Alethea Milford, standing in front of her bathroom mirror and gazing at her own red-rimmed eyes, saw that same vacuum of hope reflected in her weary face. Alethea was a big woman—nearly six feet tall—and in her soul she knew that frame had been intended to house an outsized destiny. Once, perhaps, her spirit had been generous and expansive; now it was shriveled and pinched.
She took things far too personally, and she knew it. Her brothers Ward and Devin—they could externalize their rage, could make accommodations. She could do nothing but seethe inside—and drink. And in the throes of that drinking, cast herself into more dubious forms of self-abandonment than she cared to think about at seven o’clock in the morning.
It would have all been different, she ruefully considered, if only the whole world hadn’t gone crazy around her. She’d been one of those young women whose life was all in place, who had a plan. At the time of the Soviet attack, Alethea Milford had been an honor student at the University of Nebraska. She was studying journalism, and by God she could write the stuff. She saw her future clearly: the trench coat, the note pads, the bylines, the sense of doing something.
And what was she doing now? Ruining herself with alcohol, wallowing in the knowledge of her reputation, and utterly unable to come to terms with the aching love and desperate anger she felt toward her brothers and her father—toward everyone, in feet, who’d shared in her disgraced and disappointed life. “Such a waste,” she whispered aloud to her own reflection. “Such a sinful waste.”
She stepped into the kitchen and hesitated. William Milford, the patriarch of the family and a strong, unyielding man of the land, sat alone with a mug of black coffee. She looked at this man—her father—who had spent most of his seventy years being successful and respected, and who now looked broken and hollow. He looked up at her, his face set in cold contempt. Alethea forced a smile. “’Morning, Dad.”
He didn’t reply. She shrugged.
Outside, Ward Milford climbed out of his patrol car and entered the kitchen. “Hello, Alethea. How’s it going, Dad?”
“Damn squatters tore some siding right off the back of the milk barn.”
“How much they get?”
“Why?” asked Will Milford, with a sarcasm he found harder and harder to keep out of his voice, even when talking to his own children. “You gonna do something about it?”
Ward hesitated. He knew only too well his father’s now-archaic feelings about the rights of property owners; he understood the old man’s rage at being so helpless is the end. He sympathized, as well, with the squatters, internal exiles kept in constant motion by the harassment of the authorities. “What can I do, Dad? Want me to go around checking who’s got pieces of our barn sticking out of their campfires?”
“You think it’s okay for the government to steal the land,” William Milford grumbled. “You probably think it’s okay for the squatters to rip the damn house down for firewood.”
“You know I don’t. I’ll look into it.” He stared at his father, waiting for a response. There was none.
The old man stared stubbornly out the window at the battered barns, rusty silos, and barren winter fields.
Alethea slipped past her father into the hallway, and Ward, sensing a moment when brother and sister might comfort each other, followed her.
“You been cryin’ or drinkin’?” he said, instantly sympathetic.
“Cryin’ while drinkin’.” Her face was flushed, her eyes red. “You have to be real coordinated to be able to do it. Kinda like chewing gum and kissing.”
Amanda Bradford, fully awake at last, joined her children in the kitchen. Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her lithe and almost girlish body stood in painful contrast to her taut and careworn face. Amanda had once had a classic cheerleader sort of prettiness; with age had come a more substantial beauty tempered by sorrow and perhaps too much awareness.
As Amanda entered the kitchen, Jackie was stuffing her books into her backpack. Scott, her “little” brother by a year, was wolfing down a double-decker sandwich of toast, fried eggs, and ham. Scott was dark-haired and handsome like his father. At six-four, he was a budding basketball star in the orange and black Milford High letter jacket.
“Where’d the ham come from?” Amanda asked.
“I swiped it from the training table,” Scott said.
“They’ve got to keep the jocks healthy,” Jackie said disdainfully.
Amanda no longer minded the eternal bickering between her two children; at its best, she thought, it was a minor art form.
“You shouldn’t steal,” she said, helping herself to a bite of ham. “Boy, that’s good.” She sighed. “Jackie, want some moral support at your tryouts this afternoon?”
“Okay, if you don’t say anything.”
Amanda walked her daughter to the door. “You’re a strange kid—you don’t want to be criticized by your own mother.” Jackie pulled on her parka. “Be good,” Amanda said, straightening her daughter’s collar.
“Yeah, give ’em hell, Jack,” Scott called. “Just don’t get pregnant.”
“Jerk,” Jackie called, and ran to her bike.
Scott left a moment later, still munching on his sandwich. Amanda trailed after him, waving his parka.
“Take this!” she called.
“Don’t need it.”
“Take it anyway.”
She smiled, watching as her two children pedaled out of sight. Childhood slipped by so quickly, she reflected; happiness, sometimes, vanished even faster. She wondered idly if she and Peter would have had more children if the Transition hadn’t come. They hadn’t even thought of it then; everything seemed so hard, so different, that along with everyone else they had concentrated on protecting what they had, not reaching out for more.
As she turned to go back into the house, a darting motion at the outer edge of her field of vision caused her to stop abruptly. There was something animal-like and fugitive in what she’d glimpsed, as though a fox or a raccoon had found itself cornered by daylight. But in fact the skittish movement wasn’t made by an animal. the creature was a human child. As the child tried to sneak abound the corner of the garage, Amanda realized that it must have been foraging in the garbage cans that were kept there.
The child wore patched and thrown-together castoffs to fight the sharp cold. The first thing Amanda thought of was Scott’s unwanted parka, but she did not take her eyes off the child, who, she could now see, was a girl. The little girl froze under Amanda’s gaze like a rabbit caught in headlights. Amanda approached slowly and carefully. She thought she might scare the girl further if she tried to make eye contact—the girl’s wide-eyed stare was pure fear—so she let her gaze range over the tatterdemalion outfit: a grown-up-sized plaid shirt whose frayed tails dangled below the waistband of a patched green woolen jacket, oversized boots stuffed with rags. Amanda knew, with a mother’s instinct, that this child was loved: the boots had been carefully packed to keep out the cold, and although none of the patches on the jacket matched, they’d been securely sewn.
Amanda stopped a few feet from the little girl and extended her hand in a universal gesture of friendship. “Hi, honey. What’s your name?”
The child did not speak. As Amanda knelt in front of her, the girl regarded her with solemn suspicion.
“Where are you from?” she asked, although she knew the answer. The Exile child remained silent.