You’re one year old, balanced on unsteady feet in a kitchen that smells like coffee and cigarette smoke, your tiny hands gripping the edge of the chipped counter while you babble to yourself. The radio plays old country songs because the local station is all your parents can get out here, miles from any city, where the mountains fold over themselves and the roads turn to gravel before you can blink.

Kurt hums while he changes your diaper on a towel on the floor, his hair tied back in a loose ponytail. The world thinks he’s gone, that he’s ashes scattered over the cold Pacific. But he’s here, alive, the veins in his arms hidden under the sleeves of flannels worn soft from too many washes. You don’t know he used to be the voice of a generation. You only know he’s the one who kisses your forehead in the morning and carries you outside to let you touch the frost on the grass.

Courtney lights another cigarette, leaning in the doorway, her hair tangled from sleep, wearing a faded T-shirt she cut into a tank top. She watches you with those sharp eyes that soften when you laugh, her lips twitching up before she catches herself. She rocks on her heels, a mix of restless and exhausted, trying to live a quiet life after years of screaming into microphones, after nights on hotel bathroom floors with mascara streaks down her cheeks.

They had to leave it all behind. The funeral, the rumors, the crowds, the interviews. They left Frances, too, because it was the only way to keep her safe from the chaos that followed them like a ghost. They left her with love, but you’re the one they kept, born in a small cabin outside Missoula when the snow was coming down in fat, soft flakes, Courtney’s screams echoing off the log walls while Kurt held her hand, terrified and alive.

You don’t know any of this. You don’t know your dad once ripped his voice screaming into a microphone, or that your mom once set stages on fire with her rage. You only know that when Kurt plays guitar in the evenings, you bounce up and down on your diaper-padded butt, laughing while Courtney claps along, her voice low as she sings along to lullabies that are really Nirvana songs slowed down so they won’t scare you.

They take you on long drives down empty roads, the windows down, your hair catching the wind while Courtney sings over the static of the radio. Sometimes she glances at Kurt, her eyes soft in a way only he gets to see, and he glances back, a half-smile that says he’s still here, still choosing this life with her, even on the hard days when the past pulls at them like a rip current.

They are trying, in the small ways that count. Kurt makes pancakes shaped like lopsided hearts on Sunday mornings, the two of them laughing when they burn, eating them anyway while you smear syrup on your face. Courtney reads to you from old children’s books, her voice low and rough, pausing sometimes to kiss the top of your head, whispering, “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

At night, Kurt sometimes sits on the porch alone, smoking, staring at the stars. He thinks about the world out there, the people who still think he’s gone, the posters on bedroom walls, the fans who light candles. He thinks about Frances, about the father he could have been. Then he hears you crying, and he goes inside, picks you up, and holds you close until your breathing slows, pressing his cheek against your soft hair.

He’s alive. Courtney is alive. You are alive, the proof of everything they survived and everything they’re trying to become.

Outside, the world is big and full of noise, but inside this cabin, it’s just the three of you. Just Kurt, Courtney, and you—one year old, tiny hands reaching for your parents, in a world that still thinks your dad is dead while he holds you, quietly humming a song only you get to hear.