Page 25 of When Autumn Arrives

"Hi, Paisley. It's nice to meet you. Your mom told me so much about you," I lied. The truth was, I didn't know about Paisley until about four hours ago. Still, I forced myself not to resent Thea. She had no obligation to tell me about her personal life.

There was a reason she didn't want us to know, and I had to respect that. All I could do right now was be there for her.

"Are you her boyfriend?"

Thea snorted. "Paisley Rose. You can't ask people that."

"Well, is he?" she asked, turning to Thea with wiggling brows.

"No," Thea laughed. "He's just a friend. He's helping me fix up the car Pop left us."

"Oh," she whispered, disappointment clear in the way her pitch dropped.

Thea started the humming again, this time speaking words in French. “Fais dodo mon fille.” Go to sleep my daughter.

My eyes squinted. I'd heard that somewhere before.

“Tue aurais du lolo.”You will have your milk.

My chest tightened. Another familiar, yet odd line I'd heard. Where the fuck had I heard it? Thea was only humming the tune in the past.

“Hail’d Je serai la pour toi.” I will be here for you.

Images of the desert fluttered through. Two pairs of boots walking and a familiar male's voice sounded, "My wife just had our baby girl. My baby, my Rose."

Thea sang the last line. “à côté de toi toute la nuit.” Beside you all night long.

The male's voice continued. “And here I am, stuck on a mission. But we do what we have to in order to keep them safe, right?” He handed me the photo of a mother and child. The mother’s face was cut off from the nose down. Had it been Thea? I couldn’t remember the photo well enough to be sure.

The air in my lungs turned to fire. No. It couldn't be. Joe Brown was not… When had he shown me the photo of an infant? About seven years ago. But Kyle was the baby’s father. The humming and the singing continued, over and over until Paisley's eyes softened and her body grew heavy. Then she was asleep.

"Thea," I whispered, forcing down the bile caught in my throat.

She glanced up at me.

"Where did you hear that song?"

"My dad sang it to me."

I rubbed my eyes. “Your dad?”

She nodded. “Yeah, why?”

I shook my head. "Nothing. I just feel like I’ve heard it before."

Thea shrugged. “Unless you knew my dad, I doubt that. He made it up when I was a baby.”

Chapter sixteen

Shane

The storm rolled in, lightning striking against wood in the distance, and thunder cracking close enough that the ground shook with each clap.

Still, I worked with the doors of the garage open, allowing the slant of the droplets in. The wind and the chill it brought were welcoming as I frantically tore apart Thea’s Stingray.

The panels of the door were the first place I looked. There was nothing, not even a letter to his daughter. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was looking for, or if it would even be here, hidden in the vehicle.

But my gut told me there was more to this, that I needed to piece together. John Black had infiltrated us. He’d befriended us and talked about his daughter, Rose. Even showed us pictures of her as a young child. I listened to that damn song he hummed, and sat with him when he’d been shot in the stomach. He had said she lived in North Carolina with her mother.

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