Unseen Messages(146)

“I didn’t say it was silly.”

“You laughed.”

“When did I laugh?” I couldn’t hold back my chuckle. “Okay, now I just did, but before, I didn’t.”

“You smirked.”

“A smirk is not a laugh.”

“It’s beside the point. Coconut is off the table.”

“What if I don’t want it off the table?”

She huffed. “What?”

“You want to name our child after something that’s become intrinsic to our lives. If it hadn’t have been for coconuts, we would’ve starved and most likely died of dehydration. They saved us. What better word would suit our daughter?”

“What word?”

“Salvation. Coconuts were our salvation.”

“So...you do like it?”

“It’s kind of perfect, actually.”

She peeked at me beneath her lashes. “Really?”

Pushing aside the material covering the squashed face of our newborn, I grinned. “You know what? It is.”

Brushing my knuckle over her warm pudgy cheek, I murmured, “Hello, Coco. Pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

.............................

APRIL

I did my best for Conner’s birthday—just like I’d promised.

However, the now fifteen-year-old admitted that he’d claimed Coconut as his birthday present rather than make us carve or whittle something he didn’t need. He figured their names were similar enough that we’d named her after him (I let him have his illusions).

Estelle’s birthday would fall again in September (I already had ideas on how to make it the best I could) and mine continued to pass in March with no fanfare because that was how I liked it.

I hated birthdays (especially knowing I was twenty-nine and the next was the big three-O). I hated being reminded of how much time I’d wasted being angry and locked up for something I would never apologise for doing but regretted with every inch of my soul. Not because he’d deserved to die but because I was better than that. I wasn’t a monster like he was, but I’d become one to extract revenge.

Despite Conner’s assurances that his new baby sister was enough, I made him a slingshot out of a forked twig and the elastic string that’d tied up the survival kit found in the helicopter all those months ago. For ammunition, I’d dived on the reef for broken pieces of coral.

It didn’t work very well. The tension was all wrong. But we somehow made his birthday dinner of eel and taro delicious and celebrated yet another significant event on this deserted place.

That night, as dusk fell, dorsal fins appeared in our bay for the first time since we’d crashed.

Estelle froze, yelling ‘shark’ as if she was still giving birth and at risk.

However, she was wrong.

They weren’t sharks.

They were dolphins.

And Conner claimed their arrival as his fifteenth birthday present, too.

Our island was no longer foreign.

We’d explored every inch.

We’d navigated and adapted and excelled.

But how many more birthdays would we attend here?

How many more years would pass?

.............................

MAY

Two things happened in May that signalled just how fast Conner was growing up.

After dealing with a squirmy baby all morning, while Estelle caught up on laundry, I was free to stomp through the forest to collect firewood.

I kept my eye out for lizards and the leaves Estelle said were okay to eat, but what I stumbled across was something entirely unappetizing.

I found Conner wanking.

The horny teenager leaned against a palm tree in the centre of the island (obviously thinking he had privacy) and had his hand down his bloody shorts.

Needless to say, I hadn’t stayed.

What he did with his cock was his business, not mine.

Masturbation was a common thing (especially for teenagers), but it did remind me how lacking I’d been in my fatherly duties.

When I’d finished my forage and Conner returned, much more relaxed, to the beach, I’d taken him aside and had ‘the talk.’ It’d been as uncomfortable for me as it had been for him. But I had to know that he knew Pippa was off-limits as well as Estelle.

The only one not off-limits (because of marriage or relation) was Coconut, and she was only a few months old. Besides, she was banned from ever having a boyfriend, so she too was off-limits.

That meant the poor kid was doomed to spend his life as a monk. However, it didn’t mean he had to look like one.

Just like my hair, his had grown long enough to tie up. His copper strands had turned strawberry blond and the splattering of freckles across his nose were so dark they morphed with his tan.

He was good looking but his straggly beard was not.

We spent the afternoon in the sea as I demonstrated how to shave with the Swiss Army knife. I didn’t do it often. I wasn’t fussed if I had a beard or clean-shaven, and Estelle didn’t seem to have a preference, either. But Conner looked so damn grateful for the lesson, I promised myself I’d continue to teach and be there for him.

After all, it was just the two of us.

Two men.

Three girls.

We had to stick together.

.............................