Carol studied the man across the table from her, watching him shovel food into his mouth like he'd been raised in a barn. And who was to say he hadn't? She still didn't know much about their childhood but she knew it'd been tough.
She and Daryl didn't linger on the past. There was too much to look forward to these days for them to dwell on what had been. But that didn't mean she wasn't curious.
And Daryl's brother was a strange character. He was about the same height as Daryl but he had a thicker build, more packed with muscle, though she couldn't imagine him working out or working hard.
She figured he was probably about five years older than her which would have made him ten years older than his brother. But he certainly looked older than her estimate of 34. He had thin lips, small, angry eyes, and skin that seemed to be stretched tight over his skull and the prominent bones in his face. He had dark circles under his eyes that gave her the impression that he hadn't slept in days. It gave him an almost ghoulish appearance under the harsh overhead light.
He cleared his throat and, realizing she was staring, she quickly looked back down at her food.
"So when you due, woman?"
She glanced up at him in surprise and found he was now cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife.
"I've got about twelve weeks left," she said proudly, her hand automatically resting on her stomach and her eyes finding Daryl's. "Won't be long now."
She could see the tips of Daryl's ears reddening but he smiled at her.
Merle let out a low whistle, "Shit. When'd y'all even get together? Couldn't have been too long. I was only locked up for two years."
"We've been together for a little over a year now," she answered when it became clear that Daryl wasn't going to. "But we met almost two years ago."
Her mind drifted back to her countless visits to the garage and all the money she spent on that damned Cherokee just trying to get him to say one word to her.
"Hell, I went into Milledgeville with a brother that couldn't get laid to save his life and came out an uncle," Merle chuckled but his eyes seemed hard. "Don't waste no time, do ya?"
"It wasn't planned," she said, managing to tear her gaze away from Daryl long enough to look at his brother, "It wasn't planned but we were happy about it."
Merle didn't seem to have a reply to that and went back to digging the dirt out from under his fingernails.
"So what brings you here, Merle?" she asked after a moment to fill the silence. "Are you planning on staying a while?"
He glanced up at her from under his lids and then looked back down at his knife, "Don't know yet."
"Don't know which?" she asked and he looked up at her again.
He folded the knife up, glancing over at his brother with a thoughtful expression on his face, "Both. Either."
"You don't know what brought you here?" Daryl snorted.
Merle glared at him, "Already told you. I reckon it was fate that brought me here, I just ain't got it all figured out yet."
Carol raised her brows, "To be honest with you, Merle, I wouldn't have pegged you for a man of faith."
She smiled at him again but he either didn't notice or didn't care. His expression remained stony.
"He ain't. Bet you he ain't set foot in a church since Mama died."
"Ain't gotta be a believer to see that things happen for a reason," Merle protested. She saw a devilish gleam flashing in his eyes as he leaned his elbows on the table and fixed his brother in his sights, "Reckon with all that talk and this nice lady you got here, you're a regular on Sunday mornings now."
"Fuck that," Daryl mumbled around a mouthful of food.
Merle cackled and Carol shook her head, trying to hide a smile, "You know I hate that word, Daryl."
He peeked at her sheepishly from under his shaggy hair and then looked back down at his plate as he muttered, "Sorry."
Merle glanced back and forth between them, "Damn, Darlena, is she your mama too?"
"Shut up," Daryl told him, stabbing at his food with more force than was strictly necessary.
Merle leaned across the table to smack his brother in the back of the head and Daryl slapped his hand away.
"Boys," she chastised them, leaning back in her chair and taking a sip of her tea.
Daryl went back to eating and she went back to casting around desperately for something to talk about. It seemed to her that every possible normal topic of conversation was rigged with a land mine, just waiting to blow if she stumbled into it. It wasn't like she could just ask Merle what he'd been up to. She wasn't sure she wanted to discuss the horrors of prison at the dinner table.
But Merle saved her when he fixed that predatory gaze on her again, "So tell me this, woman. What's so damn special about you?"
Taken aback, she stared at him for a moment before answering, "What do you mean?"
"Well, my baby brother ain't never showed much interest in women before," Merle told her, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Hell, I ain't ever known him to even bring a woman home."
"That's 'cause you'da fucked 'em if I did," Daryl muttered under his breath.
"You probably right about that, little brother!" Merle cackled. "Hell, I fucked his teacher when he was a kid! What was that…fifth grade? Sixth?"
If Carol hadn't been watching Daryl closely, if she didn't have his every feature memorized, she would have missed the way Daryl's jaw tightened; the way his eyes shut down like a steel door had closed behind them.
Merle certainly missed it. He continued as if nothing was wrong,
"She was a cute little brunette. Had a nice ass on her too. Shit," he sat back in his chair with a self-satisfied smile on his face, obviously enjoying reliving old times. "Didn't she move you out of her class when I was done with her?"
Daryl didn't speak, just stared down at his plate. And though she didn't understand it, Carol's heart ached for him.
Merle continued talking but to her it seemed the room had fallen silent. After a few moments, she stood up and took her plate to the sink.
She watched the two brothers from across the room, one relaxed and one wound so tightly she was afraid he might snap. Maybe if she left them alone for a while they'd be able to talk. Maybe Daryl would be more relaxed without her watching him.
She excused herself, squeezing Daryl's shoulder as she passed, and headed to the bathroom with a book, planning to soak in the tub and give them some space.
Her bathwater didn't even have time to cool before she heard a crash in the kitchen that sounded a lot like a plate shattering. It was followed almost immediately by a cacophony noise and shouting.
She was still trying to climb carefully from the tub when she very clearly, very distinctly heard Daryl's yelp of pain. Sloshing water all over the floor, she scrambled for a towel and rushed towards the kitchen.
Pushing open the door with her heart in her throat, she found Merle pinning his brother to the floor with the greatest of ease, laughing as Daryl struggled in vain beneath him. She could see that Daryl's face was red, contorted with anger and pain. And then she noticed that Merle had his arm curled casually around his brother's neck, squeezing his windpipe.
"Think you can swing on me, boy? Huh?" Merle's mouth was close to his brother's ear, his teeth gritted, but she could still hear his words clearly. "You done got too big for your britches, baby brother."
Daryl made a gurgling sound and her stomach lurched. She didn't stop to entertain the idea that it might just be a little bit of brotherly roughhousing – all she could think was that Daryl couldn't breathe.
"Get off of him, Merle! You're hurting him!"
Merle glanced up at her, his laughter fading, "Well, look at you, woman! Ain't you a sight?"
"Stop it, Merle!" she clutched the towel to her chest with one hand and tugged at his shoulder with the other. "You're hurting him! He can't breathe!"
Daryl's gurgle turned into a strangled whimper as Merle tightened his grip, shrugging Carol off, "He's my little brother. You just stay the hell out of it, woman. Ain't your place."
Her towel was slipping but she didn't care. She saw red.
She shoved at Merle with all of her strength and screamed, "I said get the hell off of him!"
Her shove barely moved him but he looked up at her in shock, his arm loosening around Daryl's neck as he rocked back on his heels.
Daryl collapsed face-down on the linoleum, gasping and wheezing for air. She itched to touch him, to see if he was okay, but somehow she knew her sympathy wouldn't be welcome right now. And she was right.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet, his chest heaving, his fists clenched and his face red with rage. He glared at his brother, ignoring her completely as he stomped out of the kitchen. Carol winced as the front door slammed behind him.
"Wouldn't have thought you had it in you, woman," Merle said from the floor. "Wasn't like I was gonna kill him."
"I put up with too much for too long," she told him, wrapping her arms around herself and tugging her towel back in place. She stared after Daryl for a long moment before looking back at his brother. "I'm not sitting back and watching you hurt him. He's been hurt enough."
He gave her a long, hard look and then stood up, his mouth an angry slash across his face. He towered over her; a man who knew how to use every last of inch of his height to his advantage. But she stood her ground, eyeing him with contempt.
"What, you think he's a little angel? You think he's just a kid?" he asked in a low voice. "Well, you listen to me, sugar. That boy ain't no angel."
She just stared back at him, unwavering, and his lips curled into a smirk.
"Yeah, I bet there's plenty of shit he ain't told you. I bet there's a whole lot you don't know about my little brother. Hell, he might be the sweet one between the two of us but I could tell you shit that would make your hair curl, woman."
She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes without hesitation though she had no doubt he could see her trembling, "I know everything I need to know about him. I know he's a good man."
Merle's eyes narrowed, his lips parting to speak. But then he pressed them together again into that hard, angry line, his eyes still searching her face. And then he turned away, wrenching open the door and stomping off down the front steps.
The door rattled on its hinges as it slammed shut again and she sighed. They'd have to replace it if the Dixons kept this up.
She cleaned up the mess in the kitchen under the sickly yellow glow of the overhead light, her lower back aching something awful.
When Daryl still hadn't returned, she waddled down the front steps and paused at the bottom, listening to the sounds of the woods just to make sure the damn fools weren't out there killing each other. But she heard no struggle, no voices - just the low thrum of the crickets in the trees.
She waited for him for two hours at the kitchen table, staring at the pages of the book she'd been intending to read without seeing a word on them. When the clock flashed 11 pm she brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.
The house was silent and the bed felt strange without him in it. It was too big; too empty.
She tossed and turned for a while but sleep wouldn't come. A hard, heavy knot of worry had settled itself in the pit of her stomach and wouldn't leave.
She was just about to get up and find the spare set of truck keys so she could go look for him when she heard the front door open. Heavy footsteps made their way across the living room and down the hall. She sat up, eyes on the bedroom door.
The footsteps stopped, a moment ticked by, and then the door eased open.
Across the dark room, she could see him hesitating in the doorway.
"Didn't wanna wake you," he murmured hoarsely, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
She just smiled and patted the bed beside her, "It's okay. Come on."
He dipped his head, stripping off his shirt as he crossed the small room. She heard the heavy thump of his boots hitting the floor as he toed them off and kicked them aside while unbuttoning his jeans.
She scooted over to make room and he climbed into bed, stretching out beside her with a groan. He smelled like the woods with just a hint of cigarette smoke. She figured he must have snuck a few from one of his hidden packs while he was out brooding.
"Didn't have to wait up on me," he mumbled, shifting beside her as he tried to get comfortable.
"I couldn't sleep without you," she told him drowsily, her eyelids suddenly heavy now that she had him safely at her side.
He continued to squirm beside her, seemingly restless, but her lids had already slipped closed. She was nearly asleep when he spoke, his voice barely more than a low rumble in his chest.
"It was Miss Hall."
"Hm?"
"My teacher…"
"Oh," wakefulness slammed into her brain like a runaway train and she turned to study him in the darkness, where he lay with his back to her. He'd never brought up the past like this. "Oh…I'd like to hear about her."
She laid her hand on his arm and felt him shrug, "She was…nice, I reckon. I had her class right around the time my mama died. She…"
He fell silent again and she rubbed his shoulder, waiting patiently for him to process his thoughts.
"She said I had potential," he finally said, snorting at that word like it didn't matter. But his voice was quiet and a little shaky and she knew it did. "Said I's smarter than I realized…used to bring me books and shit. Stuff with titles I couldn't even pronounce."
He was trying to sound careless but his body was rigid next to hers.
"She sounds like a very good teacher," Carol told him softly, afraid to push him too much. "Want to tell me what happened?"
He shrugged again, the muscles in his arm tight under her palm. Unsure of how to make it all better, she wrapped herself around him, hand over his pounding heart, and buried her face in the crook of his neck.
He covered her hand with his own, blowing out a noisy breath through his nose, "Ain't much to talk about. Merle found the books so I told him 'bout her. He didn't give a shit 'til I told him how pretty she was. Then wouldn't you know it, that sumbitch wanted to go down to the schoolhouse and meet her."
She pressed a kiss against his warm skin as he fell quiet again.
"Reckon they hit it off," he mumbled. "Think he was about 20 or 21 then and crazier'n a run-over dog. Hell, he's still crazier'n a run-over dog."
She chuckled in agreement and Daryl's fingers slipped into the spaces between her own, clutching her hand to him tight.
"She doesn't sound like the type of woman who'd go for Merle," Carol mused, forming a picture of the woman in her head and finding it impossible to match that image up with Daryl's brother.
He shook his head, "I reckon she must'a thought he was something he wasn't. Merle's got himself a way with words."
"So I've noticed," Carol smiled against his shoulder.
"Couldn't have lasted long though," he continued, "Never does with Merle. I never saw her 'round the house or nothing. Just showed up on Monday morning and one of the women from the front office told me to go to Mr. Harvey's class instead. And he was a real asshole…told me I might as well drop out."
On its surface, it didn't sound like much of a story. But she could tell it was still painful for him, even all these years later. It was obvious in the tone of his voice, the feel of his body against hers.
And it hadn't escaped her, what he'd said about it happening around the same time as his mother's death. She realized suddenly that it wasn't about having a crush on the pretty young teacher. What must it have been like for him to have a woman showing him kindness, a woman believing in him so soon after the loss of the only warmth he'd ever known and then, out of the blue, rejecting him and taking that kindness away? It must have been devastating, she thought, especially for a person with scars as deep as Daryl's.
She held him tighter, "I'm sorry that happened to you."
He squirmed, suddenly seeming uncomfortable under her touch, "She was just a teacher…weren't no big deal. It don't matter."
"It does matter," she argued. "It wasn't right. It wasn't fair to you. Merle probably didn't think about your feelings or – or how it would hurt you."
"Ain't never thought about nobody else's feelings in his life," Daryl muttered under his breath.
"I'm sure that's not true…I think he does care about you. He just – he just has a funny way of showing it."
He didn't respond and she twirled her fingers through the soft hair on his chest.
"I think he has his own demons, Daryl," she told him softly, remembering his brother's hard eyes as she looked at his face in the darkness.
He seemed to consider that for a while, his own eyes distant.
"Maybe."
