I Have to Tell You

 "Have you told her yet?"

"No," she texted and shut down her phone.

Her mother appeared with a tray of croissants and two espressos.

When she was home, she and her mom met here Monday mornings "to start the week," her mom said.

The last time she and Phil had been away for a year. They were nomads, he's told her. They'd spent a year in London and 10 months on a cargo ship going from port to port with home stays in between. "Prison time," Phil called it.

The cafe's garden was a bit unkempt with unmatching tables and chairs. All kinds of flowers, whose names she didn't know, surrounded the terrace. She called them yellow, pink, purple.

She knew her mother wouldn't say anything against her and Phil's next adventure. "There's something I need to tell you," she said.

Her mother leaned forward. She still had her figure and an unwrinkled face. "Me too."

"You first." 

Her mother looked at her hands. "I've the biopsy results. They weren't good."