Chapter 1
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 typed Yes before 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 to harden.
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 greeted me with cinnamon and cold.
Petals a teenager wanted a 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’s why 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 light still 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.
Across the street, closing time moved like a tide.
Chairs scraped. Laughter carried. For a breath, Eric stood in the front window with a tray balanced on one hand, his head tipped like he was listening to the street.
I told myself not to build a story out of the shape his shoulders made. I’ve built the wrong story before.
My phone buzzed.
Sandy: Text when you’re locked in. Proud of you.
I sent a picture of the key in the door, ribbon trailing.
Me: Locked. Thank you for today.
Sandy: Tomorrow at nine. We’ll ease you in.
I put the thistle in a jar by the sink and cracked the window a finger’s width so the fall air could cool the room.
I’d eventually have to face my brother’s wrath because, even though I was promised the information I provided the police about my father would be confidential, I knew he had eyes everywhere.
Olivier would be angry, although, on some level I think he was also waiting to take over the whole organization and Nico, his right hand, didn’t matter.
He did whatever Olivier and my father commanded him to do.
But I wasn’t going to dwell on those things tonight.
Tonight, I would let the small things be big: like having hot water, clean sheets, and the steady hush of Main Street after-dinner rush.
A black cat knew where to put her feet and which windowsills held the sun.
I could take care of myself. I was allowed to want softness too.
I made tea, watched my breath fog the glass, and let hope take up more space than it had in a long time.
Tomorrow, I’d help a stranger tell the truth with flowers.
Tomorrow, I’d cross the street for coffee and pretend I’d never forgotten how to say hello.
Tomorrow, I’d start again. For the first time in months, it felt less like running and more like coming home.