"I'm so fucking hungry!" Daryl groans from inside his bedroom.
Carol leaves the coffee cups on the table and wanders to his open doorway. He's sitting in the desk chair and yanking off his mud-caked boots, with his pack and rifle on the floor and his grimy bow tossed on the neatly made-up bed. His arms are grayish-black and there's dried blood smeared on the backs of his hands. "How about I draw you a bath and then make you some breakfast?"
"Draw me a bath? What are you, Jeeves now?"
"I'll mix a kettle of boiling water with cold water in the shower tub so you can have a warm bath and get really clean."
"A'right, madam." He rolls a hand forward like the butler. "Draw me a bath."
She chuckles and vanishes to put the kettle on. She can hear him unpacking in his room. When she goes to tell him his bath is ready, he's stripped himself of his socks, vest, outer shirt, and undershirt and stands in only his filthy pants, his back to her, as he tosses something on his closet shelf. She notes a black ink tattoo of a pair of demons on this back, but it's the scars that draw her eyes again. A flash of anger courses through her as she beholds those stripes more clearly in the bold light of day. When he turns, she sees there are two more slashes across his chest.
Remembering how he yelled at her last time she saw him like this, she looks quickly away. "Your bath is ready. I left a clean towel in there."
"Thanks," he murmurs.
While he's bathing, she sweeps up the dirt trail from his boots and then makes breakfast – an egg scramble with a bit of fresh tomato, onion, jalapeño and the last of the venison sausage. She also uses the rest of the coffee crystals Ryan hurriedly left behind in his haste to make Daryl – and herself - a cup of coffee.
Daryl's plate is on the table when he pads barefoot from the bathroom in clean, loose fitting, dark blue jeans and a white muscle shirt, drying his hair. He sits down with the towel draped around his neck, and Carol sits down across from him. Jefe was absolutely right about his arms, she thinks, as her eyes skirt quickly up their sinews to his half-bare shoulders.
"Like the new shower curtain," he says.
"You noticed?"
"Noticed it wasn't black and green with mold anymore. Ain't you eating?"
"I ate a little something earlier."
"Oh God," he moans with his first bite. "This is fucking fantastic!"
She smiles. "So, did you get your grizzly bear?"
He shakes his head. "Nah. Caught up with it, but a couple of thrashers had bit into it good. He gave 'em a run for their money, though, crushed their skulls. But he was hurt bad. Had to put him out his misery. Jefe says we can't risk cutting 'round the bit-up parts."
She wonders how often he defers to Jefe. "Do you think that's true?"
"Don't know. Never seen a turned animal. Don't know if they can pass it on, especially after they've been cooked. But she's probably right. Ain't no sense in taking chances."
"Well, I'm sorry you didn't get your bear."
"Don't matter. Ended up bagging a sixteen-point buck on the way back. Just a quarter mile from the gates. Dumb fucking luck." He takes another bite and hums.
"Sixteen points is really good, isn't it?" A lot better than ten, she assumes.
"Yeah. I'm definitely putting those antlers over the fireplace." He turns in his seat and holds his hands up, fork still in the right, like a frame.
Carol glances toward the fireplace and frowns. There's a rather nice painting above it now, of a bright lighthouse on the rocky shores of a sparkling ocean. Thomas Kincade, she thinks, old fashioned, in keeping with the grandmother furniture, but she likes it better than she would a set of antlers.
"Honestly, probably almost as much meat as that bear," he says before he takes another bite.
"Really?" Carol turns her attention from the fireplace to him. "But brown bears are so big."
"Bear's got so much fat and bones. Lower meat yield, percentage wise. Really wanted to know what grizzly tastes like, though. But I'm sure it ain't as good as venison." He points with his fork to the scramble. "You spiced up that venison."
"A little she says. You like it?"
She only asks because she wants to hear those words again, and she does – "Fucking fantastic."
She looks him over again. A little water drips from his hair and weaves down the thick stubble that's grown on his cheeks. He didn't shave while in the bathroom. His dirty blonde hair – darker and more brown-looking now that it's wet, falls unevenly over his forehead and half obscures his left eye. Garrison was right back at that country house. It's scraggly. "I can give you a haircut later if you want."
"Merle used to cut my hair. Once every eleven months with a pair of buzz clippers. Hated it. He always made it too damn short."
"Well, I could just even it up for you. Thin it out a little, without making it too much shorter."
"A'right," he agrees around his next bite of food. "Later."
"I think you frightened poor Ryan."
"You know he just wants in your pants, right?"
Carol sips her coffee. "I don't think that's all he wants."
"But you know it's some of what he wants?" Daryl sets his fork on his plate and takes a sip of his coffee. "Pretty damn bold if you ask me, given the man looks like a cueball."
Carol snorts, and her coffee ripples. "That's mean!"
"Ain't mean. Just a statement of fact. Looks like his head belongs on a pool table." He waves one hand in the air along the side of his own head. "Looks like the 15 ball, but reversed. White in the middle, brown down the sides."
"Stop. Ryan is a very nice man."
"Yeah, but nice don't make a woman's panties wet, does it?"
Carol was just lifting her coffee and her mug freezes in mid air for a second before she completes her sip.
"Sorry," Daryl mutters, looking down abruptly at his plate. "That was crass, wasn't it?"
"A little."
"I ain't supposed to say crass shit in front of ladies." He looks up from his plate again. "I'm s'posed to work on overcoming my uh…negative behavioral modeling."
"Is that what your book told you?" As soon as the words are out, she wishes she could drag each and every one back into her mouth.
"What book?"
She swallows. "I was…I saw your book on treating childhood abuse one day when I was cleaning up your room."
"You need to stay out my stuff!" he growls.
"Yes," she agrees. "I do. I will. I'm sorry. I'll stay out of your room completely from now on and - "
"-didn't say that," he interrupts. "I mean… 'S nice. How you make up the bed. And hang m'clothes. Ain't never lived in a place that was neat before. It's kind of…dunno. Relaxing. Just stay the hell out my drawers!"
"Okay."
"How would you like me rummaging through your shit?"
"I wouldn't." This would not, she calculates, be a good time to mention she found his wallet.
"You tell Ryan 'bout my book?"
"No! Of course not. I haven't told anyone. I wouldn't. Have you told Jefe what I told you? About my husband abusing me?"
"Why the hell would I?" he asks. Then, quieter, "Oh. We both got shit we don't want people to know, don't we?"
"I don't gossip about you," she assures him. "I assume you pay me the same courtesy. And I didn't go looking for that book. I was just trying to clean up."
He sighs. "Hid that book in there months ago 'cause I didn't want Merle to find it."
"You don't think he could have benefitted from it, too?"
"Merle took off when I's just a kid. Joined the army when I was nine. And even before that, he was in and out of juvie."
Drugs or fake IDs or credit card fraud, Carol suspects, based on what she found in his wallet. "You know, Merle must have gone through something similar with your father." She's making a bit of an assumption when she says father, but he doesn't contradict that assumption.
"Yeah," he agrees, picking up his fork again, "that's what Dr. Eastman said."
"Dr. Eastman?" So he has mentioned the abuse to someone? He hasn't kept it a complete secret? "The man who teaches staff at the school?" And who was, Carol remembers Bonnie telling her, a forensic psychiatrist in the Old World. And who lives in the mansion.
"Yeah, he's teaching me some martial arts. Figured I should add that to my repertoire." Daryl says repertoire a bit sarcastically, and with a pronounced Southern accent. "Mean, I got the bow down pat. Ain't too bad with a gun. But I guess I should know how to use a stick. Lots of sticks in the woods if I ever find myself without a real weapon for some reason."
"So that's where you go a lot of nights?" she asks. "To the mansion for martial arts lessons?"
"Big house has that indoor gym in the east wing. With the mats and dummies and shit. They use it for the school when it rains. And anyone can use it to train. Just got to sign up."
That's why Garrison saw him slipping in on the east side of the mansion. Not to go up the side stairs to the penthouse floor, but to go to the indoor gym on the first floor. Daryl's not going up to the big house at night to be with Jefe, Carol realizes. He's going up there for counseling sessions. "And he's a good teacher, Dr. Eastman?"
"I guess. Sure does talk a lot though." He moves his free hand open and closed like a running mouth. "And he's always asking me questions. Nosy fucker. Nosier 'n you even."
Does Daryl even know he's getting therapy? Carol suspects he does know, on at least some level, but this is how Dr. Eastman has figured out to let him save face doing it.
Daryl scrapes the last bit of egg scramble from his plate and hums when he eats it. "Thanks. That was fucking fantastic."
"You're welcome. By the way, Jefe told me she wants to see you when you get home. She said you can go straight up to the penthouse." Carol watches his reaction. She no longer believes Daryl is going to the mansion for sex, but that doesn't mean Jefe isn't angling to reel him into her bed.
He appears indifferent to the invitation. "Well, Jefe can wait. I only slept three hours last night. I ain't in the mood for a meeting." He looks around the cabin. "Where's your girl?"
"School."
"Oh yeah. That's every day here, ain't it? Poor kids. Can't even get out of school when the world ends."
"It's only three hours a day, though. And Sophia likes school. She just won the math battle yesterday."
"Math battle?" He shakes his head. "I'd like to see someone kill a thrasher with math."
Carol chuckles. "Well, there's more to life than killing thrashers. Maybe Sophia will be an engineer one day. God knows we're going to need them."
Daryl yawns. "Think I'm gonna go catch some Zs." He stands. "Thanks for the grub."
After Carol cleans up, she peers in on him through the door he left wide open. He's thrown himself on top of his comforter and is asleep, facedown, with his arm slung over the crossbow he tossed there earlier. Strange teddy bear, she thinks, but there's something oddly endearing about it, too.
Quietly, she closes the door.