It's the worst time in the nation's history of reproductive laws for someone like Katherine, who doesn't want a child, to learn she's pregnant. In this environment, not having a child will be a challenge.
Katherine isn't afraid of a challenge.
29 ye...
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Author's note: When I started writing this, we weren't nearly as close to the overturn of Roe v Wade as we seem to be now. One of the things that has always bothered me when people argued about reproductive rights was that they seemed to focus on everything but the potential lives of the children, their quality of life, instead of obsessing over the impact on adults, and only adults.
The Age of the Child addresses that side of the argument, and maybe points out a gross hypocrisy or two. You might not relate to any or all of the characters, but that's okay - they're different from you and me. I love writing people whose behavior I disagree with, and whose reasons for that behavior I want to explore. But this story isn't meant to make you fall in love with the characters; it's meant to present a world that may not be too far away.
I hope you enjoy it! Thank you for reading. - Kris
* All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Characters, events, and places are creations of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to existing places or to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Katherine had never been this close to an abandoned. She had seen them from her car, and occasionally one wandered past her store window, but the distance had always allowed her the convenience of assuming she was imagining the worst. The children were simply walking home, she could tell herself. The babies had been set on the sidewalk "just for a second" while their parents ran inside for some forgotten thing.
There was no pretending this baby was there for any other reason than that someone had fully intended to leave it there.
Above the shaded entrance where the car carrier sat on a WIPE FEET HERE mat, a second-story banner declared THIS CLINIC STAYS OPEN in futile defiance of a thick iron chain looped in a taut lemniscate through the metal doors' handles. (Katherine had hardly expected the Daily Fact article about the clinic's chained doors to be quite so literal.) Graffiti, some old and veined—Adoption is a loving option!—and some new, bold, and bright—The future children of this great nation have prevailed!—decorated exterior walls and fresh wood panels nailed over the first-floor windows.
Not only had no one run inside this building for anything, but one half of a legal sized envelope—what could it be but a note?—poked out from behind the baby's large head, which swiveled this way and that in a scan of the world and the two women standing over it.
"What should we do?" Margaret said.
Katherine looked again at the locked doors and felt physically ill.
She focused instead on the miniature t-shirt printed with green frogs and red daisies, at the plump legs with undefined knees poking out of a plain white diaper. A drop of water from the previous night's rain fell onto the tiny stranger's wrinkled neck. The baby opened its eyes and stretched one leg. Katherine tried not to imagine the moment someone had set down the carrier and walked away.
