Page 26 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

I looked down at the inside of my left wrist.

The day that she’d told me that she was going to die, I’d gotten this tattoo.

She’d been there with me and had written the words that were so faded and hard to see.

Years and years of hard living—of missing her—had worn it down.

I swept my thumb over the lettering, and my heart skipped a beat.

Chapter

Fourteen

Jingle my bells.

—Dixie to Mary

MARY

Past

I’d felt weird since I’d left the doctor’s office.

It was now six days later, and I just knew that I was about to get a call any second.

I didn’t know why or how I knew, I just did.

And at four, right as I was taking my husband’s favorite pie out of the oven—comfort food was what I knew best—the phone on the wall next to me rang.

With shaking fingers, I picked it up and said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. Normus?”

My ears started to ring.

“Y-Yes,” I said, my eyes staring blankly at my man’s cherry pie.

“I’m calling about your test results from your appointment last week,” she said carefully.

Too carefully.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

She didn’t beat around the bush, and I admired her for that.

“You have cancer.”

I nearly dropped the phone, even though I expected the words.

“I’m sorry, what? Can your repeat that?”

She didn’t need to repeat it.

I’d heard her loud and clear.

“You have cancer, Mrs. Normus,” my gynecologist repeated. “I’m so sorry.”

I’d felt fine.

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