“I want to know everything about you,” he’d said. “Every moment I missed. Every triumph. Every scar. Every story.” And he’d kissed her.

Colleen shuddered; sitting on Shane’s floor years later, she found that the memory had shifted from sweet to painful and had now become one of disgust. That is what memories do, she thought; the body’s recollection transforms.

She slowly opened the baby book, a dried rose petal falling from its pages and landing on the floor. The first page’s edge had faded to yellow and on it was written her full name and birth date along with a faded color photo of Colleen wrapped in a white baby blanket with only her red and crinkly newborn face showing. Colleen stared at the picture feeling no attachment to it at all—this baby had nothing to do with her, just another photo of a newborn in a hospital nursery.

Colleen flipped to page two. There she was—the photos she’d always known, the ones framed and hung around the house. Dad holding her on a chair in the backyard. Mother feeding her a bottle and smiling lovingly at whoever took the photo, her face flushed. A photo of Colleen in a crib, staring at a mobile of Winnie-the-Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Roo. Then what was amiss? This was the baby book of a loved and adored child—pages of photos and notes and records of her first word (boat); the date of her first steps (eleven months); her first solid food (bananas).

Colleen flipped through the book, page after page, looking for a clue that might tell her the full story, when it hit her hard, the realization like a sledgehammer on her chest. It was the beginning that was wrong. She turned back to page one and then page two. Her baby book went from day one to month two—there was nothing in between. No photos. No mentions of milestones or weight or shots, none of the details that filled the rest of the book.

How had she failed to notice this? Eight weeks unaccounted for. It didn’t seem so big in the face of years and years of love and attention, yet also it seemed huge: a gaping hole. An empty space in which anything at all could have happened, anything at all that might change who she was. Maybe they’d been too tired to photograph or record?

Colleen closed the book and set it on the floor with a sense of the ground moving, as though the house had been tilted slightly, set slantwise on the property so the views to her beloved river shifted.

Without knowing how long she’d been sitting on Shane’s floor, she heard him call her name.