Nancy from Monclair
"I told them my name was Nancy," Carol answered as they prepped to leave the shelter. Daryl had asked why no one ever followed up with her after her stay.
"Nancy?"
"From Montclair."
It was one of their deeper conversations, which seemed to be the theme of the week since Carol had saved the group from certain death at Terminus. Daryl had tried getting her to open up about what had happened since the prison, but Carol was determined to keep mum. As they scavenged the makeshift cafeteria after he'd taken care of the leftover Walkers, he was able to dig deeper into her past.
The past – what happened before the world ended – was never much of a problem for the two of them. Daryl didn't go into specifics about his father's abuse, but they both knew she had seen the scars. Carol couldn't help being honest about Ed – he'd met the guy, after all. Sophia was another story entirely, much like Merle. Too soon, even after so much time. Too close to home.
"Why didn't you just tell 'em the truth?"
"I think I was going to, but as soon as I got to the front desk I chickened out. I told them I'd left too quickly to grab my ID, and that we'd been on the road for days. Sophia started crying, and they didn't ask questions – you want one of these?"
Carol had found some decent knives in the kitchen drawer, and was stuffing them strategically into her pack. Daryl scoffed.
"You have a serious problem with those."
"Obviously." It was a dark joke, considering the conversation, but that was sort of their thing.
If they still had a thing. It wasn't easy to tell anymore.
"They let you in with nothing?" He wasn't sure why he kept asking questions about it, but he knew he wanted to keep her talking.
"They were good people," she explained. "This was a good place."
She shuddered, and Daryl didn't know why. In her memory, Carol could see the woman at Terminus, screaming as she was eaten alive by Walkers. That had been a good place too. Apparently.
Daryl was moving messes of luggage and supplies around the floor with his foot, trying to find anything that might be useful. Wrapped in a jacket, he saw a book. The title-
"Do you think it stayed that way?" Carol asked suddenly, and Daryl didn't process it for a second.
"Here?"
"Yeah."
He didn't know what he was allowed to say. "It was a kid. How bad could it have been?"
"But maybe they were punished, or just exiled for being different? For not wanting to do bad things?"
"Don't think like that," Daryl insisted, subtly crouching down over the book. He picked it up as though it were glass, and he unzipped his pack.
"What's that?"
He didn't answer. "Got another knife?"
She nodded. He tossed the book into his bag, closed it, and trudged into the kitchen area. Carol held out a good-sized paring knife.
"Careful," she warned him, sounding how he imagined every suburban mother did when a child did something questionable. He turned the knife and placed it blade down into his front pocket. "I said 'careful'," she repeated, this time mischievous, with a twinkle in her eye that reminded of him of their first night in the prison.
His eyes rolled. She might have laughed, if they had been anywhere else.
"Let's go," Daryl petitioned, sensing the shift in tone.
Carol started to leave, and then paused to look at a stretch of untanned rectangles on the wall. "There were photos there, of the different groups throughout the years. Mostly different women than I'd met, obviously, but there were loads of them. All posed with their kids, and the volunteers." She glanced around the floor, as if wondering where the photos had gone. "There were a couple of women who'd been in all of them, like they'd been here since the start, and there was one girl…" Carol trailed off as he stepped on a tony pile of glass. She leaned down to pick the shards out of the bottom of her left boot. She wobbled on her other foot.
Daryl reached out to steady her, but Carol had already balanced against the kitchen island. She didn't look up from her boot, but she continued:
"The girl was about Sophia's age by the time we got here. It was the only person she'd talk to. I remember she showed us the wall. She was in all the photos, too, all the way back to her pregnant mother. She'd grown up here."
"Maybe she took 'em, then," Daryl suggested.
"No, she was sweet," Carol disagreed. "She never made it out."
"You never know."
"Sure I do."
As they left, Daryl almost regretted taking the book. It was bulky, and part of him felt like he was keeping it from someone else who might need it more – but all those people were dead, he remembered, so he didn't throw it out.
Carol walked next to him silently, and he knew her mind was still on the Walkers from that morning.
"Nancy," he mocked to lighten the mood.
Carol shrugged. "It's a family name," she justified.
"Still, you couldn't have picked something…sexier?"
"Sexier?"
"Well, you only get so many aliases. Might as well pick something good."
She pursed her lips. He could practically taste how cheeky she wanted to be.
"It was the name of Ed's sister."
Daryl made a jumble of unimpressed sounds. "Doesn't get less sexy than that."
"No, it doesn't," Carol agreed.
They walked peacefully for another several minutes before she admitted:
"And it was Sophia's middle name."
They laughed until the reached the office.