Red roadside wildflower, if I had only picked you,

took you home, set you on the counter

oh, at least a time or two.

APRIL 29, 2010: PRESENT DAY

When his body falls, it feels as if the air resists his weight, pushing him upward, white-hot before it's icy, slower than any fathomable sensation. Hitting the sticky grass feels like spilling his bones onto a soft, cold cloud.

Shane drops to his knees and scrambles over his chest, gloved hands slipping frantically over his body, but Rick's devastated flesh is numb to it. It's as if hands have gripped him by the jaw and wrenched his head skyward; bound his muscles in place, motionless and traumatized. The world is a stinging vision of blinding white static before it's eclipsed by Shane's voice and his moon-wide eyes. That's calming for a while — it's all he could ask for if he's going to die.

"Shh-shh. Listen to me; hey. You just breathe, you hear me? Don't you dare stop, don't you dare stop, brother, you hear me? Shh-shh, listen to me, Rick, you breathe."

Shane's failing to hide the fear: blood-drained, mouth stern, eyes blown so wide, they're all Rick can focus on. There's no sign of his irises. Rick's own blood is polishing the trembling black leather hands that are pushing, shoving on him, absolutely unrelenting. "—you know that? It's gonna be okay; we're gonna make it, you understand me?"

The only motion Rick can make is to breathe; when he does, he's crippled — an explosion of pain crashes into him, a blast of recognition, blindingly swift. There's a vivid, miserable agony of mangled muscle tissue grinding between broken rib bones and hot bullet fragments. The numbness is ripped from his nerves like a festering tooth, and if he could manage it, every inch of him would writhe. Burned alive by a hellfire kind of torment, there's nothing left to move; he's forgotten how to scream.

The breeze in the trees evaporates into a mere suggestion of sound as his ears descend into an ocean of still water. He's distantly aware of the faint sound of Shane desperately willing him to breathe, and trying is the least he can do for him, though he's lost all energy to weather the torment. His mouth hangs open with the effort. Shane looks at him as if desperately trying to find hope in his blue eyes. Georgia's April wind tastes like just gunpowder and blood and the faint suggestion of Shane's stolen sip of Rick's strawberry-mint malt.

He misses the scent of the honeysuckle plant that's climbing his fence back home. It's this vivid, almost otherworldly green-white that projects a perfect image of the forest it crawled from, nestled next to Lori's mother's gaudy hyacinth garden. Lori says it's a weed he should have pulled as soon as spring started. She called it invasive, and then a distraction. The one thing Rick wanted in that garden, the one thing he could shape and nurture and show Carl: a distraction.

Shane disappears, the empty face of a city paramedic occupying his place. Rick only has an instant to grieve the loss before he feels himself being tugged and pulled and tilted. Shane had held him steady, warmed his icy skin with his breaths, and told him to stay.

It occurs to him that he hasn't yet gotten to ask Shane if he'll let him dig up one of those honeysuckle roots and replant it at his house when he moves in after the divorce. It'll go right against the outside wall, close to the backyard gate. They'll get a trellis, maybe. Maybe some English Ivy, some lamb's ear around the front perimeter in the flower beds that Shane ignores. Shane would like it. He knows he would. Shane's momma would've liked it, too. Honeysuckle right next to her window, close enough for the intoxicating smell to flood the whole house in the morning when she opened it. Maybe it would've made her rethink things if she could've woken up every day and looked right at something beautiful.

For him, it did, when he had something truly beautiful to look at. Beautiful in his own way, anyway, like the trembling moss clinging to the bottom of that old glassy stream — the one he and Shane would play in together; the one Carl uses to catch small frogs.

His body is stone-dead as he observes his vision blurring to oblivion, helpless to resist it. It's the thoughts of those beautiful things that grip him with terror. He sees dark brown eyes, starry skies over the lake, Carl's baby kisses, the drooling smile of his old dog, Bubba. And then, like ice-water on naked skin, he sees the moment every star in Shane's galaxy burned out into cold dust as he wrenched out his heart, still beating in his hand to the rhythm Rick had set for it. It's what Rick deserves to see before he dies.

But it isn't.

His entire life speeds by his last threads of consciousness like a flipbook made special. It's almost like purgatory. It's images and vivid memories. It's the fingerprint of every emotion he's ever felt: pictures he's seen, things he's done, things he's only been told stories of. It's a vivid image of his mother that he sees first, peering back at him from the streaky blackness of oblivion. She's young in a way he's never seen her; a way he's only ever heard her described.

JANUARY 1965

Ramona Mathews and Isabelle Strinati stand on the front steps of their university, the edges of the stairs chewed by a relentless frost. Posing for a picture, the close friends' arms are linked. They both have one leg theatrically kicked as if in mid-stride, just like in Isabelle's favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. Their opposite arms clutch their textbooks to their sweaters. It's undoubtedly a pose that was Isabelle's idea. Ramona plays along with a goofy smile and Isabelle is in the middle of a laugh that threatens her balance.

DECEMBER 1967

Ramona sits sunken into a plush couch, tightly holding the arm of Tim Grimes in her junior year of college. Her hand glitters with an engagement ring as she leans over the coffee table and points something out to Isabelle. They're all well-dressed. It's a house party Tim's college friend threw, and even though Isabelle chose not to go for a four-year, Ramona invited her anyway. Isabelle looks like a doll, swallowed by that matching chair with her hands clasped on her lap. Since taking on that military lover, she's begun to devolve into something weak and sunken. He's not there, of course. He's stationed somewhere Isabelle thought he'd rather be. The way Isabelle looks, it's a wonder whether Ramona urging her to leave her dark apartment was worth it.

OCTOBER 1969

Ramona's wedding is swallowed by white colors wherever one turns. It's held in her daddy's church, classic, elegant, Southern-humble, just like she and Tim and every couple this side of the Mason-Dixon desired. Ramona's fair hair is pulled back in her sister's intricate braids, and her mouth is split in a silly grin she can't control even as Tim Grimes tries to properly kiss her, and there's a laugh in his eyes as he accidentally kisses her teeth the first time. It's not a wedding for royalty; people cheer and they clap and throw up their hands, and Ramona and Tim are laughing and kissing, and after a moment, they simply hug. Isabelle stands in her bridesmaid dress to the side, remaining silent, standing still while everyone's a wild mess. Quiet smile, quiet eyes, small.

JULY 11, 1970

Ramona Grimes' blue eyes are as lively as ever as she holds a fresh baby girl in her arms, smiling that outrageous grin she always got and would keep until she died. The baby is red-haired, which confused them initially, but Tim has an aunt with hair like a firetruck, so it isn't paranormally unusual. Out of respect for the unexpected persistence of the woman's genes, they name their daughter Jessica.

APRIL 1972

It's late April, right on the heels of their tax return, and Tim and Ramona Grimes chat giddily in the bathroom about her pregnancy test. Their heads are craned over it, both of them gripping either side of the stick to see it closer as if it might change its mind. There isn't enough room on the thing for them both to hold it, and Ramona wins out, pulling it fiercely and tucking it to her chest, happily stomping like a madwoman. Tim pulls her into a hug to spare the life of his tile, and he's powerless to hold in his laughter when she slams her head into his chest to muffle her delighted scream.

AUGUST 1972

August, Friday, miserably sullen weather that has every corner of the state drowsy with the thickness of the hot water in the air. It's nighttime. Every window is open in the apartment. The fan is on, the lights are off, the moon casts a dull navy glow from the window into the kitchen. It's Isabelle, alone, bent over the kitchen counter in old boxers Henry left behind over a month ago. Her dark hair runs down her face like a blackout curtain. Crying into the landline, she grips tightly onto the counter because she might fall if she doesn't. Her head pounds like a hangover, and her ear hurts from keeping the phone slammed so close to it, like pulling it tighter will bring Ramona any closer. She's buried her pregnancy test deep into the wastebasket, positive, broken in half, only because it's too hot to light the fireplace and burn it.

NOVEMBER 1972

Mid-November, and the heat has been replaced with a dreary chill. Isabelle poses on the steps of the courthouse, standing with an unsmiling man, her marriage certificate held too-tight at her side, her makeup more stern than usual. Henry isn't smiling, so she feels like a fool for trying to fake one. Her long, black button-up dress doesn't hide her baby bump as he'd wanted, and it took her an hour to make sure her concealer hid the fact that she'd spent the morning driven to tears. Her thick Italian curls are emphasized with a few runs of a curling iron. Her nose is strong, her chin is pronounced, and her eyes are darker than his. She's always been somewhat proud to look into any mirror and see the reflection of her own heritage. Henry would strip her of that, too. There is nothing Italian about the name Walsh.

JANUARY 3, 1973

January third sees frost eat its way up the hospital windows, snow piling on the sill, leaving the family toasty and warm untouched within. Ramona resists every urge to squeeze her new baby boy for hours, she thinks he's so precious. Tim runs his fingers through her hair, her blonde tendrils still drenched in sweat from the labor. There aren't any surprises this time — not with Eric Steven Grimes. The baby boy has his mother's blue eyes and light hair, though the doctor says he could grow out of the latter. He has Tim's nose and Ramona's ears; his paw-paw's name and Ramona's affectionate diminutive: Rick. It's a disappointment to both of them that Isabelle couldn't come. She told them it was car trouble, but the wet hitch of her voice and the half-sob clued them in that it was a lie she was forced to feed them.

APRIL 19, 1973

April nineteenth hits Isabelle like a bullet to the head, and the pain is like a wound to every place that wouldn't kill her. She feels so much like dying, she begs for it. It's torture, it's loss, it's fear, and it'd be worse if she were truly alone. Henry's in a country she can't pronounce, but Ramona is outside that door, and Isabelle knows it. The doctors hand her the crying little thing, and Isabelle, at first, is only confused. They wash it, they hold it, they smile at it, they swaddle it. Him.

The only thing that redeems him to her is the fact that he looks more like herself than Henry. His eyes are too dark, his skin is the shade of sand, his hair is black without the faintest dimension. Absently, exhaustedly, she winds her finger in it when Ramona has left and they're both alone. She's damningly gentle, tender, so soft with him that she almost looks afraid she'll burn his skin. The gentle twist runs out of hair to grasp; her son's charcoal curl coils back into its place from her finger, soft, supple, strong. She places a warm kiss on his sleeping face and rocks him with little bounces up and down. The room is blind-dark and the air whispers paranormal, but he's the most frightening thing she's ever known - her own personal terror. And there she lays, bathed in sweat and aching with pain, cherishing him like cursed jewels to a starving thief.

The nurses take him from her while she sleeps, and she vomits from the terror in the morning when she doesn't have her son. She's been alone for as long as she can remember, so used to silence, it's developed its own sweet melody, and yet she's come to need her baby, like an umbilical cord she's unready to snip. They place him beside her in a cart, and she lives for the moments when Ramona and her daughter come to tell her stories, Ramona talking about home and Jessica babbling at her feet.

She never unhands him, though, not willingly. Ramona has to convince her to let her hold the baby, and Isabelle watches her like she'll drop him, never having expected not to trust her son's life with the only woman whom she'd ever trust with hers. Though Ramona is two years older, her skin is young and lively and nothing like Isabelle's own. Nine months without the comfort of her vices have failed to reverse the evidence of Isabelle's years of cigarettes and guilty numb-sweet drinks.

Ramona helps her dress in normal clothes. Isabelle meets her eyes in the mirror as Ramona snaps her bra from behind. She listens to Ramona's anecdotes about childbirth while she begins to brush the sweaty tangles from her hair. Ramona eyes her strangely when she asks her what she's chosen to name her baby.

Isabelle looks past their figures, resting on the tiny body among the blankets behind them. "Shane. His middle name's Giovanni, after my father." She watches the child stir in the little cart, tiny hands briefly reaching upward until sleep steals him away. She smiles. "Henry told me to name him Xavier," Isabelle says, "but I'm gonna name him Shane."

Ramona warmly smiles, proud, and hugs her shoulders and kisses her cheek with something ecstatic that Isabelle misses every day. She never gets that energy from the dark walls in her apartment. It's a sight for sore eyes when Isabelle sees her own face laugh and smile. "You're gettin' better at ignorin' that asshole," Ramona says, and Isabelle rolls her eyes. She's glad to look at something other than her own chapped smile when Ramona's big blues look down at her directly. "Hey now. You won't say it, so I'll say it for you."

"I can't stop you," Isabelle says. She hardly believes the sound of a giggle in her own voice.

"Shane," Ramona says like it's a word and not a name, like a child learning a new word. "Shaane. Shayne. Hm."

"Oh god," Isabelle says. If Ramona weren't holding her hair still, she'd stumble on over to the bathroom to get away from the sound of her butchering it like a pig. Ramona ignores her squirming and deftly weaves the tight braid, squeezing a hand on her shoulder and passing her a goofy wink.

Ramona says, "Oh, hush. It's cute. It's a good name. Strong."

"I know," says Isabelle.

Ramona weaves and tucks and weaves and tucks and brushes out the last little kinks before weaving and tucking her way down Isabelle's spine again. "Where'd you get it?"

Isabelle tenses despite herself, seeing her own shoulders freeze and stiffen in the mirror. Artificially, she scratches an itch on her cheek. "The baby book."

If Ramona notices the stiffness in her voice, she ignores it, continuing on sweetly. "I told you you'd like it. It was a hard night," she says, then catches Isabelle's eyes, her own big and blue and lovely gaze framed by bob-length blonde curls. "But I know you. I knew you would."

Isabelle half-smiles, tight, but affectionate.

She tries not to remember the gruesome headache and clutching a mug of Ramona's chamomile tea like a security blanket as she sobbed and crawled back on the couch until she couldn't crawl anymore. Ramona finally cornered her for a hug she thought she didn't want. She could smell Ramona's flowery perfume, warm, homey, underlying the scent of Tim and barnwood from the wonderful life she'd carved for herself. Ramona was a foreign character in Isabelle's shadowy apartment — a vivid, soulful spirit in a graveyard of melancholy. She didn't belong in the city. It's why Isabelle never invited her.

That night was a mantra of duplicate sentiments. "It's okay." "You're gonna be a perfect mom." "You don't need him, you have me and Tim." "I'm here, sweetie. I'm here right now ."

It only stole Isabelle away to that party in college, long enough ago that it shouldn't have bothered her any longer. Isabelle had had too many shots, but Ramona was a better woman than her, taking dainty sips and socializing and being the glowing star of health and studentry. Ramona had tasted like strawberry and vodka when Isabelle drunkenly kissed her after asking if she wanted to know a secret. Oh, how Isabelle had delighted in the goofy laugh in Ramona's voice when she told her, "Throw it at me." Maybe she wouldn't have kissed her if Ramona hadn't made that sound, pretty and perfect and fresh as a raindrop.

She never quite stopped being haunted by what happened after that — the steadying feeling of Ramona's hands on her shoulders moving her back, those blue eyes shocked and goofy. "Oh, no no, honey, too much booze for you, girl," she'd said, blushing and marked with a smear of red lipstick on her mouth. Ramona had needed to hold her upright on the walk back to their dorm; no matter Isabelle's weak resistance, she never let up, never loosened, not until she deposited her body on her fluffy white sheets.

It had been the next morning, maybe the morning after, that Isabelle asked her the big question; Ramona told her, ever so gently, she didn't feel the same way. Isabelle had shut herself in her room for days. Ramona had practically lived outside that door, reassuring her that nothing was wrong. "I don't hate you, Isabelle; I'm glad you told me." A broken record growing ever more desperate. "Isabelle, honey, please talk to me. I can't lose my best friend." It was the last thing she said before Isabelle had finally opened the door.

Ramona's light windbreaker was on her coffee table and that book of baby names was hidden under it. Ramona forced Isabelle into a hug that she wanted but had refused, and the mug of tea was held to her chest between them as Ramona wrapped Isabelle's shoulders in her arms and held her hair. Isabelle smelled like frozen dinners and depression and dried-up tears, and she imagines that when she sniffed and turned her face and kissed her, that's what Ramona tasted.

Ramona didn't kiss back immediately — Isabelle didn't expect her to at all — but she didn't pull away. Isabelle held her lips to hers and breathed her breaths and regretted what she had become, but not what she was doing. She kissed Ramona like it would tell her how scared she was, how hurt she was, how alone. Ramona, just for a moment, gradually met Isabelle's motions, and it felt almost — only almost — like she wanted it too. Her lips were as soft as they'd been years before, just that once — that stolen kiss that she fantasized about when the loneliness oppressed her. Maybe she was thinking of Tim; conjuring the sensation of his brown stubble on her chin and his cologne in her nose because Isabelle wasn't male enough. A favor for a friend; a sacrificial gesture so the broken Isabelle Walsh didn't hit rock bottom and finally break.

Maybe that's why Ramona didn't pull away. Pity.

When Isabelle broke the kiss, Ramona only stood shocked for an instant before she treated the moment as if nothing had ever happened. "I love you, Isabelle," she said, and Isabelle knew she did, just not how she needed her to. "You're gonna be the best momma that baby could ask for, you understand? Henry doesn't matter. This is you and you can do it, honey; I know you can."

Isabelle didn't believe her. When she said things like that, she never did. When Ramona left, she left behind the baby book, a box of chamomile tea, and a blanket that was knitted and special and big and brown. Of course, Ramona had embroidered it with her name. It was big enough to comfortably drape across her bed, but Isabelle hugged it to herself on the couch and let the numbing smoke of sleep fill her lungs and bring her death, if only temporary.

"Doesn't Shane mean 'God is good?'" Ramona asks, snapping Isabelle back into reality. "I thought I read that in there when I skimmed it,"

Isabelle shrugs. It saps what little energy she has. "Something like that, I guess."

"Oh, it doesn't matter anyway," says Ramona. "You know, Rick and that boy are gonna be like brothers, those two. Stompin' around, causin' havoc, annoying everyone to death. It'll be Shane Walsh and Rick Grimes 'gainst the whole state of Georgia. World won't know what hit it."

"You think so?" Isabelle asks. Looking at Shane, she thinks he doesn't look like the type to bring chaos.

"Oh, they're little boys," Ramona tells her. There's that smile again. Goofy, massive, the kind that means that Isabelle won't be able to stop herself from smiling back. "That's what they're born to do, isn't it?"

"It might be what they're born for, but I don't think Shane's gonna grow up to be like that," Isabelle says. She thought she'd long stopped lingering on the tender touches of Ramona's hands; for all the years she's spent suppressing her feelings, it shocks her slightly when her mind strays again. Ramona's hands rest on her bare shoulders in completion, bra fastened, braid woven, her soft hands warming Isabelle's frigid skin. Isabelle turns her chin to see the hand on her shoulder for herself; to see Ramona's ring glitter at her like a taunt, to catch the contrast of their skin colors as a bloom of gooseflesh ripples under Ramona's fingertips.

"Oh, you don't think so?" Ramona asks her, and those teasing blue eyes hold Isabelle's own, her vivid energy like a perfect foil to that tired, deep, deep brown. Ramona turns to the side and fans out a long-sleeved striped shirt for her. "For our sake, I hope you're right. When boys get into trouble, they get into it together."

Isabelle takes the shirt from her, turning to face her friend so she can look her in the eyes herself. "I'm glad you're here, Ramona," she says. "I —"

"I wouldn't ever miss this," Ramona says. She adjusts herself to sit beside Isabelle, so close, their thighs touch.

It's sudden, that feeling. Everything else evaporates like a soul leaving a body. The noise of the hospital machines, the whir of the AC, the showers of April beyond the window — they're all suddenly insignificant. Ramona wraps her arms around her body; holds her like she isn't half-naked; treats her like a sister and not a friend. Isabelle feels more ungrateful than ever when she realizes that it still isn't enough. "I'd never miss it, Isabelle. I wouldn't. Not ever."

Isabelle holds her hands around Ramona's waist and soaks in the contact of another person: the hands on her back, gentle touches, the comfort, the affection, the love. She remembers how it felt to rub her fingers through her son's hair, to know he is hers, to know that even when Ramona isn't here to bring her peace, he'll always be there to love her.

"I know," she tells Ramona, and it's true. But she'll never have Ramona; she isn't hers to keep.

Shane, however. He's her baby. He has her eyes and her hair and her distinctive tawny skin, more Strinati than Walsh. Holding onto that reality, the ache of that long-ago loss doesn't cut her quite so deep. She's known for years that she'll never have Ramona. A pathetic kiss on a couch in the dark, tender touches, lingering blue eyes — amount to absolutely nothing. But Shane is real. Shane, who wraps his entire tiny hand around just one of her fingers; Shane, who is the difference between loved and alone; Shane, who is her one and only reason to wake up and not wish she were dead.

Shane counts for something. It took Isabelle nine months to learn it.

JUNE 1975

The water is soapy, its lukewarm surface peppered with all manner of bath toys. The floor beneath the deep basin is thoroughly wet, though the two toddlers would have managed to keep their hair bone-dry if Ramona weren't spilling warm cupfuls of water onto their heads to wash out the dust of the day. The baby shampoo comes deathly close to falling into Rick's blue eyes; his best friend tries to stand every time Ramona sits him back down in the water. Five-year-old Jessica isn't very much help, either; she's more of a distraction, that ember-red hair peeking into Ramona's periphery, silly little hands tickling her little brother as Ramona tries to keep a hand on each wriggling boy.

She would have had Shane over for a sleepover any day regardless of whether Isabelle needed it. It makes it all the sourer to know what she's up to now: giving Henry whatever he wants for the brief few days he can bother to stay in town for his wife. Henry made Isabelle pay Ramona to watch Shane this time. It was odd, but it made sense to her in the end, why he'd do it. Henry isn't comfortable with his long-distance wife and son having relationships that are anything more than transactional.

Tim comes home the moment he's supposed to. It's the familiar jingle of keys and twinkle of wind chimes, and he gives Ramona a kiss before picking up Rick from the tub to towel him off. He tells her this and that about work, asks her about her day, tells her that he missed her — and she knows he did. Ramona prepares a towel and picks up Isabelle's son. She idly chats with Tim while they dress the boys; walks past Isabelle's $20 on her way into the living room, still pinned under the bag she packed for Shane.

Tim watches the news next to a lively Rick. Ramona holds Shane in her arms in the rocking recliner and admires how he's got his mother's eyes. He clings to her like a koala as he drifts to sleep, fingers tightly wrapped in her blouse, immovable. Ramona can't help but notice he seems starved for affection.