Kismet

Chapter 1 Dominique

Dominique

Cosette skipped merrily along the uneven terrain, pigtails bouncing off her slender shoulders.

Her incongruous joy, viewed against a backdrop of dying winter grass, low, slate gray clouds heavy with the promise of snow, and long rows of marble headstones stretching toward a distant corpse of trees, widened the hole in my chest.

Every Sunday without fail.

It shouldn’t be like this.

But she needed to know about the mother she’d barely met.

Cosette sang tunelessly, a ditty learned at Miss Heather’s, no doubt, as she aimed for the ashen flecked headstone in the distance.

Twice she tripped in her winter boots but caught her balance and journeyed on.

The chrysanthemums she’d chosen at the flower shop remained firmly clutched against her chest, stems and petals suffering under the careless hands of a toddler determined to keep them safe.

She always picked chrysanthemums because the name had the word mum in it.

Yellow because it was her favorite color.

“Like dandelions, too, Papa?”

“Oui, yellow like dandelions.”

The wind howled, fluttering the ends of my open coat and numbing my cheeks. The bitter scent of melancholy tickled my nose. The shells of my ears ached. Misery was the long, stretching shadows chained to my ankles and hindering my every step.

My sensibilities started and ended with ensuring Cosette was appropriately dressed for the weather while I suffered under the brisk assault of early winter, drawing my shoulders higher and wishing I was anywhere else.

A squeal of delight pierced the mournful silence of the cemetery. Cosette turned, radiating glee as she pointed into the distance. “Elle est là, Papa. You see? Hurry.”

She ran ahead, but I kept my steps even, in no rush to revisit the agony brought on by the onslaught of memories I suffered every time we visited.

It wasn’t the same for Cosette. She had no recollection of the mother who had given her life.

To her, Angelique was an idea no different than the characters in the books we read. She was a story. A fable.

Hands buried deep in my coat pockets, I clutched my silent phone in a sweat-dampened palm, urging it to ring, to save me from this weekly nightmare.

From the pain of remembering. I would rather confront death in an autopsy room than a cemetery, heartbroken over someone I loved who had been taken too soon.

I was on call this weekend, but the phone remained inordinately soundless.

Ottawa was a big enough city; it should not have been so.

Under the sheltered boughs of an ancient weeping willow, Cosette stopped and dropped to her knees at Angelique’s final resting place.

The yellow flowers tumbled over the brown winter grass at the base of the headstone, where a few crisp leaves had gathered.

My brain struggled to process the contrast of both the cheery child and the bright blossoms in such a dreary, colorless place of death.

I stopped several feet away. My misery stopped too, forever on my heels, never letting go.

As always, Cosette hugged the granite marker in greeting and babbled as only a toddler, untouched by loss and grief, can do. “Hi, Maman. Je suis revenue. Did you miss me?”

Carefully, cautiously, she lined up the yellow chrysanthemums along the top edge of the stone as she sang the same tune from before, nothing more than a repeated verse and bits of a chorus about an elephant on a spider’s web.

When she finished, she took my hand and forced me closer. “Your turn, Papa. Put yours ici.”

She always left a spot for the blossom I carried, so I laid it amid the vibrant yellow collection as instructed.

Crouching, I wrapped an arm around Cosette and tucked her against my side. “Are you going to tell her about the new house?”

“Oui! We have a new house, Maman. In…” Cosette’s brow crinkled. “What’s the name, Papa?”

“In Ottawa.”

“In Ottawa,” she repeated. It came out Ahwahwah. I didn’t correct her. “I go to a new school with Miss Heather.” To me, she asked, “Je peux tu chanter?”

“Of course. Sing to your heart’s content, ma belle. I think Maman would like that.”

So she sang. Most lyrics were jumbled. Some were in French and others were in English. At times, they came out in a combination of both languages. Cosette clapped and did the actions. At one point, she peeled free from my side to dance, a bum wiggle that melted my heart and blurred my vision.

As she performed, I grieved, wanting to close my eyes yet never wanting to look away.

This child. Her innocence. Her purity. She brought me such comfort, yet boundless pain.

A precious porcelain doll with perpetually rosy cheeks, chestnut brown ringlets, wide brown eyes, and a cupid bow mouth.

So like her mother, I ached with the unfairness.

Two and a half years. Time slipped irrevocably away as it is wont to do.

First, days and weeks. Then, months and years.

People moved on with their lives. They forgot.

Those of us who suffered the most were always left behind.

I desperately clung to the past, wishing for something that could never be.

Day by day, the crushing weight of time stole my humanity until I wasn’t sure I recognized the man in the mirror any longer.

Cosette finished her song and dance and sat cross-legged on her mother’s grave, facing the stone as she traced the letters of Angelique’s name.

Unwilling to remain a wispy shadow in this verbose child’s life, I approached, kneeling on the frozen ground behind her and kissing her cheek. “Tell Papa the letters. Do you remember?”

“Oui.” Despite being two-and-a-half, Cosette knew most of them.

She was advanced for her age, talking in full sentences at eighteen months, recognizing letters by her second birthday.

We did this weekly. She took my hand and guided my blunt fingertip along the lines and curves of Angelique’s name as she recited in a mixture of French and English, still unable to untangle the two languages.

A, N, G, E, and so on and so forth. Cosette absorbed everything, soaking up every detail of her growing world.

When she finished, she stood and moved into the pocket of my arms, leaning her tiny body against me as I remained at her level, cradling her against my chest, absorbing her minimal weight and sweet syrupy scent—always pancakes for breakfast on Sundays.

“Did Maman sing?”

“She did. All the time, and she had a beautiful voice.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Gorgeous. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Like me?”

A watery smile tugged at my lips, and I kissed Cosette’s cold, rosy cheek as the lump in my throat strained my words. “Oui, just like you, ma belle.”

“And she’s an angel now, like her name.” She used the French pronunciation of angel.

“Oui.”

“And she liked dandelions, too, but not the yellow ones.” Facts, not questions. Cosette knew these answers because we discussed them at every visit.

“That’s right.”

“Like the picture on your skin.”

“Like my tattoo.”

Cosette puckered her strawberry lips, and I knew what was coming.

“Pourquoi, Papa?”

Why? Always Why? The one question that deserved an answer, but it was an answer I didn’t have. Why did she have to die? Why her? “She was very sick.”

“And the sick made her die?”

“Yes.”

“And the doctor couldn’t fix her?”

“Non, ma belle.”

Cosette turned in my arms and squished my cheeks between her icy fingers. “En anglais, Papa.”

I chuckled. “The doctor couldn’t fix her, and you forgot your mittens in the car, munchkin. Your hands are freezing.”

I curled my much larger ones around hers and brought them to my mouth, breathing hot air into a small opening between my thumbs. Cosette giggled and told me it tickled.

“How about you find Maman some treasures while I talk to her for a bit?”

“Okay.”

Cosette bounded off among the rows of headstones, gaze fixed on the ground.

A curious magpie in search of shiny objects.

Her pockets were always full of one thing or another.

She often collected acorns, bubble gum wrappers, shapely rocks, or bottle caps.

To her, they were riches and gems to be hoarded. Once, she found someone’s lost brooch.

This past summer, Cosette had learned of her mother’s love for dandelions. Collecting them, she marked her chin and cheeks yellow. Bouquets of those precious weeds sat in a cup of water on the kitchen table for weeks. When they went to seed, she blew on them, making wishes.

Cosette never wandered far, always mindful of my presence. Once she was out of earshot, I faced Angelique’s memorial. In truth, I had no words left. Nothing would bring her back. Nothing would change the past.

I crouched and straightened Cosette’s flowers so they didn’t fall off the rounded top of the headstone.

“She’s a ball of energy, growing more every day. I can barely keep up sometimes. She sings with the same freedom and inhibition you used to have. Not sure she carries a tune as well, but she’s young.”

Angelique had once filled my days with music. She had a passion for musicals and sang all the scores, knew every part. No matter the role, male or female, her contralto rang with a clear vibrance and power that was meant for the stage but was wasted daily in the shower or kitchen.

In fact, Cosette was named after the young girl in Les Misérables.

It had been Angelique’s final request. Call her Cosette.

So, with a broken heart and the horrific image of Fantine dying in a hospital as she begged Valjean to care for her daughter, I named the baby Cosette. How could I refuse such a request?

The wind rustled the sagging branches on the weeping willow, sending them swaying and sweeping the ground.

Cosette returned and placed several rocks and twigs among the chrysanthemums, arranging them just so.

She had found a blue jay feather but seemed reluctant to give it up.

Clutching the shaft, she delicately ran her finger along the vane with a quiet introspection unsuitable to a toddler.

I often wondered where her mind strayed.

“You can keep it.”

Smiling, she tucked it into her coat pocket. An instant later, she seemed to think better of it and removed the feather, placing it beside my flower. “C’est pour Maman.”

Cosette took my hand. “Tell me a story.”

As I scavenged through memories, seeking a pleasant time from the past that was worth sharing, my pocket vibrated. Relief I didn’t deserve flooded my system, followed by guilt and shame.

I tugged the device from my jacket and checked the screen.

Work.

Finally. The escape I’d been waiting for.