Jerusha set aside her sewing for the moment. Another quilt, perhaps destined for the gift shops of Cedar Key, and eventually the home of a passing tourist or the beach house of a wealthy Yankee. She glanced at the interplay of blues and greens and grays, the careful stitching and the intricate border pattern called “Storm at Sea,” the one she favored for her quilts. All were hand sewn, and all most carefully wrought. They served not only her primary purpose, but that of providing a comfortable, if not extravagant, monthly income as well.

She picked up the remote and flipped idly past Animal Planet and HGTV. For the last two days-- for the last three months, really -- her attention had focused on The Weather Channel and the travels of Jim Cantore. Jerusha was a beach dweller -- and more specifically, a beach dweller in Florida’s Big Bend -- so following the rhythms of hurricane season and the travels of the television weather chasers was second nature to her. And now, in peak hurricane season, three evenings before the beginning of Labor Day weekend, she checked the charts and the web sites almost compulsively, looking for the big one she knew was out there, lurking somewhere in the Caribbean with her name on it.

A light rain fell outside her window. The bougainvillea rustled lightly -- from a light breeze? -- no, from the cats hunting God-knows-what under its spiky knots of vines. The muted display on the TV caught her attention as it switched, and a four-color logo displaying the words “Tropical Update” flashed onscreen.

There it was. The tropical storm was fully organized now, having lost strength only slightly as it passed over the narrow part of Cuba and into the Strait. Now the warm waters of the Gulf would feed it, nurture it, then draw it northward. By the next time it made landfall, tomorrow night or the next, it would be a full-on hurricane, the tenth named storm of this season.

The man in the gray suit pointed to a chart of the southeastern US.

But not hers. The last storm to hit this area had been the summer before Jerusha had made it her home, and there were families who still, seven years later, were just beginning to get back on their feet, who still muttered darkly every summer about FEMA and tarps and blue roofs and the safety of their fishing boats. And her house was fragile, built of cement block with random bits of wooden built-ons, like so many in this community. The newer and more expensive houses closer to the beach were built on stilts; less because the owners saw the wisdom of local codes than because they sought the Key West charm that would have cost them a dozen times the price, eight hours to the south. Some of those had started, over the last few years, to gain semi-illegal additions under the house proper-- a workroom here, a child’s playroom there.  Technically open to allow storm water to pass through, these additions were nearly as elaborate in their feigned simplicity as the houses proper. But here, two blocks inland, the houses had been built long before code enforcement-- long before the codes, even, many of them. A direct hit would flatten the area, or perhaps just wash it away. That would simply be unthinkable.

Not hers, then. Whose? Pensacola was her first thought; they're used to it by now. Certainly anything that would wash away was long since gone, from Bonnie or Ivan or the edges of Katrina.

Jerusha picked up her needle and floss, and stared at the wide expanse of bluish green in the center left of her quilt. She began to envision a spiral, long and low and lazy, at one edge.

Pensacola knew the drill...and it occurred to her thatwas precisely why this storm was not theirs.