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L8er, Katie

Ramona
      W hen I get back downstairs, my mother is making coffee. “Do you want some, too?” she asks. Like it’s her kitchen.
    I nod.
    “Have you heard anything from Sofia?”
    “Not yet. She has to get to the hospital, get herself settled, all that. We probably won’t hear for another day or two.”
    Lily measures coffee into a paper filter. “Poor baby. Who knows what she’ll find. I’m so worried about her. I mean—burns, dear God.” She shakes her head. “I’ve got the prayer team on it.”
    I’m worried, too, but it always feels like my mother is making things into some big drama. Even if this might qualify, I don’t want to start hand-wringing. “She’s strong. She knew what she was getting into when she married a career soldier.”
    “Well, it’s one thing to know intellectually. Another to have to deal with it emotionally. And she’s pregnant.” Lily clicks her tongue. “Such a handsome man, too. Is his face burned?”
    Would it be better if he was ugly? “I don’t know anything, Mom. Nothing.”
    She finishes the prep on the coffeemaker, presses the button.Carefully not looking at me, she says, “Katie makes me think of you that summer you went to Poppy’s farm in Sedalia.”
    All I can manage is a nod. That was a painful time for me. Us. I was fifteen and pregnant, exiled to my aunt’s house for the summer. The memory edges along my ribs, joins with the present day. I think of Sofia’s pale face as she blew me a kiss from the circle of soldiers’ wives.
    “What was that young man’s name?” Lily asks.
    I frown, drawn from my thoughts into what feels like a non sequitur. “Who are you talking about?”
    “That summer you spent with Poppy,” she says, again avoiding the obvious way to refer to it. “There was a young man who worked at the record store. You were just smitten.” She laughs. “And it was so strange—he was kind of funny-looking, wasn’t he?”
    “Jonah,” I say, buttering bread. “I wasn’t smitten. He was my friend.” I frown, looking at her. “And, as I remember, he was beautiful.”
    “You had the worst crush ever,” my mother snorts. “And, no, he was pretty funny-looking.”
    There are footsteps in the hallway, and I make a chopping motion across my throat. As Katie comes around the corner, I pick up the handset of the phone and give it to my mother. “Why don’t you see what you can figure out about the dog?”
    “I can do that.” She sits down at the table and flips open the little notebook she carries in her purse. Every single one of us has tried to get her to switch to a BlackBerry, but she thinks they’re rude. “Katie, come sit here with me and let’s see what we can find out, shall we?”
    “You can probably look things up on the computer faster,” Katie says, pointing to the desktop in a nook in the kitchen, breathing softly beneath the gurgling coffee. “Or doesn’t it work?”
    I wink at Katie. “ It works fine.”
    “So does information,” Lily says. “What airline did you fly on, sweetie?”
    So it begins. Katie’s life in my house. My life with Katie in it.
    In the middle of the night, the phone rings and I scramble in the dark to answer it, knowing who it will be. “Hello?”
    “Mom?” Sofia’s voice on the other end of the line is thin. “Did I wake you up? Of course I did. I’m sorry. I just needed to talk to you.”
    “It’s fine, baby. I’m here.” I click on the lamp, push hair out of my eyes, and squint at the clock—2:36 a.m. “Have you seen Oscar?”
    “Yes.” The word is squeezed flat.
    I wait, my lungs thick with a mucus of worry. In the background, I can hear a television or something. “Take your time.”
    “It’s bad. Second- and third-degree burns over sixty percent of his body. And he”—she takes a quick gasping breath—“lost most of his right leg, part of his right hand.”
    “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”
    “He’s in a coma, which they say is a