The tree swayed in the gentle breeze, its brown leafless branches mocking the spring. She stared at it from her kitchen window; over the last few months she had grown to hate that tree, one that her husband had planted during the week they had been married. He had loved the flowers, the way their walkway would be littered with fallen blossoms.

"Clara... " he whispered, soft and sensuous, his breath causing tingles through her. As he repeated her name, she asked, "why do you keep saying my name?" He pulled her closer and whispered, "Because your name is the fragrance of summer, the scent of the sunlit beaches and..." She whirled in his arms to face him, "You are such a romantic, you sound as though you can really smell all of that." His reply had been to kiss her, gently and then with heated passion.

It was gone now; gone with the man she had grown up, the man she had loved all her life, the father of her kids, the man who had gone for a run on a Sunday morning and died on the sidewalk. And the pain of the last year swelled up and she rushed out of the kitchen and into the garage.

She stood in front of the tree, grasping the axe tightly, hoping to put all her pain into the swing; she would chop the tree down, one that swayed, its branches covered in greenish scabs.

"Mom?"

She did not turn at her son's voice, deep and resonant like his father, already a man at fifteen, forced to grow up when his father had died. She resented it.

"Mom?" in the tremulous squeak of her daughter, she could hear the sorrow at losing the father she adored. Clara hated that.

Clara tightened her grip and started to raise the axe when her daughter spoke, "You do not miss him, Mom? I never see you cry and now you want to chop down his tree? Why?"

That question from a ten-year old shook her and she dropped the axe as she realised how wrong she had been. She had thought that she was being strong by not crying in front of her children yet it had never struck her that it would seem that she was uncaring.

She whirled around, gathered her kids to her and sank to the ground. Clara wept, holding to them, and their tears joined hers. They cried together for the man they had lost; they loved him differently but their grief was the same, as deep as the love they had.

"Do not chop the tree, Mom. It is Daddy's tree and it is full of buds."

Clara turned back to the tree; the reddish-green patches were not scabs as she had thought, they were tight buds, waiting to burst into blossoms. She nodded at her daughter, the tree would stay.

And they would rebuild their lives, one ephemeral blossom at a time.

Word count 495

This is the submission for the second prompt "to write a piece of realistic fiction, in 500 words or less, with a title borrowed from WattpadShortStory's reading list, 'Phantasm and Sorcery'. "