Children of the Storm

And it was all falling on my head.”
        “I see.”
        “When the storm's finished,” Peterson went on, “I can get things hooked up and started all over again.”
        “By then,” Saine said, “it won't matter.”
        Everyone stiffened, unconsciously, when the bodyguard made that unpleasant pronouncement.
        Saine, realizing what he had said and how it had been interpreted, explained himself, “I mean, by the time this storm's really over, Mr. Dougherty will know something's wrong here, and he'll be trying to get through. He'll have alerted the police on Guadeloupe, and help will have arrived.”
        Everyone eased back again, some of the tension draining out of them, though no one seemed to be as relaxed as he had been before Saine's faux pas. They had become especially intrigued with the approaching storm, engrossed in the violence of Nature, and this far greater spectacle had momentarily relieved them of their worry for the children. Now that worry was back, twofold, and there was no way to be distracted from it, fully, again.
        Henry Dalton and Leroy Mills returned from closing the shutters on the ground floor, stripped out of their water-beaded slickers and then, at Bess's insistence, from their shoes and socks.
        Helga made more coffee while the two men went to shut the second and third floor windows, and when they returned, she had also set out several plates of cookies and pastries which everyone, rather half-heartedly, was helping himself to.
        The next hour passed slowly, punctuated by three weather reports on the radio.
        The first:
        “Winds up to a hundred and ten miles an hour at the worst of the storm as Hurricane Greta moves closer to Guadeloupe on a steady northwest track. Inhabitants of the outlying island have, almost without exception, reported to Pointe-a-Pitre for shelter, where stores have been closed for some hours and shutters have been bolted against the fierce wind and rains that are moving in advance of the storm itself.”
        The second:
        “Captain Richard Spiker of the Janse Pride, freshly into port on Guadeloupe, reports that Hurricane Greta is one of the worst storms he has seen in twenty years of seamanship in the Caribbean. He reports towering seas, and an almost unbearable wind that managed to put the Janse Pride in a heavy list to port during the last few hours of her frantic drive for Guadeloupe.”
        The third:
        “The United States Weather Bureau operating out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, predicts that the hurricane will pass through the vicinity of Guadeloupe between ten-thirty and midnight tonight. U.S. reconnaissance planes, scouting the perimeter of the storm, report, from analysis of aerial photography, that the tides are running extraordinarily high. On this warning, the shopkeepers and homeowners living near the docks at Pointe-a-Pitre, have begun to move all furniture and goods off the ground floor, in the event the seas should breast the docks and pour into the lower streets of the city.”
        They talked, nervously, between the extended silences when they were listening intently to the weather reports and stories of imminent disaster on the radio, and they made a lot of bad jokes that somehow seemed, to them, quite funny. Only the children were clearly unimpressed with the danger posed by Hurricane Greta, for they played together as they always did, relaxed, pleased with themselves, competing in age-old games and in other games of their own manufacture. And they never wanted for a genuine smile or laugh, which made the adults' forced humor seem all the more phoney.
        Bill Peterson came and sat next to Sonya, trying to cheer her up. He seemed to be aware, more than the others were, that this was her first experience in a major storm and that, piled atop all the other horrors of recent days, this was almost too much for her to cope with.
        He held her hand.
        She welcomed that.
        He surprised her, after a while, by leaning close to her and whispering, “I'd like to talk to you alone.”
        She raised her eyebrows.
        “About Saine, about the things that have been going on,” he said, in a voice so low that Saine could not have heard him.
        “When?”
        “Now.”
        She said, “Where?”
        He thought for a long moment, then suddenly got to his feet, pulling her up after him.
        To the others in the kitchen, he