AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I think some people missed the last chapter, so please make sure you read it!
I hope you enjoy this one. Don't forget to let me know what you think!
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"You ready?" Daryl asked, killing the engine.
"OK—wait…just a minute," Carol said, catching his arm.
"I'll wait as long as you want me to," Daryl said. "But—this cake ain't gonna keep more'n a week…even then, might be better to eat it, you know, within a couple days."
"Asshole," Carol said. Daryl laughed and touched her face. It was all the invitation she needed to kiss him, and he never needed a reason to kiss her.
"You OK? You breathin' heavy," Daryl said. "You wanna talk about it?"
"What if Clyde's here?" Carol asked.
"His truck ain't here."
"We don't have anything for him," Carol said.
Daryl swallowed back his laughter and bit the inside of his mouth.
"I think he's gonna understand, if he is here—hidin' and shit."
"It would hurt his feelings," Carol said.
"It ain't gonna hurt his feelings," Daryl insisted. "You ready now?"
"Daryl—if we take this cake in there and she says no, then we're going to feel like serious assholes," Carol said.
"If we take this cake in there, and she says no, it ain't gonna be us that feels like assholes, Carol," Daryl said. She opened her mouth like she might speak and Daryl held his finger up to her to stop her. She raised her eyebrows in question. Daryl jokingly leaned toward her lap and put his hand on her stomach. "Just—just give me a minute here, Carol, to converse with my Sprout, OK? Just—we just need a minute of privacy."
"Daryl…" Carol said, but she laughed, and that was good enough for Daryl. It warmed him up even more than the heat that had been blasting in the truck during their whole drive there. Daryl brushed his cheek against her stomach. She worried because there would be a need to buy some clothes, soon, that didn't need to be fastened with safety pins and elastics. Daryl looked forward to the day when anyone that saw them immediately knew that they were anxiously awaiting Sprout's arrival into the great big "out here" world.
"Listen," Daryl said, teasing Carol as much as he was talking to Sprout. He didn't know, after all, if babies were capable of hearing, or if Sprout had even sprouted ears yet, but it didn't matter. "You gotta stop workin' your Ma up with them hormones, alright? It's OK to pump her full of the ones that make her think I'm irresistible—you can load her ass up on them—but you gotta stop givin' her the ones that's just raisin' everybody's blood pressure, OK? Or we gonna have to haul you down town and get you both put on the tranquilizers your Uncle Merle had to get for your cousin Peanut."
"Daryl—Andrea is not taking anything, and she's certainly not taking tranquilizers," Carol protested.
Daryl smirked at her and straightened up.
"First off, you weren't supposed to be listening. This was a private conversation. Secondly, Carol—there's gonna be half-truths we're gonna have to tell Sprout for his own good for a long damn time. Now—if thinkin' that there's lil' baby tranquilizers for babies that don't put out the good kinda hormones helps to kinda chill things out? I don't see any harm in it." Her bottom lip very slightly rolled out and Daryl brushed his thumb across it before he kissed her. Luckily, she forgot every other feeling except her desire to kiss him, and she kissed him well enough that he had to break it before a fire was lit that he wasn't prepared to ignore all evening. "You are…beautiful," Daryl said.
"And crazy enough to need tranquilizers, apparently," Carol said.
"Boy—it's still hot in this truck," Daryl said. "You hot? Let's get that cake out for it melts."
"Daryl…" Carol said.
Daryl laughed to himself.
"You ain't crazy," Daryl said. "And I was just teasing. But I do want you to just—relax, Carol. We're gonna have a good night. And Agnes is gonna say yes, and she's gonna love the card and the cake. And when Clyde hears about it, he's gonna be thrilled for her, and we'll just play the rest of it by ear, OK? There's nothing at all to worry about."
"Just—one more thing," Carol said, raising her finger up at him.
"OK," Daryl said. "What is it?"
Carol laughed to herself and her cheeks ran red with color.
"Will you carry the cake? I don't want to drop it."
Daryl smiled and nodded.
"I got the cake. You just carry Sprout," he said with a wink.
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"Well…now…but I haven't gotten my Christmas presents yet," Agnes protested.
The best way to do this, Carol and Daryl had decided, was to come to Agnes's house for coffee—decaf, because, luckily, Agnes never drank caffeine in the evenings—and to "sit a spell." Agnes had extended the invitation to do just that about twenty times, so asking her if she wanted company for the evening hadn't brought up any concern or genuine curiosity.
When they'd walked in the door, Agnes had already prepared for them. In her little dining area, she'd spread her plastic Christmas table cloth over the table, and she'd put out Christmas china. Daryl assumed those dishes had been seeing a great deal of action since he'd had lunch with her on them already, and he knew that Carol had too, and there was no telling how many meals she'd served Clyde in the past few days.
She'd already brewed a pot of coffee in happy anticipation of their arrival. The pot rested on a Christmas potholder on the table, and she'd put out an ashtray to make Daryl feel more welcomed to stay there and smoke—though her husband had smoked a pipe, Daryl had learned, when she'd practically tried to force him into smoking it. Daryl wondered, since the house did have a slight scent of tobacco, if Clyde had been partaking of a pipe or two as "a digestive," which was how Agnes described the habit.
In the middle of the table, she'd also put out cookies—the fancy kind that she liked. They were the kind with French names that only came with something like ten to a pack, but they weren't really that superior, in Daryl's opinion, to any other grocery store cookie. Still, they made Agnes happy, so there was no harm in them.
As soon as they'd come in, though, and she'd seek the cake box, she'd become a little flustered.
"The cake's just our treat to go with coffee," Carol had insisted. "A thank-you for having us."
Agnes had accepted that, and she'd accepted Carol's warm hug and a kiss on the cheek.
When Daryl had stopped her from opening the box, though, and insisted that she read the card first, that's when she'd really become concerned. She feared this was a Christmas gift, and she had no gift to give them.
"Agnes, this ain't your Christmas gift," Daryl insisted. He waved at Carol to sit, and she took her seat at the table. "This is just a card. Not a Christmas gift."
"I don't need any money," Agnes insisted, eyeing the card like it was something akin to a live snake.
Daryl couldn't help but laugh.
"Not money, Agnes…I swear to you. This ain't no gift, OK? It's just…somethin'…it's a card. We really wanted to give you this card. That's all it is."
"And if you don't like it," Carol offered, "then you can give it back. That's fine."
"I'm gonna buy Christmas gifts, you know," Agnes said. "Clyde and me are going to Union. They got a nice big ole place there and you can buy all you want in one place."
"That's great," Daryl said. "This ain't a Christmas gift. Open the card, please?"
"You haven't got any coffee," Agnes pointed out. Daryl hadn't quite made it to his seat yet.
"I'ma get some to wash down that cake," Daryl said. "But—first I want you to…open the card, Agnes."
Agnes looked at him like she was annoyed with him. She plucked the card out of his hand with a sigh.
"Well alright," she said. "I don't know why you're so wound up about it."
Daryl had never—not once in his life—noticed how slowly Agnes moved. He watched, almost feeling a creeping pain crawl through his body, as she started to open the card, stopped, picked up her glasses from the chain around her neck and slowly prepared them to put them on her face, placed them on her nose, picked the card up again and worked it open finally, pulled the card out of the envelope, opened it, and then went through the adjustment period of holding the card in so many different locations that he thought that he might offer to hold it at his seat for her to see it better.
For a moment, Daryl was afraid she might find out about Sprout when the baby was born, right there at the table, before she ever actually managed to read the card.
He smiled to himself, too, when he glanced over and saw that Carol had her phone out—the video going, without a doubt.
"Read it out loud, Agnes," Carol prompted.
Agnes looked at her and furrowed her brow.
"You're not takin' a picture are you?" Agnes started to protest.
"No," Carol said. "I'm not…just read the card out loud?"
"Need help?" Daryl asked.
"I can read, Daryl," Agnes said with some irritation. "I've been reading since…"
"What does it say?" Daryl asked, interrupting her before she got started good.
Agnes looked back at the card and set her mind to actually focusing on it. It was a blank card on the inside except for what Carol had written there, as clearly as she possibly could. The outside was just a generic Christmas scene in red and green, so it wouldn't give anything away until Agnes read it.
"Well, now…let's see. It says…'every child needs to know a grandma's love,'" Agnes said. "Well—now that's sweet…"
"Keep goin'," Daryl urged. "That ain't all it says, is it?"
"Well—no—it says 'Would you be mine? Sprout Dixon, blooming in June.'"
Agnes looked at the card with a furrowed brow. Daryl glanced at Carol, but she was biting her bottom lip between her teeth, and she didn't look half as worried as she had even in the truck. Agnes read the card back, her words whispered this time. Then, she stopped, and she looked at Daryl—and then at Carol.
"You mean you…?" She asked.
"We sure are," Carol said, her voice high-pitched with excitement. She was grinning with an open-mouthed smile, hovering on the edge of her seat and still filming.
"Whatta you say?" Daryl asked. "Sprout ain't got no grandparents, and he sure could use a grandma."
"Oh…my…well…I…I…I don't know what to say…" Agnes stammered.
Daryl glanced at Carol and she signaled to him to open the box of cake. He flipped it open and picked it up, tipping it so that Agnes could see it.
"We hope it's right," Daryl said. "Says—Happy First Granny-versary, Love Sprout."
As soon as the tears started, Carol stopped the video and bent down, reaching for Agnes. Daryl let the two women have a moment—each of them pulling at each other—to hug this out. He figured both of them would be better at handling each other's tears better than he ever would.
When he was pretty sure that they were reaching the end of what simply had to happen, he stood enough to offer a hug to Agnes, who had gotten to her feet, and then to rub Carol's back to make sure she was handling the whole thing well enough.
And then, he slipped into the living room and returned with the box of tissues that he knew would be on the coffee table.
While everyone got mopped up and cleaned up—both women excusing themselves to the bathrooms that the house offered—Daryl took a picture of the cake for his collection, sat it out of the box and on the table, and poured coffee in all the little china Christmas cups that Agnes had put out.
"I didn't cut your cake," Daryl said.
"Help yourself to anything you like," Agnes said, still sniffing.
"Yeah, but…you never did say if you was gonna accept," Daryl said. "And it don't seem right to eat lyin' cake, Agnes."
Agnes looked between the two of them. She sucked on her bottom lip, gnawing it slightly.
"I would be honored," she said. "I'm afraid, though, that I don't know much about how to be a grandmother. I didn't know my own as long as I would've liked and…"
"Anything you do will be perfect," Carol interrupted. "We don't know how to be parents, either, so we're all just kind of…learning together."
Carol hugged Agnes again, and both of them looked considerably happier when the hug broke and they returned to the table. Daryl finally sliced the cake, then, and passed pieces of it around.
"Sprout?" Agnes asked. "My…" She hesitated a moment. "My grandchild is…Sprout?"
"That's what we're calling the baby for now," Carol said.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Agnes asked.
"We don't know yet," Daryl said. "We been sayin' 'he,' but…it ain't 'cause we think it's a boy. It's 'cause we don't like 'it,' and 'he' was just sorta there, so we used it."
Agnes smiled and sipped her coffee.
"I like it," she said with as much sincerity as Daryl had heard from just about anyone in days.
"We do too," he confirmed. "Hey—I got a good Sprout related thing I can tell you."
"What's that?" Agnes asked.
Daryl couldn't swallow back his amusement entirely.
"Carol's pants don't fit an' the only way they stayin' on right now is with a big safety pin," Daryl said.
"Daryl!" Carol barked. Daryl laughed.
"She's Sprout's grandma!" He protested. "She deserves to know he's growin' just fine!"
Daryl winked at Carol. She was doing her best to look annoyed, but she never could quite hide her smile.