Harmony
Montreal was loud enough to drown the past… if you let it. For four months, I tried. After my brief return to Val-Du-Lys, I slipped back to the city and into a life that fit in a single duffel. Early shifts at a café that opened before dawn, cash tips in my pocket, and my mother’s lemon tart recipe card tucked behind a bag of flour in a cabinet that wasn’t mine. When the headlines rolled across the mounted TV—Riley Jansen, Louis Marchand, and Marcel Bellerose arrested the same night—I turned the volume down and kept moving. Strong and tired can live in the same body. I was proof.
Summer blurred by in work and quiet thinking. What did I have in Montreal? My one friend, Elyna Chabot, was back home building a future with Phoenix Thorne. Their wedding invitation for Thanksgiving weekend sat on my counter, soft at the corners from being picked up and put down. If I stayed in the city, would anything ever change?
In September, Sandy, Pierre Thorne’s girlfriend texted, because she knew I answered words better than calls.
If you want a place to land, I’ve got hours at the shop. And the apartment upstairs. It’s small, but perfect for one. —S
Sandy was new to Val-Du-Lys. She had bought the flower shop from Evan Henry since he wanted to leave Quebec for Nova Scotia, where his daughter and her family relocated. I had met Sandy when I had gone back to Val-Du-Lys four months ago. The woman was a breath of fresh air. I read her text on the light metro while the train shivered over the river because I had sold my car when I got back to Montreal, because I was strapped for cash. I thought of maples going copper, lake water that knew my name, and a street where people said hello because they meant it. I thought of bread at 4:00 a.m. and the kind of quiet that doesn’t ask you to perform. I typedYesbefore courage could negotiate.
Packing took an hour. I didn’t own much, and none of it argued when I said it was time. I caught a bus at the downtown station and watched the city fall away. It was time to head home, to the place I ran from and the place that had made me. My stomach tightened as the bus pulled onto the highway, as if my body remembered the turnoffs before my mind did. Val-Du-Lys wasn’t just a dot on a map, it was a reckoning. I was going back after helping the police put my father in a cell, after telling the truth out loud and signing my name beneath it. I told myself justice was clean, it ended when the gavel fell, but towns like ours didn’t work that way. They remembered. They counted sins like inheritance.
Still, it was where my mother had laughed, where her hands had smelled like citrus and sugar, where she’d taught me strength didn’t have to roar to survive. Every memory of her lived in kitchens and riverbanks, in the spaces between houses where the light fell just right. Even when people had looked at me like a cautionary tale, even when my last name shut doors before I could knock, I had stayed soft on purpose. I had studied harder. Worked longer. Smiled when it would’ve been easier toharden. I wanted them to see me, not my father. To know being a Bellerose didn’t mean I was destined to become one.
The bus crested the hill where the trees thickened and the air shifted, and I pressed my forehead to the glass. Fear came with me, riding shotgun, but so did something steadier. I wasn’t returning to beg forgiveness or to be folded back into old roles. I was coming back because the town had shaped me and I had shaped myself in response. Because legacy wasn’t a sentence unless you accepted it. I was done letting my father’s shadow decide where I was allowed to stand. Val-Du-Lys rose to meet me, familiar and unyielding. Last time I’d run home because I had nowhere else to go when trouble came knocking. This time I was coming home as a choice. I was choosing me.
Main Street greetedme with cinnamon and cold.Petals & Pines, the new name for Evan’s Flower Shop, which was much more creative, stood out modern and classy. Sandy also made visual upgrades too, the window was all green fog and glass eucalyptus, stems crowded into galvanized buckets, and an OPEN sign hung like a smile. Across the street, the bell over Thorne’s Bakehouse chimed, letting out two kids with chocolate on their mouths. I hauled my duffel and a box onto my hip and stepped inside the flower shop. Sandy came around the counter fast, apron crooked, and her hug unapologetic.
“You’re here,” she said into my shoulder, like she’d been holding her breath for months and could finally stop.
“I’m here.” My voice tried to wobble, so I made it practical. “Tell me what to do.”
“We’ll start with ‘take this key.’” She pressed cool metal into my palm, tied with a ribbon because Sandy believes evenpractical things deserve a little ceremony. “The key sticks, remember, lift and turn. First month’s on me. Argue later.”
“I can pay,” I said and meant it. I may have been living month to month, but I always believed in honest hard work to make my money.
“You can say thank you,” she replied with a kind smile.
“Thank you,” I exhaled with the knowledge there were good people in the world.
She grinned and tugged me down the narrow hallway and up a flight of stairs. She put the key in the key hole and showed me how to turn it so it wouldn’t stick. A tiny apartment with a bed tucked under the eaves sat just beyond the door, it had a small kitchenette, and a little balcony that looked straight across at the bakery. This was the new place I would call home. Small, cozy, and warm.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
“It’s yours,” she said. “Start tomorrow. Today, breathe.”
“You’re too kind,” I said to her. I was tired after packing and the bus ride. Maybe I was just emotionally drained. That was probably it. I don’t remember the last time I had someone I could depend on, other than myself.
I followed her back down the stairs where the shop moved like a heartbeat. A woman needed something that saidI’m sorrywithout groveling; a teenager wanteda bouquet that looks like I didn’t try.Sandy translated with peonies, rosemary, and a laugh that made people believe in themselves for five minutes. I trimmed stems, swept leaves, and remembered how to make my hands quiet. There was something calming and reassuring about working around Sandy. Even though she was relatively new to town, the townspeople loved her. She greeted everyone with a kind smile and knew exactly what kind of flower they needed. My mom had always been interested in flowers. When I was little, she would teach me about the different types. Maybe that’swhy I responded to Sandy’s offer with an immediate yes, because working around flowers would make me feel close to Mom.
During a lull, I drifted to the front window of the shop to see Thorne’s Bakehouse door open and close on a steady rhythm. Trays slid in and out of ovens, steam blurred the glass. Eric crossed the frame once, then again. I knew he split himself thin these days. I had seen him temporarily when I was back here last spring, when some hooligans thought they could harass me. Then I had reached out to Pierre Thorne, the director of police of Val-Du-Lys, because he had always been kind. I was in trouble for reasons I didn’t understand, other than I was the daughter of Marcel Bellerose. When I had come back for that short visit, I learned Eric ran the orchard at Maple Valley before dawn, then he went back and forth between the town bakery and the new one out on the property. I’d heard him pressuring Asher, his kid brother, about taking over the orchard, but Asher wasn’t ready to settle down. Most of the brothers were still living in the main house with Pierre. Eric didn’t speak to me much on that visit, but the other Thorne brothers were kind and welcoming, despite my last name. Becket was in police mode, since he was working on a case that crossed over with mine. Phoenix, the oldest Thorne, built himself a gorgeous L-shaped bungalow on the Maple Valley property. The Thornes weren’t perfect. Most families didn’t seem to be, but they loved and respected each other. That was the glue that held them together. I couldn’t say the same for my family, since there had never been any respect and the way they loved was questionable.
As I stood by the window, a part of me hoped Eric would look my way. But my presence didn’t seem to be on his radar, and I honestly didn’t blame him. Senior year ended with heat and then silence; some doors stick for a reason.
“Still good?” Sandy asked, appearing beside me with a mug that smelled like chamomile and mercy. She was truly an angel.She and Pierre started dating last year when Sandy first moved to town. Someone had broken the glass on her flower shop and she called the police. Apparently, the director showed up himself and the rest was history.
“Better than okay,” I assured. I actually felt like I could take an easy breath, even if I didn’t know how long this calm would last because, in my life, it was never long.
“Good. We’ll keep it that way.” Sandy checked her clipboard. “The festival committee approved one more security camera for our block this year.” She grimaced. “But the alley lightstill flickers. I filed a repair request.”
“Good luck. If I remember correctly, any town repairs take forever,” I said.
“Not much has changed in that sense.” She tucked a thistle into my half-made bouquet. “Pretty things need spines.”
The word thistle clicked inside me, like turning a key in an old lock, strength and beauty in the same breath, a reminder I could use. A lesson my mother taught me young.
We closed at six. I flipped the sign, checked the back door twice, and climbed with my box and duffel, counting steps out of habit the second step was shallow, the fourth warped, and the eighth squeaked. Inside, the apartment felt warmer than it should have, the radiator deciding to be generous. I set a skillet in the cupboard and slid the recipe card into its place behind the flour, my mother’s handwriting catching the light. Sugar, you torch until it singes. Candied peel. A life you can hold in both palms and pass to someone who deserves it.
