AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I'm not sure if most people missed the last chapter or if it simply wasn't very popular, but please do go back and read that one if you haven't.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"You sleep OK?" Carol asked.
She'd heard the car pull up, and she'd looked outside to see Madison examine herself in the rearview mirror, get out of the vehicle, and smoke a cigarette while she talked to Jerry as he loitered around outside keeping watch over Carol from a distance. Madison, Carol already knew, would have her own tail as soon as Merle could arrange one. She didn't have on yet, though, because it was barely even six in the morning.
Andrea had texted Carol the moment that Madison was leaving their house. Merle had given her strict instructions not to stop the car, and not to get out, until she was at the hotel. Jerry could pick up the slack of seeing her inside. It was unlikely that Madison—newly associated with the Judges at all—would be the target of a hit, but it was better safe than sorry.
Carol, Sadie, and Andrea all really liked the woman already and, seeing her out the window and getting that immediate feeling of being glad to see she was safe, Carol realized that she'd already be deeply sorry to see her be the victim of any kind of violent crime—especially one that was meant to dig at the Judges.
After speaking to Jerry for a moment, Madison had come inside. Now, she was standing in the doorway of the café, waiting for some kind of instruction about how she ought to spend her day. She almost looked nauseous as she quickly and purposefully switched her expression to the best smile she could muster up in a hurry. Carol's heart squeezed. Immediately, she understood.
Madison had shared enough of her story, when she was a few beers into the night at the meet in Union, that Carol felt she could understand her pretty well.
She'd married Steven when she was young, and maybe when she was too young—some trouble in her family had made her anxious to get away from her daddy as quickly as possible, and to burn every bridge that existed between her and those who shared her biology. Steven had given her that way out. He'd had issues for most of the time they were together. She'd had to learn to be an Old Lady, and she'd had to do her best to hide from the others that Steven was as unstable as he was when people weren't looking. She'd carried whatever Steven needed her to carry until he'd decided to kill himself to drop the weight of his own problems.
And then she'd carried what the club wanted her to carry. She'd essentially had a choice—she could either move on, entirely alone, and hope for the best, or she could accept that she'd transferred into being something of the president's property. Madison put on a decent show of false bravado, but she had insecurities lying just at the surface. She'd chosen to essentially become Cy's property, and she'd run his businesses for him while he'd degraded her every chance he got.
Merle had given the word that they'd take her in, and she'd driven nonstop from the Alabama line to Liberty. Andrea said she'd reached their house around two in the morning, and Merle had tossed her a pillow and a blanket to sleep on the couch.
It was six now. Carol was working on opening up for breakfast, and Madison was standing, waiting for orders, and looking a little green about the gills. There was a bruise on her cheek that Carol thought might have been a parting gift from Cy, the Outlaw president. Carol decided not to say anything about it, and Madison nodded to answer Carol's question about how she'd rested during her four hours on Merle and Andrea's couch, and Carol's stomach tightened as though her little one was trying to communicate some wave of compassion for the woman.
"You're stronger than you think you are, you know?" Carol offered.
Madison put on a smile, but it was an unsure smile at best.
"Beg your pardon?" She said.
Carol waved her into the kitchen.
"Come on," Carol said. "You're with me this morning." Madison came into the kitchen. She looked around. "Can you start the coffee? You need help?"
"I can make coffee," Madison said, immediately falling into doing that. "Same kind of pot that Cy used to have in the breakroom."
"We keep the pot always full," Carol said. "Start a new pot as soon as that one gets low if you're in the kitchen. Someone always wants coffee around here."
"About as much as they want booze?" Madison asked, laughing quietly.
"Almost," Carol ceded. "Earlier? I said—you're stronger than you think you are."
"Not me," Madison said. "I'm not—strong. Not really. I put on a good show. I mean—you have to make them think you are, but…"
"You are," Carol said. "And you're going to be OK. Better than OK, maybe. I got here in a beater not entirely unlike yours. I was running from something different, but…not entirely different. You're safe here, too. As safe as any of us, I guess."
Madison smiled to herself.
"It's a new start, and I'm looking forward to it," she offered. "I slept better in the four hours I slept last night than—than I can remember sleeping in a long time. I meant what I said. I'm not afraid of work. I know Andrea wants me to help you, and I already know that what Andrea wants, she gets."
Carol laughed.
"Andrea's the queen bee around here, and everyone knows it," Carol said. "Still—she's a benevolent queen."
"I guess I know that, too," Madison said. "Coffee's on. What else can I do?"
"You're going to be managing the whores," Carol said. "And the books for the café and the hotel. We've got the foundation, but—we're going to build a restaurant, eventually. Right out there where you see the foundation. Until it's built, this place is running three meals a day, but just barely. We ran two for a while."
"Not a lot of customers?" Madison asked.
"Plenty of customers. Too many, sometimes. Not enough hands," Carol said. "And it's hard to hire when people get nervous."
"The boys always make people nervous," Madison said with a smile.
"That's why it's so good to have someone like you on board who knows what we're dealing with," Carol said. "And who understands the shows when they're being put on."
"And who puts one on herself?" Madison asked.
"We all do our fair share of that," Carol said. "But—some of it's true. If it weren't, you wouldn't have made it this far."
"About everything I said the other night…" Madison said. Carol cut her off before she could get even another word out.
"We don't have to talk about it unless you want to," Carol said. "And—if you'll promise to stay around a while? We'll—do something. Have a girls' night. And maybe…we'll all share a few stories."
Madison's smile was sincere, and it looked like a weight had been suddenly lifted off her shoulders.
"I'd like that," she said.
"I would, too," Carol said, realizing how much she really meant it. "Come on, Maddie. You can help me get breakfast started. Usually, I try to have breakfast on the tables for the boys by seven or seven thirty. The whores get here around that time, too. We have a couple of tarts that keep showing up, hoping to get some attention. I don't complain because they're free labor. The paying customers start rolling in after that. How are you at cooking?"
"I'm not a chef, but I can man a toaster and scramble an egg," Madison said, suddenly bubbling over with more enthusiasm that breakfast usually required.
"That's exactly where I needed you to start," Carol offered.
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"Hey…"
Carol smiled. She heard his voice only a second before he caught her from behind and pulled her back against him.
"Don't get burned," she warned.
"Then I'ma have to stop touchin' you," Daryl said. "You so damn hot—I'm bound to get burned."
"Asshole," Carol said, laughing to herself. She moved the food off the eye so that it wouldn't burn, and she turned around to wrap her arms around Daryl and offer him a substantial kiss. She nipped his lip as he pulled away, and he came back for another kiss.
"Fuck," he muttered, pulling away. "I'm gonna run by here more often in the middle of the day to get me some sugar."
"What are you doing here?" Carol asked. "You usually don't come for lunch for at least another hour."
Daryl and the other brothers usually took a "late lunch" so that they didn't interfere with the paying customers and put more strain on Carol and her merry band of tarts than they could manage.
"Had Teeter patrol," Daryl said with a laugh.
"Everything alright?" Carol asked, a wave of cold concern washing over her. Daryl immediately calmed her worries.
"Fine," Daryl said. "He had a doctor's appointment and Hershel couldn't stop what he was doin', so Jo asked me if I'd go with her. She gets nervous about takin' him out, you know? In case he kinda goes off on some kinda tangent. So, I went with her."
"How'd he do?" Carol asked.
"Fine," Daryl said. "Hell—half the time he was young as I was. Relivin' his days in the club. Thought I was a new patch."
"Oh—Daryl…I'm sorry," Carol said, knowing that it was tough on Daryl when Teeter didn't recognize him. Daryl chewed his lip and shook his head.
"No. I decided—it's OK, you know? It's better. As long as he's happy? As long as—whatever he's rememberin' makes him happy?"
"I understand," Carol said, not forcing him to try to explain himself.
"Jo's gonna get Soph after school," Daryl said. "We'll run by an' pick her up later."
"That's fine."
"How's Pea Baby? You alright?"
Carol smiled.
"Fine," she said. "Hot. Tired."
"You work too damn hard," Daryl said. "You gotta start takin' breaks. Gettin' off your feet some. It ain't good for the baby for you to be slavin' away in the damn kitchen from before the sun comes up 'til after it's down."
There was frustration in his voice, and his features were immediately drawn up with it. Carol rubbed his cheek.
"I'm barely pregnant, Daryl."
"I weren't aware there was degrees of bein' knocked up," Daryl said.
"You know what I mean," Carol said. "I'm going to be tired. It's not going to kill me, though."
"You ain't the only one I worry about," Daryl said, grumpily.
"Pea Baby's fine, too," Carol said. "I'm being careful."
"Ain't that what the hell Merle let Andrea have that woman for?"
Carol kissed him to quiet him and shushed him as she pulled out of the kiss.
"Keep your voice down," Carol said. "She got here last night, Daryl. And she hasn't even sat down all day. She's straightening out books, and whores…and she might even help me out with the books at the shop. She's freeing me up to worry about the food, and that's all I have to worry about."
"I wish you'd still promise me you ain't overdoin' it."
"I'm not," Carol said. "But—could we also not refer to Maddie like she's a dog that Merle let Andrea bring home?"
Daryl laughed and pulled her to him in a hug.
"I didn't mean she was a dog," Daryl assured her. "Who give her that eye?"
Carol shrugged.
"I didn't ask. I didn't want to embarrass her."
"It weren't Merle," Daryl said, a touch defensively.
"I would never have thought it was," Carol assured him. "I'm imagining that as much as the president told her he wanted to be rid of her, and as much as he told her she wasn't worth anything to him, he might have felt differently about it when he found out she was leaving."
"Asshole," Daryl muttered. There was nothing else to do about it, though, so he let the subject drop. "You got anything for lunch?"
"I can make anything you want," Carol said.
"I don't wanna put you out—whatever they're having."
Daryl gestured toward the elderly couple that was waiting on food at a table. Everyone else was eating, so it was clear that their order was the next to come up.
"Unusual order," Carol said, gesturing toward the pan. "Pan-cooked hamburger steaks, smothered in onions and gravy, and served with a side of fries."
"We got that on the menu?" Daryl asked.
"Carol's Café has everything on the menu as long as the food holds out," Carol said.
"Carol's café? Not—the Liberty Inn Café?"
"Meh," Carol said, humming it out. "I don't know. I'm just not committed to any of them. I mean—the Mouse Trap's still in play, too." She sighed and Daryl laughed.
"You'll figure it out," he said. "And it don't seem to stop people from eatin'. Feed them first. Then, if you ain't too tired, cook up a couple more of them smothered hamburger steaks and eat lunch with me. What's your new friend's name?"
"Maddie," Carol said.
"Let Maddie show us how damn good she is with a skillet," Daryl said. "Let her handle the food while you get somethin' in you."
"Are we still talking about food?" Carol teased.
Daryl winked at her. He leaned close to her so that, even if anyone were paying them attention—which they weren't with all the normal chatter and scuttle that took place around the little café—nobody would be able to really make out what he was saying to her.
"There's plenty of open rooms. There's not a reason in the world that we couldn't duck into one of 'em, you know. I think both of us have earned enough break time for a quickie somewhere. Get us both a little natural stress-reliever to get us through the day."
Carol laughed.
"It's really something we should do for our health," Carol said.
"Whatta you think? You think Maddie's capable enough that we can leave her ass alone with the gas stove and she can keep from burnin' the fuckin' place down to the ground in…ten or fifteen minutes?"
"Well—she's got to learn sometime," Carol teased.