At Close Range by Marilyn Tracy Page A

they’re not married to each other anymore.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œDon’t be.” He almost stopped there, but thought of Corrie’s revelation about her past. Remembered the way she’d merely stood there after his brush-off the night before. She deserved more from him. “They’re great people, just not with each other. They’ve both remarried and I like both the new stepparents.”
    â€œWhere do they live?”
    â€œAll of them?”
    â€œAll of them.”
    He told her about his brother’s vagabond existence on a research yacht in the Caribbean, his sister’s recent marriage to a stockbroker in Idaho, and his parents’ lives in northern New Mexico and southern Texas.
    He liked the way she listened, interjecting laughter when he solicited it and sympathetic murmurs when he touched on topics that naturally called for empathy.
    â€œHow long have you been teaching?”
    He stiffened somewhat, dreading the inevitablequestions about his past. “About ten years, give or take.”
    â€œYou’re good at it,” she stated, not inviting argument over her pronouncement. “The kids adore you.”
    He didn’t want their adoration or even their trust. He just wanted their safety. Not comfortable with continuing that vein of discussion, he asked, “Why did you leave radio?”
    She didn’t answer immediately as she was leaving the main highway from Carlsbad to Roswell for the gravel road leading to the ranch. She slowed the Bronco down to avoid swerving and sliding on the rocks.
    â€œWhy did I leave PBS? I guess you could call it burnout,” she said, making him wonder what she called it. “One day it just seemed I’d asked all the questions before. I wasn’t editing sound bites for story impact anymore, but because some politico had made a grammatical error.”
    â€œYour fans will miss you.”
    â€œI doubt that,” she said. “There’s always some young, starry-eyed kid with a golden voice waiting in the wings somewhere.”
    â€œThat describes you to a tee.”
    â€œI’m no kid anymore.”
    â€œYou look like one. And, you still have stars in your eyes and a voice that sounds like the low strings of a harp.”
    He was watching her face and met her look of pleased surprise with a neutrality he hoped let her know he was speaking nothing but the truth. “You said you were an orphan. Were you raised in an orphanage?”
    â€œMostly, yes,” she said, but didn’t elaborate.
    â€œDo you want to tell me about it?”
    â€œNo,” she said firmly, then added, “I’m sorry. But it’s long ago and far away and I prefer it to stay that way.” She reached a hand out and lightly touched his arm, not looking at him. He wondered if the gesture was to apologize for not sharing her past with him, or to reassure him that she hadn’t been broken by it. She was in the process of pulling her hand away when she suddenly dropped it back down, clutching him. “What is that? ”
    Directly ahead of them on the long, lonely ranch road, a figure draped in black walked alone at the edge of the bar ditch.
    Mack felt his heart jerk reflexively and his fingertips tingled as adrenaline shot through his system. Everything in him wanted to yell at Corrie to drive faster, to pass the apparition by, because it wasn’t of this realm. The figure could only be a ghost.
    Corrie braked hard, breathing shallowly. “If I were Catholic, I’d be crossing myself.”
    The headlights centered on the figure in black, slowly walking down the ranch road in the same direction they had been traveling.
    â€œTell me you see her, too,” she said.
    â€œI see her,” he said tersely, though until she’d spoken he hadn’t seen the figure as female. Now, because the car was stopped and the headlights shone directly on the phantom, he could make out the