“Stop blaming yourself, my child, for everything that goes wrong!”
He took a key from his pocket. “Here’s the key to my office. Wait up there where it’s quiet. I’ll come up later and tell you how Brad is—and I want to hear all about what happened.”
Kitty was glad he had thought of this, for her wet clothes and troubled face would certainly invite questions from any friends who might see her. She hurried out to the wing and up the steps to the second floor, instead of taking the elevator.
She had never been in the administrative wing at night when everyone was off duty. There was light in only one office as she went down the short hall on the upper floor. Strangely enough she felt more nervous there than she had in the lonely marshes before the shooting. She was tempted to turn back and go to Hazel’s room, but she knew that would invite questions and call for explanations, for which she was in no mood at the moment. In her father’s office she could be quiet to calm herself after so much excitement and strain.
She unlocked the door and touched the light button. She crossed to her father’s desk chair and sat down a moment. She felt she couldn’t live through this interval while waiting to hear about Brad. To divert her mind she reached for a book in a rack at the back of the desk. It proved to be a medical tome, whose language seemed dry as dust to her excited mind.
In the basket at the right of the desk were some addressed envelopes and a stack of orders that had been made up and signed by her father, but had not yet been mailed. Her eyes ran down the list of drugs and supplies that had been ordered.
While sitting there she suddenly shivered, and realized her clothes were wet through. Noticing one of her father’s coats hanging on a rack in the corner, she put it on, and went to the big armchair near the window. She took off her wet shoes and socks and tucked her feet under her woollen skirt until they were warm.
The chair faced the window and as she sat there she recalled that her father had pointed out the location of Mangrove Island from that very window. How long ago it seemed! She wondered if Punaro, or whoever had shot at them, was still out there.
Wind shook the window as it came howling in from the sea. The rain had stopped, however, and Kitty wondered if she could see anything across the marshes at night. She padded across the office on bare feet and switched off the light. While her eyes became accustomed to the darkness she sat on the window ledge peering out, wondering if the Nazi spies would dare come ashore in such a storm to pick up their loot. Would anyone be so foolhardy?
The night was impenetrably black under lowering clouds. She could see nothing except the glow at the Marine Base to the east, and a few house lights in the settlement around the hospital.