The Trees Have Buds

By Francois Houle

What makes a family?

For seventeen years, Hailey Cormier has known exactly who she is: Jack Cormier’s perfect daughter. Driven by fear of her father leaving like her mother did when she was four, Hailey pushes herself to excel at everything she does.

At the age of twenty-nine, Sarah Kincaid is still haunted by her past. Dragged from town to town all her life by a mother whose idea of love was a backhand or turning a blind eye to her creepy boyfriends, Sarah has never felt worthy of anyone’s love or kindness.

Until Sarah meets Jack. Within months, they are married.

But can Sarah—fragile and afraid to believe her life has finally turned around—and Hailey—an angry and distrustful teenager who sees her dad’s new wife as an adversary—learn to accept each other and become the family that Jack so desperately needs?

The Trees Have Buds is a poignant and heart-rending journey of two women who struggle to shed their past, learn to trust, and define the true meaning of family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francois Houle
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989734056

Francois Houle

François Houle’s first novel IT HAPPENED TO US spent multiple weeks in 2019 as an Amazon top 100 best seller in two categories. His fiction explores themes that are universal such as family and friendships, love and grief, and anything else that makes us all human. Reviews often refer to his books as “beautifully written,” “heartbreaking and heartwarming,” and “intense and emotional.”François is one of five boys so it’s no surprise that family is a strong theme in his books. A lot of the inspiration for his first two novels IT HAPPENED TO US and BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT came from the passing of his father in 2005.François grew up in a small town outside of Montréal, moved to Toronto when he was ten, and currently lives in Ottawa. An avid reader from a young age, he tried to create a comic book when he was twelve, penned hundreds of song lyrics as a teenager, and wrote his first novel in 1985.When he's not writing, he's probably outside doing something around the house or down in his basement workshop, enjoying a little woodworking.If you’d like to stay current with what he’s working on, signup to his Insiders Group and get a free ebook as a thank you: www.francoisghoule.com/your-free-starter-library/

Book preview

THE TREES

HAVE BUDS

FRANÇOIS HOULE

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Dawn Rainbow Books

OTTAWA, ONTARIO

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, establishments, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by François Houle

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, email: [e-mail]

www.francoisghoule.com

The Trees Have Buds/François Houle. -- 1st ed.

ISBN: 978-1-989734-05-6

Published by Dawn Rainbow Books

Cover Design: KD Design

Cover Art Image: Sergii Mostovyi©123RF.com

Editor: Geffen Semach

For my brothers

Gaétan, Robert, Martin, Benoit

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

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ONE

_________

Sarah woke up to a dreary autumn morning with the odd sense that the perfect harmony that had unexpectedly found her less than three years ago would someday soon be impossible to hold onto—thin and misty like the fog that wisped by her bedroom window.

Jack was in the shower, getting ready for work. Sarah had gotten up with the intent to join him, but the fear she’d been harbouring lately, like she was a fraud and soon Jack would figure it out and cast her aside like the nobody she used to be, paralyzed her.

Giving up her former life had been easier than she’d ever dreamed of, but it was never far away, almost like an imperceptible mosquito buzzing around her head and keeping her awake at night.

Sarah hated it when Jack went to work and left her alone. She’d always loathed being alone, mostly because she had spent the majority of her life alone with her mom, moving from place to place. Always the new kid at school, on the perimeter of other kids’ lives, watching friendships from the boundary of the playground or the lunchroom. Never venturing closer, never becoming one of them.

She watched others live while she waited to be invited to join in. By the time others kids had warmed up to her, she would be long gone, her mom already hooking up with another boyfriend in a new place. That is, until they’d outstayed their welcome and Mr. Boyfriend dumped her mom’s sorry ass, leaving them with nowhere to live once again.

Sarah put her fingers to her lips, but the cigarette that had been a fixture in her hand since she was twelve was absent—a phantom of her old life. She had been all too happy to give that up when Jack had suggested that it might be best for her health.

And his.

He didn’t smoke and she had figured it was as good a time as any to give up the habit anyway. Besides, at almost twenty dollars a pack, it made little economic sense.

But still, while her mind agreed with the common sense of quitting smoking, at times her fingers seemed to have a mind of their own. There was still the odd time she had a craving, especially on mornings like this when she was feeling completely out of her element, and could feel her anxiety coming at her from everywhere, desperately trying to suffocate the happiness she felt she so deserved.

The shower stopped, and Sarah knew Jack would be on auto-pilot now getting ready for work. She’d only get in the way and she really didn’t want to pick a fight this morning just because she was feeling insecure.

Again.

Thanks to her mother.

And her mother’s boyfriends.

So many men.

So many towns.

So many disappointments.

Sarah closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Remembering to breathe had helped her get through some really bad moments, but today it wasn’t really helping. Maybe because this morning wasn’t really a bad moment. She was married to the most amazing man she had ever met and had never been this happy.

Well, things could be better with Hailey, but she was a teenager going through adolescent stuff and clearly had no intention of sharing any of that with Sarah. If anyone could understand the troubles of teenhood it would be Sarah, but Sarah had not yet managed to earn her stepdaughter’s trust or respect.

She really had no clue how to be a mother, and she hadn’t had much experience with friendship, either. So, when she was left alone with Hailey, both just kept to themselves while they waited until Jack came home.

Being a firefighter, he’d be gone for the next twenty-four hours.

No wonder Sarah was feeling anxious.

* * *

Sarah was still standing in front of the window that looked out across an expansive farmer’s field when Jack crashed out of the bathroom—Jack never seemed to do anything with delicate finesse, always seeming to destroy as he moved about. Sarah had remarked this early on in their relationship and he’d simply laughed it off, telling her that when your life was spent rushing into burning buildings to save lives, delicate finesse wasn’t going to get the job done.

No, she’d said. I guess it wouldn’t.

Still, it wasn’t like their house was burning, so he really didn’t need to act like he had to rush in and out of rooms as if it were.

Stop it, she told herself. You’re doing it again, finding faults where there are none to be found. Are you trying to ruin this beautiful life that basically fell into your lap?

Sarah felt Jack wrap his arms around her, his naked body against her bare skin.

Good thing we don’t have neighbours, he whispered into her ear.

It’s such a great view from up here. Dawn had just begun to push the night away. Except right now, even if we did have nosy neighbours, that fog blocks everything. It makes me feel like we’re cut off from the world.

Jack kissed her neck and she felt him against her lower back—he was a big man, nearly a foot taller than she was, and she wasn’t short—and reflexively, she reached behind her and grabbed him.

You don’t have time, she said sadly.

Jack spun her around and kissed her like it was their first time, deep and long and eagerly. No one had ever kissed her like that before she had met him and she wondered why that was—why hadn’t anyone before Jack ever made her feel like she was that desirable?

She felt a tear sneak out of her right eye.

Hey, what’s wrong? he said after their kiss ended.

Nothing, she said. I’m just so happy.

He looked at her with a frown.

Are you and Hailey getting along? he asked. Do I need to talk to her again?

Sarah shook her head. We’re good.

He looked at her a little longer, and she could feel his gaze trying to reach her lie, but then she started to run her hand up and down and next thing she knew he’d led her onto the bed and loved her until they were both spent and he was running super late.

I’ll grab something at Tim’s, he said as he rushed out the front door. Love you, babe.

I love you more, she said.

Sarah stood just outside the open front door and watched Jack back his car out of the garage and into the little two-car parking area off to the side of the driveway designated for guest parking. He gave her that big smile she loved so much and then blew her an air-kiss before heading towards the main road. Their driveway was so long that Jack owned a tractor-snowblower because there was no way anyone could shovel that much snow in the winter without getting a heart attack. She saw the tail lights turn bright red, and then Jack aimed the car toward town and out of Sarah’s sight.

She then closed the door and began to shake.

* * *

Sarah let herself slide down against the wall until she was sitting on the floor. She pulled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, making herself as small as she could.

Small things went unnoticed.

She hated when this happened. The shaking, the sweating followed by chills, that invisible hand around her throat cutting off her airwaves, as if she had no control over anything. It would be easy for her to blame her mother, or at least her upbringing for these panic attacks, but she’d basically been taking care of herself since she was barely ten and had never made excuses for anything.

Her mom wouldn’t have cared anyway, so complaining about things wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing would have changed. She had learned to live by being unseen and unheard.

The panic attack would pass. It always did. She just didn’t understand why she was still getting them, especially now. She had never been more loved, cared for, or safe.

Which was probably the problem.

She was afraid of losing it all.

Her eyes stung.

The day her mother died when Sarah was seventeen didn’t even bring a tear to her eye. She’d been too busy trying to figure out how to survive.

Sarah had no idea who her father might be, and she had no brothers or sisters.

At seventeen, she’d been all alone.

Grieving for a mother who had dragged her around like she was a used piece of luggage had been a luxury she couldn’t afford; her new reality was that she’d become an orphan, was homeless, and no one in the world cared about what happened to her.

She never returned to school.

What was the point? She had still been just in grade ten because of all the moving around, and she had been tired of being made fun of by the other kids when they found out she was old enough to be in grade twelve. Being called stupid and worse had long ago made her despise school anyway.

And it wasn’t like she could have afforded to go to college after graduating. Besides, there was only one thing she’d been meant to do, and although the thought hadn’t ever crossed her mind until that day, she’d known that following in her mother’s footsteps had been the only option she’d really ever had.

Jack had saved her from that life. She couldn’t imagine life without him and every time he went off to work, she felt like that seventeen-year-old who’d suddenly found herself all alone.

Something rough and yet wet touched her bare feet repeatedly, and through the cascade of grief pouring out of her eyes, she saw the one, true thing that really belonged to her.

Hey, Peanut, Sarah said as she scooped her little Maltese into her arms and buried her face into its fur. Jack had brought her home last July. One of the guys he worked with had a dog who’d had a litter, and Jack had surprised Sarah by bringing a little puppy home. Not that she’d ever expressed any desire to have a dog, but Peanut was so cute and friendly and lovable that Sarah had simply fallen in love with her. Mommy is all right. I’m just being my silly old self.

Peanut acknowledged her mommy’s silliness by licking Sarah’s tears from her face.

You’ll never leave me, will you? Sarah said and was greeted by more kisses. Of course, you won’t. You love your mommy, yes you do.

Sarah held Peanut up against her chest, feeling the Maltese’s warmth and comfort. Slowly, her shaking stopped, the chills vanished, and she was able to breathe again as the pressure around her throat eased and disappeared.

Sarah put Peanut down and pulled herself up. She took a deep breath and straightened her nightgown. I bet you’re starving.

She let the dog out to do her business in the back yard and took Peanut’s bowls to the sink to give them a quick wash before filling one with water and the other with dry lamb and rice kibble. Peanut came in and dashed toward her food while Sarah went to make a cup of coffee and put a couple pieces of bread into the toaster. She smothered peanut butter on her toast but after a couple of bites she found that she didn’t have much of an appetite. She sat at the kitchen island with her cup of coffee in her hands, watching Peanut eat, wondering how she was going to fill the next twenty-four hours until Jack came home.

She heard the old pipes rattle as the upstairs shower came to life. Her heart began to beat a little faster.

Her stepdaughter was up.

TWO

_________

Hailey turned on the hot water tap in the shower and peed while she waited for the room to fill with steam. It normally took a couple of minutes for the cold water to be pushed out of the pipes as it moved from the cold, dank basement tank all the way to the second floor. The house had been her grandparents’ home, and before that had belonged to her great-grandparents. It was old and cold in the winter and, really, she wished her dad would just sell it and buy a new one.

She really didn’t care for old things. Bulldoze the damn thing if he really wanted to stay here and build a nice modern house. Maybe one of those sprawling bungalows that went on forever. She wouldn’t mind having a wing to herself. The farther away from her the better.

Hailey had no idea why her dad had married Sarah. She seemed rather useless. She didn’t work, didn’t cook, didn’t do much of anything. Hailey guessed Sarah must be good in bed because Hailey couldn’t see any other reason for her father to keep Sarah around.

Hailey flushed without thinking and when she stepped into the shower, the scalding water made her shriek and she stepped back quickly. Another thing she hated about this place—her dad had promised to install one of those anti-scalding thingys but never seemed to get around to it. He was too busy renovating the spare bedroom into a workout room for Princess Sarah to care that his own daughter constantly burned herself in the shower whenever someone flushed a toilet in the house.

While she waited for the water in the shower to return to a more moderate temperature, she grabbed her phone and put on one of her podcasts. Her friend Madelaine had turned her on to podcasts a couple months ago, and Hailey had become quickly addicted. It seemed that no subject was taboo.

Hailey used her hand this time to test the water and, feeling it was fine, stepped in the shower again and spent the next twenty minutes washing up as the podcast blared over the noise the old pipes made. She then spent another ten minutes examining her blemishes in the steamed-up mirror that she kept having to wipe with her towel—another thing her dad hadn’t done yet was to replace the useless old fan that seemed to suck the humid air out of the bathroom about as good as a straw full of holes.

Then she examined her body. Her shoulders were broad, her arms muscular. And her thighs were strong and powerful, which may have made her one of the fastest skaters on the ice but she definitely wasn’t delicate like Madelaine or some of the other girls at school.

A big angry sigh escaped from between her lips, which were her best feature: naturally full and inviting; at least, that’s how she liked to think of them. Unfortunately, no boys were kissing her these days, and definitely not the one she wanted anyway. Her hair was long and twilight-dark like her mom’s (from what she had seen from the few pictures she had in her baby album), and she had her dad’s lawn-green eyes. Her nose was a problem. She felt it was too big, especially compared to Sarah’s perfect Emma Stone celestial nose. In fact, Sarah could almost pass as Emma’s twin.

Another angry sigh.

You look too intimidating, she said to the image in the mirror. Maybe that’s why Connor hasn’t asked you out.

And she was smart. Her overall average was ninety-three. Things just came naturally to her. She knew she could get her average up above ninety-five, but she purposely kept it below that. She never studied and still she often had to purposely sabotage her tests to bring her grades down, which were still better than all her friends’. She already got called brainy as it was and she just couldn’t imagine how her friends would treat her if she started getting A pluses.

Smart and intimidating. She heard the rumours of what the non-athletic girls called her: a dyke on steroids. So, she was grateful for her small circle of friends.

She couldn’t wait to be done high school. High school was the ultimate institution populated by teenage fraudsters. Everyone was trying to fit in, look cool as her dad would say—such a prehistoric term—and for what?

So they could survive the four worst years of their lives.

Hailey hated it when her dad tried to tell her that these were the best years, that she should enjoy them. Was he nuts? Had he completely forgotten his own teenage years?

She looked at herself one more time and then wrapped a towel around her body and walked back to her room. She closed the door, threw herself on the bed, and grabbed her phone to open Snapchat and see what was going on with her friends. Madelaine was going on about the math test today and how she wasn’t prepared; Sylvie was complaining about her weight again—the girl was as thin as a rail, so Hailey really had no sympathy for her; Jessie was bitching about her younger sister who kept coming into her room and taking her stuff; and Connor, who Hailey had a secret crush on, was just being his goofy self and making fun of everything and everyone.

Hailey was about to start her morning rant about Sarah but decided that was too predictable. She searched for something else and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Then Andréa piped in about the show You on Netflix she’d been binging on—hockey practice three times a week squeezed in between two games didn’t leave Hailey and Andréa much time to stay current with the latest shows, so they were always trying to catch up. Still, the conversation got heated and Hailey’s imagination easily began to place Sarah as Joe and her dad as poor, trapped Guinevere.

And then something dawned on Hailey. Sarah was only twelve years older than Hailey and twelve years younger than her dad. Strange coincidence.

She quickly shared it with her group.

That is weird, Andréa texted.

Really weird, Sylvie added.

High-five for your dad, Connor texted and added smiley faces.

You’re such a guy, Hailey texted back.

Hey, don’t blame the player, he texted.

Yeah, yeah, hate the game, Hailey texted back.

So, how’s the wicked stepmom? Jessie asked.

Hailey glanced back at her bedroom door, as if to make sure Sarah wasn’t eavesdropping. Not like she could know what they were texting about.

Haven’t seen her yet, she texted, including the hands raised emoji. Gotta get dressed and grab something to eat. See you all at school!

Hailey rummaged through her closet and settled on a pair of blue jeans and a loose-fitting, midnight-coloured sweater. She brushed her hair and tied it in a ponytail, didn’t bother with makeup—she rarely wore any, something she’d noticed Sarah rarely wore either, which really annoyed her because Sarah still looked gorgeous.

Everything the woman did annoyed Hailey.

The fact that her mom had left when Hailey wasn’t quite five didn’t have any bearing on her quest to dislike her stepmom. It was just that she’d had her dad to herself all those years before Sarah showed up. Ten wonderful years where her dad gave her his full attention. In the summer, he’d take her camping almost every weekend that he didn’t have to work; in the winter, they went skiing at Camp Fortune. He never missed her hockey games or lacrosse games. Before she’d gotten her G2 licence a few months back, he’d driven her and her friends to the Kanata or Barrhaven cinemas.

Now he was always too busy with Sa-rah.

Arrrggg!

Sure, at seventeen she didn’t spend as much time with her dad as she used to, but it irked her to share him. He was her dad. Sarah was just a third wheel. No one needed a third wheel. She had ruined the family dynamic. If Hailey could blame Sarah for the hole in the ozone layer, she’d do it.

As much as she loved her dad, she despised his wife. And the last thing she was going to do while she still had to live at home was be nice to Sarah.

Not a chance.

* * *

Lately, Hailey wished she could go stay with her mom. Her mother lived in the Glebe in a beautifully renovated, century-old home. Hailey had only been there once, last summer when she and her friends decided to go to a Redblacks afternoon game. Not that she liked or knew anything about football, but Connor was a fan. Afterward, she’d convinced them to take a walk by her mom’s place.

She hadn’t exactly gone inside. In fact, she hadn’t even gone up to the front door and rung the bell. She hadn’t seen her mom since the day her dad had picked her up at daycare when she was four—they’d had to call him when Hailey’s mom had been a no show. When they’d gotten home, the house had been void of all her mother’s things. On the kitchen counter there was a short note that even Hailey, in her limited reading ability, had been able to read.

I’m sorry. Mom

Why is mommy sorry? she’d said and had showed her dad the note.

Her dad had then gone searching through the house and come back down to the great room. "She even