She didn’t wear her linen bonnet anymore. Nor her ribboned frock or satin shoes. Instead, Cosette wore a sack from the miller’s house meant for flour but that was too thin in places to keep the flour in. Maman cut two holes into the sack for her arms and a larger hole at the top for her head. “That,” she said, “is your new dress. Not such a pretty thing now!”

Cosette did all the bad jobs.

She worked in the kitchen. Among the grease and black-bodied flies, she plucked chickens and scraped the scales off fish. She scrubbed vegetables and sliced fatty meat and wrinkled her nose at the pails of soured milk. When the cook carried rabbits by their ears—still alive, kicking—into the yard to have their necks snapped, Cosette cried for them. Then she scoured their blood from the kitchen floor.

She cleaned the windows and washed our clothes. She ate from a bowl under the kitchen table, kneeling on all fours. “Like an animal,” said Maman, laughing. “Look at her! Just like the cat. She’s so dirty, with fleas and thistles in her hair.”

*  *  *

I didn’t have to steal anymore. Every month, Cosette’s mother sent fifteen francs: with this, my parents could pay for their tobacco and ale and gin and flour and milk and firewood and eggs. They could pay for a hock of ham instead of stealing it. I didn’t have to dip my fingers into pockets.

This was new. In the evenings, when the inn was full, Azelma and I weren’t creeping through the room now; we were sitting upstairs instead. Would Maman want us? It felt very strange.

We drew on the window’s mist with our fingers.

We played with the doll and sang.

But Maman didn’t come. Part of me was glad because I didn’t like the inn being smoky and noisy and full of men. But part of me felt sorry too—because I didn’t know how else to make our mother smile and say, Oh, my pretty ones!

*  *  *

Spring crept on. March became April and April became May. Sunshine brought the villagers out. Cosette stayed indoors, sweeping, but the rest of us came out into the flowery warmth. Marie-Belle, with her hunched back, sat on a bench and read. Monsieur Fournier’s cows munched buttercups. Claude the blacksmith, seeing the sun, worked outside in the street and I heard the ting ting ting! of his hammer and the hiss of the shoe as he pressed it on to the horse. One morning as we watched this, Azelma and me, I saw how the tools on his belt were shiny. I wondered if I might take one, and what Maman would say?

Maman appeared. She stepped out of the inn in her prettiest dress, rustling as she walked. “How do I look?” she cried.

We left the blacksmith’s and ran to her.

“Am I very beautiful?”

“You are! You are!” We clapped our hands.

“I’m going to Paris,” she declared. “See these bags? They are filled with that urchin’s clothes … Fancy, frilly nonsense. Her mother sent them, but that bug cannot scrub floors in such dresses, can she? So I’m off to Paris to sell them—and with the money they fetch I shall buy you far prettier dresses than these vile things … Satin! Silk!” She turned. “Luc? My hat.”

Papa stood in the doorway. He tossed her a hat, took the pipe from his mouth, and said, “Get what you can—and more.”

“I will.” She kissed our heads—two smacking kisses.

At that moment, a carriage appeared. It would take her to Livry and from there a second coach would take her to Paris itself. She heaved herself inside it with the bag of clothes.

We watched the coach rumble away, down the ruelle du Boulanger.

Papa said, “She’d better come back with one hundred, at least.”

“One hundred francs?” I gasped. “The clothes are worth that?”

“No, but she’ll be doing more than selling clothes.” He placed the pipe back in his mouth, gripped it with his teeth. “We know all the best places in Paris …”

“To visit?”

He laughed. “Ha! No, to steal from, you fool!” And he turned and went inside.

Azelma followed him but I stayed in the lane. I watched the carriage grow smaller and smaller. I thought, All we do is steal. It seemed to be all we ever did or talked about. Wasn’t there another way of living?

I remembered the hug Cosette’s mother had given her. I looked up at the swifts, swooping.

For the first time I hoped for something better. For something more than Montfermeil, and this.

*  *  *

Paris. I knew its name. I’d heard it mentioned in the street as the carriage rolled by or as the blacksmith tended to horses. At the market in Chelles, they called, “The finest lace! From the streets of Paris! Come and see!” Madame Cou said she’d worked there once, as a dancer in a part called Montparnasse.

“Paris … ,” she murmured, like she loved it very much.

Maman was in Paris for three days. Back in Montfermeil it was all I could think of. What was it like? I imagined boulevards—wide streets lined with trees that whispered in the wind. Tall houses made of stone, and horses that shone, as if polished. Men were handsome, tilting their hats when they passed a fine lady, and those ladies wore fox fur and pearls. Even the names of places sounded beautiful: Notre-Dame, the hill called Montmartre, the Seine, and the Champ de Mars … It felt like a magical place.

One evening I crept into the half-empty bar. My father was playing dominoes with Boulatruelle and some other men.

“Papa?”

“Hm?” He kept his eyes on the game.

“Will you tell me more about what Paris is like?”

“Paris? Grubby and dark. Alleyways to hide in.”

I didn’t want to know that. “I mean, are the ladies very beautiful?”

Boulatruelle cackled and Papa shook his head. “Not the ladies I’ve known! Let me tell you this: Paris is perfect for thieving in and that’s all. At la Grève, for example, everyone’s too busy watching the guillotine to feel a hand in their pocket … Ha!”

I felt sad: These weren’t the tales I’d hoped for.

I knew Père Gauphin had been to Paris so I asked him instead. “Oh,” he sighed, “it was a fine city once. It might be fine again but as long as there’s a rich, plump king and starving people …” He coughed his rattling cough. “It’s got its troubles.”

Madame Cou didn’t like company so I couldn’t ask her.

Widow Amandine said, “Paris? I’ve never been.”

It was Maman’s romance books I turned to in the end. In them, I found my gentlemen with gold-topped canes and perfumed ladies who fluttered their eyes behind fans. Notre-Dame’s polished stones reflected the sun. People fell in love on the Paris streets.

I sighed.

I laid down The Beauty of Belleville and looked out the bedroom window. It was my favorite daydream—that one day I’d be pretty, and I’d walk with a boy on the rue de Rivoli in a skirt that went shush … shush … shush.

*  *  *

Maman came back looking flushed. She stepped down from the coach in an embroidered cape that trailed behind her, and she smelled musky, strange.

“Maman! What did you see?”

She swayed up the path, past the nettles. “Where’s your father? Find him. Tell him I have money …”

“And gifts?” chirped Azelma.

“Oui, ma chérie, and gifts.”

*  *  *

I was given a shiny petticoat and a white fur muff for the winter. Azelma got a cape with a green velvet trim. She danced in it, singing, “Look at me, look at me!” Papa was handed a clinking drawstring pouch, full of coins.

Cosette? She got nothing. She crept out of the shadows that evening, as we were eating roasted goose.

“What do you want?” Maman barked. “Why aren’t you fetching water? Go and get it!”

I stopped chewing. I thought, Poor Cosette, because it was pitch-black outside and she must have been so hungry. But she said nothing; she only trembled, nodded, and reached for the bucket. The goose tasted bitter after that.

*  *  *

I found her later. She’d fetched the water and was huddled on her bed under the stairs, whimpering.

“Cosette?”

She looked afraid. Maybe she’d thought I was Maman.

“Don’t worry—she’s sleeping and Papa is counting his francs in the bar. They won’t see this.” I held out my hands. I’d saved some of the goose for her.

She stared. “For me?”

“Yes.”

She made small, soft noises as she ate. I saw the blisters on her hand and her flaking lips. “You’ve been asking people about Paris, haven’t you?” she said, swallowing. “My mother knows Paris.”

“Really?”

“She met my father there. She said they walked along the riverbank and he took her to theaters where the lanterns are made of gold …”

This was what I’d wanted. “Thank you.”

Cosette wiped her mouth. We looked at each other and smiled. It was like we’d both given something the other person needed—a little bit of nourishment. Mine for her body, and hers for my soul.