Carla Neggers - Keeper's Reach

Her room also had a low ceiling. She could feel its looming presence. She had never been one for squirrely places. Hence, the cracked window and her natural wake-up call.

The rooster crowed again.

He didn’t sound as if he planned to give up anytime soon.

With a groan, Naomi sat up, keeping the duvet tucked around her. She could hear more chickens now, warbling outside her window. Probably hens. If she were one of them, she would organize a revolt against the rooster.

Chickens.

She sighed. “Of course the place has chickens.”

She threw off the duvet and stood on a soft hooked rug that, she recalled, depicted a sheep. It was too dark to see it now. She shivered, rubbing her bare arms, wishing she had resisted the impulse to take this side trip and instead had spent her last night in England in London, where she’d had a room in a proper hotel with five-star service, a bustling lobby, a great location and no chickens. But here she was in the English countryside after a week of intense meetings.

She fumbled with the lamp on the nightstand, found the switch and turned it on. The worst part of her constant travel, Naomi decided, was locating light switches.

Nightmares about an ex-lover weren’t that great, either.

It wasn’t her fault she had dreamed about Mike Donovan. As much as she wanted to find someone to blame and could pick a name or two, she knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not really.

She seldom had nightmares anymore about the dangers she’d faced in the past decade, maybe because she’d found healthy ways to process them. Post-trauma therapy had helped—or debriefing, or whatever one wanted to call it. Naomi, you’ve been through hell , her mother, blunt as ever, had told her. You need to talk to someone.

Naomi hadn’t mentioned Mike in her sessions—or to her mother. What was the point? By then, he was just another Special Forces soldier she would never see again.

She felt the cool air from the cracked window. Her room really was adorable with its English-country-chic decor. When she’d arrived last night, the woman at the reception desk in the pub had handed her a real key and reminded her that this was a pub that let rooms—meaning she could expect noise from the patrons late into the evening.

No mention of early-morning roosters.

Not that early, Naomi thought as she noted the time on her phone, faceup on the nightstand. Eight twenty. She had been in England long enough to adjust to the time change but not so long that it didn’t still feel like the middle of the night. It was, after all, only 2:00 a.m. at home in Nashville.

She went to the window and pulled back the curtains, letting in more of the gray light. Her rooster was parading on the edge of a stone fountain in the middle of the courtyard. He was black with white spots, or at least appeared to be. Sunlight would help. He threw back his head and belted out another crow, letting the world know he was awake and ready to take on the day.

“Well, good for you,” Naomi muttered, remembering her granny describing how she would have to catch a chicken and wring its neck for Sunday dinner. That prospect didn’t seem as horrifying at the moment as it had at six years old.

She noticed a handful of brown-feathered hens pecking and warbling in the herb gardens that flanked the pretty courtyard. She doubted they or the rooster were in any danger of becoming dinner. She envisioned the courtyard in spring and summer, when the dripping, winter-browned vines that trailed the trellises and the tall fence would be blossoming with clematis, roses and wisteria. The smattering of tables were all empty now, the cold, gray, drizzly morning not exactly a draw for breakfast outdoors.

With a yawn, Naomi ducked into the bathroom, stifling a yelp when her bare feet hit the cold tile floor. She spread a bath mat in front of the tub and turned on the water, letting it get good and hot while she pulled off her yoga pants and tank top, her standard sleepwear on the road—which meant her standard sleepwear, period. She opened the bottles of luxurious, locally made shampoo, conditioner and body wash. She wondered what it would be like to stay in this place for a few days for a break. A real getaway. It was appealing even now, in midwinter, with its soothing blend of English charm and sophistication and its perfect location in the heart of a small, traditional Cotswolds village.

A getaway would have to wait. She had a late-afternoon flight back to Nashville via Atlanta. She would gain six hours and be home in time to sleep in her own bed tonight.

“Preferably without nightmares.”

And definitely without chickens, she thought, smiling as she stepped into the tub and eased under the steamy shower.

When she stepped out of the tub again and wrapped up in a fluffy towel, she was much warmer and smelled faintly of herbs and citrus. She dried off, combed out her hair, basic brown and ridiculously curly, and got dressed. Since she had expected to stay in London for the duration of her trip, she hadn’t packed any serious country clothes. The slim, stretchy pants and wine-colored cashmere sweater she planned to wear on her flight would have to do for her morning in the Cotswolds. She did have an authentic Barbour jacket, an indulgence she had succumbed to on a long, drizzly walk in London. She never remembered to bring an umbrella with her, and that day she had bolted out of her hotel without so much as a jacket. Too much on her mind. She was good at assembling information and making sense of it, analyzing it and seeing where it pointed, but it was often a messy process that completely absorbed her.

It certainly had been that afternoon in London. She had found herself cold and wet, standing in front of a store that sold Barbour jackets. Her jacket’s waxed dark green cotton and English-country look would do nicely today. Her slip-on ankle boots, at least, were good for walking, if not for a full-blown trek on one of the network of walking trails that zigzagged throughout the region. Before dozing off last night, she had flipped through a bedside notebook filled with “guest information” and had noticed mention of a medieval church in Stow-on-the-Wold whose arched door had reportedly inspired J.R.R. Tolkien when he created the door to Moria.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to prowl through an English churchyard and then relax in an English tea shop?

It wouldn’t happen on this trip.

Naomi ignored a tug of regret mixed with nostalgia and loneliness, as if she had lost something that, of course, she’d never had. Love, trust, understanding.

Someone to wander through churchyards and have tea with her.

It was the nightmare, she knew. It still had her in its grip.

What are your plans for after the army, Mike?

She could see his enigmatic smile, at the same time self-deprecating and confident—and annoyingly fatalistic. Without saying anything, he had managed to tell her that he didn’t think past the army. If he got home to Maine, he got home to Maine. He wasn’t a pessimist, he would say. He was a realist who lived in the moment.

Did Mike Donovan ever imagine himself wandering through old English churchyards and having tea and scones with the woman he loved?

“Not a chance,” Naomi said, grabbing her jacket as she headed out to the courtyard and the chickens.

* * *

The same man who had poured her pint last night showed Naomi into the breakfast room in the pub building across the courtyard. He offered her tea or coffee. “Coffee, please,” she said, not quite choking on her words when she recognized the only other diner, a man seated on a cushioned bench, watching her, his back to the wall. It was all she could do not to turn around and walk out of there. She forced herself to smile at the waiter. “Thanks.”