Olivia Millar was sixteen when she fell pregnant.
She was sixteen still when she fled from home with only a rucksack of clothes and a handful of pocket change to get her through the week. In hindsight her mother probably would have kept her home, cared for her and guided her through the trials her body was about to undergo, despite her disappointment - it was her stepfather that cast her out, point-blank refusing to keep an unwed mother in his home (his home, he said, as though he had purchased the house himself and not moved into it after marrying Olivia's mother).
Her son, a tiny premature baby boy, was born at 7 months gestation, just over 8 weeks shy of his due date. The nurses rushed him away the second he was born, leaving Olivia flushed, sweaty, short of breath and sobbing in the hospital bed. Alone, as she had faced most of her pregnancy. Alone, as she would face the six weeks her son spent in the special care unit, swathed in wires - wires in his nose, wires in his arm, wires taped to his chest. Alone, as she would face child rearing thereafter, learning to be a mother without the guidance of her own.
Alone, as she would be as she became a woman, an adult, a mother, in her own right.
"Hurry up, honey," Olivia called out to her son, struggling to right her suitcase as it petulantly tried to tip on its side. "I don't think the taxi man is going to be nice enough to wait for us forever." The single carry bag she had, a diaper bag she had used when Inigo was a baby, had already been stuffed to the brim and stowed in the taxi boot while she was struggling to haul the suitcase down the path. It was a scene she had been through many times before. The suitcase, while unwieldy, had been her trusted companion over the past five years. The diaper bag had been something she had been lucky enough to come across at a second hand store when she was about five months pregnant, for a price she was lucky enough to be able to afford at the time on a shelf stocker's salary.
While the taxi driver and Olivia struggled with lifting the suitcase high enough to wedge it into the taxi boot, Inigo clambered out of the house as fast as he could, clutching his seal toy to his chest. That had also been brought at a second hand store, this time shortly after he left the hospital for the first time - the fur on the seal's back had been previously rubbed away, as though by vigorous brushing, and Olivia had needed to sew another little glass eye onto it. Threadbare, and with a slightly wonky eye from the DIY repair, it was evidently a well-loved plush toy, even before her son had gotten his tiny hands on it. It fit into their wonky, two-person family perfectly.
"Mama, do we gotta go?"
She knew the tone well. Inigo could be a whiny boy sometimes, especially when he was tired or unwilling to do something asked of him. He took the same tone whenever she asked him to put his Legos back in their little tub.
With the suitcase finally packed away, Olivia turned to her son, kneeling down to eye level with him as she gently took his right hand. He clutched the seal closer to his chest with his left arm, biting his lip uncertainly.
"We do, honey. Mama's work finished, and nobody else has any work to do here. We need to go to this place so we can get money and get some good food in that little belly of yours!"
Releasing his hand, she lightly tickled her son's belly, making him squeal with delight. A gentle smile spread over Olivia's face, a smile that could only be described as maternal, as she gently scooped Inigo into her arms, carrying him to the taxi to secure him into his baby seat.
Not long into the car ride, maybe fifteen minutes, and Inigo had fallen asleep in the car seat, his seal dropped into his lap while he was too tired to continue holding it close. It was of small relief that the driver was not the talkative type; both of them had always been on the shy side, and she doubted if she could prevent herself spouting out her entire life story if she began talking. Instead, Olivia stared out at the scenery flashing by; farmlands, countryside stretches, a few abandoned barns and old, ramshackle farmhouses, mostly made of wood and wrought by termites and the weather. She wondered, not for the first time, if what she was doing was truly the right thing, if it was truly the best way for her little boy to grow up. Bounced from house to house, staying with people kind enough to lend them their guest rooms until, inevitably, work dried up and they had to leave again.
Not for the first time, she wondered if she really should have put her son up for adoption like she had considered after his birth. She wondered if he would fare better with a stable family that would provide for him properly, give him the stable home he deserved. The home she could not provide for him.
She would have still been in school. She could have graduated. She could have grown up like every other teenager her age, and Robin-
She snapped herself out of the thought, biting down hard on her bottom lip. There was no point to thinking about Robin now, though she had done so many nights before. The choices she had made and the consequences they brought around couldn't be changed, and the only thing to do was continue powering forward on her chosen path. The taxi barrelled on, winding through old country roads, nearing the destination town with every ticking second.