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.
.............................
JUNE
I hadn’t been drunk since my eighteenth birthday.
Mostly because I’d been in jail with no access to alcohol. More recently because we’d been stranded on our island.
We’d stumbled across a few papayas last month that’d been sweet and plump. The taste of sugar after so long had been goddamn delicious. We didn’t get a lot of fruit on our island, probably because there weren’t many birds or bats flying over depositing seeds in their droppings.
The Papaya was a luxury and I’d thought about fermenting a few to see if Estelle and I could get tipsy (if such a thing as papaya alcohol existed) but there hadn’t been many and we’d eaten them all before we realised the limited numbers.
However, none of that mattered because I was inebriated.
I was drunk.
Completely.
On my daughter.
Only a few months old, she fascinated me with how quickly she grew. Her chubby arms constantly waved and fists opened and closed. She loved lying in the sand and cried if we took her from the waves before she was ready.
It seemed being born beneath the sea made her a child of the deep and she should’ve grown a tail rather than kicking little legs.
Her skin tanned rather than burned. The fuzzy hair on her head was as white as Estelle’s. And her eyes were a mixture of vibrant blue and glowing green.
She was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, and if Pippa wasn’t carting her around being the best babysitter we could ask for, then she was in the crook of my arm babbling nonsense.
For her crazy emotions during her pregnancy, Estelle was the most relaxed mother in the world. The saying ‘you need a village to raise a baby’ was entirely true.
And lucky for us, we had one.
Pippa and Conner took turns playing. No one grew bored because Coco was passed around at will.
I wished I knew the developmental stages and what to expect.
When would she walk? Talk? Crawl, even.
I had no idea.
I couldn’t tell if she was smart for her age or slow.
But that wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
To me, she was perfect.
Just like her mother.
Chapter Fifty-Three
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E S T E L L E
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JULY
“I WANT TO make her something. Galloway’s showing us up.”
I looked up from changing Coco’s rag-diaper and squinted in the sun. Pippa and Conner stood in halos, dripping wet from the sea, with an armful of red and yellow flowers.
“What do you mean?” I stood up, placing Coco on my hip. She squirmed toward Pippa, who dropped her flowers and took her from me.
The two girls had become inseparable.
“I mean G’s made her a crib, a damn high-chair thingy, even a driftwood horse on skates so he can drag her through the tide like a pouncy princess.” Conner dragged hands through his hair, doing his best to seem frustrated but failing.
He loved G.
In fact, they’d only become closer in the past few months since Conner well and truly left boyhood for an adult.
“Well...” I spread my hands. “What are you going to do about it? Is it a competition now?”
His brown eyes lit up. “Hell yeah, it’s a competition.”