LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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