I have it in my head that they’re going to tell us they’re selling the house. (I would picket in the driveway until they backed down.) That they’re moving to Los Angeles. (I will lose my shit.) That they’re having some trouble and are going to spend some time apart. (This I can’t even fathom.)

“What’s going on?” I ask slowly.

Mom closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and then looks right at us, saying, “I have breast cancer.”

After these four words, the hundreds that follow sound fuzzy and shapeless. But I understand enough to know that Mom has a tumor that is roughly three centimeters in her breast, and that cancerous cells were found in several lymph nodes. Dad found the mass while they were in the shower one morning—I’m too relieved he found it to be weirded out by this information—and she didn’t want to tell us anything until she knew more. She’s opted for a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy, and they’ve scheduled surgery for Monday... three days from now.

It’s all somehow moving too fast, and, for a fixer like me, not fast enough. I can rattle off questions as if I’m reading from a book: Have you gotten a second opinion on the pathology? What is the recovery time for the surgery? How soon after can you start chemo? What medications will they give you? But I’m too stunned to know if my rapid-fire questions are an appropriate reaction at all.

When Dad mentioned he found the lump, Bellamy burst out laughing and then immediately broke down into hysterical sobs. Mom sounded like an automaton for the first time in her entire life as she detailed what the doctor had told her. Dad remained uncharacteristically mute.

So this is what I’m saying: What is an appropriate reaction when the center of your world finds out she’s mortal?

Once she’s finished telling us everything she knows—and once she’s promised us that she feels strong, and fine just fine—she tells us she wants to go lie down and be alone for a little while. But I can hardly breathe, and from the look on my father’s face, he’s faring much, much worse.

Bellamy and I sit and watch Clue with the volume practically on mute. She’s curled in my lap, and Dad has disappeared down the hall to their bedroom. On my phone’s browser, I read every website I can find on stage-three breast cancer, and with every new piece of information I mentally update the odds of my mother’s survival. The credits are rolling and then the screen goes blank before I realize the movie is over.