"Hey! We got your stuff." Maggie furiously strode through the gate leading into the camp with Glenn trailing behind her.
"Maggie, hang on please." Glenn pleaded, wanting to keep the peace. Lori looked up from where she was folding laundry in front of her and Rick's tent. She waved a hand at them to beckon them to follow her.
"Come on in here."
"Why? Nothing to hide. We got your special delivery right here." Maggie strode right up to Lori, slamming the items one by one onto the table. "We got your lotion, special conditioner, your soap opera digest."
"Maggie…" Lori was amazed at the venom being directed at her from the younger woman.
"Next time you want something, get it your damn self. We're not your errand boys."
"Honey, I…" As Lori went to step forward her foot grazed something else that had fallen from the bag. Glenn had come through for her again and had managed to source several boxes of morning after pills. Maggie bent to scoop up the packets and threw them at Lori's chest.
"And here's your abortion pills." She stormed off and Glenn glanced over at Lori's startled face before following after her.
"That was not cool."
"Which part? The one where that bitch almost got us killed?"
"I should have gone alone." Glenn stated quietly, "If you want to blame anybody, blame me."
"Right, take the blame." Maggie stopped walking and turned to face her would-be boyfriend. "You know, for a smart guy, you're really stupid."
"Okay, I'm confused, because I think you just paid me a compliment, but you made it sound..." Glenn didn't have a chance to finish his sentence before Maggie lunged forward and pulled him into a warm, wet kiss.
"I've already lost three of the people that I care about most in this world."
"Maggie…" Glenn breathed, and Maggie pressed a finger against his lips to silence him.
"Shut up. You're smart. You're brave. You're a leader. But you don't know it. And your friends don't want to know it. They'd rather have you fetching peaches. There's a dead guy in the well? Send Glenn down. You're Walker bait. I can't take you becoming one of them." Maggie released Glenn and strode off across the fields to head back to the house; leaving Glenn to follow her at a discrete distance.
He made his way back into camp and onto Lori's tent. She looked up at his approach and called out quietly: "The blood on Maggie's shirt?"
"She was attacked." Glenn confirmed with a nod.
"Are you guys all right? How bad was it?" Lori asked and Glenn stepped into the tent, ducking his head as it brushed the top of the door opening.
"It was pretty close."
"I'm so sorry. I should never have asked you to go."
"I offered."
"I thought the town was safe." Lori shook her head as she sat at the small table and looked up at Glenn with tears pooling on her lashes. "If you hadn't have come back…"
"But we did. I always do." He noticed her rubbing the small boxes of pills together with her fingers. "The morning after pills, will they even work?"
"I don't know. And I don't know if I want them to…"
"Then I…err, got these too, just in case." Glenn placed a small white paper sack on the table in front of Lori. She reached inside the bag and pulled out the bottle.
"Pre-natal vitamins…That's a hell of a choice."
"I'm glad it's not mine." He stated quietly and watched as she caressed the bottle of vitamins almost lovingly. "Lori, we're friends aren't we?" She looked up in amazement at the quietly voiced question.
"With everything we've been through, yeah."
"I can't tell you what to do. I could never tell you something like that. But your choice, maybe you shouldn't make it alone."
Lori waited until she was alone before she started to pop the pills out of their blister packs. She stared at the pills sitting in her open palm and then with shaking hands gulped them down with sips of tepid water. Oh, God, what have I done?
The enormity of what she had just attempted to do hit her like a sledgehammer and she ran out of the camp, sobbing and gasping for breath. Falling to her knees she rammed her fingers down her throat, over and over until she gagged. Coughing, she scrambled in the dirt looking to ensure that all of the pills were accounted for. Five, six, seven. Shit! Only seven, no wait – eight. She rested back on her ankles and placed a hand over her abdomen. For what it was worth, that baby was in there to stay. She rose to her feet as the sound of angry footsteps crunching on the gravel warned her that she was no longer alone. Lori turned around to see a tired and pissed off looking Rick standing before her in the middle of the gravel road. He set his hands on his hips and looked over at his wife. "Is there something you need to tell me?"
"We can't leave. I'm pregnant." Lori squinted at her husband through the glare of the sun, and watched as his hand slowly opened to reveal the crumpled empty packaging.
"Are you?" He asked quietly and took a few paces toward her.
"I threw them up. You can yell if you want." At her quiet statement Rick threw his arms in the air, jaw twitching as he tried to rein in his warring emotions; jubilation, fury, and fear – all of those and more were racing through his mind at the same time. Jubilation – the fact that his wife was pregnant again after years of wondering whether they ought to try for a brother or sister for Carl. Horror – at the very idea that she would even think of not going ahead with the pregnancy; what if the tables had caused irreparable harm to her? Fear – not just of everything that could go wrong at any stage of the pregnancy but that unspoken fear that he had been hiding ever since the quarry; what if the baby wasn't even his? He'd seen the way that Shane had become very protective with his family; more than just a friend would be, and the looks that the two of them shared when they thought no one else was watching…
"You can scream if you have to," Lori continued, scanning the emotions that flickered over Rick's eyes. "But talk to me."
"How long have you known?" Rick walked over to stand directly in front of her, wanting to see her face as she answered.
"Does it matter?" she questioned, Rick knew then that Lori possibly didn't even know herself who the biological father of her child was.
"Yes, it matters! Days? Weeks? And you didn't tell me." The tic in Rick's jaw twitched as he struggled to rein himself in.
"I'm telling you now."
"I found these. So, Glenn knows, right? Instead of coming to me, you send him to get pills?" Rick almost spat the words in her face, Lori watched the fury mounting behind his eyes and thought about all the times before, when they had argued and he had simply remained placid and calm, agreeing with everything she said. Not any longer, the man before her was almost a complete stranger; he ranted and raved as he paced up and down that small patch of gravel road.
"I panicked. You tell me that we have no roof and no walls…."
"DO NOT PUT THIS ON ME!" Rick blasted at her, throwing the empty pill packets down on the ground between them. "You tear into me for keeping secrets when you're holding onto this?"
"You want me to bring a baby into this? To live a short, cruel life?"
"How can you think like that?" Rick threw his hands in the air and whirled away from his wife.
"We can't protect the son we already have." Lori cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"So this is the solution?" Rick looked down at packets on the gravel and ground his boot heels into them.
"Rick, I threw them up." Lori stated emphatically. "I screwed up. I don't know how we do this." She turned to lean her forearms on the fence rail and Rick exhaled slowly.
"We can make it work." He turned to half face her, knowing that despite everything she had done, she did it because she thought he was dead. How could he blame her for that?
"How? Tell me how."
"We'll figure it out. Shouldn't we try to figure it out? You threw up the pills. You want this baby. I know you do."
"Not like this. Not giving birth in a ditch. Not when its life will hang by a thread from the second it's born. Not when every cry will put it, and Carl, and everyone we care about, into danger. That's not right." Lori looked fully into Rick's eyes as she made her impassioned speech and watched as he ran a hand wearily across his stubbly cheeks.
"Not even giving it a chance isn't right either."
"Maybe this is why I didn't want to tell you." Lori whispered as she raised a hand to her forehead.
"I still don't understand why. You really think I'd make you have a baby you don't want?"
"No, no." Lori shook her head and reached out to place a hand on Rick's shirt. "So that if I went through with it, it would be on my conscience and not yours."
"Maybe that's true, but…" Rick's voice trailed off as he placed a hand over his heart and took a deep breath. "I can't live like this anymore, Lori. We can't live like this. Is there anything else I should know about?" He stared over at his wife, almost pleading with her to come clean about her relationship with Shane; to try and have a chance at rescuing their marriage he needed her to be completely honest with him.
"Shane and I." She finally admitted and Rick slowly nodded and turned to stare out into the fields.
"I know. Of course I know. You thought I was dead." He looked over at Lori. "The world went to shit and you thought I was dead. Right?" Oh, God, please don't let it have started before this; don't let me find out that HE was the reason she was pissed at me those few weeks before the shooting.
Lori nodded her head barely able to speak through her tears; "Yeah." Rick nodded again and turned his head toward the fields; he hadn't missed that initial hesitation before she agreed with him or the way her head seemed shake from side to side slightly before turning into a nod. He leant on the fence rail and simply accepted her words at face value; there would be time enough for questions later. For now they simply stood side by side, leaning on a fence rail and watching the sun drift slowly over the horizon.