Children of the Earth Read Free Page B

different, she looked different, too. She’d put on some weight, and her face was rounder, the skin taut and glowing and her old acne pockmarks nearly gone.
    “Yeah, well.” Janie gave a vague shrug. “I guess we should go upstairs.”
    She led Hilary up the wooden skeleton of a wide, sweeping staircase that would one day be finished in marble, past doorways with no doors that peeked into rooms whose only decoration was yellow sheets of insulation stapled to the walls. With the lawsuit against Janie’s father stalled and the Varleys hurting for cash, they’d sold their ranch house in town and moved the family to the chateau on Elk Mountain before it was finished—and judging from the way money had been lately, it seemed like it may never get done at all. Vince Varley swore they’d get it fully insulated and heated before winter, but there had been no workers for days, maybe even weeks. The Wyoming air was chilly even in early September, wind whistling through the cracks in the walls like lost children crying to come home.
    “Brrr.” Hilary hugged her arms and shivered as they entered the den. It was the only room in the west wing—Doug and Janie’s wing—that was fully furnished, but the old leather living room set from the Varley’s ranch house still seemed dwarfed by the vast expanse of plywood floor. “It’s cold in here.”
    “I’ll build up the fire.” Janie dredged logs from a cardboard box and poked at the smoldering coals, watching them jump and hiss before licking at the wood and filling the room with smoke. “At least there’s plenty of wood on this land.”
    “Remind me to bring you a space heater next time I come.” Hilary perched on the end of the couch and looked around, slowly taking in the panorama of the Savage Mountain Range from the huge bay window. “Sure is some view, though.”
    Janie guessed it was okay, but she preferred to face away from the lonely peaks, staring instead at the fireplace or the flat-screen television Doug had propped somewhat precariously on a milk crate.
    “Want a drink?” Janie held out an economy-sized plastic bottle half-full of the cherry vodka she’d taken to sipping throughout the day. The strong, clear liquid burned sweet trails down her throat and kept her mind hazy and soft, away from the thorny edges of thoughts that caught and ripped at her brain: memories of the birds that had fallen dead from the sky on the day of her shotgun wedding to Doug, of Daphne holding her stillborn infant son in her arms, of Doug pushing her into the dirt and screaming over her as she sobbed, blaming her for their son’s death. “It’ll warm you up.”
    She realized that maybe she should go to the kitchen for glasses (it’s what a good hostess would do, what her mother would do), but that meant a long trip down the cold stairs and dark hallways, and possibly meeting Deirdre Varley’s disapproving face over the vast kitchen island, silently judging her daughter-in-law while she attempted a new casserole with some phony-sounding French name.
    But Hilary shook her head. “I don’t really drink anymore,” she said. “I know—crazy, right? Me, turning down a drink? But, well, ever since everything happened, with Trey going to God and them finding that ancient tablet and—well, you know . . . what happened to you.” She averted her eyes, color creeping into her cheeks. Janie knew. Sometimes, it felt like it was
all
she knew.
    “Anyway, I’ve been trying to live a little cleaner since all that,” Hilary went on. “Pastor Ted says the Rapture’s coming any day now, and we all have to get right in the eyes of God. That means no drinking, no swearing, no getting down before marriage—which is great for me, ’cause now Bryce keeps talking about putting a ring on it.” She grinned wickedly, a flash of the wisecracking old Hilary superimposed over the clean, shiny new one.
    Janie took a swig from the bottle, seeing as how Hilary didn’t want any anyway. Maybe