Hi, Mom

Thea started up out of sleep, her dream turned suddenly inside out. A dream of her grandmother's house on the Nebraska prairie, Thea pacing the straw mat in the front room as the sky fell dark, the candleflames blown horizontal by the wind shrilling through the keyholes. A storm was coming down, a storm whose cold snap she could already feel inside her breast. A terrible storm.

But the storm didn't arrive; something else came in its place. Someone knocking at her door, a tentative rap at first but now steadier. "Hey, Mom. Anybody home?"

Her eyes were open but for a few seconds she was still in Nebraska, wondering where Grandma Baumann got that digital clock. Her eyes focused. 1:58 a.m., and she wasn't in Nebraska anymore.

There was more knocking at the door.