Grace made him say goodbye on the corner rather than walk her down to the school entrance. He kissed her and walked away, fighting the urge to turn and watch her go in. He knew that if she saw him look, she might mistake concern for pity. He walked back to Third Avenue and turned downtown toward his office.
The sky had cleared while they had been inside. It was going to be one of those icy, clear blue New York days that Robert loved. It was perfect walking weather and he walked briskly, trying to drive away thoughts of that lonely figure limping into school by thinking of what he had to do once he got into work.
First, as usual, he would call the personal injury lawyer they'd hired to look after the convoluted legal farce Grace's accident seemed destined to become.
Only a sensible person would be fool enough to think the case might boil down to whether the girls were negligent in riding on the road that morning and whether the truck driver was negligent in hitting them. Instead of course, everybody was suing everybody: the girls' health insurance companies, the truck driver, his insurance company, the haulage company in Atlanta, their insurance company, the company that the driver had leased the truck from, their insurance company, the manufacturers of the truck, the manufacturers of the truck's tires, the county, the mill, the railroad. No one had yet filed suit against God for letting it snow, but it was still early days. It was pure plaintiff-attorney paradise and it felt odd to Robert to be looking at it from the other end.
At least, thank heaven, they'd managed to keep most of it away from Grace. Apart from the statement she'd given in the hospital, all she'd had to do was give a deposition under oath to their lawyer. Grace had met the woman socially a couple of times before and hadn't seemed troubled by again having to go over the accident. Again she had said that she could remember nothing after sliding down the bank.
Early in the new year the truck driver had written them a letter, saying he was sorry. Robert and Annie had discussed for a long time whether or not to show it to Grace and in the end decided it was her right. She'd read it, handed it back and said simply that it was nice of him. For Robert, just as important a decision was whether or not to show it to their attorney who naturally would seize upon it gleefully as an admission of guilt. The lawyer in Robert said show it. Something more human in him said don't. He'd hedged his bets and kept it on file.
In the distance now, he could see the sun glinting coldly on the towering glass of his office building.
A lost limb, he'd read recently in some learned legal journal, could nowadays be worth three million dollars in damages. He pictured his daughter's pale face, looking out of the coffee shop window. What fine experts they must be, he thought, to quantify the cost.
The school lobby was busier than usual. Grace did a quick scan of the faces, hoping she wouldn't see any of her classmates. Becky's mom was there, talking to Mrs Shaw, but neither of them looked her way and there was no sign of Becky. She was probably already in the library, on one of the computers. In the old days that's where Grace would have headed too. They would fool around, leaving funny messages on each other's E mail and would stay there till the bell rang. Then they'd all race up the stairs to the classroom, laughing and elbowing each other out of the way.
Now that Grace couldn't manage the stairs, they would all feel obliged to come with her in the elevator, a slow and ancient thing. To spare them the embarrassment, Grace now went straight up to the classroom on her own so that she could be sitting at her desk when they arrived.
She made her way over to the elevator and pressed the call button, keeping her eyes on it so that if any of her friends came by they'd have the chance to avoid her.
Everyone had been so nice to her since her return to school. That was the problem. She just wanted them to be normal. And other things had changed. While she'd been away, her friends seemed to have subtly regrouped. Becky and Cathy, her two best friends, had gotten closer. The three of them used to be inseparable. They would gossip and tease and moan about each other and console each other on the phone every evening. It had been a perfectly balanced threesome. But now, although they did their best to include her, it wasn't the same. But how could it be?
The elevator arrived and Grace went in, thankful that she was still the only one waiting and would have it to herself. But just as the doors were closing two younger girls came hurtling in, laughing and gabbling away to each other. As soon as they saw Grace they both went quiet.
Grace smiled and said, 'Hi.'
'Hi.' They said it together but said nothing more and the three of them stood awkwardly while the elevator made its laborious, cranking ascent. Grace noticed how the eyes of both girls examined the blank walls and ceiling, looking everywhere except at the one thing she knew they wanted to look at, her leg. It was always the same.
She'd mentioned it to the'trauma psychologist', yet another expert her parents made her visit every week. The woman meant well and was probably very good at her job, but Grace found the sessions a complete waste of time. How could this stranger - how could anyone - know what it was like?
Tell them it's okay to look,' the woman had said. 'Tell them it's okay to talk about it.'
But that wasn't the point. Grace didn't want them to look, she didn't want them to talk about it. Talk. These shrink people seemed to think that talk solved everything and it just wasn't true.
Yesterday the woman had tried to get her to talk about Judith and that was the last thing on earth Grace wanted to do.
'How do you feel about Judith?'
Grace had felt like screaming. Instead, she said coldly, 'She's dead, how do you think I feel?' Eventually the woman got the message and the subject was dropped.
It had been the same a few weeks ago when she'd tried to get Grace to talk about Pilgrim. He was maimed and useless, just like Grace, and every time she thought of him all she could see were those terrible eyes cowering in the corner of that stinking stall at Mrs Dyer's. How on earth could it help to think or talk about that?
The elevator stopped at the floor below Grace's and the two younger girls got out. She heard them immediately start talking again as they went off down the corridor.
When she got to her own classroom it was as she'd hoped, nobody else had yet come up. She got her books out of her bag, carefully concealed her cane on the floor under the desk, then lowered herself slowly onto the hard wooden seat. In fact it was so hard that by the end of the morning her stump would be throbbing with pain. But she could handle it. That kind of pain was easy.
It was three days before Annie was able to speak to Tom Booker. She already had a clear enough picture of what had happened at the stables that day. After watching the taxi go away down the driveway, she'd gone into the yard and got most of the story just from the faces of the two Dyer boys. Their mother had told Annie coldly that she wanted Pilgrim out of the place by Monday.
Annie called Liz Hammond and together they went to see Harry Logan. He had just finished a hysterectomy on a Chihuahua when they arrived. He came out with his surgical gown on and when he saw the two women he said 'Uh-oh' and pretended to hide. He had a couple of recovery stalls behind the clinic and, after a lot of sighing, he agreed to let Annie put Pilgrim in one of them.
'For one week only,' he wagged a finger at her.
Two,' Annie said.
He looked at Liz and gave a forlorn grin.
'She a friend of yours? Okay, two then. Absolute max. While you find somewhere else.'