As she came to the top of the stairs, she saw Grace's door hadn't moved. She tapped on it as she went in. The drapes were still closed and she went across and drew them a little apart. It was a beautiful morning.
Then she turned to the bed and saw it was empty.
It was Joe who first discovered Pilgrim was missing too. By then they'd searched every cobwebbed corner of every outbuilding on the ranch and found no trace of her. They split up and combed both sides of the creek, the twins hollering her name over and over and getting no reply but birdsong. Then Joe came yelling from down by the corrals, saying the horse was gone and they all ran to the barn and found the saddle and bridle were gone too.
'She'll be okay,' Diane said. 'She's just taken him for a ride somewhere.' Tom saw the fear in Annie's eyes. They both already knew it was something more.
'She done anything like this before?' he said.
'Never.'
'How was she when she went to bed?'
'Quiet. She said she felt a little sick. Something seemed to have upset her.'
Annie looked so scared and frail, Tom wanted to hold her and comfort her, which would have looked only natural, but under Diane's gaze he didn't dare and it was Frank who did it instead.
'Diane's right,' Frank said. 'She'll be okay.'
Annie was still looking at Tom. 'Is Pilgrim safe enough for her to take out? She's only ridden him the once.'
'He'll be alright,' Tom said. It wasn't quite a lie; the real issue was whether Grace would be. And that depended on the state she was in. 'I'll go with Frank and we'll see if we can find her.'
Joe said he wanted to come too but Tom told him no and sent him off with the twins to get Rimrock and their dad's horse ready while he and Frank went to change out of their church clothes.
Tom was first out. Annie left Diane in the kitchen and followed him out over the porch to walk beside him to the barn. They only had the time it took to get there for the two of them to talk.
'I think Grace knows.' She spoke low, looking straight ahead. She was trying hard to keep control. Tom nodded gravely.
'I reckon so.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Don't ever be sorry Annie. Ever.'
That was all they said, because Frank came running up alongside and the three of them walked in silence to the rail by the barn where Joe had the horses waiting.
'There's his tracks,' Joe called. He pointed at their clear outline in the dust. Pilgrim's shoes were different from those of every other shod horse on the ranch. There was no doubt the prints were his.
Tom looked back just the once as he and Frank loped up the track toward the ford, but Annie was no longer there. Diane must have taken her inside. Only the kids still stood there watching. He gave them a wave.
It wasn't till she found the matches in her pocket that Grace had the idea. She'd put them there after practicing the trick with her father at the airport while they waited for her flight to be called.
She didn't know how long they'd ridden. The sun was high so it must be some hours. She rode like a madwoman, consciously so, wholeheartedly, embracing madness and urging its return in Pilgrim. He'd sensed it and ran and ran all morning, mouth afoam, like a witch's nag. She felt that if she asked he would even fly.
At first she'd had no plan, only a blind, destructive rage whose purpose and direction were not yet set and might be turned as easily on others as herself. Saddling him and shushing him in the gathering light of the corral, all she knew was that somehow she would punish them. She would make them sorry for what they'd done. Only when she reached the meadows and galloped and felt the cold air in her eyes did she start to cry. Then the tears took over and streamed and she leaned forward over Pilgrim's ears and sobbed out loud.
Now, as he stood drinking at the plateau pool, she felt her fury not lessen but distill. She slicked his sweating neck with her hand and saw again in her head those two guilty figures slinking one by one from the dark of the barn, like dogs from a butcher's yard, thinking themselves unseen and unsuspected. And then her mother, with her makeup smeared by lust and still flushed from it, sitting there calmly at the wheel of the car and asking, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, why she felt sick.
And how could Tom do this? Her Tom. After all that caring and kindness, this was what he was really like. It had all been an act, a clever excuse for the two of them to hide behind. It was only a week, a week for Godsake, since he'd stood chatting and laughing with her dad. It was sick. Adults were sick. And everyone knew about it, everyone. Diane had said so. Like a bitch in heat, she said. It was sick, it was all so sick.
Grace looked over the plateau and beyond the ridge to where the first pass curved up like a scar into the mountains. Up there, in the cabin where they'd all had such fun together on the cattle drive, up there, that's where they'd done it. Soiling, spoiling the place. And then her mother lying like that. Making out she was going there all alone to 'get her head together'. Jesus.