“I met Candice at university. She was an extroverted pharmacy student. I was an introverted med student, struggling with my sexuality. Catholic upbringing for the win. I was desperately trying to convert my feelings into something more hetero, while abjectly denying my attraction to men. She asked me out, so I said yes. I quickly learned that I was in over my head. I was not straight, and no matter how badly I wanted it, I was also not bi. I was a fake. A twenty-year-old gay virgin with a girlfriend, but I was not a quitter.
“Candy got pregnant in our second month of dating. It was a shock to both of us, but she wanted to have the baby. I didn’tknow what to think. The relationship was never going to survive, that much was obvious, but it took me six months after she announced the pregnancy to find the courage to tell her I was gay. I ended things but promised I would be a father to our child no matter what. I accepted the responsibility, and I wasn’t running out. I would do my part. She was mad. Rightfully. She had been expecting a wedding. She did not want to be a single mom in university.
“Angelique was born in May the following year.” Dominique gestured to the date on the headstone. “Candy gave the baby her last name since she was the primary caregiver, and we were not married or planning to be. I suspect she was trying to hurt me, but I understood. She took a year off school but never took to being a mom. I think it surprised her, this lack of desire. Motherhood is something most women assume is innate. It’s not always. It wasn’t for her. When the following year rolled around, and Angelique was sixteen months old, Candy approached me and asked if I wanted to be a full-time parent. She would willingly give me custody and walk away.”
“Jesus. Really?”
Dominique nodded. “Of course I said yes. Candy may not have loved being a mother, but it was the opposite for me. I adored our daughter. Angelique’s legal name was Sauvage, and I never changed it. It was the only part of her mother she would ever have. I let her have that gift. That memory.”
“So you raised her alone?”
“Yes. It was not easy while I was in school, but I figured it out. My parents were… not unkind, but they didn’t love that I had a child out of wedlock and so young. They slipped farther from my life when I came out. I moved to Gatineau after I graduated, so it wasn’t like we were neighbors. I got a job. Life stabilized.”
Dominique grew quiet. When I glanced his way, I noticed his eyes first. They swam with unshed tears. His chin quivereddespite how intensely he clenched his jaw, and I could only imagine what he envisioned.
“I need to know everything, Dom.”
“I know.” He scrubbed his face, a strangled sob escaping before I watched him push his grief away, firm his resolve, clear his throat, and continue.
“Raising a child is challenging. Raising a teenage girl is… something else altogether. Puberty was tough. No twelve-year-old wants to talk to her dad about getting her first period, never mind the sex talk. I did my best.
“She started high school in September of 2022. High school is a milestone in itself. My baby girl went from being a free-spirited child to an emotional teenager overnight. The shift from Barbie dolls to makeup and boys was terrifying. The fluctuating moods, the attitude, the petulance. The battle over what she could wear or not wear. It came out of nowhere. I was overwhelmed, and for the first time, I wished Candy had at least taken a minor role. Having a mother might have helped.
“Jolie was at our house all the time. They had been best friends since grade school. After they started grade nine, they spent more time at Jolie’s house, and I knew it was because of her older brother Bastian. Angelique had a crush, and I hated it, but he was sweet and respectful, so I tried not to interfere.”
A sad smile ghosted his lips.
“She and Jolie often had slumber parties on the weekend. It wasn’t abnormal. It was the third weekend of September, their third completed week of high school, when she asked to spend Friday night at her friend’s house. I said yes, like I always did.”
Dominique paused and seemed to gather his thoughts. “When Angelique came home on Saturday afternoon, I could tell something was wrong, but when you’re raising a willful teenage girl with wildly changing hormones who hates you half the time for no reason at all, it’s not easy to get them to talk. I thought sheand Jolie had a fight. It wouldn’t have been unusual. They could scrap like nobody’s business. I asked what was wrong. She got snippy. When I pushed, she had an attitude, told me to mind my business. She went to her room and slammed the door. Things disintegrated without my really knowing what was happening until one day, I lost her completely. She was not my Angelique.
“The transition wasn’t as noticeable as you’d think. Looking back… I originally thought it was high school that kicked it off. That was when it started. But it was that sleepover, and I didn’t know it until much later.”
He huffed and shook his head. “She stopped talking to me. What relationship we had vanished. She turned bitterly angry, slammed doors, stamped her feet, threw tantrums I hadn’t seen since she was a toddler. Then she’d cry and hide in her room for hours. She stopped wearing the nice clothes we’d bought her for school—the ones I’d fought against that she demanded she needed. She didn’t put on makeup. She listened to angry music at top volume. No more musicals. No more dancing around the house. No more performances. No more singing. Hormones, I told myself. She’s fourteen and experiencing a lot of hormones.
“Then the phone calls from teachers started. She went from being a straight-A student to barely passing. Nothing I said helped. When her mood didn’t shift or change or get better, I approached her and asked, ‘What’s wrong? Why have you given up on school?’ She told me I was delusional. She was fine. Go away. Leave her alone. When I pushed, she yelled that I was smothering her.
“I talked to a doctor friend who explained that some young girls experience more hormonal fluctuations than others. It was likely normal, but he suggested blood work, mentioned therapy, and asked about her diet.”
Dominique let out a heavy sigh. “She started skipping school. Lying. She stopped talking to Jolie. She stopped taking care ofherself. I would go to work in the morning and come home and find her still in bed. I know what you’re thinking. How could I not realize she was pregnant? I barely saw her, Kobe. When I did, she wore jogging pants and my old university hoodies that swallowed her tiny frame. She didn’t want me to know.
“It got bad enough that I was about to drag her to a doctor, kicking and screaming. I feared child services would show up at my door. But I waited too long.” He buried his face in his hands, stifling sobs that wouldn’t be contained.
“Tell me, Dominique.”
He nodded, lifted his face, and blew a cloud of hot air, draining his lungs. The strain around his eyes stood out in sharp relief, an ancient pain he might never shake.
“On June fourth, I came home from work to the cries of a newborn baby. I was confused. I thought it was the television or that Angelique was listening to a video on YouTube. I followed the sound to her bedroom and…” He choked on the words, paused, and a moan left his lips before he cut it off and turned his back. “A minute. Please.” He squatted, bracing one hand on the ground as his face crumpled and grief reigned.
I waited, my stomach in knots, knowing what happened next and why. His broken teenager had tried to report the assault, and it had been dismissed. She had suffered in silence for months, a constant reminder of the assault growing in her belly.
When Dominique straightened and continued, he spoke so quietly, I had to fight to hear over the wind.
“There was blood everywhere. So much that it seemed impossible it could have come from one tiny girl. I’m a doctor, Kobe. For a long time, she wanted to follow in my footsteps, so of course she knew exactly what arteries to cut. Her body was already cold. She had died hours before I got home. In the center of the bed, swaddled in the hoodie she’d been wearing for months—my hoodie—was a newborn baby. Beside the babywas a note. Pages of handwriting. She told me everything she couldn’t tell me in life. About the party. The drinking. About the boys who drugged and raped her. About the unkind doctor who frightened her. About the police officer who called her a whore. About the hollowness that grew inside her with the baby. She explained how it wouldn’t go away.”
Dominique balled his fists, his features conveying anger and disgust. “She apologized, Kobe. She fucking apologized as though she had anything to be sorry about. As though she had done something wrong. She was a fourteen-year-old girl, not yet a woman, and she blamed herself for the actions of those boys. She was afraid I would be mad, so she suffered in silence. Hating herself. Hating the child inside her, but Angelique would never harm a fly, let alone a baby, even one she didn’t ask for or want.”
His chest heaved as he fought to regain control. “The first line of the note simply read,Call her Cosette. Take care of her for me. This is not her fault, but I will never love her.”
