Rosie did not, in fact, sleep the whole time.
As much as Richard would have liked her not to, Rosie woke up at just past eight with a cry that he was sure could shatter crystal if she so pleased. He tossed his book aside and scrambled over to her crib, hovering awkwardly as she cried.
"Er, hello Rosie! Do you need a moment to yourself or... No, that's stupid. You're a baby, you don't want time to reflect on your thoughts. Okay, up we go." Richard grabbed her under the armpits and guided her head to his shoulder like he had seen Fidel do a few times, letting Rosie curl her tiny fists in the lapels of his suit until he got a good grip on her.
"What's wrong? Is it too hot in here? Too cold? Is your blanket itchy?" Obviously the six month old couldn't answer. She just continued to cry as Richard bounced her, rather awkwardly, in the darkness of her bedroom. "Oh, Fidel said you'd sleep the whole time. Now they're at dinner and-"
Rosie went quiet. "Oh? Do you want Fidel? Your father?" Richard nodded to himself, walking her over to one of the many photos on the wall and pointing at his officer's smiling face. "That's your father. As you know. He's a very good detective. Dedicated. He once stayed up all night matching fingerprints you know."
There was an awkward silence as Richard remembered that Rosie was too young to carry on a conversation. "Right. Is that all you wanted? To be standing near a picture of Fidel?"
It seemed to be, because as Richard bounced her in place Rosie gurgled happily, reaching up and grabbing a fistful of Richard's hair. She tugged and Richard winced, carefully extracting the brown strands from her surprisingly strong grip. "Please be careful with that stuff. It's getting to be a little scarce up there; I need to preserve as much as I can."
Rosie gurgled again, making grabby hands at his head. He assumed that not many people she knew had hair the same texture as he did, and she was curious. His pastiness was good for something, he guessed.
After a few minutes of bouncing and letting Rosie tug at fistfuls of his now un-slicked-back hair, she made a little huffing noise, her bottom lip trembling. "Oh now what? Do I have to find a picture of Juliette for you to stare at?"
Richard moved them closer to the photo of a heavily pregnant Juliette outside her and Fidel's bedroom and Rosie immediately burst into tears, wailing her little lungs out and making grabby hands towards the photo.
Wait, no. Not the photo, but the room it was next to. The kitchen. "Oh! Are you hungry? You want your Erzulie dinner too, huh?"
At the word 'dinner', Rosie once again quieted. She was apparently very hungry. "Oh, you know that word. You must be very smart." Richard tilted his head. "Or very food motivated. Or is that dogs that you call food motivated?"
He shook the thought off and stepped into the kitchen. Luckily there was a note stuck to the fridge in Juliette's pretty script. "If she gets hungry, there's a tin of mashed sweet potato in the fridge! Baby cutlery is in the cupboard above the fridge."
"Okay, sweet potato for you, Rosie. Into your high chair we go-" Richard struggled to get the squirming baby into her chair, but when he finally succeeded in getting her chubby legs into the holes of the seat he smiled triumphantly.
Rosie smacked her small hands on the tray table and shrieked. It was high-pitched and rather abrasive, but somehow endearing, and Richard grinned as she made grabby hands at the tin. "Oh, you are hungry. Here you go!" He tried to hand Rosie the spoon, but she dropped it into the tray, sweet potato splattering onto Richard's shoes. He scoffed, shaking his head and the mess off his oxfords. "Yes, right. You can't hold a spoon yet." He picked up the spoon and held it in front of Rosie's face. "Here comes the aeroplane?"
His aeroplane noises sounded more like sad cow noises, but Rosie ate her sweet potato happily, dribbling all over her little pink shirt and giggling at the disgusted faces Richard made at the mess. She finished the sweet potato and held out her sticky hands for Richard to wipe with a damp cloth. "You need a new shirt, little miss."
He picked her up gingerly, making sure not to get sweet potato on his suit jacket, and sat her on the changing table in her bedroom. He picked a little yellow snapsuit from a drawer at random and wrestled her into it, tickling her into submission before slipping each tiny limb into the arms and snapping it at her bum. "Alright. You can go back to bed now, right? You're fed, you're clean, you have been thusly satisfied."
Richard lowered Rosie gently into her crib and shut the light off. "Well, goodnight then. Sleep well."
Rosie must have been displeased, because she made that little whimpering noise again as he closed the door, and Richard was treated to the sound of her anguished wailing. "Oh, what is it? You're fed and watered, you've not got a dirty diaper. What?" He picked Rosie up again and felt her sniffle into his suit, curling into the crook of his neck like a satisfied cat.
"Do you just want to be held? That's ridiculous! You have a perfectly comfortable bed and everything." This was slightly undermined by the fact that he was rocking Rosie back and forth. "Fine. But I am finishing that book if it's the last thing I do."
Richard walked them over to the couch and sat down heavily, trying not to jostle the baby in his arms. He leaned her onto his chest and picked up where he left off, flipping pages with the hand still on Rosie's back. "The Lesser Antilles more or less coincide with the outer cliff of the Caribbean Plate. Many of the islands were formed as a result of the subduction of oceanic crust of the Atlantic Plate under the Caribbean Plate in the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. This process is ongoing and is responsible not only for many of the islands, but also for volcanic and earthquake activity in the region…"
When Fidel and Juliette walked through their front door, they were greeted by a sleeping baby on top of a sleeping Detective Inspector, curled into each other in the heat of the Caribbean night.