“He was afraid to have kids?”

“Oh, no. He was excited to have a baby. The whole time Lena was pregnant with Asher, he was the happiest, proudest father-to-be you’d ever seen.” She paused, smiling again. Her eyes were unfocused, like she was reaching back in time and seeing things as they’d once been. “It wasn’t until Asher was born that Charlie really learned about fear.”

“How?”

“There’s something about holding a newborn baby in your arms that brings it all home. Charlie was so jumpy with Asher, he drove your mom crazy. Always afraid someone was going to drop him or he’d get too hot or too cold. Worried about every little peep he made. Although when it came down to it, those things weren’t what really bothered him. Having a child brought his biggest fear to the surface. The fear of losing the people he loved.”

“And you think that’s my biggest fear too?”

“It’s up there. And a close call can certainly bring that demon out of hiding. But I think there’s something else you’re afraid of almost as much. A fear you carry in your heart every day.”

Reluctantly, I met her eyes. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she had to say.

“You have lost people you love, and anyone would fear living through that pain again. But I think underneath that, you’re afraid that you don’t matter.”

“Do we have to talk about this now? I’ve had a rough couple of days.”

“I know you have, but yes, we do.”

I scrubbed my hands up and down my face, letting her words sink in. She was right. I was afraid I didn’t matter. That my life was irrelevant.

“I don’t remember them,” I said, not quite sure where I was going with this. Only that I needed to finally say it out loud, here in this house. “I don’t have a single memory of Mom and Dad. They lived, and did things, and got married, and had a bunch of kids, and I’ve got nothing of that.”

“You were so young.”

“I know. And I know it’s not their fault that they died. They didn’t want to leave us.”

“No, they didn’t.”

My throat felt thick and tears threatened to prick at my eyes. “I don’t even know if I miss them, or just the idea of them. How can you miss someone you don’t even remember?”

“You can, Otter. Because your spirit knew them, and your spirit remembers. Even when our minds don’t hold onto our memories, our spirits do.” She pointed to my chest. “In there. That’s where they still live. They’re a part of you, and they always will be. You weren’t old enough to keep the memories they left you, but they made you out of themselves. Out of their love.”

“Yeah, well, except they didn’t mean to have me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I know I was an accident. They didn’t plan to get pregnant again.”

She smiled, deepening the lines around her eyes. “When you put your hand on a stone, or the side of a mountain, what does it say to you? It says I am immovable. I am as permanent as the earth itself. But we know that isn’t so. Water flows relentlessly past the stone, grinding it away to sand. Gavin, you have the spirit of water in you. Relentlessly flowing from the mountain to the sea. You were a surprise, but you were also inevitable. There was nothing that was going to stop your spirit from entering this world.”

“Even if they didn’t want me?”

Gram got quiet for a second. I couldn’t quite meet her eyes, but I knew she was watching me.

“Wait here,” she said, finally.

She got up and a few seconds later, I heard the stairs creaking with her soft steps. I waited, the weight on my chest still painfully heavy. I was calm, and okay, I could admit the bridge jumping stunt had probably been reckless and stupid. And maybe it was good that my brothers had stopped me.

But I still felt awful.

Gram came back with a stack of light blue books in her arms. She set them on the table in front of me. They were all the same size, about as big as one of my old school binders. All the same faded blue. The top one said Baby Book on the cover.

“What are these?”

“These are the baby books your mom made for each of you.” She took the top one and pushed the rest to the side, then laid it in front of me. “This one was for Asher.”

I flipped through the pages. She’d filled out a lot of it, writing in milestones. Weights, firsts, notable moments in his first year of life. She’d tucked a plastic bag with a lock of hair from his first haircut, photos of his first steps, and more from his birthday party when he turned one.

“Evan’s is a little more sparse,” Gram said, shifting Asher’s book out of the way. “That tends to happen with the second child.” She turned a few pages to show me, then moved it so she could set the next two side by side. “The twins, well, I think she had her hands full simply surviving by that point. She wrote a few things down, but understandably, there’s not much here.”

“Mine must blank, then.”

Without replying, she moved Levi and Logan’s baby books to the side and pushed mine in front of me. “Why don’t you have a look and see?”

I flipped to the first page and Mom had written my full name—Gavin Matthew Bailey—and my date of birth. I was totally expecting the rest of it to be blank, but when I turned the page, there was more. In fact, I kept flipping, and mine was filled out every bit as much as Asher’s.

There were photos and little handwritten notes. Milestones and the dates. She’d used stickers and different colored pens—red, blue, purple, yellow. Everything, from my first bath to my first steps to me with cake all over my face on my first birthday, was included.

“You were a surprise,” Gram said as I gazed at the pages. “They didn’t think they’d have any more babies after the twins. And I won’t lie and tell you they weren’t worried. They were. They had their hands full with four, and they had moments where they wondered if they could handle five. And then you were born and your parents could not have been more in love with you.”

I looked away again because now she really was going to make me cry.

“A baby book doesn’t measure her love for her children. She didn’t neglect the twins’ books because she loved them any less than you or Asher. But don’t you doubt for one second that they wanted you. You fit into their family—into our family—like you were always meant to be. Because you were. They loved you with everything they had, and they wouldn’t have given you up for anything.”

I turned to the last page, and tucked inside was a loose photo of me and my parents—just the three of us. I was in Dad’s arms, wearing nothing but a diaper, and Mom was standing next to him, holding one of my hands. There were balloons in the background and I had chocolate cake on my face, so it was probably my first birthday.

A few tears broke free and I let them fall without shame. Because damn it, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they’d died and left us behind. That we’d had to grow up without them. That they’d missed it.

But as I looked at this picture, I realized something else. Gram was right. They’d loved me. You could see it in their faces. They didn’t look like a couple who were frazzled, at the end of their rope trying to survive their youngest child’s babyhood. They looked like young parents enjoying their baby’s first birthday. And something about that meant more to me than I knew how to express.