Children of the Storm

Dougherty or Mrs. Dougherty or either of their children-but was Bess.
        “Well,” Henry said after a few minutes, “she ought to meet the others. And then I'd guess she wants to freshen up and rest after that trip.”
        “Leroy's outside, patching the concrete at the pavilion,” Bess said. “I was just talking to him.”
        Henry lead Sonya and Peterson outside, onto the mat of tough tropical grass that covered the lawn like a flawless carpet, took them down a winding flagstone walkway toward an open-air pavilion down near the easterly beach. The building was perhaps forty feet long and twenty wide, with picnic tables and benches arranged around its waist-high rail walls. The roof was shingled tightly but laced over with palm fronds to give the illusion of primitive construction, and the final effect was exceedingly pleasant.
        “Mrs. Dougherty likes to sit here in the morning, when its cool and when the insects are not out. She reads a lot,” Henry informed them.
        Leroy Mills, the handyman who was working on the pavilion floor, stood over his most recent piece of patchwork, watching their approach, smiling uncertainly. He appeared to be in his middle thirties, small and dark, with an olive complexion that indicated Italian or Puerto Rican blood. He was thin, but with a stringy toughness that made it clear he was not a weak man at all.
        Henry made the introductions in a clipped fashion and finished with, “Leroy lived in Boston for a time.”
        “Really?” Sonya asked. “I went to school there.”
        Leroy nodded. “Too cold in Boston, for me.”
        “Me, too,” she said. “What part of Boston are you from?”
        “A part I don't like to remember,” Leroy said, still smiling uneasily. “I haven't lived there for quite a while now. I was Mr. Dougherty's handyman in New Jersey, before we moved here.”
        “You were a handyman' in Boston, too?” she asked, trying to make some pleasant conversation. Though he seemed nice enough, Leroy Mills was not particularly easy to engage in conversation.
        “Yes, there too.”
        “I'm a fumble fingers myself,” she said. “I admire someone who can fix things.”
        “If you need something repaired, almost anything, just call for me,” he said. He looked at the wet concrete at his feet. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to work.”
        Their conversation had been a most mundane one, yet it stuck with Sonya all the way back to the house. Mills had been so uncommunicative, even though Henry, by mentioning Boston, had provided them with a simple take-off point for an exchange of greetings. Of course, Mills might only be shy, as Helga so obviously was. And, when all was said and done, did she really know anything more about the others than she did about the handyman? Helga was too shy to say much. Bill Peterson was talkative and open but had not said much about himself; likewise, Bess. And Henry, of course, had said little because, as Peterson had explained, he was having a bad day. Yet… Mills' uncommunicative nature seemed different-as if he were being purposefully secretive. She had asked where he lived in Boston; he had avoided saying. She had asked what he did there; he had skipped that subject too. She realized, now, that he had been completely circuitous in his responses, as if she had been questioning him rather than making polite conversation.
        At the house again, she shrugged off the incident. She was building proverbial mountains out of molehills-all because of the story Peterson had told her on the way over from Pointe-a-Pitre. Child mobsters, threatening telephone calls, poison pen letters, madmen-on-the-loose-none of these things made for peace of mind, and all of them served to set the imagination working overtime.
        In the front foyer again, Bill Peterson said, “Well, I'll leave you to your rest for now and see you at dinner. You'll meet the Doughertys then, too.”
        “They eat meals with us?” she asked, surprised.
        Peterson laughed. “It's a democratic household, all the way. Joe Dougherty is in no way a snob, and he runs a lively dinner table. Leroy, you and I will eat evening meals with the family; the kitchen staff, which has to be cooking and serving, will eat separately, of course.”
        “See you at dinner, then.”
        She followed Henry up the wide central staircase to the second floor, along that main corridor to the