Carol kept her hand on the butt of her handgun as they walked through the woods to the front of the cabin nearest the range. Even though they had cleared all these cabins, she went through the process again, with her knife drawn, just to be sure, and also for practice. Lori hovered near her. Lori was carrying a gun now, too, though she hadn't actually shot it at anything but a paper target yet.
When Carol was sure the cabin was empty, she and Lori checked out the medicine cabinet and the vanity in the main bathroom, and they did actually find a pregnancy test. Two, in fact.
After taking the test, Lori lay it on the back of the toilet and opened the door to invite Carol inside to wait with her while it developed. As they were waiting, Carol began to fill a backpack she had found in the hall closet with some things from the bathroom: mouthwash, toothpaste, unopened toothbrushes, asprin, Nyquil, Visine, and condoms.
Lori smiled at the condoms. "You and Daryl getting friendly in that lonely cabin?"
"What? No!" Carol violently zipped up the backpack. "I figured Darlene would want them."
"The way she and T-Dog go at it, I'd guess so." Lori rolled her eyes. "I don't know why I let Rick's comment rile me up. Darlene is a firecracker in bed. And there's no way in hell Rick would be able to keep up with her anyway. He's not very adventurous."
Carol flushed at the intimate detail and slung the backpack on her shoulder.
"Don't get me wrong," Lori said. "He's considerate in bed. Affectionate, thoughtful, gentle. He's just kind of boring. He doesn't like to experiment very much."
That sounded fantastic to Carol. She didn't feel the need to inhabit a porn movie. A little considerate, non-adventurous, affectionate sex would be just fine in her book. "You're lucky to have Rick," Carol told her. "He's a good man."
"Don't tell me you're sweet on him, too?" Lori shook her head and leaned against the closed, artificially frosted window. "The world ends and suddenly my rather ordinary husband becomes a very hot commodity. Darlene's wearing tight tank tops around him. Andrea's telling him what a great teacher he is. Even you, now?"
Carol wasn't about to go full-Darlene on Lori, but she'd had enough. She couldn't keep holding back her opinions. "Rick is not ordinary, Lori. Kind, capable, loyal family men are not a dime a dozen! And the world did end. Civilization - all the things keeping bad people in check - ended. And that unfortunately puts women like us in a very vulnerable place. So if you've got a man who cares about you - who will protect you and not hurt you - you're pretty damn lucky in this world. You ought to see that and not risk losing it."
"Is that why you've been pretending to like Daryl?" Lori asked.
"What?"
"So you can have someone strong to protect you in this world? Even is he's not the kind of man any woman would want to be around in the old world?"
"I would want to be around Daryl in any world!" Carol, surprised by her own volume, lowered her voice. "He's a man of honor. And I'm not pretending to like him. There's plenty to like about him. He's sweet to Sophia. He's out there right now teaching your son to catch frogs. He hunts for us. He tracked us down and rescued us after we had to flee the quarry."
Carol waited for Lori to say she was sorry, to show some contrition, but her face was strangely hard. "Rick never would have been in Atlanta in the first place if Daryl hadn't insisted on going after his asshole of a brother. If Rick was in that camp, Amy might not have died. Dale might not have died. Jacqui might not have died. Shane might not have died."
"Shane," Carol echoed. "You need to forget about Shane. You need to make Rick your priority. And you can't blame Daryl for any of their deaths. Daryl's more than earned his place. And if your husband hadn't left Merle chained to that roof in the first - "
"- Merle," Lori interrupted her, the name dripping like disdain itself from her tongue. "The man who beat T-Dog, pulled a gun on everyone, and held a gun to my temple!" She put a finger against her head. "Daryl's brother. The madman he brought into our camp. The madman he tried to bring back into it."
"The man he left on the side of a road in Kentucky, even though he was blood! Do you have any idea how hard that was for him, to choose us over Merle? Daryl has made sacrifice after sacrifice for this group. I can trust him, rely on him - "
"- You do really like him."
"Of course I do!"
Lori looked down at the pregnancy test on the cool, white ceramic of the toilet's back.
Carol's gaze followed and fell on the evidence in the window. "Congratulations," she said hollowly.
They didn't talk on the entire walk home. When they got back to the big cabin, all of the windows and doors were open to let in some air, because there was a spit of six skinned frogs slow roasting on the fireplace, and it was already a warm afternoon. Beth, Carl, and Sophia were sitting around the coffee table and playing Risk.
"Where's your dad?" Lori asked as she sat down in an empty armchair. Carol took the chair opposite her.
"He went to scout out the road down the other side of the mountain," Carl answered. "To make sure there's no campers or big groups of walkers." "Just him?" Lori asked with alarm.
"Mr. Dixon went with him," Sophia said.
"And T-Dog," Beth added. "He went with them, too."
Carol supposed Beth considered herself more woman than girl, if she was calling everyone by their first names.
"Did you have fun catching frogs?" Lori asked her son.
Carl rolled two dice. "Yeah." Sophia rolled three dice, and then plucked two of his armies off the board and moved into his empty territory. "He told me all about the War Between the States."
"Did he now?" Lori asked skeptically.
"Did you know that if Robert E. Lee hadn't resigned his commission in the U.S. Army, and he'd led the Union forces, the war would have been over in less than six months? And that General Grant was a fall-down drunk? And that Colonel Pemberton invented Coca-Cola and it used to have real cocaine in it!"
"I wouldn't get your history from Mr. Dixon if I was you," Lori warned him. "And speaking of lessons, it's time for you two to start home school. 6th grade math. Come on. Put the game away. We'll have lunch and then school work."
"But I was winning!" Sophia whined.
"Can I help teach?" Beth asked. "I always wanted to be a teacher."
"I'd love your help," Lori assured her.
Carol made her way to the kitchen and found Darlene there, scrubbing up the counters. "Damn frog blood," she muttered.
"I thought you didn't know how to skin well?"
Darlene rinsed off the sponge. "I can do fish and frogs. Just not big game."
"What's Daryl's middle name?" Carol asked. If anyone knew, it would be Darlene.
"No idea."
"He said it starts with a B and that he hates it."
"I was four years ahead of him in school, so I ain't never heard a teacher scold him with his full name. Or his mama, neither, though I heard her scold Merle plenty. Can't be any worse than his. Merle's is Cooter."
"Good Lord. That is awful."
"What's yours?" Darlene asked.
"Anne."
"That's pretty. Fits perfect with Carol. I ain't got one." She tossed the sponge in the sink."Are you gonna season those legs up for lunch? I just put 'em on a spit for now. Didn't know what you wanted to do with 'em."
"I'll come up with something."
And Carol did. They all agreed the frog legs tasted like chicken, except for Glenn, who thought they tasted like fish.
"Aren't we saving some for the men?" Carol asked.
"I am a man," Glenn reminded her, and Maggie snickered.
"She meant the men who aren't here, obviously." Maggie looked at the empty plate. "There's nothing left to save."
"They packed lunch anyway," Sophia said, and then the girl licked each one of her fingers, one by one, just like she'd seen Daryl do a dozen times.
Carol suppressed her laugh. "Don't do that, sweetie. That's crude. Use your napkin."
[*]
The dark purple thread pulled through the brown leather. Carol rocked in the chair on the front porch of the small cabin and then made another stitch. The sound of a motorcycle roared toward her. Instinctively, she reached for her handgun before realizing it was only Daryl, cresting the mountain from the other side. He pulled his bike into the line of vehicles that blocked off the road on the top side and then strolled down the hill toward the porch.
Carol's heart seized. "Why aren't Rick and T-Dog with you?" she called.
"They's fine," he yelled back, and she began sewing again.
Soon enough, he was clamoring up the porch steps. He leaned his crossbow against the wooden logs of their small cabin and then plunked a beer bottle down on the end table next to her rocking chair. A single Black-eyed Susan peeked out of the top, its bright yellow petals fanning out around its dark brown center. Technically, this was the second time he'd brought her a flower.
Before she could thank him for the surprising gesture, Daryl leaned back against the porch rail and said, "Rick and T-Dog's comin' up the other side in the pick-up. Scouted to the bottom. Ain't nothin' down that road. Blocked it off where it meets the highway with a bunch of logs. Only one way up now. They's gonna drive on the highway to the other side. Tear down that sign." There was a large, brown informational sign on the highway with an arrow pointing up the main dirt road and the words, Hideaway Cabins.
"So I take it we're not welcoming strangers?"
"Strangers like the ones shot up the nursin' home? Strangers like Negan?"
"There must still be some good people in this world," she said.
"Yeah, well, reckon this'll at least slow the bad 'uns down."
"Makes sense." Carol yanked the thread through a tight spot before digging the needle into the leather again. "Did your nana tell you the story behind this flower, too?" She nodded to the beer bottle. She was trying to think why he might have brought it to her. The Cherokee rose was to comfort her when she though she might lose her daughter, but what was this one for?
Daryl cast his eyes down at the flower. "'S from a poem."
"What's the poem about?"
"Pretty girl named Susan with black eyes. Comes on board a ship lookin' for her lover Sweet William 'fore he sets off to war on the high seas."
"That's it?"
"'Mhmhm. Sweet William's a flower, too. Ain't native, but if'n ya sew it with Black-eyed Susans, they'll bloom the same time."
"So they'll grow together when they're thrown together by fate, even though they come from different worlds?"
His thumbnail went straight into his mouth. "Mhmhm."
"I like that." Carol tied off her thread, cut it, and slid the needle back into the pin cushion on the table by her chair. "Can I try this sleeve on you?"
Daryl dropped his thumb from his mouth and stretched out his bare arm for her. She stood and slid the leather over his flesh. The sleeve was supposed to stretch all the way up almost to his shoulder. He could wear it over his bare skin with his sleeveless t-shirt in spring and summer, or underneath a long-sleeve button-down in fall and winter. But the leather wouldn't stretch over his bicep. He was standing very still as she struggled to work the sleeve up. Eventually, she abandoned her efforts and peeled it back off. "Your arms are even more muscular than I realized. That one will have to be for Rick. Can I measure you?"
He submitted to the tape measure being wrapped around his tricep and then his bicep. Carol took a long time getting the tape correctly in place. She messed up and let it slip loose twice, and had to touch his muscles to get it just right. She expected him to flinch, but it felt more like he shivered. Carol stood close and bent her head to read the number. When she looked up, Daryl was looking down at her. For the first time, their eyes met straight-on. His were a sharper shade of blue than she'd realized. At times, they'd seemed more blue-gray, but face to face like this, they were cloudless and piercing. But then those blues flitted away and he bit his bottom lip.
The tape unraveled slowly from his arm. "You need to stop doing that," she told him. "You'll make yourself bleed."
He released his bottom lip from the grip of his teeth. It slid out, a little raw.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Before she quite realized what she was doing, Carol was running two fingertips over his bottom lip. His mouth came open slightly, and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her fingers. His lip was rough and warm and a little moist. She pulled her hand quickly away when she caught herself doing it.
He didn't say anything about it. Instead, he asked, "Hell the brass for?"
Carol stepped away from him and looked into the bucket of spent shell casings she'd brought back from the range. "That's what I'm going to use for the outer layer on the sleeves. I'll unravel them, then face them up. The brass is sharp and jagged. It'll hurt when they bite. Might at least make them pause."
"Smart thinkin'."
Carol smiled.
"Gettin' on evenin," he said. "Ya should take a break and start cookin' dinner."
She laughed. "I should take a break and do more work?" she asked.
"Thought ya like to cook."
"I like to sew, too. But they're both work."
"Know that. Didn't mean..." He bent his head. "Ya do a lot of work 'round here," he muttered. "Ain't unappreciated." He looked over the rail and down the road. "Better check on Rick and T-Dog." Daryl slipped from the porch and clobbered down the stairs. She watched his familiar swagger as he began to make his way down to the lower cabin.
"Bo!" she called after him. "Is that it? Is that your middle name?"
"No!" he yelled back without turning back.
"Buddy?"
"Ya ain't never gonna guess it. And I ain't tellin'!"