Cat's fear is coming back. She wants so desperately to meet this little person she has carried for a little less than nine months, but the face haunts her. Her old hatred of Audrina and what she used to represent haunts her, too. What if the face comes stitched to her daughter like patchwork, a constant reminder of what Cat has endured? Cat does not know if she can stomach that, but she is unsure that she would be able to give her child to another family, not after the way that her love for Audrina has bloomed like a flower in springtime, like the way Audrina herself bloomed inside Cat, too. Cat's seventeenth birthday has rounded the corner and now Cat rubs gentle circles around her side, pressing to the spot where she'd just felt her daughter's hand fluttering. She thinks of their future together, and scolds herself for ever thinking that Audrina will be less than perfect just because of the situation in which she was conceived.
YOU ARE READING
Twelve.
Short StoryCat, a naive teenage girl navigates the last twelve weeks of her pregnancy, struggling to overcome trauma and uncertainty as the clock counts down to the arrival of her child.
