He didn't reply, just looked down and shook his head. Annie took his hand in hers.
'We can do something about this, Robert,' she said, gentle now. 'I know we can. Pilgrim can be alright again. This man can make him alright. And then Grace can be too.'
Robert looked at her. 'Does he really think he can do it?' Annie hesitated but not enough for him to notice.
'Yes,' she said. It was the first time she had actually lied about it. Robert naturally assumed Tom Booker had been consulted about Pilgrim's trip to Montana.
It was an illusion she'd also maintained with Grace.
Finding no ally in her father, Grace gave in, as Annie knew she would. But the resentful silence into which her anger evolved was lasting much longer than Annie had expected. In the old days, before the accident, Annie could normally subvert such moods by teasing or blithely ignoring them. This silence however was of a new order. It was as epic and immutable as the enterprise on which the girl had been forced to embark and, as the miles went by, Annie could only marvel at her stamina.
Robert had helped them pack, driven them to Chatham and gone with them to Harry Logan's on the morning they set off. In Grace's eyes this made him an accomplice. While they loaded Pilgrim into the trailer, she sat like stone in the Lariat with her earphones on, pretending to read a magazine. The horse's cries and the sound of his hooves smashing against the sides of the trailer reverberated around the yard but never once did Grace look up.
Harry gave Pilgrim a hefty shot of sedative and handed Annie a box of the stuff along with some needles in case of emergencies. He came to the window to say hello to Grace and started to tell her about feeding Pilgrim during the trip. Grace cut him short.
'You better talk to Mom,' she said.
When it was time to go, her response to Robert's farewell kiss was little more than perfunctory.
That first night they had stayed with some friends of Harry Logan who lived on the edge of a small town just south of Cleveland. The husband, Elliott, had been to veterinary school with Harry and was now a partner in a large local practice. It was dark when they arrived and Elliott insisted Annie and Grace go in and freshen up while he saw to the horse. He said they too used to keep horses and he'd prepared a stall in the barn.
'Harry said to leave him in the trailer,' Annie said.
'What, for the entire trip?'
That's what he said.'
He cocked an eyebrow and gave her a patronizing, professional kind of smile.
'You go on in. I'll take a look.'
It was starting to rain and Annie wasn't going to argue. The wife's name was Connie. She was a small, subdued woman with a brittle perm that looked as if it had been done that afternoon. She took them in and showed them to their rooms. The house was large and filled with the echoing silence of children grown up and gone. Their faces smiled from the walls in photographs of high school triumphs and sunny graduations.
Grace was put in their daughter's old room and Annie in the guest room along the corridor. Connie showed Annie where the bathroom was and left, saying supper was ready whenever they were. Annie thanked her and went back down the corridor to look in on Grace.
Connie's daughter had married a dentist and moved to Michigan, but her old room looked as if she'd never left. There were books and swimming trophies and shelves herded with little crystal animals. Amid this abandoned clutter of a stranger's childhood, Grace stood by the bed and rummaged in her bag for her wash things. She didn't look up when Annie came in.
'Okay?'
Grace shrugged and still didn't look up. Annie tried to look casual, feigning interest in the pictures on the wall. She stretched and groaned.
'God, I'm so stiff.'
'What are we doing here?'
The voice was cold and hostile and Annie turned and saw Grace staring at her with her hands on her hips.
'What do you mean?'
Grace took in the whole room with a contemptuous sweep of her arm.
'All this. I mean, what are we doing here!'
Annie sighed, but before she could say anything Grace said forget it, it didn't matter. She snatched up her cane and her wash bag and headed for the door. Annie could see how furious it made the girl that she couldn't storm out more effectively.
'Grace, please.'
'I said forget it, okay?' And she was gone.
Annie was talking with Connie in the kitchen when Elliott came in from the yard. He looked pale and had mud all down one side of him. He also seemed to be trying not to limp.
'I left him in the trailer,' he said.
At supper Grace toyed with her food and spoke only when spoken to. The three adults did their best to keep the conversation going but there were long spells when the only sound was the chink of cutlery. They talked about Harry Logan and Chatham and a new outbreak of Lyme disease that everyone was worrying about. Elliott said they knew a young girl about Grace's age who'd caught it and her life had been completely wrecked. Connie darted a look at him and he flushed a little and quickly changed the subject.
As soon as the meal was over, Grace said she was tired and would they mind if she went to bed. Annie said she would come too but Grace wouldn't let her. She said polite good-nights to Elliott and Connie. As she walked to the door, her cane clunked on the hollow floor and Annie caught the look in the couple's eyes as they watched.
The next day, yesterday, they'd made an early start and driven with just a few short stops all the way across Indiana and Illinois and on into Iowa. And all day long, as the vast continent opened up around them, Grace kept her silence.
Last night they'd stayed with a distant cousin of Liz Hammond who'd married a farmer and lived near Des Moines. The farm stood alone at the end of five straight miles of driveway, as if on its own brown planet, plowed in faultless furrows to every horizon.
They were quiet, religious folk - Baptists, Annie guessed - and as unlike Liz as she could imagine. The farmer said Liz had told them all about Pilgrim, but Annie could see he was still shocked by what he saw. He helped her feed and water the horse and then raked out and replaced as much of the wet, dung-soiled straw as he could from under Pilgrim's thrashing hooves.
They ate supper at a long wooden table with the couple's six children. They all had their father's blond hair and wide blue eyes and watched Annie and Grace with a kind of polite wonder. The food was plain and wholesome and there was only milk to drink, served creamy and still warm from the dairy in brimming glass jugs.
This morning, the wife had cooked them a breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and home-cured ham and just as they were leaving, with Grace already in the car, the farmer had handed something to Annie.
'We'd like you to have this,' he said.
It was an old book with a faded cloth cover. The man's wife was standing beside him and they watched as Annie opened it. It was The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Annie could remember it being read to her at school when she was only seven or eight years old.
'It seemed appropriate,' the farmer said.
Annie swallowed and thanked him.
'We'll be praying for you all,' the woman said.
The book still lay on the front passenger seat. And every time Annie caught sight of it she thought about the woman's words.
Even though Annie had lived in this country for many years, such candid religious talk still jolted some deep-seated English reserve in her and made her feel uneasy. But what disturbed her more was that this total stranger had so clearly seen them all as needing her prayers. She'd seen them as victims. Not just Pilgrim and Grace - that was understandable -but Annie too. Nobody, nobody ever, had seen Annie Graves that way.
Now, below the lightning on the horizon, something caught her eye. It started as little more than a flickering speck and grew slowly as she watched it, assembling itself into the liquid shape of a truck. Soon, beyond it, she could see the towers of grain elevators then other, lower buildings, a town, sprouting up around them. A flurry of small brown birds erupted from the side of the road and were buffeted away on the wind. The truck was nearly up to them now and Annie watched the glinting chrome of its grille get larger and larger until it passed them in a blast of wind that made the car and trailer shudder. Grace stirred behind her.