"Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NABRE)
“Claire!” Elle woke up with her daughter’s name on her lips. Startled, she sat up and looked around the living room with her heart still beating loudly in her chest. A dream, she realized dazedly.
Slowly, she crossed the way to the back door. With unseeing eyes she gazed out into the garden.
She remembered waking up in the hospital six years ago and seeing her husband sitting next to her. She remembered how he took her hand into his and looked at her with eyes full of despair. He told her that the doctor thought Claire might not survive. That she might die before she was even born, die before she had a chance to look into her mum’s eyes, feel a kiss on her forehead, clench her little fist around her dad’s finger, hear them speaking to her without a belly barrier between them… It was a silent, terrible death. It was the death of someone so precious, so innocent, so tiny…
Elle took a shuddering breath.
