Carol looked away from Tom when she heard Daryl's familiar footsteps approaching. He had a highly distinguishable gait that was like its own fingerprint.

"Hey, Daryl," Tom said. He motioned to the pew next to him. "Want a seat?"

"No."

Tom smiled nervously.

Daryl extended his hand, palm-up, to Carol. "Wanna go for a walk? Nice night." Daryl had never asked her to go for a walk before. She smiled indulgently and took his outstretched hand. Daryl dropped it once she was standing.

Carol picked her plate up off the pew. "I've got to put this away first."

"I'll take care of it for you." Tom rose and took the plate.

"How very kind of you," she said, with an intentionally sweet tone, just to rile Daryl. It worked. His eyes narrowed slightly.

They walked in silence away from the sanctuary. Daryl was clearly irritated, but he wasn't talking about it. When they got to the pond, Carol reached for his hand. He looked down at her hand clasping his as though confused. "This is what couples do, Daryl. They hold hands when they take romantic walks around the pond."

"Makes it harder to walk," he said.

"Well, it makes it easier for you to get laid later tonight," she told him.

"Ain't had much trouble in that department."

"You're about to."

"A'right. I'm holdin' it! See?" He swung her hand up, kissed the back of it, and then lowered their clasped hands between them again.

Carol laughed. He looked down at her, the irritation draining from his eyes and replaced with a lightness. "Like the way ya smile," he said. "Reminds me there's velvet 'neath that steel."

"That's a pretty good line."

"Weren't a line." He stopped walking and leaned in to kiss her. The dark water rippled gently in the pond behind them. The crickets sung as the sun began its slow descent in the sky, red and orange hues bursting out over the pond.

She put a hand on his chest when they pulled apart. "Go easy on Tom," she said. "You're scaring him."

"Not tryin' to."

"Really?"

"Ya know he's two-timing Karen?"

Carol patted his shoulder. "I don't think you can two-time someone you had a one-night stand with. Karen's a big girl. She knew what she was getting into from the start."

"Why'd she do it then?"

Carol snorted. "Because Tom's good-looking? Because she had an itch that needed scratching? Don't tell me you've never had a one-night stand." Carol was pretty sure that, prior to her, that was the only kind of sex he'd ever had.

"Yeah, but I'm a man, and I ain't smart."

She chuckled and took his hand. "Weren't smart," she said. "You know what's good for you now, don't you?"

"Damn right." He squeezed her hand and they resumed walking.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and said, "Guess what? So do I. So stop acting jealous."

"Ain't jealous. Just don't trust him with you. Think he's collectin' notches on his belt."

"Tom plays the field," Carol told him. "I don't. There's nothing more to talk about."

[*]

"Goddamnit!" Ethan shouted. They'd just spent almost an hour following tracks only to find a boar's picked-over carcass.

"Don't let yer mama hear ya curse like that," Daryl warned him. If he did, Daryl would be the one in trouble.

"I don't." Ethan shook his little head as he watched the flies buzz around the last remnants of flesh. "How do the walkers catch 'em if we can't? They don't know how to track, and they don't move that fast."

"They get the sick ones," Daryl said. "The stragglers. Hell, that boar wouldn't've been worth eatin'."

"Those grapes were sour anyway." Ethan said with a smile.

"What?" Daryl asked.

"Didn't your mom ever read you Aesop's fables when you were little?"

"My mama never read me nothin'."

"Oh." Ethan's thick eyelashes lowered over his eyes in a confused drooping. "Why not?"

"Cause she weren't a good mama like yours." He nodded at the tracks leading away from the carcass. "Looks like the rest of the passel outran 'em. Porky's still out there somewhere. But I got to get ya back home. Try again tomorrow."

When they were on the way home, a sudden snap sounded somewhere in the forest. He and Ethan stood back to back and moved in a slow circle to examine the area. A snake slithered out of the brush, moving quickly, and Daryl shot it.

"Was that it?" Ethan asked.

"Nah." Daryl walked around and looked up at the canopy of the forest. "Rotten branch probably cracked off somewheres."

"There's another one!" Ethan readied his crossbow at the weaving snake as it faded in and out of the debris on the floor of the forest. He shot three times before he got it. Then, his face tinged with embarrassment, he looked at Daryl.

"They's narrow and real hard to get when they's movin'," he assured the boy. "Ya done good."

Ethan smiled.

When they got back inside the gates, with the snakes draped around their necks like scarves, they heard the church bell ringing.

"Uh-oh," Ethan said. "That's not the starting bell. It's the ending bell."

They moved quickly in the direction of the tolling, and, as they approached the outdoor sanctuary, Karen walked hastily over to Ethan. "You promised me you'd be back in time for church. I was worried about you!"

"We were gonna get back, really," Ethan told her. "But then we saw the snakes." He put his hand proudly on the white-bellied, black rat snake draped about his neck. "We had to catch 'em."

"Sorry 'bout that," Daryl apologized. "Lost track of time."

"Daryl," Karen said, "I really appreciate all you've taught him, but no more Sunday morning hunting."

"Yes, ma'am." Over Karen's shoulder, Daryl saw Carol walking from the pews with Tom Miller by her side. She was wearing a light, floral spring dress that fluttered in the breeze and revealed her strong calves. She had on black sandals and her toenails were painted red. Daryl wondered when she'd started painting those. He hadn't noticed them before.

The pair stopped walking when they were beside Karen. "They're very ecumenical here," Tom quipped, looking at the dead reptile around Daryl's neck, "but I'm not sure they allow snake handling."

Carol and Karen both laughed. Daryl didn't. He looked sternly at Tom, who stopped smiling and said, "I've got to get to work on that windmill with Jake. See you at the Council meeting this evening." He nodded and then walked off.

Daryl walked Carol home. She wanted to change into something more practical before she went to work in the greenhouse. Changing clothes twice in one day. In an apocalypse. Things sure were different now, Daryl thought. The woman who kept telling them they couldn't risk growing soft when they first moved into Alexandria was now painting her toes and changing her clothes.

Daryl intentionally took the long way home, past the pond, so he could ask her about Tom. It took him awhile to broach the topic. "Ya go to church with Tom?"

"He was there. He goes every Sunday."

"He sits next to ya?"

"You know, Daryl, it could have been you sitting next to me if you had wanted to come with me."

"Don't get the church thing."

"It's community. Ritual. It's comforting," she said. "I like the music. And I believe in God. Don't you?"

"Guess. Just ain't so sure he believes in us." Daryl slowed in his walking now, because he saw Carl Grimes in the grass near the pond trying to weigh down a blanket with rocks.

"What are you up to?" Carol asked him.

"Picnic," Carl replied. "Vicky said she'd meet me here after she got out of church."

"That's a lovely idea," Carol told him, and then looked pointedly at Daryl. "I wish I had someone to take me on a picnic."

"You ain't subtle."

"Well, you require flashing neon signs."

As they walked on, Daryl said, "Ya know, it was my idea he take her on a picnic."

"Really?" she asked skeptically.

"Damn right." He smiled slightly and admitted, "Not that I have any idea what yer s'posed to do on one."

"You're supposed to eat sandwiches," Carol told him. "And lay on your back and look at the clouds. And then kiss the girl."

"Then why ya want me to take ya on one? We already kiss."

Carol shook her head.

[*]

Daryl was frying up frog legs in a pan on the stove one early afternoon when Brother Lawrence walked in. Daryl had caught the frogs by the pond after he and Ethan had returned empty handed from the hunt. He was only allowed to take Ethan out on Friday and Saturday mornings now, days when there was no school and no church. "Want some?"

"No thank you," Lawrence answered.

"They's good," Daryl assured him. "Tastes like chicken, if chicken tasted like frog."

"I'm fasting."

"Why?"

"It's Good Friday," Lawrence answered matter-of-factly.

"Oh." Daryl shook the pan. "Shit. Was Ethan s'posed to be in church this mornin'?" If he was, the kid hadn't told him when he'd showed up, crossbow on his shoulder, at the foot of Daryl's porch stairs this morning.

"It's an evening service," Lawrence answered. "Are you at least coming to the Easter service on Sunday?"

"Guess Carol's gonna make me." Well, she wouldn't make him. But she'd ask him with those pretty blue eyes looking right at him, and he'd probably say yes. But then next Sunday he'd go hunting early in the morning and stay out for several hours just so she knew he wasn't about to make that church-going nonsense a habit.

"We're doing an egg hunt for the kids after the service," Lawrence said. "Plastic ones, with hard candy. We still have some from the mall. That was always my favorite part of Easter when I was little. What was yours?"

"It was just another day." Daryl flicked off the burner and moved the pan over.

"Really? In Georgia? In the Bible Belt?"

"In the Dixon house."

"Well, Flannery O'Connor did say the South is not so much Christ-centered as Christ-haunted."

"Who's he? An old Irish drinkin' buddy of yers?"

Lawrence chuckled. "Her. She's a southern fiction writer. A Georgia native, as a matter of fact. Didn't you have to read her in high school?"

"Told ya. Dropped out of high school." Daryl reached for one of the frog legs, singed his fingers, pulled back his hand, and then licked his fingertips to cool them off.

"Your parents weren't at all religious?" Lawrence asked.

"They's stay-at-home Baptists. Once saved, always saved. So they figured there weren't no point in workin' at it."

"Do you believe that?"

"Ya gettin' ready to preach to me? Thought you weren't a monk no more."

Lawrence leaned back against the kitchen table and crossed his arms over his chest. "Merely curious what you believe."

Daryl got a plate out of the cupboard and dumped the frog legs on it. "Believe there ain't no point in talkin' 'bout shit when you oughta be doin' shit."

"That's in the Bible."

"Pffft."

"No, really," Lawrence said. "In James."

Daryl picked up a now somewhat cooler frog leg. "Yeah? Well, ain't there somethin' you oughta be doin'?"

Lawrence uncrossed his arms. "Helping to dig irrigation ditches. We finished the well."

Daryl ripped into the frog leg and chewed the flesh with smacking lips. He swallowed and said, "I got a lot of experience diggin' ditches." That was the only work he and Merle could get some weeks when they were drifting. It was hot, dirty work, but it kept his arms strong. "Be there to help when I'm done eatin' lunch."

"I'll let Damien known."

"Ya shouldn't dig on an empty stomach," Daryl warned him. "Gonna faint."

"I've had plenty of water."

As Lawrence walked past him to the kitchen door, Daryl said, "J.C.'d love these frog legs. He wouldn't be fastin' on a perfectly good Friday."

[*]

Daryl grumbled his way to the outdoor sanctuary very early on Easter morning, but it was worth it just to see Carol in her Easter dress. It curved around and accentuated all the right places. He'd worn a clean, unfrayed pair of dark tan Wranglers and a white polo shirt - one with sleeves and everything. He was trying. For her.

Above the empty cross rose the sun, the color of a Georgia peach, and Daryl found himself strangely missing his home state. Virginia was gorgeous land, but it wasn't as familiar as those backwoods he'd roamed his whole life.

Church was a little confusing, but just like at the dinner table, he watched what other people were doing and copied them. The hymns weren't bad at all, especially not with that choir of monks lifting the sound up and out. When Carol slipped her hand into his during the prayers and smiled at him, Daryl wondered if maybe there really was such a thing as heaven, if maybe he'd found it, here within the well guarded gates of this new Eden.