December 31, 2010
~*~ JD ~*~
"Behind you," Jazz calls out as he slips behind the two women working at the counter tops. It's one of his two nights working on the supper crew, and Fridays are his favorite shift because his mother works too. All the staff is a substitute tonight, since Fridays one of the off nights for the regular crew. Ironically, it makes him one of the most experienced, since the four subs are from supply run teams and those rotate enough that they don't work the kitchen every week.
It means that he doesn't do dishes tonight, which is always a plus. Learning to cook was just a fun hobby before. Now it's a 'get out of dishes' card.
He measures rice and lentils between the three rice cookers and adds water. Tonight's New Year's Eve and they're doing an Indian and Asian themed meal, partly for something different and partly because they have a lot of shelf-stable tofu and canned shrimp that are nearing best by dates and no one wants to really push limits on proteins or eat what ends up tasting like bland mush. Tofu they can potentially have again, when the soybean harvest comes around, and shrimp's just a few hours away on the coast, but some of tonight's ingredients are ones he'll miss eventually - like coconut.
He also knows there will carabeef stew and biscuits for those not adventurous enough for the other foods, but his mother already has that cooking away.
Rice taken care of, he touches Carol on the shoulder. "You want me on dumplings or curry, Mama?"
Carol tilts her head, assessing their help for the night, all former cops of some sort, and only two with any real skill in the kitchen. Rachel and Brian are rolling out dumpling wrappers and Leslie and Gil are chopping vegetables brought up from the big root cellars put in on the Eldridge farm. "How about you start the curries and I'll keep an eye on this dumpling crew. They've already finished the veggies for the curries."
Sophia comes thumping in, apologizing for being an hour late to shift, but Carol waves it off because she went out with Daryl's crews today running trot-lines and fishing on one of the lakes. Supply runs can be unpredictable on return times. "Help Jazz."
She washes up and comes to nudge him. "What do you want me to do?"
He glances at the large quantity recipe measurements and hands her the sheet for the one she likes best. Cooking's not really her favorite thing, but she's methodical enough to follow a recipe sheet religiously. Once those are simmering, they'll start two more. "You work on that while I do the dahl. Fishing go well?"
"Yeah, they're gonna be out there cleaning a while. Uncle Daryl says the catfish get ornery hungry in the winter." She studies the sheets carefully. "Oooh, aloo saag, yum! You gonna make naan too?"
"Did the dough earlier this afternoon after Beth and I got back from doing rounds with Hershel, so, yeah." Hershel does vet checks on the animals every Friday, alternating between the two properties on which property is done each week. Today, they took one of the trucks over and herded in the fallow does for ultrasounds to confirm pregnancies. He'll never get over the fun in getting to use the equipment to check on pregnant animals. They're going to double their herd size in early summer, although they don't plan on eating any of the females that get produced, so it could be a couple of years before they really add to the food stocks.
Once they've got all four pots simmering, they join in the dumpling making while Carol moves down to a free spot on the counter to make up biscuits. Out of habit, Jazz checks the time and sees they're probably going to finish earlier than the usual seven the meal officially starts at. The community center is rarely empty, even now that it's not a classroom half the day. It's one of the reasons he likes the kitchen shifts, because it's one of the few things he does that has a lot of people around. The interactions are always fun to watch, and no one thinks him odd for not participating in whatever's going on since he's on-duty.
Anaya decides him being at the counter makes him fair game to observe. She's been sitting by herself in the dining area, coloring for the most part, eyeing the other children present with occasional brooding glares. Considering his mother had her in a time-out when he arrived for an argument with one of the other kids that ended in Anaya shoving the kid on his backside, he's not surprised about the ongoing divide between her and the group of kids.
She's just tall enough to watch and he has an idea. "Want to help make dumplings?"
She nods, so he wipes his hands off on a dish towel and goes to retrieve one of the small plastic step stools the shorter ladies use for the upper shelves and plops it next to him. Luckily, her hair's pulled up in an intricate braid, because hers is long enough to get in the way, unlike Sophia's. "Go wash your hands, then hop up."
While she's doing that, he moves the ingredient bowl and dumpling wrappers in between his work area and hers. She hops up and gives him an expectant look. "What kind of dumplings? This isn't like chicken and dumplings."
"No, this is more like what you'd see at a Chinese restaurant," he explains. "You ever eat at those?" It sounds like a silly question to ask, but some families just aren't very adventurous at all. He had classmates who never tried Asian foods of any type.
She shakes her head. "We didn't eat out much."
He files away that clue, just like all the others the family has about her. Al thinks maybe she was a foster kid, which would really explain how she was found alone. Al and Jimmy both got 'forgotten' by foster parents that Jazz hopes ended up in one of the walker herds. He's not terribly picky if it's as a walker or in the belly of one, to leave kids behind, teenagers or not.
"Well, you've had my kolokotes and the hand pies, right?"
"I like the kolokotes. They make squash taste good."
He smiles at her, happy with the compliment. "These are similar, except we won't bake the dumplings, we'll boil them. Just take one of the dumpling wrappers and put it in front of you." He demonstrates and she carefully lifts her own little bit of pastry into place. "Then put a tablespoon - that's pretty much a heaping spoonful of this spoon - of the filling in the middle. Then fold it over like you've seen the kolokotes and pinch it all closed."
She follows his instructions carefully. Her first try isn't the prettiest dumpling ever, but it's the taste that counts, not the looks.
"What's in the bowl?" She peers in, taking a sniff to see if there are any clues that way.
"This one has chopped shrimp and water chestnuts, plus spices, from our canned goods. And there's also a little cabbage shredded in there that the others cut up earlier."
"Sophia's is different?"
"Yeah. Hers are mushroom and butternut squash. Karen's making a pork dumpling, and Gil's are fish and chive. At supper, you should try one of each type to see what you like best, but be sure to tell Shane you helped make the shrimp ones. He likes shrimp."
"And which one does Scout like best?"
"The pork ones."
Anaya eyes Karen's bowl, but doesn't defect from helping him. He does his best not to smile.
The kitchen timer beeps. "I gotta go check on that, so I'm leaving you in charge of the shrimp dumplings, alright?"
She nods solemnly and by the time he's moved the first two curries to the buffet table, she's actually managed over a dozen dumplings. She's also attracted an audience of several other kids in her age range. He knows Molly and Luke from the trip here, but he only knows the other two as part of the Grady group of kids and can't remember their names. Neither of the two unknown boys are the ones Anaya fought with earlier and she looks more warily curious than upset by them watching.
"Can we help too?" Molly asks. And since he's never been good at resisting puppy dog eyes, he looks to the other dumpling makers, who just grin.
"Alright. Go wash your hands."
While they tromp over to the hand washing sink, he borrows some of the chairs from the one table that isn't a cafeteria table and sets them up on the dining area side of the counter.
Tonight's dumplings might be sloppier than normal, but the four extra helpers make the work go fast. The million questions they ask about recipes and cooking make the time go by quickly too. He's dismissed his mini-helpers and accepted hugs from Anaya, Molly, and Luke and is actually cooking the dumplings with Sophia when Carol stops by and cups his face in her hands. He leans down to let her kiss his forehead.
"You are a sweetheart, Jasper Benjamin. Don't ever change that."
She wanders off before he can reply and he looks to Sophia, puzzled. "She means being nice to the kids," she explains. "Especially Anaya. Look."
"Anaya's my niece," he says, since singling out a family member as if he's done something special doesn't lessen his confusion. He glances over his shoulder as he skims the first dumpling out of the water as it floats and sees Anaya is sitting between Molly and Luke. The two Grady kids are sitting opposite, and they've got a deck of Uno cards that Molly is clumsily shuffling out.
The other group of kids are eyeing the game, but based on the absolute glare Molly is leveling their way, he suspects his mother will be disrupting a larger fight if they approach. Whatever's going on, Anaya's got someone on her side now.
It'll get sorted out, but he reminds himself to ask Molly later.
~*~ DD ~*~
Lori's actually in the cabin when Daryl enters, leaving his boots in the plastic tub by the door. He's cleaned them as best he can for now, but there's no way they're ever going to be clean enough to walk through Lori's domain after a day on the lake. He's baited and caught and cleaned fish so much today he's glad it's all being put away and not immediately served for supper tonight, because he thinks he might beg off eating if it was.
She smiles at him, dark eyes lighting up as she looks up at him, and he leans in carefully for a kiss. He can't imagine he smells like anything other than a fish market at the moment. She does wrinkle her nose a little, but doesn't pull away from the affectionate gesture either.
"Asskicker giving you trouble?"
She shakes her head. "She's been relatively quiet today. Saving her energy for a night time tap dance. But Abby's not feeling well, so she's napping."
"She okay?" The immediate concern is just a part of his nature.
"Running a fever. I took her to see Cricket, who says she's got an ear infection. She gave me some antibiotics and then Abby just wanted to sleep after those and Tylenol."
"A'right. I'll look in on her on my way to the shower. Carl went to the men's washroom down in the Village. Think he was anxious to meet up with Audrey." Because of different needs to shower quickly, most of the group washrooms have generic clothes available, but Carl had a backpack in the truck, so he thinks the teen planned ahead for knowing they'd come back in desperate need of soap and hot water.
"That'll never get less weird, my little boy old enough to be having a girlfriend."
He shrugs. He's just glad the boy's not mooning after Sophia still, and he knows Lori is, too. "Least he picked a really sweet one?"
"There is that." She smiles and holds out a hand for him to help her up, after laying her mending aside. It flashes the ring on her left hand, a sight he's not sure he'll tire of anytime soon. Granted, he knew a yes was almost guaranteed, but she could have decided they didn't need to be officially married at all. "I'll scrub your back, since Abby's sleeping."
That's certainly not an offer he'll ever turn down.
~*~ SW ~*~
Shane sits down next to Anaya, since Scout's already sitting on her other side. The girl leans over to inspect his plate, seeming to be counting the dumplings.
"Did you get the shrimp ones?" she asks at last.
"Yeah, two shrimp and two mushroom."
She actually smiles at that. "I helped make the shrimp ones, with Jazz. He said they would be your favorite."
"They are, yeah. Used to go to shrimping with my dad, when I was little." It's one of the few really good memories of time with his dad, because his old man would actually manage to stay sober for the weekend trips. Tom Walsh actually grew up on the Atlantic coast, only moving inland as an older teenager when his mother inherited her parents' house in King County.
"You've seen the ocean?" she asks.
"A few times. Even swam in it. Want to know something even more interesting than me visiting the ocean?"
She perks up. "What?"
"Scout was born on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."
"Really?" She looks to Scout, obviously intrigued. "Like Hawaii?"
"Yeah, really. And sort of like Hawaii, but further away. You actually fly through Hawaii to get there."
"Why would you ever move away from the ocean?"
His wife laughs. "I was really little when we left Guam. My dad was in the Marines and they sent us to live somewhere else. So, I went from an island to the desert in California. Then we lived in North Carolina after that, and that was near the ocean again, but we moved back to Georgia after he wasn't in the military anymore because this is where he's from." Scout looks thoughtful for a moment. "Might be a year or two or even three, Anaya, but eventually we'll be able to travel further out from home regularly. We'll make sure you see the ocean."
Dark eyes turn to Shane for confirmation and he nods. Before, taking her down to Tybee would be an easy trip for a three-day weekend or a summer vacation. Now, it's fraught with a lot of travel concerns, but he can even see viable reasons to do it, if they can source fuel long enough. The coast is a pretty big resource for food, and he knows the port cities are probably crowded with abandoned supplies.
She looks back to her plate and mumbles something he can't quite catch, but from the instant tension that snaps through Scout, she understood it clearly.
"Anaya." She slides her arm across the girl's shoulders. "This isn't temporary. As long as you want us to be your parents, that's what we are. Not foster parents, not guardians. Parents."
"Even if you have more babies like the new one?"
Shane joins in the embrace, kissing the top of her head. It's not the time, yet, to tell her that's an impossibility. "Even if we have a dozen more babies."
She sniffles a little and he decides to hell with it and just pulls her into his lap, while Scout slides over a seat. Anaya never actually cries, but instead just shivers in his arms as if she is crying. "Why don't you box our stuff up and I'll take her home?" he suggests.
Scout nods and he stands easily with Anaya in his arms, glad today's relatively warm for December. Even with the sun down, it's still in the sixties, so the walk back to the cabin is comfortable except for the fact that he can feel his shirt growing damp from where the little girl finally is letting her tears fall.
It takes Scout longer to make it home than he expected, so Anaya's asleep in his arms on the couch, where she cried herself to sleep. Maverick's on the couch beside him, his big, broad head pillowed against Anaya's thigh. The dog was wary of her at first, but over the last few days, has started sleeping on the foot of her bunk.
His wife looks tired and strained as she tucks their food into the fridge. She comes to sit beside him, gently beginning to unbraid Anaya's hair. "Apparently, one of the other children said something he shouldn't today. Anaya didn't tell Carol, so she separated them to give them some space after Anaya pushed him down. Carol's going to have a chat with his parents and the other boy's parents."
"How did she find out?" On one hand, Shane wants to go have words with the little bully himself. But on the other hand, most of the kids here are traumatized as hell, so there's no telling what prompted the boy to lash out. He's honestly surprised they don't have more incidents of fights between the kids, since it's a diverse group with a lot of strong personalities just among the over thirty elementary aged kids. He knows there have been a few incidents with the teenagers, some even as far as blows being traded between the boys, but nothing the adults have had to really police. The teens are pretty good at yanking their errant members back into line so they don't lose privileges.
"Molly and Luke told their uncle when they saw you leave with her. Henry told me and Carol."
"What'd he say to her?" Shane figures it has something to do with the temporary comment from earlier.
"He called her our practice child and that we were going to give her away once we had real kids."
It takes what feels like physical effort to remind himself that the other child's likely as damaged by the world as Anaya. He centers himself by focusing on her warmth against him. Scout's still working with her hair, but he thinks it's more as a comfort to his wife than any grooming needing done. Today is usually an off day for them, but with the snow earlier in the week lingering, they ended up taking four of their teams out to help Glenn's teams when he radioed in a better than usual find.
Scout's quiet for a minute. "Jazz says Al thinks she might have been a foster child."
Ah, hell. He's heard enough of Patricia's diatribes about her two teens that got 'forgotten' by the adults the state paid to look after them. At least Jimmy's foster parents dropped him off at Hershel's before trekking off without him. But Al's just left one morning and never came home, and that was days before things got so bad that people were dying by the dozens.
"I know we want to let her open up as she goes, but I'm really thinking we might need to just ask some hard questions," he suggests. The unknowns make it hard to protect her emotionally. This isn't quite the same as letting Abby ride it out until she talked on her own.
"Or see if she'd talk to the kids easier than us. After all, she told Molly what was said, but not an adult."
"Think she might talk to Jazz and Sophia?" As much as he hates to put that burden on the teenagers, both of them are stable kids who probably could inspire trust as being close enough to children for Anaya to talk to.
"Jazz is already thinking along those lines, I think. We're off tomorrow, but he says if we go out unexpectedly, he'll babysit. He wants to start taking her around the animals, maybe teach her to ride. He says other than Wednesdays, he can keep her with him anytime. And Sophia's off chore roster on Wednesdays."
He thinks it over. Initially, they thought Anaya would stay with Lori and Abby, but in a weird twist, the two girls just haven't clicked on a friendly level. Half of that may be Abby's current obsession with sticking to Carl like the boy's shadow, which he isn't discouraging. And Jazz - the teenager's always been a Pied Piper to kids Anaya's age. Today's cooking lesson is a case in point.
"We'll give it a try, long as Jazz isn't feeling overworked by having her along. Give it a week or two."
"Maybe if she gets to know everyone a little better, she'll realize just how strongly Dixons don't give anyone up once they've laid claim," Scout says, inspiring him to the first smile in hours.
Yeah, and he'll just have to show her Walshes, at least his variety of the family, don't give up their people easily either.
This is fixable... they just need time.
~*~ MD ~*~
Carol slips an arm around his waist once she's back to her spot at the table, ignoring her remaining food as she buries her face in his shoulder for a moment.
"You get everything sorted?" he asks, once she takes a deep breath and picks her fork back up.
"Yeah. One very repentant twelve-year-old reporting to the cleaning crew tomorrow instead of having his day off school. His dad added for the next two weeks, so he'll have a lot of toilet cleaning in his future on Wednesdays and Saturdays."
"From his expression, I think he was about to wet himself during that lecture you gave him." The boy in question is likely to get an ongoing series of lectures, if the foreboding expression on his parents' face is any giveaway. Merle only knows them in passing, since the father's on the lunch crew and the mother's on one of the run teams, but Carol's worked with the father on the day she covers for Glynnis to have a day off in the kitchens.
"I don't think he realizes how much less he's suffered than some of the other kids. Quinton kept his group pretty isolated, and he's got both parents and his sibling. The other boy involved says it's not the first time he's been unkind to one of the less fortunate kids. Since that one isn't the actual one doing the bullying, I let his parents deal with explaining to him that standing by the bully is almost as bad as being the bully."
"Hopefully, he'll learn from the mistake. Not every day a kid around here gets a dressing down from you." He hadn't been kidding about the boy looking poleaxed that sweet, motherly Carol was reading him the riot act as good as any drill sergeant. It's not just that it's their granddaughter he bullied, but he knows Carol will always have that instinct to want to curtail anyone sliding onto the dark road men like Ed travel. Men like that don't just wake up one day and start smacking their families around. Habits like that start young, when bullies are left to run unchecked.
"He better. Because if Anaya has to knock him on his butt again, she won't be getting a time-out, I promise."
"What were you and Jazz talking to Scout about before she left?"
"He volunteered to babysit Anaya a while. Thinks she might benefit from being away from the other kids a bit and meet all the animals. Most of his work roster works out for her to tag along, so I've dropped her off school attendance for the week. See what comes of her having fewer stressors on her while she settles in."
"Could take him off my crew the one day, if you need." If they weren't setting in warehouses on the horse farm this week, he might even recruit the little gal. She's plenty old enough to learn some of the basics, but not on a work site where they're assembling steel buildings.
"I'll keep it in mind, but Sophia's got a free day that day and says she wants to come up with something to do with her. She likes being an aunt."
"Believe we might have some good kids there, Mrs. Dixon."
She gives him that pretty smile that makes him want to spirit her off out of public, responding to the surname the same way most women respond to sweetheart or darling. "We've got a whole lot of good kids."
"Yeah, that we do." Even the unofficial ones, the ones more attached to an individual one of his kids than to him or Carol, like Scout's stray teenage Marine, are good people.
~*~ LG ~*~
Abby getting sick for the first time since Lori's been caring for her worried her a lot more than she let on to Daryl. He'd taken it calmly, checking on the girl, before continuing to shower, just content that she did all the right things without so much as even a second guess. Being Abby's parent hasn't had any of the pitfalls she's been led to expect from her friends who were stepparents. Hell, even Carl's relationship with Daryl never seems to have any strife. Maybe it's because everything's still new, since Carl has butted heads with his dad and Shane a time or two.
Daryl's cooking dinner, rather than go up to the community meal and retrieve food. She loves Asian food, but suspects it would not love her at all with the heartburn the pregnancy causes lately. That leaves her time to check on Abby - again - glad of the fact they still have modern conveniences like ear thermometers. It's been five hours since her last dose of Tylenol and the fever's still gone. She stays seated on the edge of the bunk though, just watching the girl sleep, because although they've treated illnesses and accidents here so far, including Christian's rather tricky case of pneumonia, it still worries her.
They have antibiotics, and Glynnis confirmed Abby's never had any infection stick around stubbornly, but Carl did. She remembers the ear infection that just wouldn't go away when he was six, and the multiple cases of strep throat and ear infections that followed for two years until the doctors decided to take his tonsils out and put tubes in his ears. She has no idea if they could even come close to doing anything like that for Abby.
She finds herself rubbing at the texture on her engagement ring and that at least distracts her a little. When Daryl first proposed, Christmas night, she feared it might be a reaction to the wedding. Then she got a good look at the ring and knew there was no way the proposal was impulsive. The custom floral-patterned carving and inlays probably took him more than a month, especially since it isn't a piece he would have worked on in front of her in the evenings like he does some of his carvings.
She's learned enough from him, with the kids, to know she's years of practice from this level of skill.
It made saying yes a foregone conclusion, the icing on the cake of all the dozens of other quiet little things he does to show he doesn't just love her, he adores her.
It's a heady feeling.
With one last check that Abby's tucked in properly, she levers her way upright and pads down the hallway. She can smell the delicious scent of lamb chops cooking. With her last pregnancy checkup showing her iron tipping lower than anyone's comfortable with, and an inability to take iron tablets, she's been having a lot of iron heavy meals allotted her way. She's still a little skeptical of the suggestion she should take two tablespoons of that blackstrap molasses every morning, but after a week of the higher-iron diet and the molasses, her count is up above where it was when she had her first blood work done.
She dislikes the special treatment in some ways, because it reminds her of her embarrassingly selfish behavior at the quarry, but reminds herself it's for the baby's sake, not hers. It's no different than the extra care and special foods reserved for the elderly - or for the poor diabetic girl.
Slipping an arm around Daryl's waist as he works, she takes a deep breath, enjoying the aromas of the brussels sprouts and slices of sweet potatoes also sizzling next to the chops.
"I am gonna be glad for years that no one caught on that you could cook and snapped you up," she says, making him laugh softly.
"Told you before that I don't like the pre-made food. Had to figure out what to go with my game too." He sets down the tongs he's using and turns to pull her in for a kiss. "Abby still sleeping?"
She nods. "Yeah. Figured we might wake her in a bit to see if she'll take some soup. Carol sent down a container of butternut squash soup." And since Abby will eat almost anything, to the point Daryl jokes about keeping count of her utensils, she's not worried about the girl being picky the way Carl would have been at her age.
"Antibiotics should knock it right out. She'll probably be up in the morning, ready to run laps around us." He lets her go with a brush of lips and returns to his cast iron skillet. "Grab a couple of plates? I'm gonna toss the rest of the veggies in to cook. She might feel up to eating those too, and if not, snack for you tomorrow."
Once the plates are on the counter next to the stove, she pours glasses of tea, glad for the residents of the state of Georgia being so addicted to sugar and tea both that the inventory stock of both will probably last until the baby's a teenager. Not that the tea would stay viable that long, but still, they have that much stored now. Taking a seat at the table, she watches him finish up the meal with a deep sense of all being right in her world.
A year ago, she'd be spending New Year's Eve with just Carl for company, since Rick and Shane always seemed to pull the night shift that week. It might be ironic that she's engaged to another cop, after so many years of resenting how often the job made her effectively a single mother. She's well aware that Daryl's branch of law enforcement probably worked all the sobriety checkpoints too, on nights like tonight. But she thinks of all their evenings spent like this, bolstered by his craving for simply remaining in touching distance of her anytime it's possible - never sits across from her at the table, always next to her - would have more than made up for a few missed holidays.
"Jesus, woman, stop just admiring it and eat," Daryl says, words exasperated, but smile fond as he slides a plate in front of her.
Although he means the food, she deliberately takes the time to draw her gaze over him instead.
It gets her a fork shaken at her and a grumbled "stop that", but he's blushing and smiling, and that makes it even more perfect.
Damn, she loves this man.
