“Was the spot they saw large, Ma?” Mia asked, ignoring my special kind of crazy.
“No, it was smaller than a dime. Even if it is cancer, it’s small enough that they can cut it out, and they have some fancy pill now instead of regular chemotherapy.”
Ma talked about the entire biopsy cancer thing like she was chitchatting about a nail appointment, not like the life-altering test that it very well could be.
“That’s good. They’ve come a long way with the treatments. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Mia gripped my shoulder tighter and spun me around. “In the other room. Now.”
I nodded slowly, stalking toward the dining room with Mia right on my heels.
“You need to calm the fuck down, girl. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.” Mia’s brown hair swayed as she talked, waving her arms around between us. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Mia,” I whispered and looked back toward the kitchen. “Cancer.”
She placed both hands on my shoulders and stared me straight in the eyes. “At her age, there are plenty of treatments. Cancer isn’t usually as aggressive in the senior population. As we age, everything slows down in the body, including cancer. Your mom is now in her early seventies, Izzy, and she’s the perfect candidate for the chemo pill. This is all onlyifshe has cancer. It’s most likely nothing.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“Don’t freak out until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
There was nothing scarier than that fucking word. I thought I was pretty badass and could knee-kick any fucker that tried to cross me, but I felt completely helpless to do anything when it came to this. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do except wait and see what happened.
“Ladies,” Ma said, coming into the room behind me with a smile on her face. Always being the cheerful one of the family and the glue that kept us all intact. “I promise to tell you everything. Izzy, you can come with me to the appointment when I meet with the doctor in a week to go over the results.”
“A week?” I groaned. I’d have to live with the fear of not knowing if my mother had cancer for a solid week. That was seven days of pure torture.
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around me from behind and nuzzled her face in my neck. “I’m a tough old bird, baby. Don’t cash me out already.”
There was only one chick I knew that was tougher than me, and it was my ma. I was every bit her daughter. I thanked God every day that she raised me to be a strong, independent woman instead of a meek and mild mouse who let men walk over her.
I pressed my head against hers and reached up, placing my hand on her arm. I wished I could freeze our lives at this point in time. I didn’t want to get older. I didn’t want my parents to get any older either. I loved life just as it was and didn’t want a damn thing to change. “I’d like to be there for you, Ma.”
“You can.” She kissed my cheek, lingering a little longer than usual and smelling me like she did when I was a kid. I’d always thought it was odd until I had kids of my own and caught myself smelling them a little too often to be normal. “Now, let’s not talk anymore about this. I want today to be like every other Sunday. No bringing this up to the boys either.”
I loved that she still called them boys even though they were men. Everybody in the room was over forty, but she refused to think of them as anything other than kids. “I promise, Ma.”
“Let’s finish dinner and get it on the table before all hell breaks loose.”
I tried to be normal. God, how I tried as we placed all the food on the table and served the Gallo army. As I glanced around the dining room, noticing the smiling faces, I wondered how different everything would be without this. Without the dinner. Without my parents. Without all of it.
James squeezed my leg under the table. “Doll, what’s wrong?” he whispered in my ear, tickling me with his whiskers.
I plastered a smile on my face and stabbed my fork into the seven-layer lasagna that had so much stuff in it I wondered how it stayed upright. “Nothing, babe.”
His grip tightened because I couldn’t pull off a fake smile to save my life. “You look like you lost your best friend.”
“Everything’s fine. We’ll talk about it later,” I said before shoving a slice of the cheesy noodle goodness into my mouth, basically ending the conversation. But James kept his hand firmly planted on my knee.
If something happened to my ma, I would lose my best friend. Although I was a daddy’s girl to the core, my ma had always been my tether to the important things in life. She didn’t spoil me with false compliments or give in to my whims. She forced me to be who I was and made no apologies along the way.
“How’s the shop?” Pop asked like he did every Sunday.
“Good. Busier than ever. We’re actually talking about hiring someone new,” Mike said between mouthfuls of lasagna.
I cringed because that news hadn’t gone over so well last night, and I was sure no one had bothered to talk about it, thinking I’d put an end to it before the ball started rolling.
“Izzy set up an interview with the girl for next week,” Mike said, without realizing every female in the room besides me and my ma had stopped eating and were glaring at him.
“Oh, she did, did she?” Max stabbed at her meatball, snarling at me as she spoke. “What’s her name?”
