Off Kilter. Donna Kauffman

      “Maybe you were right then. You should think about getting a few cats after all. Being as you’re so pathetic and all.” She winked at him and ducked out before he could lobby a response.

      He was smiling as he went back to work, but with her comments about Kira echoing through his mind, he wasn’t nearly as settled as he’d like to be.

       Chapter 4

      Tessa finished lacing up her hiking boots and tugged the legs of her jeans down over them, before quietly letting herself out the back door of the croft.

      The sun hadn’t quite made its way over the horizon yet, and the rock-strewn meadows that bordered Kira’s property were still drifted over with a thick, morning fog. She could barely make out the fuzzy bodies of sheep clustered just beyond the closest stone wall, much less those farther out. The occasional grumbling bleat was the only sound in the otherwise quiet dawn.

      The weight of her favorite, standard issue, classic Nikon F-301, circa 1985, was a familiar comfort hanging around her neck, one she wasn’t taking for granted on the peaceful September morning. Pulling her fleece jacket a bit closer, she zipped it up against the morning chill and set out through the side gate, across the rear field, heading toward the stacked stone wall in the distance. She planned to take the herding trail she knew led well beyond it, circling the base of the sole mountain peak to be found at that end of the small island. Beyond it lay the singletrack north road that eventually looped around the entire island, but her destination was the rocky shoreline on the far side of the north track.

      She couldn’t make out the mountain at all; the fog was too thick. Actually, Ben Cruinish was more a very large hill than a real mountain. Nothing like the towering twin peaks that formed the stunning skyscape at the western end of the island. The flaxseed crops that were the basis of the baskets woven on the island were grown in the protected valley between them. The easternmost tip, where Kira’s croft was situated, was more meadow and stream, populated by sheep-rearing crofters and the fishermen who plied their trade off the northern coast, out past the Sound of Ailles in the waters of the Atlantic.

      The rhythms of island life might seem slow, even rustic, but the islanders were methodical in accomplishing the daily tasks required to subsist off the land and sea. Their work ethic was positive and hopeful, something she’d witnessed in places with far, far less to be positive or hopeful about. The people didn’t seem to take for granted the natural bounty they had available to them. They took deep pride in the traditional artistry of their intricately woven baskets, their single export and source of income.

      She’d traveled enough, seen enough, to have an honest respect for cultural traditions, and marveled at how they persevered the world over, through centuries of strife and constant challenge. The people on Kinloch had every right to be proud of their heritage, and how it had not only kept them a viable, thriving community within their homeland, but had grown into a commodity being traded in a global marketplace, where people around the world enjoyed the fruits of their very creative labors.

      But it wasn’t Kira’s wildly imaginative waxed linen baskets or the quiet calm of island life that were the focus of Tessa’s thoughts. She’d woken again, with adrenaline pumping through her so hard she’d been shaking, nauseous with it, her skin hot and flushed, the bed linens damp from sweat. For the fifth night in a row, her unconscious mind had dragged her through the harrowing journey it kept insisting she take when she finally, exhausted, had closed her eyes and prayed for uninterrupted sleep.

      Since arriving on Kinloch, she’d been safely tucked away in Kira’s croft, quite consciously secure in the knowledge that no bombs would be dropped, burning the roof over her head, or leveling the buildings around her; that no vicious, virus-carrying insects would be feasting on her flesh; no night-marauding animals—two legged or four—would be hunting for her. Nor was there even a remote threat that anyone would storm the cottage, looking to roust her from her sleep and drag her off to a cell somewhere, to question her endlessly about her reasons for being in the village in the first place.

      No. None of those things would ever happen to her there.

      But tell that to her subconscious. All of those things had happened to her in other places. Often enough that it felt perfectly normal for her to sleep with a knife under her pillow, a net over her bed, and a fire extinguisher within easy reach—which could also double as a Louisville Slugger when necessary.

      She’d spent the past nine months trying to figure out how to come to terms with the tricks her mind had started playing on her, while still maintaining a full assignment load. She understood it was a form of post-traumatic stress, and was smart enough to know she couldn’t just ignore it, outrun it, or out think it. Extensive counseling had helped her understand it and why it was happening, and even change the way she thought about it and dealt with it. But counseling hadn’t stopped it from happening.

      Mostly because it was still happening … for real.

      Several months into counseling, she’d heeded the counselor’s advice and taken a brief, five-week sabbatical. She’d made huge, confidence-building strides. But back in the field, one bomb had gone off, and everything had come screaming right back with it. No amount of employing all the techniques she’d learned would stave the terror off. Not as long as the bombs kept exploding. And people kept dying. The counselors and therapists who’d helped her had all said the same thing: find a new career. You can’t handle this one any longer if you want to stay healthy.

      She’d rejected that diagnosis. Out of hand. She’d tried alternative methods, including hypnosis and acupuncture, among other more off-the-wall therapies. Those who knew her would have been boggled at the things she’d experimented with. Even she was surprised by the lengths she’d gone to. But she’d have tried anything if she could find a way to manage her disorder effectively so she could stay in the field and continue her work. Photojournalism was what she did. It was who she was. She couldn’t contemplate an alternative.

      But it had finally gotten so bad that she wasn’t functioning, wasn’t sleeping … and she sure as hell wasn’t doing her job effectively. In fact, for the six weeks prior to coming to Kinloch, she’d missed deadlines and struggled to complete her assignments, with no hope left that things were going to improve—unless she made some additional changes. Deep down, she knew there was only one additional change left to make.

      Feeling more lost than she’d ever been, not knowing where else to turn, she’d finally decided to take the “vacation” everyone who worked with her had been gently, and not-so-gently, suggesting. She’d come to Kinloch, to Kira. She’d come, initially telling herself a break from the road would give her time to find a realistic solution that would allow her to heal, while continuing in the only profession she’d ever known, or ever wanted. As she’d debarked from the island ferry and been engulfed in Kira’s tight hug, she’d already known that for the lie it was. There was no realistic solution—other than walking away.

      She knew that. So what she was really doing there, was hiding—taking a vacation from the inevitability of the truth. Only, in the wee, shaky hours of another restless, terror-filled night, she’d decided that wasn’t exactly working, either.

      Sometime around three-thirty that morning, she’d found herself going back over some of the calendar prints she’d taken. Her eye focused on the scenery … and not the kind that had to do with bulging muscles and artfully placed swaths of plaid. There was beauty on Kinloch—natural, staggering amounts of it, no matter the direction in which she’d pointed her camera. But there was also a history there. While the fields were no longer strewn with the carnage of this battle or that blight, what grew was a direct result of what had come from the survival of those brutal challenges.

      That had gotten her to thinking … about the travesties she’d spent her professional career recording, exposing to the world the atrocities suffered by so many, often in places of equally staggering beauty and bounty. It had always struck her as so needless, so … reckless. All of her work, her determination … had done absolutely nothing to stop it