Chapter Twenty-Eight

Christian rushed through the front door less than an hour after he had left for work one morning, nearly scaring the pants off Letty by yelling for her. "What?" she cried as she scrambled to her bedroom door.

"Start loading up the car," he replied, panting. "We're evacuating."

"What?" she repeated, astounded rather than startled.

He had started to turn away towards his own room, but stopped, took a deep breath, and turned back to Letty. "Hurricane Michael has made a turn north, and is now headed directly towards us. It's already a Cat 3, and expected to get to a Cat 5 before landfall. They've called for voluntary evacuations, but it will be mandatory before sundown, I'm sure – that storm is moving fast. We've got our bugout bags packed up," (they had been working on them for the past two days in anticipation of the possibility) "so let's get them into the car and hit the road before it becomes hopelessly clogged."

Unexpectedly, hormonally, Letty suddenly turned completely obstinate. "No! I'm not going – I'm not leaving home. We've both ridden out storms before!"

Christian gaped at her. "Thunderstorms, yes, but not a Category FIVE hurricane! Letty..." He spluttered for a second, then came out with the last thing she expected. "I am not delivering that baby at home!"

She scoffed. "It's not due for two weeks!"

So he scoffed back harder. "Oh, right, and every baby always waits until its exact due date before making its grand entrance – and is never, ever affected by its mother's stress! Why babies are never born at home during hurricanes!" His sarcasm could have cut a loaf of bread. "Letty – I am not delivering that baby – I'm not even taking a chance on it. Besides – " Without warning, his voice cracked, and tears sprang to his eyes, making her step back, startled. "Besides, in a couple of days, we may not have a home left."

"What do you mean?"

"They're calling for a six-foot storm surge, minimum, and probably much higher. We are five blocks from the ocean. This entire house is going to be underwater – if it's not completely swept away. We are going to lose everything we don't take with us."

Flabbergasted, Letty could only gape at Christian wordlessly. She had never been in such a situation before.

"So please... stop arguing with me, and get the important things into the car, and let's go."

He had turned away once more before she found her voice. "Christian..."

"What?" he swung back yet again, completely exasperated.

"I'm sorry." Her stricken face showed she really meant it. "I know how much you love this house."

He had to look away a moment, then nodded. "Yeah," he replied softly. "I do. I love everything about it – and about the life I've built here. If this hurricane hits dead on, Cat Five like they are forecasting, it could wipe out this entire town. I really have no idea if any parts of my life here – our lives here – will be left." Taking another deep breath, he stepped back to Letty and laid one palm gently on her cheek. "But we – you and me, and that baby – are more important than any of the rest. These are just things, just jobs. We can get more." He smiled a crooked, half-hearted smile. "After all, it's not the first time I've started over with nothing. At least I've still got a decent pile of money in the bank – which is more than a lot of people in this situation have. I'm lucky in that much. I can start over."

"But won't you get insurance on this place? All those pictures you've been taking..." The past two days he had taken hundreds of shots with his cell phone, documenting every possession.

But he shook his head as he dropped his hand again. "I couldn't get flood insurance, because the house is in a flood plain, right next to the shore – not without paying the insurance company as much as I paid for the house itself." He shrugged. "Call me stubborn, but I'd rather spend that money directly on a new place, than running it through a greedy insurance company, and getting only pennies back, probably." Sighing, he shook his head again to close that line of inquiry, and asked, reasonableness itself, "Is that all of your objections, Letty?"

Chastened, she nodded.

"Then call Richard and tell him we're bugging out, and get packing."

"What about your job?"

"They called me. They're sending all non-essential personnel out now. That's why I turned back." He pointed to her cell phone, inevitably in her hand. "Dial."

"Right," Letty agreed, sighing as she lifted the phone – which began ringing in her hand right at that moment. Looking at the caller ID, she snorted, then answered. "Richard? I was just about to call you."

"To tell me you're evacuating, I hope," came her manager's voice.

"Yeah," she sighed as she turned back to her room. "We're bugging out. I'm sorry, I won't make it in – "

But he cut her off. "Good. We're closing the restaurant – not even opening today. That's why I'm calling everyone, telling them to get out. Call me in a few days, after the hurricane has passed, and we'll try to sort things out."

"Oh my god," she whispered. For some reason, the seriousness of the situation hadn't hit her until that moment, hearing that Red Lobster was closing. It never closed.

"Letty... do you have a place to go?"

"I don't know where we're going," she admitted. "I think we're just driving till we find a place. Or maybe Christian knows – I don't know."

"Letty... please take care. Be careful. I... I care about you." It wasn't like she didn't know that, but he'd always been extremely careful not to show it, since he was her boss.

"Richard..."

"I know, I know. You're not free... and you work for me. I just... wanted you to know." He took a loud breath, and forced his voice into a more neutral tone. "I gotta go. Several more calls to make. Talk to me in a few days?"

"Right. Hey, you be careful, too. Are you on your way out of town?"

"As soon as these calls are done." He paused. "Talk to you soon." The line went dead as he hung up.

Letty took a deep breath, and tried to blow out her tension with it, then went to gather her bags.

They really had been packing – at Christian's insistence and Letty's slightly exasperated patience – for two days, using the Red Cross and FEMA lists as guides: two weeks of clothing, medicines and filled prescriptions, eyeglasses and their prescriptions (Letty had finally given in and gone to Lenscrafters a few weeks back; she was still getting used to them), important documents (her recovered certificates, his house papers, etc), small electronics and chargers (Christian had copied all the files from his desktop onto a small external hard drive), valuable jewelry and small knicknacks (if any) that they couldn't leave behind, were all packed into as few canvas grocery bags as they could manage – and two more bags of newborn baby clothes, diapers, and first toys were also waiting for the blessed arrival. Letty had a separate diaper bag of overnight essentials for her and the baby, ready to take to the hospital when the time came. The car seat had been properly installed in the back seat of Christian's car two weeks before. Two cases of bottled water and two bags of ready-to-eat food, flashlights and batteries – just in case – sat on the floor in front of the car seat. Amazingly, working steadily, they managed to cram everything into the trunk, with a couple of "day bags" of really essential stuff in the back seat for each, within just half an hour.

At one point, Letty called to Christian from her room as he walked by, and he entered to find her staring tearfully at the painting on the wall. "I guess that Wanderer is going to be looking at a whole lot more than fog here pretty soon," he commented painfully.

"Wait, don't you have an attic space?"

He had to think a minute – he'd never used it. "Yeah, the hatch is over the dining table."

"Will that fit up there? It might be a little safer."

Christian shook his head sadly. "It's too big." Then he thought. "Wait. The frame is too big. But we can always reframe it." He pulled the painting off the wall and laid it face down on Letty's bed, then went and retrieved a flat screwdriver, a sharp knife, and masking tape from the kitchen, as well as a flat sheet from the linen closet. He wrenched the fancy scrolled wood frame from the edges with the screwdriver, then used the knife to carefully cut the canvas just inside the staples on the back holding it to the inner frame.

"I always thought that was a print," Letty commented.

"Nope," he replied. "Painted oil copy." Carefully rolling up the now freed painting, he then rolled it up inside the sheet, taped the bundle closed, then handed the roll to Letty. "Put it in the back seat. I'm not leaving him here."

When she returned from that errand, she walked slowly through the house one last time, making sure there was nothing important left behind. Of course there was – gobs of things, everywhere she looked – but nothing that made the cut. Stepping out through the sliding glass door, she spied Christian out in the garden, on his knees in a corner, carefully digging up some bulbs and putting them – about half a dozen – into a brown paper lunch bag. She stepped over to his side and put a silent hand on his shoulder. After a moment, he was able to look up at her and give a watery smile. "Siberian Iris. My favorite flower – and the first thing I planted here."

"Well," she commented thoughtfully, thinking back to her first day in the little house. "That's the nice thing about gardens – they're never finished. Always a work in progress." Looking down at his beloved face, she squeezed his shoulder. "You'll just have to use those to continue this work in progress in another place."

Christian nodded, and patted her hand gratefully. Then he groaned to his feet.

"All ready?"

"No," she sighed, then, "Yeah."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Let's go."