At breakfast the next morning, Grace looked very pale. Robert put his hand on hers.
'Are you okay, baby?'
She nodded. Annie came back to the table with a jug of orange juice and Robert took his hand away.
Annie could see Grace had something difficult to say.
'I've been thinking about Pilgrim,' she said in a level voice. It was the first time the horse had been mentioned. Annie and Robert sat very still. Annie felt ashamed neither of them had been to see him since the accident or at least since he had come back to Mrs Dyer's.
'Uh-huh,' said Robert. 'And?'
'And I think we should send him back to Kentucky.'
There was a pause.
'Gracie,' Robert began. 'We don't need to make decisions right now. It may be that—' Grace cut him off.
'I know what you're going to say, that people who've had injuries like mine do ride again, but I don't…' She broke off for a moment, composing herself. 'I don't want to. Please.'
Annie looked at Robert and she could tell he felt her eyes on him, daring him to show even a hint of tears.
'I don't know if they'll take him back,' Grace went on. 'But I don't want anyone around here to have him.'
Robert nodded slowly, showing he understood even if he didn't yet agree. Grace latched on to this.
'I want to say goodbye to him, Daddy. Could we go see him this morning? Before I go back to the hospital?'
Annie had spoken just once to Harry Logan. It had been an awkward call and though neither mentioned her threat to sue him, it had hung heavily over their every word. Logan had been charming and, in her tone at least, Annie got as near to an apology as she ever got. But since then, her news of Pilgrim had come only through Liz Hammond. Not wanting to add unduly to their worries over Grace, Liz had given Annie a picture of the horse's recovery that was as reassuring as it was false.
The wounds were healing well, she said. The skin grafts over the cannon bone had taken. The nasal bone repair looked better than they had ever dared hope. None of these was a lie. And none of them prepared Annie, Robert and Grace for what they were about to see as they came up the long drive and parked in front of Joan Dyer's house.
Mrs Dyer came out of the stable and crossed the yard toward them, wiping her hands on the sides of the old blue quilt jacket she always wore. The wind whipped strands of gray hair across her face and she smiled as she tidied them away. The smile was so odd and out of character that Annie was puzzled. It was probably just awkwardness at the sight of Grace being helped out onto her crutches by Robert.
'Hello Grace,' Mrs Dyer said. 'How are you dear?'
'She's doing just great, aren't you baby?' Robert said. Why can't he let her answer for herself? thought Annie. Grace smiled bravely.
'Yes, I'm fine.'
'Did you have a good Christmas? Lots of presents?'
'Zillions,' said Grace. 'We had a fabulous time, didn't we?' She looked at Annie.
'Fabulous,' Annie endorsed.
No one seemed to know what to say next and for a moment they all stood there in the cold wind, embarrassed. Clouds barreled furiously overhead and the red walls of the barn were suddenly set ablaze by a burst of sun.
'Grace wants to see Pilgrim,' said Robert. 'Is he in the barn?'
Mrs Dyer's face flickered.
'No. He's out back.'
Annie sensed something was wrong and could see Grace did too.
'Great,' said Robert. 'Can we go see him?'
Mrs Dyer hesitated but only for an instant.
'Of course.'
She turned and walked off. They followed her out of the yard and around to the old row of stalls at the back of the barn.
'Mind how you go. It's pretty muddy back here.'
She looked over her shoulder at Grace on her crutches then darted a look at Annie. It felt like a warning.
'She's pretty darn good on these things, don't you think Joan?' Robert said. 'I can't keep up.'
'Yes, I can see.' Mrs Dyer smiled, briefly.
'Why isn't he in the barn?' Grace asked. Mrs Dyer didn't answer. They were at the stalls now and she stopped by the only door that was closed and turned to face them. She swallowed hard and looked at Annie.
'I don't know how much Harry and Liz have told you.' Annie shrugged.
'Well, we know he's lucky to be alive,' Robert said. There was a pause. They were all waiting for Mrs Dyer to go on. She seemed to be searching for the right words.
'Grace,' she said. 'Pilgrim isn't how he used to be. He's been very disturbed by what happened.' Grace looked very worried suddenly and Mrs Dyer looked at Annie and Robert for help. 'To be honest, I'm not sure it's a good idea for her to see him.'
'Why? What—?' Robert started to say, but Grace cut him off.
'I want to see him. Open the door.'
Mrs Dyer looked at Annie for a decision. It seemed to Annie that they had already gone too far to turn back. She nodded. Reluctantly Mrs Dyer drew back the bolt on the top half of the door. There was an immediate explosion of sound inside the stall which startled them all. Then there was silence. Mrs Dyer slowly opened the top door and Grace peered in with Annie and Robert standing behind her.
It took a while for the girl's eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Then she saw him. Her voice when she spoke was so small and frail that the others could barely hear it.
'Pilgrim? Pilgrim?'
Then she gave a cry and turned away and Robert had to reach out quickly to stop her from falling.
'No! Daddy, no!'
He put his arms around her and led her back to the yard. The sound of her sobbing faded and was lost on the wind.
'Annie,' Mrs Dyer said. 'I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let her.'
Annie looked at her blankly then stepped closer to the door of the stall. The smell of urine hit her in a sudden, pungent wave and she could see the floor was filthy with dung. Pilgrim was backed into the shadow of the far corner, watching her. His feet were splayed and his neck stretched so low that his head was little more than a foot above the ground.
His grotesquely scarred muzzle was tilted up at her, as if daring her to move and he was panting in short, nervy snorts. Annie felt a shiver at the nape of her neck and the horse seemed to sense it too for now he pinned back his ears and leered at her in a toothy, gothic parody of threat.
Annie looked into his eyes with their blood-crazed whites and for the first time in her life knew how one might come to believe in the devil.
Chapter Five
The meeting had been dragging on for almost an hour and Annie was bored. There were people perched all around her office, locked in a fierce and esoteric debate about which particular shade of pink would look best on an upcoming cover. The competing mock-ups were laid out before them. Annie thought they all looked vile.
'I just don't think our readers are Day-Glo kind of people,' somebody was saying. The art director, who clearly did think so, was getting more and more defensive.
'It isn't Day-Glo,' he said. 'It's electric candy.'
'Well I don't think they're electric candy people either. It's too eighties.'
'Eighties? That's absurd!'
Annie would normally have cut it short long before it got to this. She would simply have told them what she thought and that would have been that. The problem was, she was finding it almost impossible to concentrate and, more worryingly, to care.
It had been the same all morning. First there had been a breakfast meeting to make peace with the Hollywood agent whose 'black hole' client had gone berserk at having his profile canceled. Then she'd had the production people in her office for two hours spreading doom about the soaring cost of paper. One of them had been wearing a cologne of such dizzying awfulness that Annie had needed to open all the windows afterward. She could still smell it now.