REMI'S POV
The fourth night was the quiet one.
Not because Isolde was quiet — she was, on the fourth night, engaged in the sustained project she had been pursuing since her arrival, which was the project of establishing that she existed and had needs and expected those needs to be addressed with promptness and competence. This she communicated efficiently and without drama, which was, I was coming to understand, simply her character. She was not a dramatic baby. She was a specific baby. There was a difference.
But at two in the morning, when Isolde had been fed and settled and was asleep in the bassinet beside the bed with the particular committed sleeping quality of a person who has completed a task and considers further activity inadvisable, I lay in the dark and was awake and thought
