Late one night, lying in bed with a scarf-swaddled baby on my chest and my wife in my embrace, I murmured, “I’m so bloody proud of you, Stel.”

She kissed the skin above my heart. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Let’s be honest. Yes, you could.” I smiled in the dark. “But I appreciate you saying that.”

She sat up on her elbows and kissed my lips. “That’s a lie. I’m only alive because of your sheer stubbornness to keep me that way.”

“That stubbornness is what will get us through the next few months.”

She glanced at our child. “You’re very adaptable, G. I look at you and think that you were born for this life. Like it wasn’t an accident that you landed here.”

I shrugged. “What choice did we have? It was survive or die. I chose to survive. We all did.”

She ran her finger down the ridge of my nose and traced my bottom lip. “Know what else we haven’t chosen?”

“No, what?”

“A name.”

“Ah, yes.” I chuckled. “I remember asking you about that last week and you bursting into tears saying it was too much pressure to name someone for the rest of their life.”

“Yes, well.” She smirked. “I might’ve been dealing with overtiredness at the time.” Her gaze dropped as she turned shy. “I have a suggestion...if you want to hear it?”

Our daughter squirmed as I arched my neck and kissed her. “By all means, share away.”

She took a deep breath. “If you hate it, we don’t have to.”

“You’re making it sound like you want to name her something terrible.”

“Well, we all have different opinions on what terrible entails.”

“How about you just blurt it out, so I’m not wondering if our kid will be named Daffodil or Edwina.”

She swatted me. “Those aren’t terrible, terrible.”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, spit it out.”

Her body tensed as she said, “Coconut.”

“Coconut?”

She flopped onto her back. “Forget it, it’s stupid.”

Coconut.

Coco.

Sweet little Coco.

My lips twitched. “So, you prefer a fruit over a name like Hope or Faith or We’ll Survive This Island No Matter What?”

She scowled. “I just told you to forget it. You’re right...it’s silly.”

“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.