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Jean Valjean had never expected to become a father – in fact, he had never planned on it. After their arrival in New York at the turn of the century, he had watched his parents die slowly under poor work conditions in an attempt to keep their family together and fed, and had nearly worked himself to death in an effort to keep his sister and her own children safe after the death of her husband in a factory accident. After she remarried, less for love than for the financial security of her children, he had vowed at thirty to never to father children of his own.
He had not counted on the appearance of Fantine on the doorstep of his cramped apartment one rainy night in 1912. He hardly knew her – she had worked in a dressmaker’s shop with his sister at one point, and had been the envy of the neighbourhood, but beyond that, they had never spoken. However, the thin, haggard woman before him was a far cry from the vibrant girl he remembered, and the waif-like blonde girl who clung to her side was an unfamiliar sight. Despite this, he had ushered them inside immediately, pulling out what towels he had on hand to dry them and putting on a pot of coffee.
In a trembling voice, Fantine had explained to him her situation. She had, in her own words, “mis-stepped one too many times,” and now, she added with a bitter laugh, she was “being forced to pay the price,” and the girl, her daughter, along with her. It was her daughter, not herself who she wished to save.
“Take Cosette,” Fantine had asked of him. “They can lock me up in one of those,” she had shuddered, “one of those places. But they can’t have Cosette. Please.” He had opened his mouth and she had filled the space with words. “Your sister told me once that you were a good man. I am asking you now to help me. I won’t beg you.”
He had looked from Fantine, her head held high despites the small rivulets of water still streaming from her hair, the glint in her eye reminding him painfully of the same ruthless determination and pride he had seen in all of the women in his family before the city had broken them, to Cosette, who curled her fingers around the small glass of milk he had offered her and watched him with a mixture of childlike curiosity and a wariness too old for her. Finally, he nodded silently, and Fantine rose to her feet, taking her daughter’s small hands in hers and whispering to her for several minutes before straightening back up and placing the girl’s hand in his.
“Promise me.”
“No harm will come to her, not if I can help it.”
“Leave the city, Mr. Valjean – it will be easier for all of us.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Where will we be able to find you?”
But Fantine only laughed and shrugged helplessly. “No one can follow me where they’re going to put me, Mr. Valjean. Just promise me that you won’t let them have my daughter.”
He looked to Cosette, and she looked back up at him. He exhaled, then nodded again. “I give you my word.”
They had spent the next thirteen years moving from place to place as Valjean shifted from job to job with varying degrees of success, most of his money going towards ensuring his adopted daughter’s education and needs – he was determined that she receive the best education he could acquire for her. Eventually they landed in Chicago, and it was in Chicago they stayed, even after he was forced to admit to her the identity of the man who had dogged their heels since Baltimore, and even after necessity dictated that the upper floor of the Musain Café be converted into a speakeasy that the boys from the ABC Group called “The Corinth.”
Grimacing into the dirty glass he was cleaning, Valjean, made brief eye contact with the Group’s newest recruit as he entered the café before looking away sheepishly and heading up the stairs to The Corinth.
“Papa, you’re working too late again.”
Had there been another witness, they would have seen Valjean’s face undergo a transformation as he turned to look at the girl that he had come to regard as his daughter. His frown fled, smoothing the wrinkles on his brow, and it seemed that his stern mouth relearned to smile in her presence.
Cosette stood in the doorway, her blonde curls pulled back from her face, which held as expression of mock sternness as she watched him with her hands on her hips. Dropping his eyes under her gaze, he gave her a penitent look until she broke into a smile and shook her head. “Go on, Papa. I’ll finish the washing up. You need your rest if you’re going to make it into church tomorrow.”
“By yourself?”
“’Chetta comes in a little bit before she starts her shift upstairs – she’ll keep me company.”
He smiled at this. With their moving around, it had been difficult for Cosette to make and keep friends – her loneliness was something that he blamed himself for, but she had immediately become close as sisters with the Musain’s only other waitress.
“Very well.” He relented, knowing that if he didn’t, she would argue with him until he did. “But you know the –”
She laughed, cutting him off. “Yes Papa. I’m not to go upstairs to The Corinth. I know. If they need anything, I’ll ask ‘Chetta to take it.”
Smiling once more, he kissed her forehead and slipped off into the living area in the back of the café.
Perhaps, he thought, it had not been his place to swear off fatherhood.