Cheering goes up from the docks of Jamestown when the Susan Constant arrives that evening, because what the citizens who linger by the river see unloaded first is the loot – not the bodies that lay deeper in the hold. Rejoicing soon turns to mourning.

Thomas walks ahead of Harry's body to greet the sailor's widow on the docks, where she's been waiting expectantly for his return ever since the watchman in the lighthouse signaled the ship's arrival with flashes of light through the town. It's Thomas who tells her, because it's Thomas who feels guilty for insisting on the raid, for taking eight of their best fighters from the salt ponds and leaving the rest vulnerable. Kelly wails and then pounds her fist against the deputy's chest in grief and rage, and Thomas takes the blows until she stands back and puts a hand on the belly that just began to show two weeks ago.

Carol embraces her tired husband and kisses his cheek, grateful he's alive, but not wanting to show her joy too obviously in the presence of the widow. Sweetheart, who is on her hip, is unaware of the deaths and unperturbed by social conventions, and she claps with joy and cries out, "Dada! Yay! Yay, Dada!" Daryl quiets her by plucking her from Carol's arms and giving her the embrace she desires. She snuggles sleepily against his chest, and he takes Carol's hand and walks home with her while a few men tend to the bodies and others to the loot.

The graves are dug by night, the funeral held by sunrise, and the bodies finally covered with dirt beneath a fine mist of late morning rain. Wooden crosses are planted in the yielding earth, and mounds of mud patted around their bases to hold them tight.

There are murmurs of complaint – Carol, Thomas, Santiago, and Alvarado should have decided to kill all those men the first time, some people say, and then Harry and Laura never would have died. Thomas shouldn't have insisted on the raid, others say, and Captain McBride never should have agreed to it. He's the captain! Why did he let himself be led by a mere deputy and councilman?

"Armchair quarterbacks," Daryl mutters to Carol when she comes home the next evening from her patrol rounds, annoyed by the accusatory grumbling. He sets a bowl of stew on the table before her. He's already fed Sweetheart, and the little girl is now on her knees before Stinky's tank, chattering to the lizard.

Carol slides warily into her seat and picks up the spoon. "Thanks for cooking."

"Mhmh. Ain't as good as you make it."

"More meat though, I see." She smiles.

"Yeah…uh…now we're gonna be out for the week by Friday. Guess I didn't judge it good."

"We'll have beans on Saturday. Or you can catch us some squirrels. Maybe that one that's been trying to claw his way through the roof?"

"Crafty bastard," Daryl says as he sits down across from her. "Keeps gettin' way from me."

Sweetheart toddles over and hugs her returning mother. "Stinky hungwy!"

"Stinky ate," Daryl insists.

"Stinky hungwy, Dada. Yum, yum bug."

"She learn to talk more while I's gone?" he asks Carol.

"I think so. Sophia never talked like this at twenty months. She'll be talking circles around us in a year."

Sweetheart, giving up hope of getting her father to feed Stinky more bugs, toddles over to play with Dog.

"Rumor is that Thomas wanted the raid," Carol says, "but you and Santiago resisted the idea until the last minute."

"Wasn't like that 'zactly."

"What was it like? You haven't talked about it since you got home."

"If I'd wanted to, would of."

Carol shrugs. "Fine then." She pulls her glass of water to herself and takes a sip. She sets it down. "I just think if you did, you might not seem so tightly wound."

Daryl sighs. "Thomas wanted the raid. Santiago didn't. Me?" He shrugs. "Didn't resist it. Didn't encourage it neither. But I went with 'em when the time came."

"But what did you think of it?"

"Thought those men were rapist and murderers. Thought I don't want 'em within a hundred miles of my girls."

Carol stirs the soup in her bowl and watches the lightly colored liquid ripple. "Do you think I should have finished them all off? Do you think I was wrong not to?"

"Can't do that, Carol. Stop that shit right now."

Carol lets go of her spoon and it clinks against the side of the bowl. She leans back against her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. "Harry and Laura and her brother and those other two men would be alive if I had."

"Stop that shit right now," Daryl repeats.

"Shit!" Sweetheart cries from the bearskin rug where she sits petting Dog.

Carol and Daryl both chuckle. "Oh God," Carol says. "I hope she doesn't do that in daycare."

That night they talk a little more in bed, after Sweetheart is asleep. Then they make love slowly – the welcome home they didn't have last night, couldn't have last night, in the shadow of the town's grief.

[*]

Within a week, the grumbling and second guessing of the citizens has subsided. Life is back to normal, except for the widow Kelly and for Harry's elderly mother, and except for Thomas, who has to stare every night at the wall he built between his room and Laura's in the barracks. The Council says to leave the furniture for now. Jamestown will grow. The room will be inhabited eventually.

But Thomas packs up Laura's personal things – her clothes and books and the canned and jarred food she hadn't gotten around to - and returns them to the pantry and storage room for future redistribution. He holds back her pocket knife, a token of the woman, he thought, perhaps, he might one day persuade to be his wife.

[*]

In September, red and orange colors begin to burst from the forests behind Jamestown. The community grows yet again – another boy is born, this time to Trisha and Deputy Andrew. They name him John, after the first leader of the post-apocalyptic Jamestown colony. He's born slightly premature, but he fights for life and holds on. Trisha begins her maternity leave, with Andrew seeking extra work hours to provide, so Carol lets him have four of her patrol hours. As lieutenant mayor, she's busy enough.

A woman named Rebecca takes over Trisha waitressing job at the tavern. The service slows down a bit, with just Rebecca and the teenage apprentice waiter Samuel. Neither is very experienced, or nearly as chatty as Trisha or Candy for that matter, and the place seems a little less friendly, but still a suitable haunt for the lonely, tired, and thirsty.

But as well as a life, September also heralds a death, this time from natural causes. The retired farm manager Ernesto dies of a sudden heart attack – or perhaps not so sudden. It may not have been his first, as Linda discovers when she finds a notebook among his things. He's been privately and quietly tracking his chest pains, without informing anyone, not even Dr. Ahmad. There isn't much to be done for heart disease with the limited resources of these apocalyptic times, and the man must have decided it was his time.

He's left a will on file with the Jamestown courthouse. The judge unseals it. Ernesto has left all his remaining food for re-distribution to the orphans, his private horse to Gunther, and his ammo, tobacco, cabin, and all its furnishings to Linda. Linda offers the cabin to Gunther. "I prefer to live in the tavern," she tells him. "And now that Candy is gone, I have it all to myself. I like being nearer work. No walking home at night. And I don't want to sleep in Ernesto's cabin. His ghost will haunt me."

"Are you sure?" Gunther asks. "It's a homey cabin. And you can't climb that ladder to the loft forever."

"Well, when I can't climb the ladder, I can't walk all the way to the tavern either. I'll just move into the tavern's storage room then. Besides, old friend, you'll need something bigger than a single room one day, if you ever want to persuade Dianne to marry you and move here."

Gunther accepts the generous offer and moves his things out of the dormitory. He helps Linda take a few pieces of furniture from Ernesto's old cabin to the loft - an end table, an armchair, and a bookcase. She makes a sitting room of Candy's old room.

Linda mourns her deceased beau, but not for long. By October, she's dating the cult refugee Joe.

"And that's not the only juicy gossip I have," Shannon tells Carol at the Barron dinner table while the children play in the living room.

Garland rolls his eyes. "You live to gossip, my love."

"Well, a girl needs some entertainment when her husband never takes her to the movies."

Daryl chuckles and cuts into his venison steak. The Barrons are hosts today, but the Dixons supplied the meat – Daryl did some overtime hunting.

"I took you to the movies just last week," Garland mutters.

"To see Die Hard 2," Shannon insists. "It's not like you took me to a romance."

"That's what was playing. I don't choose the movies. Take that up with the entertainment director."

"I should have that job!" Shannon insists.

"You really should," Carol agrees.

"Why am I assigned to gardening when I could be the town's entertainment director!"

"Because, darling," Garland tells her, "Robert is missing a leg, and he needs a job that doesn't involve kneeling in the dirt or patrolling the town or climbing ladders. And he used to be a high school drama teacher. That's the extent of his skill set."

Shannon sighs. "Well, I need to have a word with him about the lack of variety in his movie selections lately. What's he going to choose for the winter musical? Seven Samurai?"

"I don't think anyone's ever written a musical version of Seven Samurai," Carol says with a smile.

"Robert would." Shannon turns her attention to Gary for a moment and tells him to stop trying to take a matchbox car from his brother.

"I had it first!"

"Well, VanDaryl has it now. He's your baby brother. Let him have it."

Gary rolls his eyes, sighs, and heads to the basket on the bookshelf to get another car. VanDaryl smiles sneakily and hands the car he took from Gary to Sweetheart. "Weetie!" he says as he offers the gift.

Sweetheart takes the car, but instead of playing with it – or, thankfully, shoving it in her mouth – she toddles over to the bookcase and hands it to Gary. "Hey, thanks, Sweetie," Gary says, and VanDaryl frowns to see his stolen gift returned to its rightful owner.

"It's going to be My Fair Lady," Garland says. "The audition announcements went up today."

"Oh, I love that!" Shannon insists. "I'm trying out."

"When would you have the time to rehearse?" Garland asks.

"I'll make the time. I can put the boys in daycare during rehearsal."

"Are you going to try out?" Garland asks Daryl with a deadpan, serious look. Daryl stops chewing, and Garland laughs. "God what I wouldn't pay to see you in a musical." He turns his head toward the living room. "Boys! Wouldn't you love to see your godfather in a musical?"

Gary looks up from the car he's begun to run along the coffee table and lets out a Bwahhhaaaahaaaa! of a laugh.

"I think you'd make a fine Professor Henry Higgins," Garland says.

"Stahp," Daryl insists.

Carol spares Daryl by changing the subject. "What was your other gossip, Shannon?"

"Oh. You know Kaitlyn, that cult refugee? Joe's daughter?" Carol nods. "Well, there's been a little trouble in the bedroom with her boyfriend on account of his…" Shannon looks down in her lap. "You know. Not much of a libido. They broke up."

"That's a shame," Carol says. She feels sorry for the castrated young man.

"She's dating one of the sailors now. Merry."

"Hell kind of name is Merry?" Daryl asks.

"I think it's a nickname," Garland says, "though I never asked."

"Oh!" Shannon exclaims. "And Barry's girl Rachel got herself knocked up by that Jackson boy."

"That I knew," Carol says. "They applied for Laura's old room in the barracks. And now Thomas wants to move back to the apartment complex so he doesn't have to listen to them going at it. So the Council granted him Gunther's old room."

"Well Garland didn't tell me all that!" Shannon slaps his knee under the table. "Why not, baby?"

"I didn't realize it was noteworthy."

"You know what is noteworthy, though?" Shannon asks as she returns her hand to her fork. "All the time Thomas has been spending with Harry's widow."

"Feels guilty," Daryl mutters.

"At first, that's why he was checking up on her," Shannon says. "But I don't think that's why he's been checking up on her lately. If you know what I mean."

"What? Kelly's in her twenties," Garland says.

"And Thomas is in his thirties. He's not as old as you, baby."

"You say that like I'm ancient."

Shannon smiles affectionately. "I've always liked older men. Wait till you get a little gray in your beard like Daryl. It'll be sexy."

Garland frowns skeptically. "I've already found a little gray around my temples, thank you very much."

Sweetheart stumble runs and plants herself against Daryl's leg. "Pway! Dada Pway!"

Daryl wipes his mouth with a cloth napkin and gets up to join the kids in the living room. "Ten minutes," he tells her. "'N them 'm playin' with Uncle Garland."

"Do Carol and I get to watch?" Shannon asks.

Daryl flushes red. "Meant poker."

The men go to the tavern for their now monthly poker game with Dante, Santiago, Gunther, and Mitch, and Daryl comes home to the Dixon cabin after Sweetheart is in bed. His pockets are full with two more rounds of ammo than when he left, his head is ever so slightly buzzed, he's clutching a disarrayed bouquet of wild autumn-blooming asters he plucked from the field behind the tavern, and he's happy and horny. Luckily for him, Carol's been up reading a trashy serial romance novel to unwind, Denim Dreams #42, and she's in the mood. It's a good night, a fun night, and the morning comes to soon. When the next quiet evening rolls around, Carol puts the finishing touches on Sweetheart's Little Bo Beep costume for Halloween.