Page 12 of Love is a Harmony
“English, sweetie.” He looked to Noah. “She speaks French with us, but with her papa it was always English.”
Her papa.
Her father.
Noah stumbled back. “She’s…”
“Stella.” Mathieu set her down and bent to look her in the eye. “Noah is your papa’s brother.”
Her tiny lip quivered, and a tear slipped down her cheek. “Papa is gone.”
Noah thought his heart had already shattered beyond repair, but as he looked at the girl—his niece—what was broken smashed into a thousand tiny pieces.
And it all made so much sense. She was the right age. Carson left the family because his parents couldn’t accept the baby he’d had out of wedlock. No one spoke to Noah of what happened, but he’d heard the arguments. A woman left the baby with Carson and ran.
Now, she stood before him an orphan.
A part of Carson.
Sucking in a breath to calm his racing heart, Noah kneeled before her, taking in her every feature, trying to see his brother.
“Hi, Stella.” He offered her a weak smile. “I guess I’m your uncle.”
A sob wracked her body, and she lurched forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. Noah hugged her to him, the tears he’d been holding in since learning of Carson’s death spilling over his cheeks.
Mathieu and his son watched on as the remaining parts of Carson’s family clung to each other.
Noah didn’t know how long he held her or which one of them pulled away first, but he knew Mathieu had been right.
That was the moment his life changed.
* * *
Noah kicked his feet against the worn wooden deck as he hunched forward in the porch swing. How did he get here? How did Carson allow this to happen? A car accident, Mathieu told him. That took a brother from his estranged family, a father from his daughter.
But before that… why did Carson hide out here in a small French town? Why did he join a new family and leave the old one behind?
Mathieu shut the front door and joined Noah on the porch. They’d struggled through an awkward dinner in which Stella stared at her plate, not eating a bite, and Noah wasn’t much better.
Now, as the sun sank down below the trees, Noah wasn’t quite sure what came next.
Mathieu handed him a beer, and Noah strained trying to read the label. He really should have paid more attention in school, but that had been more than ten years ago. Carson was always the smart one, as well as the troublemaker. It was like he had two personalities. It wasn’t until he left that Noah really went full bad boy as the media would call him.
Dropping onto a cracked wooden bench, Mathieu sighed. “We have a lot to discuss.”
“Can you… tell me about him?” He didn’t need to say who he meant.
A long silence stretched between them before Mathieu started. “He was a good father. Above all, that’s what he’d want people to know about him. That girl I just tucked in? He loved her fiercely. Every decision he made was for her benefit.”
On some level, Noah knew that. Carson left the family to raise Stella on his own terms, away from the pain they’d grown up with. Their parents never made them feel… wanted. He hoped Stella had never had to experience that.
“Come on, rock star.” Mathieu stood. “I can show you who your brother was.”
Noah expected him to walk back inside to his sleeping house, but instead, he loped down the front steps and started off across the field separating his house from the one next door. Noah ran to catch up with him. “Where are we going?”
“You see that house?”
Noah peered through the dark at the only other house nearby. Moonlight danced off peeling blue paint and cracked white pillars holding up the terra-cotta roof. “Carson was your neighbor?”
