'Harry, you're a sweetheart,' said Liz. He put up his hands.
'I'm an idiot. This horse. He bites me, he kicks me, he drags me through a freezing river and what do I do? I take him in as a house-guest.'
'Thanks Harry,' Annie said.
The three of them went up to the stables the next morning. The boys weren't about and only once did Annie see Joan Dyer, looking out from an upstairs window of her house. After two hours of bruising struggle and three times the amount of sedative Harry felt happy giving, they got Pilgrim into the trailer and drove him back to the clinic.
The day after Tom Booker's visit, Annie had tried calling him in Montana. The woman who answered the phone - Booker's wife, Annie assumed - told her that he was expected back the following evening. The woman's tone was none too friendly and Annie thought she must have heard what had happened. She said she would tell Tom that Annie had called. Annie waited two long days and heard nothing. On the second night, when Robert was in bed reading and she was sure Grace was asleep, she called again. Again, it was the woman who answered.
'He's having his supper right now,' she said.
Annie heard a man's voice asking who it was and the ruffling sound of a hand being put over the receiver. Through it she could hear her say, 'It's that Englishwoman again.' There was a long pause. Annie realized she was holding her breath and told herself to calm down.
'Mrs Graves, this is Tom Booker.'
'Mr Booker. I wanted to apologize for what happened at the stables.' There was silence at the other end so she went on. 'I should have known what was going on up there but I suppose I just closed my eyes to it.'
'I can understand that.' She expected him to go on but he didn't.
'Anyway. We've moved him to another place, a better place, and I wondered if you could…' She realized how futile, how stupid this was even before she said it. 'If you would consider coming back and seeing him.'
'I'm sorry. I can't do that. Even if I had the time, frankly I don't know how much use it'd be.'
'Couldn't you spare just a day or two? I don't care what it would cost.' She heard him give a little laugh and she regretted saying it.
'Ma'am, I hope you don't mind if I speak plainly with you, but you've got to understand. There's a limit to the amount of suffering these creatures can take. I believe this horse of yours has been living in the shadow for too long now.'
'So you think we should put him down? Like everyone else does?' There was a pause. 'If he was your horse Mr Booker, would you put him down?'
'Well ma'am. He's not my horse and I'm glad it's not my decision. But in your shoes, yes, that's what I'd do.'
She tried again to persuade him to come, but she could tell it was no use. He was courteous and calm and totally unmovable. She thanked him and hung up, then walked down the corridor and into the living room.
The lights had all been turned off and the top of the piano shone dimly in the darkness. She went slowly over to the window and stood there for a long time, looking out across the treetops of the park toward the towering apartment blocks of the East Side. It was like a stage backdrop, ten thousand tiny windows, pinpricks of light in a fake night sky. It was impossible to believe that inside every one of them was a different life with its own special pain and destiny. Robert had fallen asleep. She took his book from his hands, turned off his bedside light and undressed in the dark. For a long time she lay on her back beside him, listening to his breathing and watching the orange shapes made on the ceiling by the streetlamps spilling around the edges of the blinds. She already knew what she was going to do. But she wasn't going to tell Robert, or Grace, until she had it all arranged.
Chapter Twelve
For his talent in nurturing young and ruthless recruits to run his mighty empire, Crawford Gates was known, among many names less flattering, as The Face That Launched a Thousand Shits. For this reason Annie always had somewhat mixed feelings about being seen with him.
He was sitting opposite her, eating his seared swordfish meticulously without taking his eyes off her. And as she talked, Annie was intrigued by how his fork kept finding the next piece, homing faultlessly in on it as if drawn there by a magnet. It was the same restaurant he had taken her to almost a year ago when he'd offered her the editorship, a vast soulless space with minimalist matt black decor and a floor of white marble that somehow always made Annie think of an abattoir.
She knew a month was a lot to ask but she felt she was owed it. Until the accident she had barely taken a day off and even since then she hadn't taken many.
I'll have the phone, fax, modem, everything,' she said. 'You won't even know I'm not here.'
She cursed to herself. She'd been talking for fifteen minutes and was getting the tone all wrong. It sounded like she was pleading. She should be doing it from strength, just telling him straight what she was going to do. There was nothing about his manner that so far suggested disapproval. He was just hearing her out while the damn swordfish autopiloted into his mouth. When she was nervous she had this stupid habit of feeling obliged to fill the silences of any conversation. She decided to stop and wait for a reaction. Crawford Gates finished chewing, nodded and took a slow sip of Perrier.
'Are you going to take Robert and Grace too?'
'Just Grace. Robert's got too much on. But Grace really needs to get away. Since she went back to school she's started to sink a little. The break'll do her good.'
What she didn't say was that even now neither Grace nor Robert had the faintest idea of what she was planning. Telling them was almost the only thing left to do. Everything else she had done, with Anthony's help, from the office.
The house she had found to rent was in Choteau, which was the nearest town of any size to Tom Booker's ranch. There hadn't been much choice, but the place was furnished and, from the details the real estate agent had sent, it seemed adequate. She had found a physical therapist nearby for Grace and some stables who were prepared to take Pilgrim, though Annie had been less than frank about what the horse was like. The worst part was going to be hauling the trailer across seven states to get there. But Liz Hammond and Harry Logan had made calls and fixed a chain of places they were welcome to stay on route.
Crawford Gates dabbed his lips clean.
'Annie my dear, I said it before and I say it again. You take all the time you need. These children of ours are precious, God-given creatures and when something goes wrong, we just have to stand right by them and do what's best.'
From someone who'd walked out on four marriages and twice that many children, Annie thought that was pretty rich. He sounded like Ronald Reagan at the end of a bad day and the Hollywood sincerity only served to sharpen the anger she already felt at her own miserable performance. The old bastard would probably be lunching at this same table tomorrow with her successor. She'd been half hoping he would just come right out with it and fire her.
Cruising back to the office in his absurdly long black Cadillac, Annie decided that tonight she would tell Robert and Grace. Grace would scream at her and Robert would tell her she was crazy. But they would go along with it because they always did.
The only other person she needed to inform was the one upon whom the whole plan hinged: Tom Booker. It would seem to others curious, she reflected, that this of all things worried her least. But Annie had done it many times before. As a journalist, she had specialized in people who said no. Once she'd traveled five thousand miles to a Pacific island and turned up on the doorstep of a famous writer who never gave interviews. She ended up living with him for two weeks and the piece she wrote won awards and was syndicated all over the world.