"Lord, if you get me through this, I promise I'll do better," Philemon Laurent said, looking at the clear blue wintry sky, as he walked out of the weekly meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, held in the basement of the community center located not far from the Rideau Shopping Center in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. The twenty-nine-year-old, Haitian-born RCMP constable couldn't believe how far he had fallen, but fervently hoped that he wasn't beyond redemption...
"Well, hello there," came a familiar feminine voice, rousing Philemon out of his murky thoughts. Selene Bellefeuille-Laurent stood there, leaning against the hood of her bright red Rav4. The six-foot-tall, curvy and very voluptuous, brown-haired, alabaster-skinned and green-eyed Quebecoise looked at Philemon Laurent, and he sighed deeply. Hope Selene's not here to play the blame game, the young man thought.
For Philemon sensed another lengthy tirade coming on. After he lost his latest battle with sobriety, his wife Selene took off with their son Gilbert to her parents ancestral estate outside Montreal, Quebec, and this was his first time seeing her in weeks. For three weeks now, Selene had ignored his phone calls, his texts, his emails and his attempts at Skype. Yup, she was a goner...until she wasn't.
"Selene, um, what are you doing here?" Philemon asked, surprised to see his estranged wife standing there, a wry grin on her lovely face. Clad in the bright red Carleton University Ravens sweatshirt he'd once worn during his days as a university basketball superstar and tight black jeans, Selene looked almost exactly the same way she once did, in their halcyon days at Carleton University. She still looked like the gal who came to every game, always cheering for him...
"Sergeant Roark told me I'd find you here," Selene replied, and Philemon bit his lip. He'd met Sergeant Marcus Roark during his days at the Police Academy, and the tall, dark-skinned, fifty-something, Jamaican-Canadian RCMP officer had been tougher on him than all the other instructors. Seriously, the old guy gave him hell. At the time, Philemon genuinely disliked the man, until the old cop accosted him on graduation day, and gave him some words of wisdom...
"Philemon, you seem like a decent young man, if I was tough on you, son, it's because I believe in you, the RCMP can be a tough environment for minority officers, and you ought to know by now that we are not measured by the same standard as the white guys," Sergeant Roark said, and Philemon nodded, and shook the older man's hand. Mr. Roark looked at him proudly and Philemon nodded gravely.
As part of that first generation of black men to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Sergeant Marcus Roark had endured the kind of hell that Philemon prayed he never went through. Philemon heard horror stories about how tough the federal police force could be on minority guys and female officers. Mr. Roark was definitely worth listening to, this much was clear to Philemon. He'd kept in touch with the older man as he began his career as a federal police constable, and it's a good thing he did...
"Heaven bless that man," Philemon said, and Selene looked at him, blinking back tears. For this was the man she loved, her estranged husband and the father of their son. Selene remembered feeling so proud as she held hands with Philemon as they graduated from Carleton University in the summer of 2011. Against all odds, the ultimate odd couple, the tall, handsome black athlete and the white female nerd, actually made it.
