I sometimes think we’re like the flowers—we don’t need very much to grow. Just food, water, and light.

The hedgerows in Montfermeil were filled with flowers that summer. They spilled over walls into the ruelle du Boulanger so that they brushed the carriages that trundled past. The lanes were so colorful—blue anemones and pink roses and the tiny yellow daisy’s eye. Nobody cared for these flowers and yet they grew. People gazed at their prettiness or stooped from their horse to pick a bloom or two.

Cosette didn’t see any of it. She was indoors all the time, scrubbing the kitchen floor or darning our clothes. We ate raspberries and played in the fields but she didn’t. In September she dropped a glass and it smashed, and Maman screamed at her, “You horrid, clumsy beast!” She hit Cosette so that she had bruises for weeks.

But she still had to fetch the water. “Off into the woods!” cried Maman. “Go! I don’t care if it’s cold or scary out there! And don’t spill a drop, do you hear?”

Cosette wept very quietly when she lay down that night. I heard her.

By November, some nights were so frosty and cold that I worried she might freeze to death in her sackcloth dress, out in those spooky woods. But she always came back, shivering with cold but alive.

She was like the flowers in the lane, maybe—nobody cared for her, but she still grew, and she was pretty. Prettier than Azelma and me.

*  *  *

“She isn’t a Thenardier,” Maman said. “You don’t want to fetch the water yourself, do you?”

I definitely didn’t. But I didn’t like seeing Cosette’s bruises or hearing her little moans at night.

It was a wintry day when I decided to help: the fire in our bedroom kept us warm but all the other rooms were icy cold. Even the cat stayed near us. But Cosette was scrubbing the back doorstep. She was kneeling with a bucket of water beside her, scrubbing very slowly back and forth. Her skin was goose-pimply and blue. And at that moment, she knocked the bucket over. It clattered and its water raced across the yard.

Cosette wailed, “No!” and tried to dam the water with her hands but she couldn’t stop it. The bucket was empty.

She gave a single sob. She’d have to fetch more water now and it was getting dark.

“Cosette?” I whispered.

She was all teary-eyed.

“There’s a trick I know. Give me the bucket.”

She didn’t move.

“The bucket! Cosette, you don’t have to go in the woods. The old nag in the field? She has a drinking trough. It’s not good water because it’s green with insects in it and people can’t drink it but you could scrub a floor with it. The bucket, quick!” I reached out my hand.

I ran from the inn in my silk petticoats and climbed over the gate. I broke the icy crust on the water trough, filled the bucket up.

When I returned, her eyes were as big as saucers. I said, “When you’re done, come upstairs. Papa is teaching Azelma how to cheat at cards in the bar and Maman is drinking with men so they won’t know if you come up to warm your hands.” I tried to smile. “I won’t tell.”

I remember how she crouched by the fire with her eyes closed as she soaked up its heat. Like the flowers that turn their faces to the warmth of the sun.

“Thank you,” she whispered after a little while, and she padded back downstairs.

*  *  *

I liked being kind to her. It felt much better than stealing, or being mean. I was frightened that Maman might find out, but how could she? I thought my secret was safe.

But in the morning, Widow Amandine knocked on our door. She owned the old gray nag and, like the nag, she had big teeth and a swaying bottom.

“Monsieur and Madame Thenardier?”

My parents were suspicious. “Oui?”

“Please keep that eldest daughter of yours from stealing my horse’s water. I saw her yesterday! She took a whole bucketful! It is theft—theft, I tell you! I pay Père Six-Fours for that water, don’t I?”

“You’re mistaken,” said Maman, but her voice sounded tight.

“I saw her, Madame! And if it happens again I will bring the gendarme from Chelles and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.” She snorted, turned, and swung her bottom down the lane.

Maman slammed the door and bellowed, “EPONINE!”

She found me on the stairs, seized me by the wrist, and said, “What’s this? Taking water from a drinking trough? Did you? Answer me!”

“But you like stealing, Maman—”

“Don’t be sassy with me! Why did you do it? It’s Cosette’s job to fetch the water—that horrid, bony thing!” She brought her face closer to mine. “Were you helping her?”

I paused.

“You were, weren’t you? You were helping that stinking little …” Maman hissed in disgust. “Don’t you remember what I told you, Eponine? That”—she pointed down the stairs, where Cosette was huddling—“isn’t a Thenardier! Why should we be kind to her?”

“Because … it’s nice to be kind?”

“Nice? NICE?” She kicked the cat as it passed her. “I shan’t say this twice so listen well: Kindness is a useless thing. Useless! Do you think that kindness stops the guillotine’s blade or the gnaw of hunger in a belly or the gray hairs creeping onto a man’s head? Do you think a kind man’s body won’t be sucked by worms? Hm? These are dangerous times, Eponine, and people will steal and trick and lie and kill, if they have to. And it is the kind people who are tricked and fooled and stolen from! It’s the kind ones who are murdered! Do you want that to be you?”

“No, Maman.”

“Then be cruel. Cruel! It’s what will save you! And”—she grasped my collar—“if you cannot be cruel, and if you cannot be hard, then I’m not sure you’re my daughter at all.” She let go, folded her arms.

I was shocked. “Not your daughter?”

“Maybe not. Maybe it’s only Azelma who’s my daughter, for she is growing hard. She does not help that snivelling wretch. And if you aren’t a Thenardier, why must we keep you?”

I was frightened and I reached out for her. “No, Maman! I am your daughter! I can be cruel!”

She eyed me. “Can you?”

“Yes! Very cruel! You’ll see!”

“You must prove it.”

“I will! I will prove it!”

She sniffed. She bent down and kissed my head. “Good.”

I wondered, then, what kind of flower I was because I drank up my mother’s kiss like it was water. As if it hadn’t rained for months.

“Promise me?”

“I promise. I’ll be hard and cruel.”