-be and I made an intuitive leap. And the result was a means by which normal blood coagulation could be halted, such that surgical procedures which up to then had been impossible suddenly became reality.” Her seamed features glowed with remembered achievement. “Our new drug became part of the success of early heart transplants.”
“What does that have to do with Daddy?”
“Your father was working for this company in London. Our college, Christ Church, was seeking a means by which they could utilize our discoveries. Peter tried to convince his company that they needed to establish a new division, one that would help the Oxford scientists transform research into commercial applications. They refused.”
”He left MVP because of you?”
“As I recall, he mentioned numerous conflicts with his employer. But we were certainly one of his first projects. He located a pharmaceutical group that brought our product to market. We used our share of the royalties to purchase this home. We have much to thank your father for, my dear. As does Oxford's scientific community. He went on to establish a system which is still in place today, whereby royalties from such discoveries are shared between the college, the university, the labs, and the scientists.”
Adam said, “MVP must have been furious when he left.”
“They were livid. Particularly after seven of the colleges shifted their endowment capital to Peter's new company.”
Adam leaned back as far as he could without letting go of Kayla's hand. He stared at the ceiling overhead.
Kayla asked, “What is it?”
Adam asked, “What if the guy went down to destroy your project on company orders?”
“What?”
The professor nodded slowly. “I fear you may be onto some-thing there.”
“Think about it. Your father's company becomes involved in a project that is helping thousands of poor farmers. The potential PR could be huge. Then what happens but MVP hears about this major potential boost to the company's standing. Joshua claims they've got a spy in the company, right? So MVP sends down Derek Steen with orders to tear your project apart.” Adam gave her a tight space, then, “It makes all the sense in the world.”
The cane thumped softly upon the floor. “So the assignment has been established. You have a duty to save this good man and his work from corporate oblivion. And I shall do all I can to assist you.”
Adam said, “They fired me this morning.”
“Oh, stuff and nonsense. What scientist worth his ilk hasn't been faced with potential doom? The occasional setback is to be expected. I would go so far as to suggest that nothing is better for strengthening one's constitution.” She leaned heavily upon her cane as she led them toward the door. “Now the pair of you go out there and
achieve
.”
T
he final remnants of rush-hour traffic slowed their progress out of Oxford. Night blanketed the world of roads and headlights and half-seen houses. They both remained locked in their respective worlds until they were well past the city's outskirts, when Adam asked, “Did you know about this other part of your father's company?”
Kayla felt as though she were struggling for the surface of roiling internal seas. “I've always known he's been involved in new companies. Once in a while we'd meet the people in Oxford. They were always so excited.”
“I've spent my entire life just wanting to be good at this one thing. Then I meet your dad, and he talks my language. But there's so much more to him. He's warm and caring. I see how he is around you and Honor. He may be worn down by this cri-sis, but he's still got a heart big as England.” Adam turned off the main highway and slowed as the hedgerows closed in on either side. “Today I learn about this
other
section of the company. He's not just running a business. He's not just after making the most profit from his capital. He's
helping
people.”
“And he likes you.”
Adam turned onto the country lane with the river for company. “He makes me feel so small. There are a million people out there doing what I do. Maybe I'm better than most. I think I am. But that possibility doesn't explain why he'd pluck me out of oblivion.”
“He sees something in you.”
“What? My generosity? My caring nature?”
“You helped your mother.”
“I told you. There isn't anybody else. I did it because I had to.”
“No, Adam. You said it yourself. You could have run. Why didn't you?”