Children of the Storm

improved sufficiently to permit that trip.
        Through the film of water, Tina looked up at the young woman holding her, dark eyes locking with blue eyes, and even though she was a child and supposedly incapable of sophisticated communication with an adult, she passed a wealth of emotion in those short seconds, fears and hopes that Sonya was able to recognize at once and sympathize with.
        She hugged Tina closer.
        She said, “I'll get us through.”
        At about the same moment, she became aware that Alex was standing before her, trying to get her attention. She bent, as if to try to hear what he had to say, then saw that he was frantically pointing toward the flooded glen out of which they had just come.
        Knowing what she would see before she looked, she turned and stared into Peterson's eyes.

----

    THIRTY-ONE
        
        Kenneth Blenwell sat before the unshuttered window, watching the rain-swept lawn, the dipping trees that looked a bit like frantic dancers in a new style discotheque. He winced each time that something-perhaps a leaf, a tiny branch, a bare palm frond, a piece of paper carried from who-knew-where, clouds of dust and small pebbles- slapped against the glass with the force of Greta's big, invisible hands behind them. He knew that something might very likely be blown against the window at just the proper angle and at just the right speed to smash the pane and shower him with dangerously sharp shards of flying glass, but he tried to be watchful for such a thing, and he remained, fairly faithfully, at his post.
        Once, he went for a cup of coffee, telling himself that he was being the perfect fool and that nothing could happen in the three minutes or so that he would be gone.
        But he'd come running back, breathless, slopping coffee on his hand, certain that he'd chosen the crucial moment to take a break and that he was missing what he had been watching all this time for.
        The lawn had been empty.
        He sat down.
        He finished his coffee.
        He watched.
        Time passed as slowly for him as it had for Sonya, earlier in the morning, when she had waited in the kitchen of Seawatch for Rudolph Saine and Bill Peterson to return from the second floor with the kids. He kept looking at his watch, frowning, holding it close to his ear to see if it were still working.
        It always was.
        He went and got another cup of coffee and took his time returning to the window, so that he would not feel like an utter fool when he looked out and saw that the lawn was unpeopled and that the storm was still the focal point of the scene.
        Fifteen minutes later, he went to see how Walter and Lydia were getting along in the storm cellar. The place was as comfortably furnished as their regular living room, though the concrete walls gave off an unmistakable chill. They counteracted this irritant by wearing coats and draping their legs with afghans which Lydia had made herself. They were sipping wine and reading, clearly upset that they must miss their television programs for a while, but functioning nonetheless, in their usual style.
        “You should be down here too,” Lydia warned him.
        “I will be, shortly.”
        “What's taking you so long, anyway?” his grandfather asked.
        “Tying things down.”
        “Never took this long before.”
        “I'm getting old,” he said, smiling.
        Hattie, the maid, was there too, reading, sipping cola instead of wine. She smiled at him, a rare thing these days. Though he had often been angry with his grandparents for keeping her on just because, after working a lifetime for them, she had nowhere else to go, he was now glad that they had ignored him. She was grumpy, aging faster than either Walter or Lydia, though they were senior to her, and she was no longer a particularly efficient housekeeper and cook. But her presence was a testament to his grandparents' generosity and their concern about people they touched. She reminded him of how Walter and Lydia had been, when they were more vital, recalled to him the thousands of other kindnesses he had seen them extend and which they had extended to him. For that reason, despite her grumpiness, Hattie was good to have around.
        “I'll give you just another fifteen minutes,” Lydia said, looking at her watch.
        “And you'll spank me if I take longer?”
        “No, but your grandfather