"Hey."
Daryl stopped poking holes in the mesh of his tent and looked up. Andrea stepped through the flap into his tent. He raised his eyebrows when she handed him a paperback book.
Case of the Missing Man.
It sounded like a tv movie that would play at two am. He flipped through anyway; no one had ever given him a book. He got the feeling most people didn't think he could read, but just 'cause he chose to do other things didn't mean he couldn't. Hell, if there wasn't so much to do all the time maybe he'd read every day.
"This is not that great, but..."
"What, no pictures?"
He couldn't help himself. She smiled a little. He knew why she was here, why she'd been avoiding him up until now. If he wasn't feeling so damn comfortable he might've worked harder to make her feel guilty for shooting him in the head.
"I'm so sorry, I feel like shit."
There it was.
"Yeah, you and me both."
"I don't expect you to forgive me, but if there's anything I can do..."
Daryl picked the arrow back up. He knew Nora was just outside by the fire; he thought of the shit head, Beau, in the picture with her, and decided to let Andrea off easy since he knew she could hear him.
"You're tryin' to protect the group. We're good."
As the blonde turned to leave, he added,
"But hey. Shoot me again, you best pray I'm dead."
He was serious but she seemed to think he was joking around. Whatever, it didn't matter to him either way. Daryl found he couldn't really be mad at her. Not when he knew there was an eavesdropper sitting close by who was probably feeling all jealous just knowing he was talking to her. He fluffed his pillow and laid back. Nora came over a few minutes later.
"Painkillers."
She handed him a canteen.
"Ya' don' need to keep track fer me. I can do just fine by myself."
Sitting down nearby, she shrugged.
"I don't mind."
He held the arrow delicately, watch her attempt at being casual.
"It was good of her to apologize."
She was fishing; he barely held in his smirk.
"'Spose."
She picked up the book that he'd dropped on the floor, looking at the title, flipping it over to read the back. They sat in silence. Daryl was starting to feel irritated; she was supposed to come in here in a huff, supposed to demand what he was doing talking to that skank, supposed to do anything besides ignore him and look at the damn book.
"You like hangin' around with assholes?"
He recrossed his legs in annoyance at her confused face.
"Yer boyfriend, Beau, looks like an asshole."
This was not going as planned. Nora shook her head, eyes innocent.
"He wasn't my boyfriend."
"Sure looks like it."
"He was the son of the owner of a bar I liked. He's only in those pictures because he got Maggie and I in free on a busy Saturday."
Daryl snorted. That didn't sound like something a guy would do for a girl he thought of as anything other than a piece of cooze.
"Yeah? An' why'd he do that? Did he have a rich old man an' a heart a' gold?"
She paused.
"You really want to know the story?"
He sat back, scowling.
"S'not like I got anythin' better to do."
She leaned against the foot of his cot, picking at her jeans once she'd settled in.
"We ran into Beau outside, and I tried to convince him that it was Maggie's birthday and he should get us in. He said he would, but only if I agreed to dance with him."
Great. A regular Casanova.
"The kind of music they usually played in there would've meant very...you know...close dancing..."
"I know what kinda music they play in those shitholes."
"Anyway, I agreed, but only if I could choose the song. And when the time came I told the DJ to play 'Hound Dog'. Elvis, you know?"
His tone was considerably less aggressive this time.
"I know Elvis."
She smiled, rubbing the back of her neck.
"He didn't think it was as funny as I did, apparently. And, after that, Maggie and her friends and I left. The end."
Daryl thought back, once more, to being in his home town's old bar. If he'd seen her dupe some gross bastard like that, he would've laughed his ass off; probably still wouldn't have talked to her, though. He was glad he hadn't met her then.
"Hey."
He looked at her as she leaned casually near his feet.
"What's it to you, anyways, who I may or may have an understanding with?"
Smug bitch had turned his own words on him. He turned to poke another hole in the mesh, hiding his smile behind his arm.
–––
–––
"So, it sounds like we missed your birthday."
Lori sat down next to Nora by the fire. Daryl sharpened his buck knife, glancing up occasionally. They'd missed his too, but there wasn't time for stupid things like that anymore.
"I guess. I mean," her eyes fixed on the needle she was threading, "Jim and I celebrated a little, so its not really a big deal."
Lori smiled; other people around the fire were beginning to listen in. It was clear that word had gotten around.
"Nora, a few of us were wondering if maybe you wanted to tell us a little bit about yourself. It looks like in all of the craziness we all kind of forgot to ask, and we're sorry about that."
Daryl watched her face carefully, ready to step in should she begin to look trapped. Not that he wasn't curious. Nora poked a finger through the hole in the cloth lace-up she was mending.
"Maybe how you met Jim? Is that a good place to start?"
She was quiet for a time.
"After I met you all outside of Atlanta, I started looking around, at everyone who seemed to know what they were doing, whether it was laundry or building fires or hunting, and I was terrified. I'd never so much as touched a gun, the worst grade I ever got was in high school gym...Everything I'd been told to work towards, everything I'd ever been taught to do was all for a world that no longer existed. For a future that wasn't ever going to happen anymore. I was sure the minute everyone realized I was a loose end..."
She trailed off, swallowing heavily.
"And then Jim came over that first morning and asked if I could give him a hand. I guess I agreed out of fear more than anything. My car expertise extended about as far as popping the hood for a mechanic. But he never really asked me to do anything besides handing him tools or holding things. He told me I looked like his daughter."
Her voice began to thicken, and she picked at her jeans.
"Except when he got sunstroke he kept talking about his two boys. I don't think he even had a daughter. I think he just saw that I was...lost. Wanted to make me feel like I had a place."
Daryl remembered the way she and Jim would sit together, the way she had stayed at his side until the end.
"What about your family?"
Carol asked the question. Nora fiddled with the shoe in her lap.
"My parents were both psychologists. My father was a forensic psychologist, he worked for the Louisiana court system, and my mother had her own clinical practice where she worked mostly military cases. I didn't have any brothers or sisters."
"Did they...?"
The sentence didn't need to be finished; it was one that everyone had heard, or thought, or been asked too many times to count.
"I...I don't know."
And her answer was the almost universal one. For some reason, though, Nora seemed to feel the need to explain herself.
"My parents really liked their jobs. I read somewhere that it was important for people who did what they did to try to, you know, 'leave it at the door', not involve their families. I guess...maybe, they weren't really able to do that so well. And I understand that. It was...it was just hard to try and...I don't know...act normal when you knew you were being constantly analyzed."
The way she stripped her face of emotion so easily, or seemed to assess people without letting on that she was doing it suddenly started to make sense.
"But, they must have loved you very much if they kept an eye on you like that?"
Nora looked into the fire, something odd flickering in her eyes. It wasn't the reflection from the flames.
"I suppose. I mean, I'm pretty sure anyway that they... you know...they must have, at least a little..."
Daryl had been told he was an accident and a mistake since he was old enough to crawl. His old man had never minced words on the issue; he'd dropped out of a cunt that hadn't been worth his time, and he'd only kept Daryl around because his pa hadn't wanted the police on his tail for abandoning a baby, even if it was a scrawny, ugly thing like him. This being the case, Daryl had never lost a night's sleep guessing whether or not his pa cared. He wondered what it would be like to not know.