Children of the Storm (9 page)

    He did not seem to realize or care that his thoughtlessly antagonistic comments about the Doughertys put Sonya on the spot. She could hardly, after all, join in a conversation denouncing her employer.

    “Threatened to cut their throats, didn't he?”

    “I suppose,” Sonya said.

    “He did,” Walter said. “He threatened to cut their throats from ear to ear. But there was more than that.”

    “I'll say there was!” Lydia wheezed.

    She was leaning forward, as if the talk of blood had given her more energy than she'd known at one time in years.

    “Torture and mutilate,” Walter said, shaking his grisly old head, his white hair blued by the television. “Threatened to torture and mutilate them as well as kill them.”

    Sonya swallowed all of her brandy, trying to still her nerves, which were as jittery as a congregation of frogs.

    “What kind of a man, do you suppose, would even
consider
doing something as unspeakable as that?” Lydia asked Sonya. From the old woman's pursed lips and anxious expression, Sonya could only surmise that she was eager as a schoolgirl to meet this marvelously daring soul, whoever-or whatever-he was.

    “I don't know,” Sonya said. “A monster of some sort, a-madman.” She took a sip of her coffee.

    “More brandy, Sonya?” Kenneth inquired.

    “No. No, thank you.”

    “I believe the man also threatened to disembowel them,” Walter said. “Didn't he, Kenneth?” The old man held his coffee cup in both shaky hands.

    “He was not so civilized as to word it that nicely,” Kenneth said. “He promised, instead, 'to open the kids' guts,' quite a more forceful way of putting it.”

    The walls drew nearer.

    Despite the air-conditioning, Sonya was perspiring.

    She put her cup down.

    “Worse than that, though,” Walter said. “The man promised worse than that.”

    “The eyes,” Lydia added. “He promised to do something with their eyes. I don't remember just what.”

    Before any of them could tell her just what the man had threatened to do with the Dougherty children's eyes, Sonya said, “How did you learn all of this?”

    “Ken told us,” Lydia said.

    “And how did you hear all this?” Sonya asked the grandson.

    He smiled. “Rudolph told me.”

    “Mr. Saine?”

    “He's the only Rudolph I know around here.”

    Sonya was shocked, for Saine did not strike her as the sort of man who would go running to the neighbors, blabbing the latest gossip-especially to neighbors like the Blenwells, when he knew they did not like or associate with the Doughertys, his employers. And that meant that she had badly misjudged the burly bodyguard-or it meant that Kenneth Blenwell was lying, and that he knew about the nature of the threats through some other source…

    “You know Rudolph, then?” she asked.

    “We're friends.”

    “Friends?”

    “Why sound so incredulous?” Ken asked her. “Is there a law against it? I think he's a very capable, admirable man.”

    Lydia leaned far forward in her seat and said, “I know what it was now!”

    “What are you talking about?” Walter snapped.

    “What that terrible man promised to do with their children-he was going to cut out their eyes, he said. Take them right out of their heads. Wasn't that it, Kenneth?”

    “Yes, I think so,” he agreed.

    Sonya stood so abruptly that she caught the serving cart with her hip and jarred all the utensils on it, almost knocking over the cut glass brandy decanter which the youngest Blenwell barely managed to catch before it tipped to the floor.

    “I'm sorry,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. She wished that she could control the tone of her voice, for she knew that it contained a note of obvious panic. “But I really must go now. I've things to do back at Seawatch and-”

    “I'm sorry if we've frightened you,” Kenneth said.

    “No, no, you haven't-”

    She turned, aware that she was being rude, but really not caring much after having endured the past half hour with them, and she made for the open door and the hallway where there was at least a bit more light.

    When she opened the front door of Hawk House, Kenneth was right behind her.

    He said, “You're being silly, you know.”

    She turned, looked up at him, squinting in the strong sunlight. “Oh? How so?”

    “Even if someone does intend to kill the Dougherty kids, you're safe. No one has threatened you yet.”

    She nodded and went down the steps.

    “I'll walk you back,” he said.

    “That's not necessary.”

    “No trouble.”

    She summoned up all of her wits, thinking fast, and she said, in as level and forceful a voice as she could manage just then, “No, Mr. Blenwell, really now. Please don't bother. I would much prefer to walk home alone. I set out, alone, to explore
Distingue.
I want to see it at my own speed, in my own fashion, in order to get some emotional
feel
about the place. I'm sure you'll agree that that sort of thing is best done by oneself.”

    He grinned.

    Again, looking up at him, caught by his dark eyes, she could not be certain whether that grin was produced by high spirits, or whether he was mocking her.

    “Suit yourself,” he said.

    “Thank you for the coffee and brandy,” she said.

    “It was nothing.”

    “I'm sorry if I upset Hattie's schedule.”

    He continued to grin. “Not at all.”

    She turned away from him and felt relieved when she could no longer see his grin or his eyes.

    She set off toward the beach, went down the stone steps in the bank at the end of the lawn, took off her sandals and let the sand creep between her toes. When she reached the edge of the lapping sea, she turned toward Seawatch and walked away from Hawk House at a quick but not abnormal pace.

    “Come again!” he called.

    She pretended not to hear.

    Thinking of the grisly details which the Blenwells had insisted on painting for her, she rounded the point and, as soon as she knew she was out of Kenneth Blenwell's sight, she began to run. Her breath came into her lungs in curious, short sobs.

    

    The remainder of that week passed without significant event, as Sonya continued to instruct Alex and Tina, played games with them, and, on her off hours, enjoyed the sea, sand and sun, slowly forgetting about all the portents of danger: the shark, the man standing beneath the palms that night, the conversation with the Blenwells…

    Her friendship with Bill Peterson continued to flower and seemed, at times, to border on more than mere friendship. Though she was clearly attracted to him, and he to her, Sonya vowed to let the relationship develop slowly, cautiously, so that neither could be hurt by any eventual rejection. She admired him, liked him, studied him from a distance when he was unaware of her-but she was not yet sure if she was in love with him. She rather thought she wasn't. But that might very well come, given time, given leisure to know him better.

    She had also begun to grow close to Bess Dalton, Henry's wife. That woman was always full of smiles, teasing, laughing; she could even cheer Henry when he was in one of his sour moods, which was more frequently-once or twice a week -than Bill Peterson had at first let on.

    Helga, the cook, remained quiet, shy, vivacious only when the subject was food in general or her cooking in particular.

    Leroy Mills, the handyman, also remained standoffish, saying little, making himself scarce when she was around.

    Each time she saw him, she tried to fit him to the shadow she had seen beneath the palms…

    On her second Saturday at Seawatch, Sonya was summoned to Joe Dougherty's airy study at the top of the house, where she was given her first bi-weekly paycheck, the first, she hoped, of many. Though she had worked at a number of part-time jobs during high school and college, this was the first full-time position she had ever held; the receipt of the check, therefore, was a special occasion, like a milestone in the journey toward complete maturity and responsibility. And since most of the check, except for some mad money, would be banked in a savings account-receiving room and board in addition to her salary, she had few outside expenses-she was especially pleased and excited by the sight of that first salary check, almost like a teenager on her first job.

    “You've done very well,” Joe told her. “Helen and I think that Dr. Toomey couldn't have come up with anyone better for the job.”

    She smiled and looked at her hands. “Thank 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 had been utterly mad, a psychotic instead of a neurotic, he would have done less threatening, less posturing, and he would have acted. He would long ago have hurt the children.”

    “I guess so.”

    “I
know
so.”

    “But-”

    Dougherty interrupted. “Furthermore, even if the man was capable of doing the hideous things he said he would, he has been left behind in New Jersey.”

    “If I could be sure of that-”

    “I'm sure,” Dougherty said. “Positive. We've been here for months, now. If he were coming after us, he would have arrived long ago. He's most likely turned his attention elsewhere, harassing some other unsuspecting family. A psychotic would have come after us at once, for we would be the only satisfactory targets for his twisted hatred, and he would feel at a great loss if he couldn't continue to torment us. A neurotic, however, a less ill man, would easily turn his hatred elsewhere. And though I pity the family he bothers next, I'm just as glad that we're out of it and that he's found someone else for his games.”