There was a long pause after every short answer. Nova kicked the pebbles that laid on the ground. An act of boredom Carina thought.
"What about a boyfriend? Do you have anyone special?" Carina asked, her voice held excitement as she tried to get the young girl to converse with her.
Nova gave a shrug as she continued to kick the ground.
"A shrug as in you don't have anyone, or a shrug as in you don't want to tell me?" Carina continued she really wanted to get to know the girl, but she was stuck. What else could she do?
Nova didn't answer to that. Again, the pause came. This was the longest pause out of all fifteen of them.
Curiosity got the best of Nova when she realized that the pregnant pause had been held for way to long. Had Carina given up?
She looked up at her and saw that she was mesmerized by the lake they were sitting by. They where sitting on a wooden bench. Nova had made sure to make space between the two of them. It was enough space to let a grown man sit down in between them. People who walked by wouldn't even think they where together if they hadn't been talking once in a while.
"This was the first place I came to when I moved here. This was— still is my 'thinking' bench." Carina filled the silence with words she had been dying to say to her daughter for so many years. She had always dreamed of the day she would be sitting on this exact bench with Nova.
Nova sharpened her ears, she couldn't help but feel intrigued by Carinas words. Could she finally get an answer to why she left, why she hadn't contacted her.
"I was a little younger than you when I moved to Italy alone, without knowing anyone. It was scary. I couldn't speak the language and the culture was extremely different from the one I knew in America. I would cry my self to sleep every night. I missed my parents, my brothers and friends." A small tear fell down Carinas face. She wiped it away quickly before she turned her head slowly to get a glimpse of the girl sitting next to her.
"I missed you. I missed you every second of the day. And every time I got too overwhelmed by the fact that you weren't with me, I came here. I would sit here for hours on end, just thinking about you." Carinas eyes turned glossy, her chest ached thinking back on all the times she have cried on this bench.
Carina faced forwards towards the lake again, her voice turned raspy. "I would fantasize about you. How you were doing, what you liked to do, how your voice sounded. Sometimes I would allow myself to fantasize about how it would be if you lived here with me. If I had taken you with me—"
"Why didn't you?" The voice beside her asked, it was monotone, almost as if what Carina had been saying didn't mean anything.
Her head snapped towards Nova in surprise, she didn't expect her to participate in the conversation. A sad smile overtook her surprised expression.
"I was only sixteen at the time, I couldn't take care of a baby all by myself in a different country. Leaving was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I knew you would be safe with mom and dad." Carinas voice cracked a few times. Pathetic. She sounded pathetic and she knew it.
"Then why did you leave in the first place? You could've stayed. Stayed with your family. You could've stayed with me!" Nova felt the anger she had build up all day resurface.
Carina sucked in air. Novas voice was low, so delicate and full of emotions. The all to familiar lump in her throat returned. She had to be strong for her daughter, a few tears she could let out, but not a sob. That would make her seem like the victim, and she wasn't. Carina was tired of playing the victim. She had been doing it for so many years.
"I was the victim. Or that's how everyone treated me. The news spread quickly throughout our school." Carina held eye contact with Nova as she kept talking. Nova would occasionally look away, feeling awkward having someone's gaze on her for so long. Carinas look never faulted. She was mesmerized with the beauty of her daughter.
Until yesterday she had only managed to see Nova as a little girl, her little daughter. A little girl that needed attention from a stable mother and father figure. A little girl that needed to be taken care of, be loved and cherished by people with real jobs, a house, cars. A baby girl that deserved to be spoiled. A baby girl that didn't deserve to know she was a product of a fifteen year old getting raped.
Today Carina saw Nova as her incredible teenage daughter, who was determined to show people, that she no longer was to be put in he category 'little girl'. She was independent. She knew how to talk about her feelings in a way most grown ups avoid because it's to hard for them. She speaks up, and want to know the answers, the right answers.
What Carina didn't know what that she was the only one in the family who saw this side of Nova. She was the only one who respected this side. Carina wanted to encourage this side of her daughter, rather then ignore it like the rest of the family.
"I was the pregnant girl. Rumors went around, no one really knew what had happened in the beginning. But people talk and truths come out. Poor Caelum was the one to experience it first hand. He talked to his girlfriend at the time about what had happened to me.
I never knew how much all of this affected my brothers. I was more focused on the growing human in my stomach. The girlfriend saw this as the perfect timing to climb the high school popularity ladder. She told everyone what had happened. I was then the pregnant girl who had been raped by her twin brothers best friend.
I had to be homeschooled after that. But even if I wasn't at school, my brothers were. They heard everything that was said about the situation. People saying that I was lying. That it was all fake. People calling me a drama queen."
Nova felt bad for Carina, but not as much as she felt bad for her brothers. They had suffers in this too... She never thought about how all of this affected the rest of her family. They had lost a part of the family to.
"I remember the day I decided that I had to leave. I had given birth six months earlier, so you were only six months old. All the rumors had died down at the high school and it all seemed like old news. At this time I was sixteen. I was walking through a park. Mom, dad and I had been looking for a nursery for you. We had sent out many applications but every nursery turned us down without a reasonable explanation. That was until we found this very nursery that finally had called me in on an interview."
16 years ago, 3rd pov
A happy go lucky young girl passed through a park in Seattle. She walked with a pep in her steps, a pepp she hadn't had for a year and a half. Finally the world seemed to be on her side and not against her.
The teenage girl wasn't like every other girl her age, she was pushing a stroller, in the stroller slept her six months old baby. A baby the girl loved with all her heart.
As she continued out of the park and down the streets she stopped outside a beautiful light blue painted house. It seemed small and cosy. A little like the small garden houses you imagine Europe has many of.
As she opened the gate that held all the children safely behind a beautiful white painted garden fence she felt all eyes on her. The children kept playing, but it seemed like the adults couldn't take her eyes of her. The started whispering amongst each other. The teenager pushed the stroller towards what seemed like the main door. She placed the stroller against the wall.
"What do you think you're doing?" A woman that seemed to be in her early fifties snapped at her. Judgement was written all over her face. She was one of the adults that had been eyeing her since she entered the property.
"I...I." The girl wasn't used to people talking to her this way. She had been getting used to the stares and a few comments these past six months, but no one had talked to her so snappy and condescending before.
"I'm here for an interview." She answers short and polite. The girl crouched down and picked up her sleeping daughter.
The older woman scoffed. "Well good luck with that, we usually don't use our space on whore babys. You should've thought about that before you decided to use your teenage years sleeping around." Then she walked away. The young girl stopped in her tracks. Had she heard the woman correctly? A lump formed in her throat.
She didn't have much time to think more about it before a plump old woman came to the front door. She wore a frown that seemed to be stuck on her face.
"You're five minutes late. We don't tolerate tardiness." The woman scowled at her. "Wouldn't expect anything else from someone like you, tho." She muttered.
Was this the way the teenager was supposed to be treated? Was this her future? Being told what kind of person she is.
"Follow me." The woman led the girl to an office. They had to pass a room full of laughing toddlers. This woke the little baby up.
"I can't talk to you if your baby is crying." The woman gritted out as she opened the office door and took a seat at a desk. The teenager kept walking around in the office softly shushing and swaying her baby from side to side. After a few short minutes the baby was fast a sleep.
Even if the girl handled that with ease the woman let out a low growl. "Sit down, don't waist more of my time. What I have seen is just what I thought I would see. A teenager, in no shape or form are you fit to be a mother. You're even holding your baby wrong."
The teenager looked down at her sleeping baby. She held her just like everyone else holds a baby, how is this wrong? Wasn't she fit to be a mother?
"It's no need for an interview. You told me that this is the only nursery that has been willing to take you in for an interview and I now understand why. We need our parents to be persistent and ready to be parents. I want to take the child in, because I know it is what's best for the child. And you should know that as soon as she starts I will be involving child survives, because clearly you're not a fit mother."
Carina was out of words. Was this even real. Threatening with child services? Could she do that?
Carina had no idea how to answer to this. All she did was stand up. She felt rage bubbling to the surface. "I am more than capable to take care of my daughter. You should be careful when you don't know who you're talking to. And for your information child services is already involved. Not because of me or my child, but because of the fifteen year old who raped me already was in the system. I hope you have a terrible day and an even worse life. Im not staying here." She told the now pitiful woman.
The woman tried to stop her and apologize for what she had said but it all fell on deaf ears.
"That's why I left. You where far to good to be associated with me. Everywhere I went people looked at me and whispered things as I passed. I didn't want you to be a victim of the gossip that spread.
And then there was the selfishness that made me leave. I couldn't stand it any longer. And I'm so sorry that all of this happened to you. You never asked for any of this mess." Carina finished her story. Her eyes once again fell on the beautiful lake in front of them. The sun was starting to set. And a gorgeous pink and yellow color illuminated the sky.
Nova had listen closely to what Carina had said. She saw everything in a knew perspective and she didn't know if she liked it or not. She felt like an even bigger burden. It was her fault that all the eyes and talk surrounded Carina.
"What are you thinking about." Carina asked when Nova didn't say anything. Her hand reached out to put a few fallen hair strands behind her ear.
Nova retracted her head making Carina loose the strands she had in her hand. She lowered her hand and gave her a small smile.
Nova stood up from the bench they had been sitting on. "I think that... all of this was a mistake. I think that I never should have come." Nova gave Carina a glance before looking back at her shoes. Carina stood up as well. She wanted to say that it was not true, but Nova said something that made her heart sink deep into her gut.
"I think that I was a mistake. I think that you should have gotten an abortion." Then Nova turned around and walked away. The same way they had walked together a few hours earlier.
"Nova!" Carina felt glued to the ground. How could she say something like that? "Nova!" She yelled. "Nova!" Her throat became sore while she stood where Nova had left her.