Liv is Shelby's birth mother. Growing up with just one older brother, two years her senior, the Rogers parents were strict and no-nonsense, so Liv and her brother quickly learned it was their way or the highway. Liv was a passive, fairly obedient child, often found with her head stuck in a book or scribbling away as she drew or wrote about an imaginary world. While they weren't distant, she was never particularly close to either of her parents, and preferred her brother's or her own company.
While she was a good student and made her way through elementary and middle school with ease, high school was a shock to the system. It was also Liv’s first real opportunity to start to discover who she was, rather than just the product of her parents’ rules and beliefs. She was 14 when she realised she liked a boy more than just liking him, and she was 15 when she sat in a bathroom stall at school, staring in shock at the two pink lines on the stick in front of her. Liv didn’t know how to react, to the point one of her friends came looking for her to see if she had died on the toilet (because teenagers). She knew her parents would be furious and hit the roof, and realistically also that she really didn’t know how to even begin with raising a baby. Despite all of this, though, there was something about that feeling she couldn’t quite explain or describe. She knew it wasn’t right, but something about it… did feel right.
Never one for lying, let alone with any ease, she told her boyfriend at the time the following day, after spending a sleepless night staring at her ceiling, one hand unconsciously resting on her stomach. He was as shocked as she was, but really wasn’t able to provide any help in what to do - then again, he was a 15 year old boy. Neither of them could have imagined something like this happening. He wasn’t exactly keen to suddenly switch his life track towards raising a baby at such a young age, nor trying to do so with somebody he’d really only known for about a year, but he didn’t try and force Liv to do anything.
Unfortunately, her parents didn’t share the same view. She was three months along when she told them, by this time with a slight bump visible, albeit one she could hide with loose clothing. Her parents both hit the roof, leading to a cacophony so loud it was a surprise a noise complaint wasn’t filed. They demanded that she terminate the pregnancy, but the one card Liv had was that she was now in her second trimester and this was therefore no longer a possibility. This hardly quelled her parents’ rage, and they demanded that she give the baby up as soon as she gave birth. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the one thing she could think to do for her unborn baby. If she couldn’t give her baby the life she knew they deserved, then surely there would be somebody else out there who could. She took to falling asleep with both hands gently cradling her belly, dreaming of a future where she could leave her parents and raise her child with tenderness and love.
But that was just a dream. Six months went by, in which Liv’s parents told the school she was bedridden with a terrible illness and would be unable to attend classes for the foreseeable future, so they had switched to homeschooling. Outside her immediate family, only her boyfriend and her closest friend knew the truth. Pregnancy was not so horrible as she’d been led to believe, and although there was nobody she could tell, she actually enjoyed it. There was something so natural and awe-striking about feeling a life grow inside her, and the joy and amazement the little kicks and flutters gave her soon gave way to stabbing pangs of guilt and sadness when the realisation she’d never see those transform into first steps and dribbly kisses would hit.
Liv’s waters broke in the middle of the night, and she was rushed to the hospital to deliver her daughter just as the sun rose. Exhausted, Liv lay back on the bed, trying to regulate her breathing, then tipped her head forward to see the baby. All she saw was the door closing. “I just want to see her,” she murmured, but nobody responded. On what should have been the best moment of her life, the birth of her first child, Olivia’s heart had broken.
Any talk of the pregnancy or the baby was strictly forbidden, and Liv was pushed back into ‘normal’ life as soon as possible. She and her boyfriend tried to make things work, but there was just no way that two confused kids could work their way through something like that. She was fairly sure she loved him, but with that only came the pain of what had been, what could have been, and what wasn’t. They went their separate ways a few months after the birth, and Liv consigned her feelings for him to the same place her feelings for her daughter went - inside.
She finished high school and went straight to college, specifically choosing to follow her brother as far from their parents as they could get. Starting over wasn’t all that easy, but a fresh start was all she’d been hoping for since she had laid back in that hospital bed and cried herself to sleep. She made a small but close group of friends, completed her degree, and went on to work in accountancy, living above a florist with two of her friends. The lady who ran the florist was incredibly sweet, and quickly became a dear friend to Liv. But accountancy just wasn’t the right thing - even if she was good at it, it wasn’t where she was meant to be.
Fate struck nearly a year into her job, when she’d realised that she didn’t want to be there but didn’t know how to get out. Mostly due to her upbringing, Liv had become a master at repressing her feelings and denying what she felt she wanted; hardly surprising considering how many times she’d been told what to think, to feel, to be. Identifying she didn’t want those things was one thing, but being able to act on it was another that was way outside her wheelhouse. So Mother Fate seemed to step in when the florist’s owner suddenly passed - and Liv discovered she had left the shop to her.
This had to be a sign, right? That was what her friends told her, urged her to realise, and so finally, she did. She handed in her two weeks’ notice and immediately began trying to work out how to be a florist. She’d always loved flowers and plants, so it was a case of taking the interest and passion and combining it with actual skill that hopefully wouldn’t see this new adventure take a nosedive. Of course, it was hardly a smooth path, but she made it work, and discovered along the way exactly what the appeal of a creative outlet was.
From there, it felt to Liv as though her life finally started to take form. Floristry became a real passion and this helped her succeed, despite constantly feeling she wasn’t the right cut for a business owner. Over the years, she built up a steady and loyal client base, and finally, her confidence grew along with it. It was at the shop that she met a handsome stranger who asked her out to coffee, in what she described to her best friend from all those years ago back home as, “the most ridiculous, Tumblr-esque meet cute you could ever imagine”. Once her friend assured her they didn’t think it was a scam and there was at least a 70% chance it wouldn’t end up on a true crime podcast, Liv agreed to meet up with them.
The relationship blossomed happily, with the couple moving in together after a year and adopting a labrador puppy they called Winston. Over the summer, Liv’s boyfriend proposed with a ring he’d made himself, and she excitedly accepted. They’ve spoken about starting their own family, and while she definitely wants to, the one thing she hasn’t really dealt with is the trauma from eighteen years ago - meaning she hasn’t told her fiancé, either. This might not be so bad if she hadn’t recently seen her high school boyfriend in town and had everything come rushing back to her, all at once…
