Children of the Storm

you-Joe.”
        “The children feel the same way,” he said. “They're absolutely crazy about you, and therefore they're learning.”
        “I like them too,” she said. “They make it easy to teach them, to have fun with them. They're both awfully bright, as inquisitive as any kids I've ever come across.”
        He nodded, aware of his children's talents. He said, “For some time now, Helen and I have wanted to get away, by ourselves, for a short vacation, a week or two. We have friends in California we've been promising to visit for months now.”
        She knew what was coming, didn't like it, but said nothing.
        “We'll be going over to Guadeloupe tomorrow morning, in the Lady Jane, and we'll catch a private plane out of the islands, around eleven o'clock. That takes us straight into Miami, where we have an hour lay-over before the commercial flight to Los Angeles.”
        Sonya nodded.
        He said, “I typed out our intended schedule and left it with Rudolph, and I've got another copy of it, here, for you.”
        He handed her a gray, Xerox sheet of paper.
        She tried to conceal the trembling in her hands when she took the paper from him. She stretched it tight, holding it with both hands, and she thought she managed to appear relatively unruffled, though, all the while, she was thinking of the threats that had been made against Alex and Tina.
        Joe Dougherty leaned back in his desk chair and said, “We'll be staying with friends; the addresses are there at the bottom of the page, along with telephone numbers.”
        Sonya looked, saw them, cleared her throat and said, “Fine.” Her voice, even in that single word, did not sound so strong and calm as she would have liked.
        He hesitated, as if he did not know how to phrase what he must say next, swiveled to look at the blue sky that shone behind one of his large windows and, gaining strength from that view, turned to her once more. “If, for any reason, you should need to contact us, feel free to call at any hour of the day or night.”
        “Will I need to, do you think?” she asked. Her voice sounded small and shaky, but she did not care.
        “It's highly unlikely,” he said.
        She wondered…
        He said, “But those kids are awfully active, like a couple of young pups always scampering about. If one of them should fall out of a coconut tree or try to swim too far out toward the sandbars-or get hurt in some other way, we would, of course, want to know about that immediately.” He smiled. “We're not the overly protective sort of parents, but we do like to keep tabs on those scamps.”
        “Naturally,” she said.
        “On the other hand,” he said, “they are certainly not fragile, not by any means. They're as flexible as two rubber bands; they'll snap back from just about anything, like most kids their ages, I suppose. So, if I were you, Sonya, I wouldn't lay awake nights worrying about them. Every kid gets his quota of scrapes and bruises; that's a part of growing up.”
        She had decided to say nothing about the circumstances which had sent the Dougherty family to Distingue ahead of their yearly schedule, and she was surprised to find herself saying it nonetheless, as if the words were being formed against her volition, as if the voice she was using was not hers at all.
        “What about the man who-threatened them?” she asked.
        His face clouded, but only for a moment. He was the sort of man who was rarely depressed or frightened-one of the reasons Sonya liked working for him so much-and was also the kind of man who, when he was concerned, would be careful not to let his anxiety spread to those around him. His frown, therefore, was short-lived, replaced almost at once by his contagious smile. He leaned back in his chair again, and he said, “I suspect that we've long since outdistanced that man and his threats.”
        “He still frightens me,” she said.
        “Don't think about it,” he said. “That entire episode is over and done with.”
        “I can't help it,” she said, feeling somewhat like a ninny, but determined to make her own feelings understood.
        Dougherty leaned forward again, hunching conspiratorily over his big desk, his arms resting on it, his hands folded together in the center of the big blotter. “The man was neurotic, Sonya, mentally disturbed. But I don't believe that he was completely mentally unbalanced. If he