A mid-November wind billows the sails of the Susan Constant as it plows slowly but steadily through the dark green waters of the James River, sending white foam frothing around its bow. Ensign Merry keeps watch via telescope high in the crow's nest, while Lieutenant Alvarado gets some practice manning the wheel and Captain McBride strolls the deck, his hands clasped behind his back, calling to attention the sailors who have paused to flirt with the female passengers.

Rosita and Enid, returning from Jamestown via Oceanside to their respective homes, along with Shannon, receive the most attention, despite the fact that the sailors know each one is spoken for. After all, their men remain behind in Jamestown – Earl to play Sheriff and father to Benji, Garland to play mayor and father to VanDaryl, and Raul to play farm manager in Gunther's absence. Later, Raul will take the last December mailboat to Oceanside, march on foot to the Hilltop, and spend the long, cold winter there by Enid's side. In spring the young couple will part, each to the work of their own communities.

For now, Daryl and Carol have settled around a barrel to play Rummy 500 with Mitch and Gunther.

"Dixon!" Captain McBride booms as he does a half twirl to avoid a careening toddler, "Get this child out from under foot!"

Carol throws down her cards. "I thought Enid and Shannon were watching her."

Enid and Shannon were, but, as it turns out, Gary got it into his head to play tag with the little girl, and they both got out from under the women's watch. When Carol returns to the card table with her errant daughter, she sits down and settles Sweetheart on her lap. The little girl leans back against her mother's chest and tugs on her ear, which means she's getting sleepy.

"Be out soon," Daryl murmurs as he discards.

Carol picks up her hand of cards and glances over to where a sailor is squatting down to talk to Gary. He's feigning interest in the boy, but Carol can tell it's Shannon he's really interested in, by the way he looks at her and smiles when she approaches to thank him for corralling Gary.

"Seaman Lincoln!" Captain McBirde shouts. "Stop flirting with the mayor's wife and get back to swabbing the decks!"

The sailor leaps from his haunches. "Yes, sir!"

"I didn't think you were coming on this trip, Mitch," Gunther tells the hunter who has just drawn a card.

Mitch lays out three Jacks before himself. "I bought the spot off a builder. I just needed to get away for a few days. To get out of Jamestown."

Commander Witherspoon is home in Jamestown, in charge of the navy in the captain's absence, and Carol thinks Mitch wants a break from seeing him with Devon. A change of scenery might do the hunter some good.

"Mhm," Gunther murmurs. "I heard."

"Heard what exactly?" Mitch asks.

"About the break-up."

"I blame you for throwing us publicly together," Mitch mutters. "It was a year ago today, wasn't it? Maybe if he'd stayed in the closet I'd at least still be getting laid."

"Closets are cramped," Gunther replies. "Sex is better when you have room to move around."

Mitch snorts. "You make it hard for me to dislike you sometimes."

"Well, if at first you fail, try, try again. Then give up. No sense being a damn fool about it." Gunther plays a Jack off of Mitch's cards and then discards.

Rosita pulls up a wooden deck chair and squeezes in. It's a tight fit around the barrel, with five people now. "Deal me in. I'm tired of getting hit on by sailors."

"After this round," Daryl mutters as he draws. "Earl ain't comin'?"

"No. He's got a baby to deal with," Rosita replies. "I'm just hitching a ride home."

"You think Jamestown will ever be home?" Gunther asks.

"I'm on the Council in Alexandria. I'm second-in-charge of security after Michonne. And I have running water and electricity. So no."

"I thought you were on the council at the Hilltop," Mitch says.

"No. There is no council at the Hilltop. They have a triumvirate. Jesus and Tara and Enid."

"Enid?" Carol asks in surprise. She knew Enid advised the triumvirate, but she didn't know Enid had become one of them. "What about Aaron?"

"Aaron stepped down after the break-up," Rosita says. "He and Gracie moved back to Alexandria. He took the last bedroom in the Big House, and she's in the attic. Not a bad spread for a seven-year-old girl."

"What?" Carol asks, while Gunther says, "I'm out" and lays down his last card.

While Mitch adds up the points in a small notebook and Daryl sweeps the cards back into a pile and begins shuffling, Rosita explains, "Aaron and Jesus broke up, so Aaron moved back to Alexandria. He's on our council now."

"Why did they break up?" Carol asks.

"I don't know. Probably because Jesus can be as annoying as fuck sometimes."

Daryl shrugs as though he doesn't quite disagree with that and deals another hand, dealing Rosita in this time.

"It sounds like Alexandria is getting crowded," Gunther says.

"One guy left last month to move in with a woman from Oceanside," Rosita says as she pulls her hand to herself and arranges her cards, "and another woman left to move in with a man from Hilltop, so it's balancing out. The bedrooms are all full, but we still have attics and living rooms. We could definitely expand our farming though."

"Expand it? I didn't know you farmed at all. I thought you only gardened."

"We've planted one field, outside the gates, fenced in with barbwire. But we need more. We rely too much on trade. And we're starting to get goats. Pigs." Rosita looks over her hand at Gunther. "You ever think of moving to Alexandria?"

Gunther picks and discards. "No."

"Oceanside?" Rosita asks as Carol takes her turn, careful not to disturb Sweetheart, who is almost asleep. "For Dianne? You could visit on occasion to help us. A week here, a week there. We'd pay you of course. Room and board and Candy shine."

"Jamestown is home. I haven't lived anywhere else since it all started. I mean, not since I left my own farm in Roanoke."

"Well, you know," Rosita tells him. "Dianne's an advisor at Oceanside. She's in the government there."

"I'm aware. And I'm on the Council in Jamestown. I'm also the head farm manager now. For 600 people."

As Daryl discards, Rosita shrugs and says, "Dianne might not want to leave Oceanside."

"I'm aware."

"Are you proposing to her again?" Rosita asks. "I heard you got shot down the first time."

"Does everyone know about this?" Gunther sighs and folds his cards together. "I'm bowing out. I should check on the animals below deck. Carolyn said Orwell was a bit restless." He scrapes his chair back and walks away.

"Leave the poor man alone," Carol tells Rosita.

"I don't know what Dianne sees in him. He's ten years older than her and almost as unkempt as Daryl."

"Ain't anywhere near as unkempt as me," Daryl insists.

Carol chuckles. Her chuckle wakes a drifting-off Sweetheart, who cranes her neck back, looks up, and says, "Mama." Carol kisses her forehead, and the little girl closes her eyes again.

"Aaron?" Mitch asks. "Is he the one with the long hair?"

Rosita rolls her eyes toward him. "Jesus is the one who looks like Jesus."

"Well, Jesus was Semitic and probably had short, tight, curly hair," Mitch rejoins.

"Fine," Rosita says. "Aaron's the one who looks like a model from the L.L. Bean catalogue, if that helps you recall him."

"Ah. That one."

[*]

It's smooth sailing toward Oceanside. No pirates attack. The afternoon of the second day, Sweetheart finally gets her wish to inhabit the ship's crow's nest. While Captain McBride keeps the ship steady, Lieutenant Alvarado straps the toddler in a backpack and brings her all the way to the top, where she gazes out on the Jamestown River flowing into the Chesapeake Bay. Carol stands below, a nervous knot tying and tangling itself in her stomach. She's not sure why she's nervous. The lieutenant isn't going to toss Sweetheart out of the basket, or let her climb down from that backpack. If Carol feels this nervous now, what's she going to feel the first time her daughter slays a walker?

She jumps slightly as Daryl's arm slides around her waist, but then, realizing it's only him, she molds against his side and rests her head on his shoulder. "You think she's loving it up there?"

"Know she is."

"Commander Witherspoon thinks she'll be a sailor." Maybe the first female officer of the Jamestown Navy, Carol thinks, although surely the one female seamen or the one female seaman apprentice will climb the ranks before Sweetheart is even out of school. Then again, maybe not. None of the officers is over forty-five, and their health seems good, except maybe for Lieutenant Commander Lawson, who is rumored to be showing signs of gout.

Alvarado climbs back down cautiously and returns the child to its parents. Once Sweetheart is in Daryl's arms, she points to the basket of the crow's nest. "Up!" she insists. "Up, Dada, up!"

[*]

They sail into the bay and reach the shore where Oceanside is nestled in the early evening, before the sun has set, a night before the fair is scheduled to start. Sailors make haste to wrap and tie ropes and bind the ship to the docks, which are full of friends and family and lovers eager to greet their Jamestown guests.

Dianne embraces Gunther and offers him a quick peck on the lips before immediately taking his hand and tugging him toward shore. She looks back at Carol just long enough to say, "You're staying in my cabin. But give us awhile before you bring your stuff in?"

Carol nods.

Cyndie laughs as Captain McBride lifts and twirls her by her hips and plants her on her feet before swallowing her mouth in a kiss. She pushes him gently away. "Slow down, Captain. I haven't agreed to a tour of the ship just yet."

Captain McBride grins, and then turns his attention to ordering some sailors to unload the tents for those who will be camping on shore.

Henry embraces Carol, kisses his little sister, and says, "Rachel's resting. She's big as a house now. And she's still got three months!"

"Well I hope you don't tell her that!" Carol scolds.

Henry chuckles.

"Has Michonne arrived?" Lieutenant Alvarado asks Cyndie.

Cyndie shakes her head, "The Alexandria contingent will probably arrive in the morning, about when the fair starts."

An Oceanside woman with a young infant swaddled in her arms approaches Ensign Merry. The navy man blinks and points at the baby. "You're not going to try to say that's mine, are you?" he asks.

McBride, who is standing nearby, watches the exchange with a wary eye.

"I don't know whose else it would be," the Oceanside woman says. "I wasn't sleeping in anyone else's tent last November."

Merry runs a hand over his mouth. He swallows. "But…I…I have a girlfriend now. At Jamestown. You didn't even write!"

"I knew it was just a two-night stand," she tells him. "Look, I don't expect anything of you. Just a few things maybe, from whatever you brought for trade? And maybe a little something on the mailboat twice a month. Child support, you know? Not a lot. Just something."

"You didn't even write me!" Merry puts a hand on her shoulder and begins leading her down the docks, away from the onlookers. He whispers hurriedly to her as they walk.

Captain McBride says to Cyndie, "Why didn't you tell me what my crewman had gotten up to?"

"I didn't think it was my business to tell you when the mother hadn't even told the father. And besides, you knew what your crewmen were getting up to last November. You were getting up to it yourself."

"I wasn't getting anybody pregnant!" He looks her up and down. "Was I?"

Cyndie shakes her head and chuckles. "No. I think you would have noticed by now, one of the six times I've been in Jamestown."

McBride lets out a puff of frustrated air. "I cautioned the boys to be careful."

"Yeah, well, we don't exactly have drugstores anymore," Cyndie tells him. "She had a healthy pregnancy. A safe delivery. And she wants the kid. And if we're going to have a future…" She shrugs.

Captain McBride shifts from one foot to the other. "You…think about that? Having kids to have a future?"

"I'm the leader of this community. I have to think about it."

"But…you think about it?"

"Don't worry, Captain," she tells him with a pat to his broad shoulder. "I'm still in my twenties. And I'm very busy. I'm certainly not looking to settle down anytime soon."

"Come on, Mom," Henry tells Carol. "I'll show you my pub. And you can have some Candy shine. On the house."

"I think I'd rather have some of that wine you found on that supply ship that washed up."

"Well, that's expensive. That can't be on the house."

Daryl huffs. "Give yer mama a free glass of wine, kid." He takes Sweetheart from Carol's arms. "I'll watch 'er while you go."

Shannon has come down the ship's ramp to the docks with Gary. They were one of the last ones off because Gary fell asleep in one of the crew's bunks, after an afternoon of running helter skelter all over the ship, rough housing with some friendly sailors, and even getting to steer the wheel with the help of Captain McBride. Cyndie welcomes her, and says, "You and your boy can stay in my cabin tonight. Come on. I'll show you around."

"It's like a little paradise," Shannon says in awe as she follows Cyndie down the docks, with Gary walking by her side and rubbing sleep dust from his eyes after his impromptu nap. "As soon as he's not mayor anymore, I'm making Garland take me on a second honeymoon here. Well, more like a first."