Children of the Storm

“I believe I could still enjoy a good dance or two, a real formal ball.”
        “Yes, you might go to the ball in a carriage,” Lydia told him, leaning forward in her chair, smiling, “but you'd have to come home in an ambulance.”
        Walter snorted.
        Sonya thought the old couple were merely amusing each other, and that the jibes were not meant seriously, but she could not be certain, and she felt out of place.
        “How do you happen to know Kenneth?” Lydia asked.
        She had once been a very pretty lady, Sonya could see, but now her eyes looked gray, flat and dull, her hair wiry and unkempt. Her face was criss-crossed with wrinkles, and these were especially concentrated around the eyes and mouth, an unfortunate condition which gave her the look of a cunning weasel and the pursed lips of an habitual gossiper. At one time, her question would have seemed like only a polite conversational initiative, but now it sounded half-quarrelsome, nosey.
        “I met him on the beach,” Sonya said.
        “Guadeloupe?”
        “Well, not exactly,” Sonya said.
        Kenneth had come into the room again and taken his seat next to Sonya. He said, “We met outside, a couple of hundred yards from the house, just a half an hour ago.”
        “What do you mean?” Lydia asked, not comprehending, her pursed mouth in a tight little bow.
        “She's working for the Doughertys,” Kenneth explained.
        “Those people!” Walter snapped.
        “I'm tutoring their children,” Sonya said.
        “How do you stand to work for him?” Lydia asked.
        “Mr. Dougherty, you mean?”
        “Of course, him.”
        “He treats his people well.”
        Walter snorted derisively. “We haven't much in common with the Dougherty family.”
        “You might even say that we're-at odds with them,” Lydia added.
        “The young lady can't help about that,” Kenneth said. “We can hardly blame her for what the Doughertys have done.”
        Neither of the old people said anything to that.
        Sonya felt distinctly uncomfortable in that darkened room, as if the walls were drawing closer and the air, despite its coolness, was pressing down on her like a sentient being; she imagined that she could feel walls and air hard against her back, on her shoulders, weighting down on her scalp, crushing. Why on earth had Kenneth Blenwell insisted on her coming to the house when he must have known she would not be much appreciated by his grandparents?
        At that moment, a woman in her sixties, dressed in a wrinkled maid's uniform, pushed a serving cart into the drawing room. Cups and saucers rattled on it.
        The maid-a rather dumpy woman with a wounded look, wheeled the cart into the center of the gathering, trundling it across one of Sonya's feet and nearly catching the other as well, offering no apology and giving no sign that the incident had even transpired.
        She said, “Mrs. Blenwell, I ain't used to havin' guests at this hour of the day, people to make ready for and what all.”
        “We're not used to having guests at any hour of the day, are we, Hattie?” Walter Blenwell cackled.
        “Just the same-” the maid began.
        “Here we go, Hattie,” Kenneth said, rising and taking hold of the cart. “I'll carry on from this point.”
        Without a word, but with a quick and unfriendly glance at Sonya, the woman turned away from the cart, dusted her hands on her unclean dress, and waddled out of the room.
        Kenneth poured the brandy in the four snifters, then the steaming coffee, served everyone in relatively short order. Though the ritual had not taken more than three or four minutes, Sonya felt as if the maid had left the room hours ago.
        “Any more threats over there?” Walter asked, after a terribly protracted silence while everyone sipped alternately at their brandy and coffee.
        “Any what?” Sonya asked. She had not been expecting him to speak to her again, and she hadn't been listening.
        “Come on, girl, you know what I mean! Threats! Have there been more threats against the children?”
        She cleared her throat and said, “No, not any more.”
        “You do know about the threats?”
        “Oh, yes,” she assured the old man. “I know about them.”
        “Terrible thing,” Lydia said.
        “Yes.”
        “And it's most terrible,” Kenneth said, “because it brought them here to