She went back into the house, found her keys to the car, then left the farm still dressed in her robe. Instinctively, she drove south on the road.

No reason to panic, she thought. The old woman had wandered outside the house before, but never far away like her grandfather had done, never off the property. There had been times when she simply wanted to feel sunshine on her face and had found some false energy to pull herself from her chair and make her way to freedom. And always, she was annoyed with Eleanor when Eleanor tried to urge her back inside the house, always complaining in the kind of hissing, old-age temper that had the venom of a poisonous snake in it. Once, she had even tried to attack Eleanor with a stick she had found in the yard, calling her a bitch and a whore, saying she had made Boyd kill himself.

Eleanor sat up in the driver’s seat, close to the steering wheel, driving slow, knowing it was possible the old woman had fallen and rolled into a gully.

Maybe she was headed toward Howard Reynolds’s home, she thought. Hoped it was true. Hoped she had made it that far, yet doubted it. By the road, it was almost two miles between their homes. And if Howard or Howard’s wife, Ada, had seen her, they would have taken her in and would have made a telephone call about it. They were good people, good neighbors. Often they stayed with Beatrice while she shopped, or they would have Beatrice stay at their home. They knew what it was like to watch over people who had wandering minds. Their grandson, Matthew, was thought to be slow-witted enough to need watching. Maybe she was going to the Reynolds home out of some remembered pleasure, like a homing bird taking flight.

And then she saw her.

Ambling on the roadside, still wearing her white sleeping gown, a bent-over figure, ghostly in the way she looked and in the way she moved.

Eleanor pulled the car to a stop behind her, got out, went to her. She said, “Granny, what are you doing out here?”

The old woman lifted her face to look at Eleanor. A pink flush was in her face from the labor of walking so far. “Going to the lake,” she answered.

“The lake?” Eleanor said. “What for?”

“To see Boyd,” the old woman said, and there was a tone of defiance in her voice.

Eleanor took her by the arm and began to lead her back to the car. Beatrice tried to pull away.

“Granny, we need to go on back home now,” Eleanor told her.

“I’m going to see my grandboy,” she said.

“He’s not there,” Eleanor replied gently.

The old woman glared at her. “You told me he was.”

“No, ma’am,” Eleanor said. “I said the young man who helped us out was staying down there. Noah. Do you remember his name? He and Taylor Bowers had supper with us last night.”