At Close Range (4 page)

“If you hurry back, I'll be here,” he said, and reached his hand out as if he would stroke the little girl's hair. His hand hung there for a moment, then dropped back to his lap as if the child's aura had burned him.

Corrie's breath tangled in her throat, both at the look of withdrawal in Mack's gaze and at the lack of promise to the little girl. He'd agreed, but it had been a half promise at best, not the whole she'd asked for. Luckily, Analissa didn't notice. She only beamed brightly, her partially toothy grin brightening the dining room as it always did. Before the child reached the door to the kitchen, she managed to lose most of the silverware on the two plates she smashed together, and chip at least one of those plates against the doorjamb.

Leeza leaned forward again, having retrieved the errant silverware and handing them to Jeannie's
adopted daughter, who was indulgently smiling at Analissa. “Mack, aren't you the one who—”

Chance's wineglass toppled into Leeza's lap and he swore as he stood up, napkin in hand, and mopped up the wine. He apologized to the table at large for being every kind of a clumsy fool, then before a shocked Leeza could even remonstrate, he leaned down to say something in her ear before turning to kiss his wife soundly.

To Corrie's surprise, Leeza flushed and shot Mack an apologetic look.

Corrie knew Chance wasn't clumsy; his every move was measured and slow, calm and deliberate. The marshal had spilled his wine on purpose, stopping Leeza's questioning of Mack.

Why? What didn't he want brought out at the Rancho Milagro dinner table? What did he know about Mack? How he acquired his terrible scars, what accident befell him?

Why was Chance avoiding her eyes? Why did Mack appear so tense and stiff beside her? And why did her journalistic instincts rise so readily to the surface when she wasn't working in the field anymore and never, ever wanted to again?

“Mack,” Jeannie asked, commanding attention as she stretched and leaned back into her chair, “what period of history interests you the most?”

“Prehistoric,” he said swiftly.

“Why is that?”

“Because the lines were so clear in those days. Survival was all that mattered. Find a cave, find a mate, make a home, go out and hunt a bear or two for food,
clothing and fat for the fire. Simple. Hard, but simple.”

“Sounds rather macho,” Leeza murmured.

Mack waved a hand in a noncommittal gesture but nodded as he took a sip of wine. “Oh, there were plenty of matriarchal tribes then, too, but the bottom line was still the same. Survival.”

“What about happiness?” Corrie asked, twisting her own untouched wineglass around, wondering why his answer might mean something important.

“Happiness?” he asked.

Corrie thought he repeated the word as if he'd never heard it before, didn't know its meaning.

He turned to look at her, as if he were trying to imprint some unspoken knowledge on her, and answered, “Happiness was a matter of security, safety, ensuring everyone in the cave had shelter, food and water. Safety. That's all that matters.”

She heard his switch from past to present tense. “But—”

The door to the kitchen burst open and a beaming Analissa sailed through, carrying a tray laden with ice cream in paper cups.

“Dessert,” she called, and, taking small, heel-to-toe steps, made her careful progress to Mack.

He looked at her as if surprised she'd returned, as if the little girl, all by herself, was a miracle on this ranch in the middle of nowhere.

He gave one of those half lifts of his lips. The little girl nodded solemnly. “You're here,” she said. The smile that followed her words could have lit the entire city of Carlsbad.

Mack cleared his throat. “I'm here.”

Little Analissa turned her beaming face to Corrie. “Just like he promised.”

From her place beside Mack, Corrie saw a muscle twitch in his jaw, not as if he were laughing, but as if he were biting back some emotion too bitter to swallow. “Just like,” she said.

“And you're gonna stay here with us, right?” Analissa asked, leaning forward, tipping the tray dangerously.

Mack caught the tray before the ice cream in the Dixie cups slid to the floor. “I'm here,” he agreed.

Analissa launched herself at him, her baby arms thin and spindly against his broad, rock-hard shoulder. The tray teetered dangerously, but not half as much as Corrie suspected Mack's emotions might be tipping. “To stay?”

Corrie rescued him. “To stay, sweetie. He's here to stay,” she said, reaching out to stroke Analissa's silky hair.

Mack didn't say anything. He set the tray on the table and gently dislodged Analissa from his arm as he pushed to his feet.

The rest of the children poured through the open doorway, treats in store, and raced around the table, making sure everyone had at least two of the prized
biscochitos.

“You're not leaving, Señor Mack?” Juan Carlos asked.

“Really, you must try one of Rita's
biscochitos.
She makes the best anywhere on earth,” Leeza said.

“He's got to go,” Analissa said, all six of her years showing, and twenty-five more to boot. “But he's
staying here now. Corrie says. He's going to stay with us.”

A cheer went around the table, with a few I-told-you-so's from Juan Carlos and nods from Jorge.

Corrie thought Mack's face would have paled had his scarred skin allowed it to do so. Instead, he only stood above them all, seemingly carved in granite, and as acutely uncomfortable as a man could possibly be.

“I'll walk you out,” she said.

“It's not necessary,” he answered. “Thank you all for the wonderful dinner.”

“Food will be here tomorrow morning and again at lunchtime and then again at supper,” Jeannie said. “It's the Rancho Milagro way.”

“And we'll talk about classes in the morning,” Leeza said.

“And I'll show you my new saddle for Dancer,” Juan Carlos said. “I can ride again next week. I'm grounded now.” He made a face that was more grin than grimace. “Because I rode Dancer without permission.”

“And I'll draw you a picture,” Analissa said, curling her hand into his pant leg and dragging on it. “It will have you in it, and Corrie, and Dancer the horse, and Jeannie, and Chance, and Dulce, and—” she looked around the table, her dark eyes questing “—and Clovis, and Pablo, and Rita and everybody.”

“Thanks,” Mack said, but Corrie thought he looked as if the whole lot of them had stretched a hot bed of coals for him to walk across. He turned to the living room as if made of wood—stiff and resistant. If she hadn't witnessed for herself his reactions to each of the children, she might have wondered how he might
act as a teacher. But she'd seen his smile at Juan Carlos's joking prayer and his tumbling for Analissa.

“Sleep tight,” Jeannie called gently.

Corrie saw Mack hesitate in his walk. He raised a hand as if in farewell.

Juan Carlos called out, “Be careful, Señor Mack. And watch out for La Dolorosa.”

Mack stopped and half turned back to the group at the table.

“What, you afraid of ghosts, Juan Carlos?” Dulce sneered.

“No way! But Rita said people in Carlsbad have seen her lately. And Jorge said—”

“That's enough, Juan Carlos,” Jeannie interrupted gently but firmly. “Those are only stories. There are no such things as ghosts.” She looked at Analissa with meaning in her gaze.

“But—”

“No buts. Good night, Mack. I'm glad you're joining us.”

Mack raised his hand again, not in a wave, but more in a gesture of frustration. He nodded and made for the front door.

“See you tomorrow, Señor Mack,” Analissa called out.

The door slammed behind him before the little girl could hear an answer.

“He'll be here,” Jeannie assured her, drawing the child to her lap. She ran her hand over the little girl's hair.

“I think he wants us,” Analissa said, pressing her face into Jeannie's chest. “I think he needs to be here.”

Corrie thought so, too.

M
ack was grateful for the icy chill of the night. He gulped at the air like a drowning man. He could hear the laughter filtering through the French windows of the veranda and could still feel the impression Analissa's little hand left behind. He listened as the heavy door opened and closed. And knew without looking around that it was Corrie Stratton who'd followed him outside.

She was the last person on earth he wanted to see at that moment. She made him want to tell her things, hard things, raw things he'd rather keep locked inside.

“It takes some getting used to,” Corrie's sultry voice said from behind him.

He thought about all the times he'd listened to her voice pouring out of the radio into the dark hospital burn unit during his long recuperation. She'd been a friend telling a late-night bedtime story, a woman who
talked with kings and soldiers far away and relayed their stories back to those waiting to hear her voice again.

“Overwhelmed?” she asked, stepping up to join him at the railing surrounding the broad veranda.

For some reason, he didn't want to lie to her, and he wanted to hear that beautiful voice, so he didn't answer her directly. “How long have the children been here?”

“Let's see. José and Dulce were the first and they came the same week about a year ago. I think Jason came next, then Tony, Jenny and Juan Carlos. Then Analissa. She's been here about three weeks. She's a doll.”

“Tell me about them,” he said.

Corrie leaned against the railing. “No one knows where José came from. He just showed up here one day when Jeannie was first finishing renovations on the place. We've searched and searched, but no luck, and if José knows, he's not saying. Jeannie and Chance have moved five or six mountains to try to unravel the paperwork involved in adopting a child who has seemingly sprung from nowhere. They're not through the wringer yet, but with the status here for long-term foster care, we all hold high hopes. Dulce was orphaned as a child and was shuffled from one foster home to another until she was so filled with attitude and distrust that she could hardly say her name without spitting at you.”

Mack wondered if Corrie knew her cadence had slipped into a storyteller's rhythm, graceful and filled with hints of magic. He leaned against one of the
large, round viga-pole supports and said, “She'll be a beauty, that one.”

Corrie agreed and continued, “Tony has parents, but his father is in prison and his mother placed him in the foster-care system because she couldn't handle things. He's been in the system now for three years.”

“A lifetime to a kid his age.”

“One third of it, anyway. And Jenny's father took off shortly after she was born and her mother's in the hospital having her fifth child. Five children, five different fathers. Not one of them involved with their contributions to the world.”

“What about her brothers and sisters?”

“The grandmother can manage them, she says, but claims Jenny wouldn't do anything she was told.” A sharp note edged Corrie's normally soft tones.

“That's the little girl who never said a word tonight, right?”

“That's our Jenny. She's eleven and behind three grade levels, though there's nothing wrong with her mind.”

“And Juan Carlos?”

Corrie gave a soft chuckle. “That child is a handful. He came to us from a group home in Portales. That's a town about a hundred and thirty miles north and east of here.”

Mack knew where it was. He'd finished his student teaching there on an exchange with Texas Tech. “What brought him to you?”

“Firecrackers in the toilets,” she said matter-of-factly, with a strange little smile. “I guess the system figured that we were so remote, we probably didn't have plumbing, so he couldn't hurt anything.”

“And has he?”

She looked up at him and smiled. Again, he felt that fever. “He hasn't blown anything up, if that's what you're asking. Has he gotten in trouble? That's his middle name.”

“And what about the other boy, the one with the crush on Dulce?”

“Jason? Does he have one?” Corrie asked. “I should have guessed. He's always really quiet around her. He's here for just a few weeks. His mother took off when he was three. His dad's a fireman and was called up to go to one of the fires in the Northwest.”

“No relatives?”

“Not a one. Poor guy.”

Mack didn't know if she meant the father or the son. “And Analissa?”

“She's our resident ray of sunshine. Her parents skipped out on her years ago and her aunt's just gone into drug rehab for the umpteenth time. The authorities found Analissa when they busted the aunt for dealing. The poor baby was literally wearing her own waste and so hungry she couldn't keep anything down for the first three days.”

“Jeez,” Mack said. “Did they bring her straight to you?”

“After the hospital, yes. You can see why she wants promises.”

“Everyone wants promises,” Mack said roughly.

“Do you?” she asked.

Her question jackknifed through him. He felt the heat of the fire that changed his life. He heard the screams of children calling for help. He smelled the putrid-sweet scent of burning flesh.

“No,” he said too harshly, then realized his quick exclamation sounded like a denial.

“And why is that?” she asked almost lazily. Dreamily.

“Are you doing a story?”

“No. Are you ducking the question?”

He couldn't help but chuckle. He could see why she'd managed to interview the amazing personalities she had over the years. “No. Yes. I don't know. I just don't believe in promises anymore.”

“Miracles, but not promises?”

“If you like,” he said.

“That's rather sad, Mack Dorsey.”

“Realistic.”

“Is there a difference?” she asked, and pushed herself away from the railing. “It's been my experience that reality and sorrow seem to travel hand in hand.”

“That's life,” he said, still refusing to look directly into her eyes.

“Has it always been like that for you or did something happen that made you feel that way about life?”

He didn't dare answer her, although just being with her almost made him want to.

“Not everything is sad,” she said quietly.

“But some things are too sad to bear.” He thought of the parents waiting outside the schoolhouse that day, the way they held on to each other, as if the weight of their tragedy was pulling them down to the ground.

“That's what Jeannie used to believe, after her first husband and baby died. We thought for a while we were going to lose her, too. When she cried, it came from her very soul, not just her heart.”

“I didn't know,” he said. He felt as if he were choking.

“Then she moved here and found her miracle.”

“Chance?”

“And Dulce and José. This place. All of the children.”

“And you?” he asked. “Have you found your miracle?”

She turned away from him a bit. “It's a miracle enough just being here,” she said in a muffled tone, and he knew she was avoiding his question. She had a look of such longing on her face he wanted to put his arms around her and tell her that she deserved more than just being here, that a miracle was waiting for her just around the corner. But she, who had been trained to listen for the truth, would hear the lack of faith in his voice. He kept silent, watching her tuck her hands into her loose sleeves and hunch forward, giving herself the hug he hadn't dared give her.

“It's cold out here,” she said.

In other circumstances, he'd have agreed, but with her standing too near him, it felt anything but cold.

“Last year at this time, it was nearly a hundred degrees in the shade.”

He made some noise he hoped she'd take for assent, though he wouldn't have known about the weather; he'd still been locked up in a hospital at this time the year before.

“What made you go into teaching?” she asked.

He grimaced. “It sure wasn't the opportunity to mold young minds.”

“No?”

“I was one of those problem kids, you know the
type, the cutup, the class clown, the kid who would never sit still or shut up.”

The look she gave him let him know how remotely he resembled that person now. He was surprised to find that notion troubled him. Until the incident that changed so many lives, including his own, he'd been secretly proud of the fact that one principal hid in his office to avoid his protests over how some of the children were treated. Stuffy teachers wrote copious memos about Mack's out-of-the-box disciplinary tactics. Mack had been vaguely pleased to be called a rebel, proving the old adage that some kids never grow up.

But, despite her overt disbelief in his ever having been anything resembling a class clown, she understood where he was going with his story. “So you chose to change the system from within?”

“Something like that. I was a seventies kid, so the schools were stuffed full of half-baked ideas from the sixties, trendy notions from the seventies and economically based concepts predicted for the eighties.”

She smiled. “I was there. I know what you mean. Happy faces and dollar signs.”

He nodded with a half smile. “That's it. The kids become guinea pigs for the latest educational theory. And when the program doesn't work, it's dropped—thank God—but the kids still lose. Big business was helping pick up the tab, so bottom lines became the focus—”

“—and the bottom line in school terms is standardized tests.”

“You've got it.”

“And you wanted to change this?”

“Let's say, modify it. I'm a firm believer in the individual.”

“Why not go into administration?”

He gave a mock shudder. “I'm inherently anti-paperwork.”

“And rebels with a cause don't rise to the top in administrations.”

He found himself liking her, despite his desire to steer clear of personal involvements. He'd admired her from the privacy of his hospital room, listening only to her voice. He'd liked her clarity, her compassion and her attention to detail. Now, standing beside her on Rancho Milagro's broad veranda, he found himself warming to her in a way he'd thought lost to him forever.

“I imagine you were a rebel, also,” he said.

She gave an abrupt gurgle of rueful laughter and shook her head swiftly. “Anything but,” she said. “I was the good little girl who always did precisely what she was told.”

He had trouble accepting that notion. She'd traveled the world, been in some of the most dangerous places, come back with heart-wrenching stories of pain and hope. A good little girl would avoid such situations like the plague. “How about later?” he asked.

“Exactly the same—always a follower, never a leader. A true coward, in essence.”

He shook his head, not necessarily disagreeing with her but unable to reconcile his preconceptions of her with what she stated was the reality. The Public Broadcasting System's motto for her ran through his mind.
“When Corrie Stratton says it's true, it's a fact.”

“I'd better get going,” he said. Once upon a time, he'd have lingered on this veranda, clung to the time with a pretty woman and a chilly night. Back in that time, he'd have believed in futures, been blind to the pitfalls and dangers that lurked in the shadows.

“Oh. Okay.” She looked understandably confused.

“Good night,” he said gruffly. He curled his hand into a fist to avoid raising it to her silken face.

“Do you want a flashlight to get back to the bunkhouse?” She turned to face him. The movement was abrupt and unexpected.

He wished she hadn't turned to face him. Her eyes were too luminous in the light cast from the windows, her face too guileless and, for some reason, wistful. He could read the curiosity there and a tinge of sorrow or pity. But he couldn't see the quest for the news story he'd half accused her of pursuing only moments before. He saw a lovely woman on a cold, moonless night, a woman who had come to offer comfort or perhaps mere camaraderie, and he'd closed her out.

It was best that way, he thought. As he'd told her, he didn't believe in promises. Lost in his thoughts, he'd forgotten her offer of a flashlight.

“No, thanks,” he said, “I can see my way. You'd better get in before you freeze.” But he was the one who turned to go.

“As Juan Carlos would say, watch out for ghosts,” she said.

“I'm used to them,” he said.

“Plural?”

She was too quick, could hear too much. He turned back to face her but didn't quite meet her eyes. “Plural.”

“As in, you're used to more than one ghost.”

“As in,” he agreed, almost enjoying the interplay.

“Are you speaking metaphorically or literally?”

“Both,” he said.

“A man who speaks on multiple levels. Hmm. And talks in riddles.”

“We all have ghosts,” he said.

“But most people call them baggage, not ghosts.”

“I could say I'm not most people.”

She gave a slow smile. “I think I'd agree.”

He tried a smile in return, but it felt odd on his lips. “I think I'll turn in,” he said, lying through his teeth. If tonight were like any other, he wouldn't sleep until nearly dawn.

“Good night, then,” she said. “Dream of the angels.”

One angel in particular, he thought. “Right,” he said. “You, too.”

“Always,” she said, rocking against the cold. She didn't seem like a child then; she was everything a man could possibly want on a lonely night. And if he didn't walk away from her that very minute, he'd find out exactly what kind of a miracle it would feel like to have her in his arms.

He gave her a stiff half wave and got off the veranda as quickly as he possibly could. He wasn't far enough away, however, not to hear her clear voice murmur, “What are you hiding, Mack Dorsey?”