REMI'S POV
Isolde said her first word at five months and three weeks.
I want to be precise about this because the precision matters and because there will come a day when she is old enough to hear this story and she will want the accurate version, not the sentimental one.
The word was da.
Not dada — da. One syllable. Directed with unmistakable specificity at Dax, who was across the kitchen making coffee, and who turned around when he heard it with the expression of a man who has just had every remaining framework he ever built destroyed by a single syllable.
I was at the island. I heard it. I looked at Isolde. I looked at Dax.
"Did she—" I said.
"Yes," he said.
"She said—"
"Yes," he said. He had not moved. He was standing at the coffee machine with the specific quality of a man wh
