"I brought your least favorite red wine this time," Mason tells Dianne as he pours the wine into her glass with a slight turn of the bottle. Next he fills Jerry's glass and then Enid's, Elijah's and then Carson's.
Enid looks at Elijah, smiles, and takes a small sip of the wine. She purses her lips, and Elijah laughs.
"Well, I like it," Elijah says.
Enid pushes her glass over to him. "Then you can have two glasses."
"Everyone can have two glasses tonight," Mason says. "We're bottling the new vintage now. Out with the old." He opens another bottle, and when the cork pops, Judith, who is sitting on Daryl's lap because the table is too crowded for her to have her own seat, covers her ears. Mason pours that bottle until it's empty and opens a third. He passes over Michonne and pauses over Nabila. "No thank you," she says. He pours for Ezekiel, and then pauses by Henry, who is the last in line.
"Can I?" Henry asks.
Henry is about the same age Carl was that night at the CDC, and Rick grits his teeth. But then he says, "Pour the boy an ounce."
Mason pours two. When everyone has a glass and is seated, Mason raises his. "A toast, to our hosts, and to the fine chef who prepared this venison, and to the hunter who bagged it."
"Booyah!" Daryl shouts and Judith echoes him with a higher pitched, Booyay!
When everyone is eating and drinking, Tara asks, "Did the Little Einsteins have any luck? With the Death Star on wheels, or whatever that thing was?"
"It's a mobile precision seeder," Carson says. "And Elijah helped me figure out a program patch that can help keep the battery from draining too fast."
"So you know medicine and robotics?" Enid asks Elijah. "That's impressive."
Elijah smiles. "I actually wanted to go to college to be an engineer. But my mom taught me everything she knew about bloodwork before she died. Then I taught myself a lot from medical books. You have a lot of time to study when you're alone."
"Sorry to keep you from studying," Enid teases.
Elijah flushes. "I don't mind."
Mason sips his wine and then raises it to Dianne. "I trust you find the wine drinkable, ma'am?"
"It's interesting," she replies. "I think I taste a little leather."
"And do you enjoy the taste of leather in the evening?"
Jerry laughs until his belly shakes. Henry looks at Jerry and laughs, too, even though it's pretty clear the boy doesn't know what they're laughing about.
Mason sets down his glass with a clink. "I apologize, ma'am. I swear I did not intend for that to sound as suggestive as it did."
"That's a shame," Dianne replies. "I was about to think it was the first funny thing you've said all evening."
Mason smiles.
Farther down the table, Tara asks Javier, "So how's your niece? Is there going to be a wedding?"
"There's going to be a wedding," Javier answers. "But my niece has decided on Santiago." He looks across the table at Carson. "Don't look so relieved, muchacho! If that baby comes out at all fair-skinned, you're still going to help."
"I think we both know who's really going to end up raising that baby." Mason lifts his glass to Javier. "Get your diaper changin' table ready, amigo."
Rosita laughs, and so does Javier, and then Henry, who only has a slightly better idea what he's laughing about this time around. But the laughter is contagious, and soon everyone is joining in.
When it's time for coffee and dessert – which is canned peaches - Rosita clears the dinner dishes, and Javier jumps up to help, but neither one comes back to the table.
"I think someone's having seconds," Tara says.
Carol smiles at Daryl, who smiles back as he feeds Judith a cut-up piece of slippery peach.
The little girl slurps it down. Her blue eyes grow wide, and she says. "Yummy yum YUM!" She turns slightly in Daryl's lap, pats his stomach, and commands, "Unca D eat one."
[*]
The cigarettes are burned halfway down. The off-white paper curls toward the top, and the tips burn red.
"Thanks for the smoke," Mason says.
"It's yours anyhow," Daryl replies.
"But traded, and now given back." Mason picks a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. From behind him, Dianne emerges to go relieve Morgan on watch. Mason tips his hat to her but doesn't attempt to say anything.
She's a few paces down the porch when she turns. "My weapon has served me well."
"Pardon?" Mason asks.
She pats her long bow. "You insulted it when we first met. You implied it wasn't useful."
"Ask it to forgive me."
Dianne's countenance is a stern reply, but then the slightest hint of a smile curves just one side of her lips. She turns and walks on.
"Either I've seriously lost my game," Mason says when she's out of earshot. "Or that is one tough nut to crack."
"Porque no los dos?" Javier asks as he steps onto the porch and joins them at the rail.
"I suppose you've been having better luck than me, amigo?" Mason asks.
"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."
"No indeed," Mason replies. "He does not need to when his lady sports a megaphone."
Javier smirks and slaps Mason's shoulder. "Come on, old man. Curfew's in half an hour."
"Ain't fifty-six a little old for a curfew?" Daryl asks.
"It's for security," Mason replies.
"The lock checker goes around at ten p.m. every night," Javier explains, "and checks that all of the bedroom doors are locked. It makes his job easier if everyone honors curfew."
"Hell ya got a guy checkin' bedroom locks for?"
"In case anyone dies at night, of course," Mason says. "So he doesn't turn and go wandering about devouring sleeping people."
"Huh." They've had that happen twice now –when the wounded turned at the Hilltop, and before that, when Patrick died in the prison. "But what if someone needs to go take a piss? And he dies on the way?"
"A lock checker is always on duty during sleeping hours," Javier says. "From ten p.m. to the crow of the rooster. He walks all the halls of the main house and checks all the locks repeatedly. He checks the bathrooms and the common rooms and the kitchen. He goes to the guest house and to the servant's quarters and back to the main house. He repeats the patrol all night long. If someone is out of their room, he makes sure he knows where they are and that they get back alive and that they lock up when they do. If someone dies and turns, the lock checker takes care of it. We've had two old ones die in their sleep."
"My stepmother," Masons says, "last year. And my 89-year-old aunt the year before that. God rest their souls." He looks at Daryl with disbelief. "Y'all don't have a lock checker?"
[*]
The next morning, there's a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and grapes before people head off to work.
Rick organizes a construction team and, using A Key to Our Future, gets started on an ice house. Rosita reloads ammunition in the garage using the press Jesus found. Maggie insists on taking watch in the rear stand and climbs the ladder with some difficulty at first, but quickly gains her footing. Michonne takes the lower watch. Jesus and Elijah begin to redesign the wine cellar for use as a root cellar for storing next spring's harvest. Daryl hunts, and Dianne fishes. Inside, Henry amuses the girls and the baby while Nabila cleans.
On the porch, Carol and Enid do the laundry by hand in a big tin bucket. Carol hands Enid a shirt, and she wrings it out in the grass over the rail before draping it on the railing. They'll put them on a clothes line later. "Elijah's really settling in," Carol observes.
Enid smiles. "Yeah. He says he's going to stay until the baby's born, in case Michonne needs him. But I don't think he'll be leaving then either."
"Any particular reason he might want to stay?"
Enid flushes and rings out another shirt before draping it over the rail.
"Enid," Carol says. "Sit a minute." Enid takes the rocking chair next to the bucket. As Carol scrubs, she says, "I know I'm not your mother. But I never got the chance to have this talk with my own daughter, so…here goes."
"You think he's too old for me?"
"No. I think he would have been too old for you in the old world. If my Sophia was a junior in high school, and she wanted to date a sophomore in college?" She shakes her head. "But in this world, you've both been forced to become adults already. I just want to make sure you know that you can take things slowly."
"I know," Enid says with a roll of her eyes.
"Don't let him pressure you."
Enid laughs. "I have more experience than Elijah does."
Carol blinks.
"Not that much experience," Enid clarifies. "Carl and I never did anything more than kiss. Ron and I did a little more, because…I don't know why. Because he tried and I let him."
Carol hasn't thought about Ron Anderson or his brother Sam in a while, or about their abusive father Pete, or about their mom Jessie, who might have ended up with Rick if she hadn't died. It's a strange thought. Carol can't imagine Rick with anyone but Michonne now. "You don't have to let any boy do anything."
"I know that now. I knew it then, too. I was just…I don't know. I didn't even like Ron." She sighs. "And I loved Carl." She grits her teeth.
"I know, sweetie," Carol says quietly, and sniffles, and fights back the rising tears, but not enough to prevent a fine mist from gathering over her eyes. She blinks it away.
Enid clears her throat. "Anyway, Elijah's like Carl. He's sweet. He's not going to be pushy. And he'd never even kissed a girl before me."
"Really?"
"He was kind of a nerd in high school. Can you imagine?"
Carol laughs. "I can."
Enid smiles. "And then the apocalypse happened. He's never had a girlfriend."
"Well, I hope you two take it slowly, because you're still very young. But if you do decide to become sexually active, I have a box of condoms in my room. I'll hold two aside for you. Ask me for one first."
"Shh!"
Carol follows Enid's gaze and finds Elijah approaching the inn from the winery building. He mounts the far stairs and makes his way across the planks, a crooked smile dimpling his coffee-and-cream-toned cheeks. "I'm done with the storage redesign. Need any help with the laundry?"
[*]
Dianne catches just enough fish for dinner, which is good, because the deer Daryl's been tracking alludes him. They have a fish fry with fresh stir fry veggies, and the Council lingers at the dining room table afterward.
When the discussion is drawing to a close, Daryl splurts, "Need a lock checker."
"A what?" Rick asks.
Daryl explains how Dead End operates. "Not all night maybe. Break the shift in half. Rotate."
"That seems like a waste of manpower," Rick says, "when we already have two night watchmen."
"They's outside," Daryl reasons. "Lock checker'd be inside. "
"And if something goes down outside," Carol suggests, "then that's one more person already armed and dressed, awake and ready to fight instantly."
Daryl nods. "Yeah. 'Zactly."
"That's less sleep," Rick counters. "And less energy for work the next day. If we rotate two watchmen and one lock checker in half shifts, that's six people who don't get a full night's sleep. Almost 40% of our adult manpower on duty every night?"
"Twice it's happened to us now, Rick!" Daryl growls. "Hell we gonna learn?"
"People were awake when it happened on the Hilltop," Rick says. "Infirmary workers. The night watch. It didn't stop it."
"But they weren't checkin' everywhere. Weren't makin' rounds. Weren't lookin' for people who might of – "
"- Let's vote," Maggie interrupts. "All in favor of a lock checker?" She raises her own hand.
Carol raises her hand, then Daryl raises his, and then Ezekiel.
Rick looks around at all the raised hands, shrugs, and raises his.
[*]
Shining his flashlight, Daryl walks across the foyer and peers into the library. It's empty. He walks on down the hall, through the expansive kitchen, past the island stove, beyond the country-style table in the breakfast nook, past the back door, and through the open doorway to the attached dining room.
The beam of the flashlight casts an eerie glow on the oil paintings. His footsteps trod out the other side of the dining room and back into the foyer and then down the hall to the master suite. He turns the knob of Rick's door and pushes, and it doesn't give. He walks back down the hallway through the foyer and down another hallway into the first-floor living room.
The living room is empty, and he treads back through the foyer and makes his way quietly up the stairs, finding each little creak deafening. He walks to the far end of the hallway and peers into the billiard room. Jerry is snoring with the speed of a chain saw on the couch. No wonder Henry asked him for those little orange shooting ear plugs last week. The boy's chest rises and falls as he lays curled up in his nest on the floor, his back to the waning fireplace.
Daryl heads down the second-floor hallway. He tries Morgan's door. Locked. He tries Tara and Dianne's door across the hall. Locked. He paces on and jiggles the nob to the Merlot suite, which is Nabila's. It's locked. He moves across the hall to Rosita's room. Locked. He moves down the hall to Ezekiel's room. Locked.
He treads back over the worn hallway carpet and up to the third floor and all the way down to the end. In the third-floor living room Elijah is still awake and is reading a textbook by the glow of a kerosene lantern and looking over the blueprints Carson left him. "Gonna build us one of 'em planter robot thingamajigs?" Daryl asks.
"When Carson brings me the parts I need. He said he would, as a thank you for finding the coding work-around."
"Glad ya stuck with us, kid." At barely twenty, Elijah already has more useful knowledge in that brain of his than Eugene ever did.
Daryl turns and walks to the Chardonnay room, which is empty, because Carol is on lower watch.
He tries Enid and Gracie's door a little farther down and across the hall. Locked. He tries the door for Maggie and H.G. Locked. He can hear the baby crying inside, and then cooing.
He walks onto the last room and turns the knob and pushes, expecting it to be locked, but instead it gives and opens.
"Jesus!" Aaron cries, and Daryl's not sure if he's saying it to Jesus or using it as an exclamation of annoyance at the door being opened on a very private scene.
"Sorry! Sorry!" Daryl mutters and yanks the door shut. "Lock yer damn door!" He calls through the wood, and then, flushing an almost beet red, strides back to the stairs. He walks down them quickly all the way to the foyer.
Maybe Rick was right. Maybe this lock-checking thing wasn't the brightest idea he ever had.