Dad looked down at their hands.
Finally, he nodded.
The next morning, Mom asked Dad to repeat exactly what the surgeon had told him.
He couldn’t.
He remembered the important parts, but the rest came out as “I think” and “I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”
Mom stopped him.
“Give me the number.”
She called the surgical office herself.
I sat beside her with a notepad while she asked what the surgeon had noticed, whether the suspicious area had been in tissue already being removed, and what would happen when the pathology results came back.
Then she asked the question none of us wanted to hear.
“What happens if it’s malignant?”
She listened without interrupting.
When she hung up, she looked tired but calmer.
“What did they say?” I asked.
“That we wait for pathology before deciding anything. If it’s benign, we discuss whether I need any follow-up. If it isn’t, then we talk about what comes next.”
Dad was standing in the doorway.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Mom closed the notepad.
“I’d rather know what I don’t know than have everybody whispering around me.”
That afternoon, Aunt Linda found me making soup.
She was holding the old photograph.
