As I've said before, this story isn't canonical (is that even a word? canonical?) to any one version of Les Miserables, but draws from all of them. Valjean's alibis in this chapter are taken straight from the 2000 French miniseries, which in turn adapted them loosely from the book. As always, I hope you enjoy it, and I value any feedback! :)

May 11, 1829

We lived in the convent until I was eleven. I went to school there, and Papa worked in the garden. For the most part, we were happy. There were a lot of other girls there, and it made me feel so blessedly normal to go to school with them every day. I'd never been around other children much before, and never gone to school at all. Every day in class I thought, This is what normal girls do. I'm a normal girl.

Still, sometimes, I felt trapped inside the convent, like a bird in a cage. Papa and I never set foot outside the high garden walls. I once heard him say that we were safe there.

"Safe from what?" I asked him.

"Nothing," was his response. "Have you studied your geography lesson for tomorrow?"

I scowled. He knew geography was my worst subject. It seemed silly to study places in the world that I would never see myself. I never even got to see Paris anymore.

The sisters were kind, and I made friends with the other girls, but sometimes I missed our little old room, where it had been just Papa and me, with no rules to follow or classes to attend, and he took me on walks all through the city. Even though I spent time with Papa every day in the garden, it was so different from before, when I'd been with him for nearly every waking moment.

One afternoon, just after we first arrived there, I asked Papa why we'd left the boarding house. He was working in the vegetable beds, and I was playing at his feet, drawing patterns in the dirt with a stick. As he ripped up some weeds, I suddenly remembered the little pot of flowers I'd had on the windowsill of our old room. I'd left it behind. I feared it might be dying without me there to water it, and I tugged on Papa's shirt and told him we had to go back for it.

But he shook his head. "I'll find you a new plant, Cosette," he said. "Why, look, this whole garden is full of flowers. I could put any one of them in a pot for you."

He was right, but I'd planted my old flowers from seeds, watered them and watched them slowly grow, and I couldn't bear to think of them withering away and dying. I became rather bratty and demanded to know why we'd left and why we couldn't go back. We had to go back, I told him. I had to get my flowers.

Papa looked away across the garden and sighed. He said, "I know it isn't fair to you, Cosette, and I'm sorry, but we can't go back. We had to close that door. Another story had to begin. Can you understand that, child?"

I didn't understand. I still didn't know why we'd left or why we couldn't go back. I still wanted Papa to tell me, to explain it to me... but he seemed so sad that my anger faded away. And I remember thinking – for the first time, but not the last time – that perhaps it wasn't worth knowing, not if talking about it made Papa so sad. I didn't want him to be sad, so I climbed into his lap, kissed his cheek, and told him I loved him.

Suddenly, his strong arms were around me, so tightly it hurt, and he said, sounding strangely desperate, "Papa loves you too, Cosette. Don't you ever forget that, my girl."

As if I could.

I can still smell the dirt on his hands, the sweat on his brow, still feel his arms crushing my body to his. I didn't understand his words then, about how another story had to begin, but looking back now, I think I do. I think Papa had done it all before, before he had me with him – packed up in the middle of the night, left his old life behind, and started over somewhere else in the morning. The question is, why?

What was he running from?

::

May 14, 1829
Feast Day of St. Matthias, patron saint of carpenters

It was when we came to the convent that Papa changed his name for the first time. The sisters there called him Monsieur Fauchelevent. When we lived at the boarding house, his name was Monsieur Fabre. I remember because the landlady there doted on me, and if we passed her on the stairs or in the hall, she would say, "Monsieur Fabre, how is that darling little girl of yours?"

I never spoke of it to Papa because it unsettled me when I heard the sisters call him Monsieur Fauchelevent instead. I was just a little girl, and even I knew it wasn't normal for people to change their names like that. I remembered that dark night when we left our old room in the boarding house for the last time, and I hadn't known it was the last time. It made me feel so uncertain, like the ground might be pulled out from under my feet at any moment.

That feeling got worse when Papa changed his name for the second time, when we moved here to Rue de l'Ouest. I was with him when he bought the house and signed the papers, and the man who sold it to him said, "I hope you and your daughter will be very happy here, Monsieur Leblanc."

And now he was someone else again, Monsier Leblanc. It startled me so. It was then that I looked at Papa and realized, for the first time, how little I really knew about him. I wondered, for the first time, who he really was. I suppose it must sound odd that I didn't wonder sooner about him, this stranger who just appeared one day and took me in. But Papa was the first person in my memory to ever treat me kindly, and when I was younger, I felt like all that mattered about him was his kindness. He loved me, and for a long time, that was all I needed to know.

There are several different flowers here in our front garden, but no roses. Perhaps I'll ask Papa if we can plant a rosebush. I read once that a rose by any other would smell just as sweet. I know that I would love Papa just as much, no matter what his real name was. After all, it isn't as if I would call him by it. I would still call him Papa.

I know Papa thinks I haven't noticed how he's changed his name. He thinks I've forgotten or I haven't noticed a lot of things – like how he avoids policemen. That unsettles me a great deal, too. At first, I thought (I hoped) it was only my imagination, but then I started to watch for it. I've seen Papa find any excuse to turn down a side street or walk the other way to avoid passing by a policeman. I don't know why, and honestly, I'm not sure if I want to.

Papa has always kept to himself. He's not unfriendly, but very private, and I've followed his example. I have friends at school, girls that I talk to and sit with during lunch, but I've never brought any of them home, and Papa has never encouraged me to. We have people whom we're friendly with, but no close friends.

I suppose there's no point in letting people get close to you when you might have to leave at a moment's notice. Papa moves so suddenly and completely – like when he took me away from that dreadful old inn, from the boarding house, from the convent. We were there one day and gone the next, with no warning, no time to say goodbye.

We've lived here on Rue de l'Ouest for a long time now, but I'm still not sure if Papa has settled down for good. I wish I felt sure, b

Later, that evening —

But I don't. That's how I meant to end that last sentence. I was lying in our front garden this afternoon, writing, and in the middle of the sentence, Papa came out into the garden and called, "Cosette? What on earth are you doing?"

My heart lept right up into my throat. Papa couldn't know what I was writing just then, that it was about him always changing his name. He had no way of knowing that... did he? I feared for a second that maybe he had read my journal one day when I was at school.

But he hadn't, of course. He was only asking me that because I was lying on my stomach on the grass, writing, and I'd taken off my stockings because it's already as warm as summer in Paris, and I happened to have kicked my dress right up over my knees.

"The front garden faces the street, Cosette," he said sternly, "and you're thirteen now. You can't be lying out here as bare-legged as a newborn babe. It's indecent." I was tempted to remind him that he didn't know if I really was thirteen, that it was only his guess at my age. But instead I told him I hadn't meant to kick my dress up over my knees. But Papa made me come back inside anyway.

I'm in my room now, about to go to bed, and Papa just came in to tell me goodnight. He kissed me and held me for a moment and said, "I'm sorry for what I said earlier, Cosette. I was much too hard on you. You know you have to be patient with your old papa sometimes."

Yes, I know that. I feel like I've been being patient with Papa for a long time.