Chapter 6.

The weeks went by without incident as they settled into their new home. Slowly, everyone began to spread out through the lodge, Carl and Judith – who had recovered from her illness with the help of the medicine Andrea brought back for her – moving into their own rooms after Tyreese and Michonne claimed a suite on the floor above theirs.

One night, as they were getting ready for bed, Andrea caught Rick staring at her from where he was seated on the edge of the mattress.

"What?" she asked self-consciously, pulling on one of his old shirts. She tried to ignore him, focusing on fastening each of the buttons, but she could still feel him watching her. "Something you wanna say?"

His only response was to steer her silently over to the full-length mirror on the back of the door, lifting the hem of her shirt to reveal the almost imperceptible curve that had replaced her usually flat abs.

To the untrained eye, it would just look like she'd started to let herself go while they'd been at the lodge. "Oh," she breathed, running her hand over it, wondering why she hadn't noticed the change herself. It seemed so obvious now that he'd pointed it out. "Wow. I guess there's really a baby in there."

"That's generally what 'pregnant' means," he teased her. He allowed her shirt to fall back into place, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. "You must be pretty close the end of your first trimester?"

"Second," she corrected him, leaning back into his chest. She was shorter than him, so that if she bent her knees slightly, her head fit perfectly into the space beneath his chin. "Thirteen weeks as of yesterday, so I'm in my second trimester now."

"That's traditionally about the time we'd start telling people," he remarked, catching her eye in the mirror.

She regarded him with a wry smile. "I think we can agree there's nothing traditional about this situation."

In the old days, she would have been on the phone to her mother or Amy by now, she thought wistfully. Her mom would have been thrilled. She was always hinting that she wished Andrea would find someone to settle down with and give her a grandchild. And every time, Andrea would joke that that was why she'd had Amy: to cover her bases.

"You don't think they have a right to know?" Rick was saying. "This is going to affect them too."

"It's not that," she assured him. She could never be ashamed of what they were doing. "I just don't want to be treated differently. I'm not ready to be the fragile pregnant lady everybody feels like they need to coddle."

He chuckled softly. "No one's going to coddle you, Andrea, believe me. They know you'd shoot them if they tried."

"You're damn right I would," she agreed. She had always prided herself on being a valuable member of the group. That wasn't going to change now just because she was pregnant.

"We don't have to make any announcements yet," he said, all seriousness again, "but I think we should at least tell Hershel. He handled all of Lori's prenatal care – he can do the same for you."

"A vet for an OBGYN," she mused with an ironic smile. "As if I don't feel like enough of a heifer already."

He chuckled again. "You are not a heifer," he assured her. "You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever met."

She laughed disbelievingly. "Tell me that again in six months."

He pressed a lingering kiss into her hair. "I will."

"You are such a cheeseball," she told him, rolling her eyes, but she couldn't help grinning.

"And you need to learn how to take a compliment," he insisted. "Promise me you'll let Hershel check you out. I'd feel a lot better about this pregnancy if someone could tell me that everything is going smoothly."

In truth, she would too. "Okay."

"Okay?" he repeated, clearly taken aback. "You're not gonna try to fight me on this?"

She shook her head. "I know you still have your doubts, but I feel like we've been given this incredible gift here. The last thing I want to do is jeopardise that."

He caught her eye again, studying her expression in amazement. "You really are happy about this, aren't you?" he said, more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah." She grinned at him in the mirror. "Crazy, huh?"

He tightened his grip on her, smiling back. "Maybe just a little."

"You trying to repopulate the earth with Grimeses, son?" Hershel teased Rick the next morning when they shared their news.

Rick laughed good-naturedly. "This will be the last one, I promise."

"Are you sure about that?" Andrea goaded him. "This place has plenty of bedrooms."

"You know, I used to spay my own cattle," Hershel informed Rick, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Rick shuddered, glancing helplessly at Andrea, who was trying to look sympathetic but failing dismally.

"Oh my God, your face," was all she managed to say between bouts of laughter.

Rick was tempted to hover while Hershel examined her, but at her insistence, he left the bedroom to give them some privacy.

"There needs to be some mystery in our relationship," she told him; he remembered Lori saying something similar when she was pregnant with Carl. They'd invited him back in for the sonogram, but just like when Lori was carrying Judith, that was something he and Andrea were going to have to learn to live without.

"So?" he asked impatiently when she joined him out on the deck where he was watching Carl and Beth play with Judith, teaching her how to make snow angels. The sight of his son acting like a kid again warmed his heart; so did seeing his daughter enjoy such a normal childhood experience – the first of many, he hoped, for her and her soon-to-be younger sibling.

"So, it's official," Andrea told him. "I'm healthy as a horse – that's probably a bad choice of words – and so is Rick junior here." She patted her belly, concealed inside her bulky coat, fondly.

"It's a boy?" Rick asked, locking on to the nickname.

She laughed. "No. Well, maybe. I guess we won't know until it's born."

"Right," he agreed, feeling foolish for entertaining the notion that anyone could tell without the proper equipment. Of course there was no way of finding out until then. "I'm just glad everything is okay."

"Me too." She braced her rifle against the post and leant on the railing beside him, her eyes performing a quick, habitual sweep of the grounds for walkers before they settled on the children. Her expression softened into an affectionate smile as she watched them frolic in the snow. "They look so happy."

"That's not really in the running, is it? Rick junior?" Rick asked her. "That whole tradition always seemed kind of pompous to me."

"Oh, I agree," she told him. "You don't see many girls walking around with their mothers' names." She turned to face him, looking shy all of a sudden. "I know it's a little early to be talking about names, but while we're on the subject, I've been thinking – if it's a girl, it would mean a lot to me if we could call her Amy."

"Whatever you want," he agreed. It was as good a name as any, so if it made her happy, he was all for the idea.

"Really?"

"Sure. I got to name Carl, Carl got to name Judith, so that makes it your turn to choose."

She beamed at him, taking his face in her gloved hands and rewarding him with a tender kiss. "I guess I better start making a list of boys' names too then," she said when she released him.

She sighed, staring out across the slopes sadly. "I wish there was some way I could tell her," she admitted. "She would've been so excited. She begged me for years to make her an aunt."

"Why didn't you?" he asked curiously. "Have kids before, I mean. You must've thought about it."

"I don't know," she confessed. "I always wanted to – I meant to – but I could never seem to find the right time, or the right guy. It's still not the right time, but it looks like I finally found the right guy."

She was looking at him again, her eyes filled with such open adoration that not for the first time, Rick wondered what he could have possibly done to deserve it; he pulled her close, kissing her with as much passion as he could muster…

…Until he felt something slam into his back.

"Gross, Dad! Get a room!" his son's voice yelled.

They broke apart, turning to see that he and Beth had stopped what they were doing and were staring at them, one smiling while the other looked mortified at witnessing his father making out with his girlfriend.

Andrea was down the steps in an instant, scooping up snow and lobbing it at Carl with an impish grin. It hit him in the shoulder, spraying his face with ice.

He tried to retaliate, but she ducked behind Rick, allowing his son's snowball to smack him square in the chest.

"Hey!" Carl protested. "That's cheating!"

Rick glanced back at Andrea in amusement, brushing the snow from his jacket. "What're you doing?"

"Using you as a shield," she explained nonchalantly, her face a picture of innocence. "I'm carrying your child, Rick – the least you can do is protect me from a few measly snowballs."

She was so smug about her apparent immunity that when she dropped her guard, crouching to make another projectile to launch at Carl, Rick grabbed a fistful of snow and threw it down the back of her shirt.

She shrieked loudly, trying to shake it out as she scrambled to her feet. "You are going to pay for that, Grimes!" she cried, but they were both laughing as she chased him from one end of the garden to the other, trying to catch him long enough to enact her revenge.

He was too fast for her, though, and soon they were both out of breath.

"Truce?" she said finally, holding her hand out to him.

Deciding that they'd both had enough, Rick moved to accept it. But before they could shake on it, she produced a handful of snow from behind her back and deposited it down the front of his jeans.

"I can't believe you just did that," he gasped as the cold seeped into his most sensitive areas.

Behind him, he could hear Carl guffawing. Adding insult to injury, Judith joined in, though Rick wasn't sure she even knew what they were laughing at.

Andrea shrugged, walking back towards the lodge. "Payback is a bitch."