Leaving the Barn (an exerpt from "Matilda")

They were an older couple and they were looking for a hotel room. They had left their home near the coast because of the hurricane. Now it was the two of them and their Chihuahua, Mimi, scouring for Vacancy signs in Greenville.
“I’m not staying in a motel room,” Nolan snapped at Prudence.
There are 132 hotels and motels in Greenville, with a total of 1,183 rooms, and the Lopps (and dear Mimi) were getting shut out at every turn. They should take in pets considering everything, Prudence argued. The storm, Matilda, was going to breach close, and she wielded a history of ruin.
“My little baby won’t make no fuss,” Prudence huffed as Nolan peered through the streaked windshield, pulling right up to the lobby of an Econo Lodge. She knew right off he didn’t want to stay there. He was in no shape to drive on, either to Kinston or Rocky Mount. His nerves were shot.
Prudence darted out of the car, clasping her heirloom raincoat to her bosom. The heat surprised her every time. It was near midnight but the rain and wind had done nothing to dull the stifle from a searing August day. Her mother’s birthday was a day away, the 23rd. The lord rest her soul, Prudence was thinking as she stood at a counter and waited for the concierge to check the computer for cancellations.
CNN was scrawling about the storm’s hours-away landfall: the tidal surge, the rainfall amounts, threat of tornadoes, and why people should evacuate now if they haven’t already. She watched the yellow words stream through a black background and listened to canned music coming from somewhere overhead. Sarah Vaughan singing “Lush Life.”
“Two double beds OK?” the concierge said through enormously bucked teeth.
Prudence said it was, but said nothing this time about Mimi. She was tired of playing around with these people. If they didn’t get a room soon Nolan was going to blow.
Her husband laid on the bed, rubbing one old knee, as she scooted in with the last bags and Mimi. The dog was nestled in a duffle bag Prudence had bought online just that spring. It was too small for Mimi to sleep in, but Mimi was going to sleep on the spare bed.
“C’mere, sugar,” Nolan drawled. “We’re going to be alright.”
Prudence knew that was so. They’d be fine as long as the roof didn’t blow off the Econo Lodge and the Tar River didn’t flood like Revelations. What concerned her was the house they’d left behind, what they’d all long called “the barn.”
She hadn’t had time to do anything to protect the antiques. They hadn’t even boarded up any windows, which meant there were at least two pricey and irreplaceable buffets that could catch a soaking if the windows burst out.
“Watch out, baby,” she told Mimi as the dog hopped off the bed to follow Prudence to the bathroom mirror. Prudence looked at the fading makeup and wished she hadn’t even put any on. None of the riffraff working at these hotels could have cared if she’d had walked in with a Kabuki face on.
Her mother had always told Prudence that most folks don’t care what your face looks like, as long as it don’t look angry. A kindly smile goes a long way. A pretty face might get you in the door, mother’d said, but the smile keeps you inside.
Prudence cut on the TV and sat at Nolan’s feet, stroking Mimi in her lap. The local news was showing where Matilda was, and the storm looked like it was actually rearing back an arm, like an octopus arm, and was going to smack the coast with it.
“God help us,” Nolan moaned. “We might be here for days.”
“There might not be anything to go back to,” Prudence said, smiling as best she could down at the dog, then puckering her lips.
“We might lose everything,” Prudence announced, close to tears. “Everything my family’s ever had is back there, Nolan. And it could get smashed like a dollhouse, just ripped to pieces, before this is all over with.”
Nolan thought about that for a second. After all his years with the IRS he still tended to see material things in the form of dollars. It was all taxable value, and he’d already told her this. Them making it out safe was the important thing.
“It’s all insured very nicely,” he said, still trying to rub the pain from his knee. “I have the papers with us, Prudence.”
She nodded, but she was crying a little already.
“Anything could happen to it,” she sniffled. “Somebody could break in and steal it, for all we know.”
Mimi hopped down to run into the bathroom and have the first sip from the toilet. Typically, Prudence and Nolan didn’t tolerate this. The only time Nolan had ever spanked the little thing was when Mimi took a swig from a neighbor’s downstairs bathroom, during a visit that past Christmas. This time the owners didn’t even notice.
Nolan didn’t think thieves would be out during a hurricane, and he told Prudence so. Besides, he said, the Barn was six feet off the ground, so if the creek flooded it wouldn’t come in the house. And all the pecans were far enough away from the house to cause any worry.
“I don’t know,” Prudence countered, getting up to put away their clothes. The first thing she noticed was that the handles on the knee-high dressers were greasy. Normally this would have driven her up the walls. Now she just tucked their things into separate drawers without saying a word. She even put the two thin, little sweaters of Mimi’s into its own drawer. Her parents’ antique armoire was causing Prudence distress. It was 18th Century French as worth thousands. Prudence used to hide in it when she was little and playing with her sisters. Of course she’d mashed her fingers in its doors once, but it had always been a beloved piece.
“You know I ain’t one for being superstitious,” she said to Nolan, evenly, with precision, “but my grandmother always said to cover old furniture with clean sheets when you left home for more than one night.”
Nolan yelped softly as Mimi hopped onto him, nuzzling his chest with a damp nose. They were all suddenly started by a thump on the ceiling, but it didn’t repeat itself. Within a few seconds the muffled beats of rap music oozed into the room from above.
“Figures,” Nolan groused. “We’ll have to turn the TV up. This is why I didn’t want to stay in a cheap motel. This is exactly why.”
Prudence was looking at him as he stroked Mimi into a nap. She was worried about him, too. Nolan’s doctors said his shallow breathing of late could be sign of heart trouble. He was 72 and his father was already dead from a heart attack by that age. There was just a lot for her to worry about at the moment.