Chapter 2 – Pre-Apocalypse Bingo
See the end for trigger warnings. Or don't, but then don't whine to me about being triggered.
Daryl Dixon had the best kid ever. He knew that lots of parents felt the same, but none of their snot-nosed brats compared to Darla.
She was cute as a button, smart as a whip, and sweet as honey.
So, getting called to her (goddamn expensive but supposedly excellent) preschool on the claim that she'd been caught fighting was utter bullshit, and he certainly wasn't going to put up with any such slanderous nonsense being spoken about his child. If she'd punched someone, then the little asshole had damn well had it coming.
When Daryl pulled into the tiny parking lot, the sight of two crookedly parked police cruisers greeted him, and he nearly had a heart attack. After parking his own truck (probably just as badly as the dumb pigs had done to their own vehicles), he leapt out and ran for the office.
Before he could even make it into the building, he almost collided with Ms. Kathy, his daughter's teacher (kind of a snobby bitch, to be honest, but supposedly an expert in early childhood education), who was being led out the front door in cuffs. Frozen as the pair of cops dragged the sniveling woman around him, Daryl demanded, "What in the hell is goin on?!"
"Mr. Dixon?" the younger of the cops asked. After getting a stupefied nod, he continued, "Our colleagues are waiting for you inside. They'll explain everything. Your daughter is just fine, sir."
"Better be," he grumbled, unsticking his feet and rushing to find her.
The school's front office was small, bisected by a counter that closed off the reception area from the waiting area; the back of the reception area had a door that led into the director's office, which wasn't much bigger than an average closet. There were too many people crammed into the brightly colored space—two more cops (who were attempting to maintain order), the receptionist and another teacher (both of whom were frantic), the director (who was also in handcuffs and sobbing about "everything" being a "misunderstanding"), a whimpering little boy (who had a bloody nose that he probably deserved), and (Daryl breathed a sigh of relief) Darla.
Kicking her little feet on one of the kid-size waiting-room chairs, calm and cool despite the tear tracks on her rosy cheeks and the ice pack held to her bruised, swollen left wrist, she watched the room with big, solemn blue eyes. After spotting Daryl as soon as he walked in, she jumped up and ran to him and threw herself into his arms. "Daddy," she mumbled against his chest, "I think I should be homeschooled from now on."
He choked out a bitter laugh, kissing her head and promising, "Whatever ya want, baby."
xxXxx
The whole incident started with an annoying little jerk named Tommy Tinley. Tommy was the preschool's resident terror, and among the boy's many, many behavioral issues was his fascination with lifting his female classmates' skirts and trying to grab their privates.
He'd been warned not to time and again, but the staff never really punished him; they seemed to adopt the "Aw, shucks, boys will be boys" approach to wrangling the obvious predator.
Darla had been attending the preschool for only a few months, and she'd mostly managed to avoid Tommy—he rolled with the glue-eater crowd, and she was usually vibing with the art nerds or conducting her own story circles (early literacy for the win). She rarely wore skirts or dresses (only as laundry day approached) and wasn't afraid to scream blue murder (full-on tornado siren) if Tommy messed with her when she did. He was annoying, for sure, but Darla hesitated to mention him and his behavior to her very protective daddy and uncles, who probably would've shown up at the school in force and fury and gotten themselves in big trouble.
However, on that fateful afternoon, she regretted the choice to keep her mouth shut. Tommy fixated on her and her cute purple frock. She smacked his hands away numerous times. She shrieked and threatened. She even told the teacher, but the useless bitch laughed the whole thing off, insisting that Tommy was just trying to show Darla how much he liked her. (Seriously?! Oh my god, woman! You call yourself an educator?! A caretaker?! A human being?!) Tommy was bigger than Darla (most kids were) and already had henchmen, who helped corner her and pin her arms down while the head perv tried to get his up-skirt jollies.
Typically, Darla did her best not to hold her age-equivalent peers to adult standards, but she wasn't going to allow herself to be sexually assaulted by anyone. Enough was enough. Did it make her feel good to put the beatdown on a four-year-old? No. Did that particular four-year-old deserve to have his nuts kicked up into his throat and his nose smashed to hamburger against her knee? Abso-fuckin-lutely.
And like all pathetic bullies, when he got a taste of his own medicine, Tommy went blubbering to the nearest authority figure to tattle about mean ol' Darla.
Ms. Kathy was a useless bitch, but Darla had not expected the psycho to react with rage, to grab the girl's arm and squeeze and twist hard enough to break the damn thing.
Darla screamed and cried all through getting dragged by said arm to the director's office and slammed down into a chair, with a hissed snarl not to "move a damn muscle, you awful little beast!" The receptionist was apparently on break, so there was no one to stop Ms. Kathy from storming into the director's office to complain about the "worthless trailer trash" and "nasty little whore in training." (Yes, the woman did indeed call a four-year-old a "whore in training." So, there were undoubtedly some mental problems at play. Great…)
After listening to a horribly skewed version of events, the director—Ms. Blair, if memory served—called Darla into the office. One look at the state of the girl—mostly her clearly broken arm and the distinct handprint bruise on it—had Ms. Blair's face going white. She didn't bother to ask any questions, just sent Darla back out into the waiting room.
Tommy was there, still blubbering; he'd followed along and wanted to call his mommy and go home.
Other than glaring at him and making him shrink back in terror, Darla ignored the obnoxious little bastard. She'd gotten very bad vibes from the interaction with the director, so the girl lingered outside the locked office door, listening intently as Ms. Blair half-heartedly scolded Ms. Kathy about losing her temper—again—and causing a mess that Ms. Blair would have to clean up—again.
About two sentences in, Darla rushed to the receptionist's desk and dug through it for a tape recorder. The girl thanked any higher power that was listening when she found one and was able to return to her post and tape the two psychopaths as they conspired to blame Darla's injuries on her "inbred retard" daddy.
She was furious but kept quiet and kept taping. She kept going as long as she could, all the way through the women's call to the cops to report that they suspected one of their students was being abused. She kept going as they called her daddy, laughing after they hung up and spewing more hate as they patted themselves on the back for setting him up to be arrested on arrival. She kept going as they discussed their plans to delete the incriminating security footage, which was on VHS in the basement. She recorded until the last second, until the women started to emerge and she had to scamper back to her seat, hiding the tape recorder under her injured arm—which hurt like hell and was starting to look like an overstuffed sausage.
The cops showed up quickly. It was an accusation of child abuse, after all.
Darla kept quiet. She let the two women make their false reports and pretend sympathy for her "rough homelife" and concern for her "aggressive tendencies." She let the pair hang themselves. And when the cops finally focused their attention onto the little girl, she smiled sweetly, whipped out the tape recorder, and pressed play.
Instantly, Ms. Blair's face whitened about two shades past her previous realization of Oh shit. It was more in the vein of I think I just shat myself…
Ms. Kathy, however, really did need to do something about her temper. When she put together what was happening and exactly how screwed she was, the woman went ballistic and lunged with her clawed hands outstretched like she wanted nothing more than to strangle the little girl.
The cops had to wrestle the crazed woman to the ground, handcuff her, and practically sit on her while they radioed for backup (which also arrived quite quickly) to take the other conspirator into custody. At some point, the receptionist had returned, and the school's other teacher had wandered in to see what all the commotion was about (leaving her class unattended, the moron; it was clearly a terrible school, and Daddy needed to demand his money back on top of suing the place into bankruptcy). Thankfully, the receptionist was nice enough to finally get Darla an ice pack, and an ambulance was reportedly on the way.
Shortly after Ms. Kathy got perp-walked out (she'd progressed from raging to begging and crying; it was pathetic but also glorious), as the remaining non-arrested adults were discussing having to shut down the school and call all the parents, Daddy arrived.
And he was not happy.
Actually, Darla suspected that the only thing that kept him from rampaging blindly until the cops had to tase him was the fact that he was holding her—that she needed him. Of course, as his urge to crack skulls warred with his urge to be there for his child, he went pretty much nonverbal, grunting and growling and menacing anyone who dared to get close. Daddy had long since gone straight—holding down a respectable nine-to-five job as an attendant at Uncle Jesse's shooting range and even picking up some side gigs as an archery instructor for kids and a hunting guide for tourists—but the Dixon reputation was still alive and well in Rose Ridge; not even the cops wanted to mess with Daddy when he was in a mood.
Fortunately, one of the EMTs who showed up with the ambulance was a friend of Uncle Jesse and knew how to deal with cranky Dixons, having patched them up enough times throughout the decades. "Boy," Mr. Abernathy barked, "Yer gonna quit bein an ass and let me look at that child, or else I'm gonna call yer uncle down here ta slap some sense inta ya. Hell, I'd do it myself if I weren't on the clock."
Daddy didn't say anything, but his glare lessened—his grip, too, enough that Darla was able to turn on his lap and smile wearily at Mr. Abernathy, who smiled right back.
"Tough day, sweetheart?" the old man joked as he squatted down and playfully jiggled her foot.
"Yeah," she agreed, unable to hold back a gasp and a few tears as the man started examining her wrist. "But I'm tougher."
Daddy snorted, hiding his face in her honey-blond curls and sounding quite choked up as he chuckled, "Sure are, baby girl."
xxXxx
The ER docs at the nearest hospital didn't like the look of Darla's X-rays, so she went home late that evening with a temporary splint, some heavy-duty pain and anti-inflammatory meds, and a referral to a pediatric orthopedist—a specialist who'd be able to tell whether or not the spiral fractures through both bones in her left forearm would need surgical intervention.
Though he was dreading putting his kid through a surgery, though he wasn't certain how he'd pay for it, Daryl would make damn sure Darla got whatever treatment she needed. He knew the pain of a badly healed bone. That shit ached even decades later.
Of course, surgery was the worst-case scenario. The ER docs had reassured him that they were just being cautious and thorough, that there was a lot of swelling likely distorting the images.
As he sat in a sterile waiting room with a cranky, doped-up four-year-old cuddled against his chest, Daryl tried to work through the rage and hatred burning his veins and clogging his throat. He knew that he'd been pretty alright as a dad so far just by doing the opposite of whatever his worthless old man would've done in any given situation, but Darla had still ended up being brutalized by a violent psycho. A teacher, no less.
A teacher he'd picked.
Daryl wanted the best for his kid, even if that meant an expensive preschool that made Merle scoff and roll his eyes and mutter about "liberal hippie bullshit" (but still fork over envelopes of dubiously acquired cash right on time to chip in for each tuition payment). Darla was just so smart, and Daryl thought that a good school would encourage her to be better than any other Dixon before her… to not waste her life as some underachieving backwoods loser… But even when he tried to give his kid the best he could, it ended in shit.
The creak of a door brought him out of his woolgathering and made him look up at the dark-skinned nurse who'd checked them in. She was pretty, probably in her late twenties to early thirties, and obviously a few months pregnant. The woman offered a sunny smile and declared, "C'mon through. I'll get the new X-rays done, and you'll be all set to see Dr. Sutton as soon as she arrives."
Damn right Daryl had left at the crack of dawn to make sure that his kid was seen first thing. He hadn't been doing any sleeping anyways, gnawing his thumbnail bloody and holding his whimpering daughter and wondering how much was too much pain relief for a four-year-old. He didn't want her hurting, but he also didn't want her getting hooked or worse…
He probably looked like a filthy, shaggy, strung-out mess and was lucky that the nurse had let him in at all, let alone without an appointment and before the actual opening hours and while she was the only person on duty.
The X-rays didn't take long. Darla already knew the drill from the day before and was a pretty agreeable kid in general, even when she was sick or hurt. She was sassy, bossy, and mischievous but rarely gave him any real trouble. (Other people weren't quite as lucky, but that wasn't his damn problem; they always deserved it.) Occasions on which she did defy him, such as refusing to change out of her pajamas that morning, were usually warranted or excusable. (The poor kid had gotten her arm snapped; if parading around in purple polka-dot jammies made her feel even a little bit better, then he was all for it.) Besides, it didn't seem right for a girl whose middle name was Rebel to be perfectly behaved all the time.
"Have you guys had breakfast?" the nurse asked with another bright smile as she ushered them back to the waiting room. "You're welcome to stay, but the doctor won't be in for at least…" She paused to check her watch. "Thirty minutes, probably closer to forty-five. And she'll need a bit of time to review the films anyway, so push that to more like an hour."
Daryl shook his head. His kid hadn't eaten much the night before, queasy from the meds, and he hadn't been able to coax her into eating anything before their long drive to the closest specialist. "Any good places nearby?" he muttered.
He left the hospital-adjacent medical plaza with directions to a nearby diner. It was still too early for any of the offices to be officially open, but there was some activity among the little cluster that catered to children and mothers. In addition to the pediatric orthopedist, Daryl spotted a regular pediatrician, a pediatric oncologist, a pediatric dentist, a marriage and family therapist, an OB-GYN, and even a good old-fashion midwife.
The trip to the diner passed quickly. Darla had fallen asleep again, and he found himself missing her cheerful commentary and incessant questions. For all that she'd been amazingly brave and upbeat throughout the ordeal, she was still an injured and exhausted—and traumatized—four-year-old on (the nice nurse had reassured him) an entirely suitable dose of painkillers.
There was nothing special about the diner, and he was happy that it seemed clean and was open and basically empty. He plopped into a booth with a good view of the clock and didn't waste any time ordering black coffee for himself; chocolate milk for Darla; and bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit salad for them to share. He'd eat whatever she didn't, but he really hoped she'd eat something. She was sure to drink the chocolate milk, and the fruit would tempt her, he was certain; she was always babbling about adding healthy stuff to their diet. She'd once even puppy-eyed Merle into choking down some kale—after she'd puppy-eyed Uncle Jesse into helping her grow it in the large garden that had once belonged to Aunt Grace.
Of course, getting Darla to wake up enough to eat was a bit of a chore, and he was barely halfway through it when the waitress arrived with the meal. The young woman cooed at them obnoxiously, leaning her cleavage into his face and simpering, "Aw, poor little thing. Did you fall off your tricycle, sweetie pie?"
The glower Darla returned was practically draconic. She despised being patronized, and women who hit on her daddy in front of her were shown absolutely no mercy. "No," the girl hissed. "Put yer saggy tits away and quit askin about my private medical information, sweetie pie."
The woman reacted like most people did when confronted with pretty much the most well-spoken and vicious four-year-old to ever live: full-on surprised and confused blow-up-doll face, spluttering, disbelief, horror, and embarrassment.
Daryl could feel himself turning red as well, and it was only partially from trying not to laugh. "Darla," he scolded weakly, "Don't be rude."
She huffed and turned away to sulk against his chest, and her disregard for the woman was almost more insulting than the actual insults.
Still recovering, the waitress hesitantly offered the check… and then seemed to remember something at the last minute and hurriedly scribbled on the bottom before tossing down the slip of paper. "Whenever you're ready," she stated curtly, stomping off without another word.
Daryl sighed, realizing that the waitress had blacked out her phone number and that he wasn't going to be getting any refills on his coffee.
xxXxx
If Merle got one more dirty look off these hoity-toity soccer moms, he was going to give them something really dirty to look at. Hell, maybe the repressed prudes would enjoy a good eyeful of his hog.
He wasn't sure what he was doing there, waiting outside the fancy office of some overpriced kiddie doctor instead of seeing to the psycho bitches who'd hurt his kin. But Uncle Jesse's phone call had been firm: the old man was handling things at home, and Merle needed to go help his anxious brother and injured niece—not make the situation worse by wading in and throwing punches, no matter how much they were deserved.
As he did every few weeks, Merle had been planning a trip to see his family. However, he wasn't cut out for tagging along on doctor visits. He wasn't the comforting or responsible type. Still, Uncle Jesse was a mean son of a bitch when he didn't get his own way, and a detour to an annoying little yuppie suburb was a small price to pay to keep the old gargoyle off his back.
"Merle?"
The elder Dixon brother didn't jump, but he came closer than he'd like to admit and narrowed his gaze on the younger of the pair (damn spooky creeper). "Thought ya were inside already."
Unrepentant, Daryl shrugged, clutched his groggy kid closer, and explained, "Got here earlier than the doc. Place wasn't even really open yet, but the nurse let us in and did the new X-rays, told us ta go get breakfast and come back in an hour."
Merle grunted in dismissal and then turned his attention onto Darla, who was peeking up at him tiredly, her fragile little arm splinted and resting against her daddy's chest. (Seeing her like that made Merle's cold black heart hurt.) "How ya feelin, princess?" he wondered in a soft voice that would've made his past self kick his present ass. (Hell, pretty much everything about the last four years would've made his pre-Darla self absolutely stomp his post-Darla self.) "I hear ya saved yer daddy's backside from evil teachers."
With a happy giggle that did little to distract from how pale and tired she was, the girl agreed, "Yep. And I got ya a present, too." From the pocket of her purple polka-dot pajama pants, the girl produced a set of handcuff keys and jangled them merrily.
Merle damn near suffocated himself laughing while Daryl squealed, "Darla! The hell?!" He covered her tiny hand with his large one, glancing around subtly for anyone who might've seen and decided to report them. In a lower, calmer voice, the younger Dixon brother demanded, "Ya pickpocketed the cops?!" He looked up to glare at his brother, snarling, "Did ya teach her that?! Jesus, Merle! She's four!"
"Hey now!" Merle defended, far too amused and downright proud to be offended. "I didn't teach her nothin 'a the sort! Wasn't gonna fer a few more years at least!"
"I taught myself!" Darla boasted, shaking off the mother hen long enough to toss the keys at Merle. She giggled again in absolute delight when he caught them, kissed them, and tucked them safely into his hip pocket. Maybe he'd get himself a chain to wear them on. Damn things were a hilarious trophy and sure to come in handy someday.
With an exasperated sigh, Daryl jostled the girl and wondered, "And how'd ya do that?"
"Books," she reported, scant energy clearly waning as she rested her head back down and yawned like a sleepy kitten. "Can learn anythin from books." (They still couldn't figure out how the hell she'd taught herself to read and weren't even sure how early she'd done it. If not for the fact that Ada was a nearly illiterate slut who wouldn't touch a book except to rip out the pages for rolling papers, Merle would accuse the woman of swallowing a dictionary while she was pregnant… Hell, maybe the rolling-paper thing had some merit. Smoking a dictionary was as good as or maybe even better than swallowing one, right?)
Smug, Merle taunted, "Well, lookie there. And who's the one always takin her ta the damn library, huh? Sounds more like yer fault than mine!"
Daryl had one more exhausted glare in him before he gave up and muttered, "Just don't get caught, baby girl…" To his brother, he added, "Ya comin in? Can't be runnin yer mouth if ya do. The nurse is Black."
Merle was never going to like associating with… certain people, but he'd cleaned up his act quite a lot since Darla came into the picture. Hell, it only took three times of her slapping big-ass rainbow pony stickers onto his bike's SS decal for him to get the message and have it painted over.
The things he did for that little girl…
It wasn't too much of a hardship to sit through the appointment and mind his tongue. Despite her racial deformity and her pregnant belly, the nurse was a looker. The doctor didn't offer the same visual buffet, but she was White and had a passable dumper. That was something.
Even better was the fact that Darla didn't need surgery, at least for the time being. The doctor wanted to see her again in a month just to make sure everything was healing as it should, but they were in the clear.
Which was great because surgery was expensive; the sort of shit Merle would've had to do to come up with that kind of cash in a hurry could've earned him at least twenty years if it went sideways.
Darla got a cast. She chose black for the color, matter-of-factly explaining to the doctor and the nurse that black wouldn't show blood if she had to use said cast to break Tommy Tinley's nose again for trying to lift her skirt.
(Who the fuck did what now to ol' Merle's baby niece?!)
The doctor was clearly horrified, but the nurse struggled to keep from laughing out loud. (She was alright, he supposed, for a Negress.) In the end, the doctor left as soon as the casting was done, not even bothering to offer lollipops for the Dixons' good behavior (the absolute bitch!). The nurse, however, stuck around while the glorified bludgeon now attached to Darla from her knuckles to her elbow dried. The two ladies chatted amicably, eventually reaching the topic of the nurse's belly.
"And my poor husband!" the nurse snickered to finish off the story of her latest sonogram. "He was just beside himself for the third time, after waiting weeks and weeks to finally find out. But our little jelly bean is being so stubborn about uncurling when anyone's watching. Not that he or she is shy about sprawling everywhere at all other times! Already a rascal giving Daddy gray hairs!"
Darla giggled, and even Daryl and Merle couldn't fight showing some amusement.
The nurse's watched beeped, and the woman halted her tale to examine the cast. She nodded at what she found and reported, "You're good to go, honey. Just make sure to keep it dry. And try not to smack anyone with it. I don't want you hurting yourself, ok?"
"Ok," Darla agreed, getting scooped back up into Daryl's arms. Resting her head on his shoulder, the girl waved her good hand at the nurse and chimed, "Thanks, Ms. Jenny." Then, she smirked wickedly and declared, "Ya can tell Mr. Morgan that y'all are havin a boy."
There was a brief pause as the adults stared at her in confusion.
(Merle would readily admit to not having the most functional brain, but he didn't recall the nurse ever referring to her husband as Morgan in their hearing.)
"And I think the name Duane would suit him just fine."
xxXxx
Someone was definitely fucking with ol' Darla. And she was going to need a pre-apocalypse bingo card to keep up with the guest appearances.
It wasn't like she hadn't considered tracking down and warning as many of the good guys as she could (and assassinating as many of the bad guys as she could), but at that stage of her new life, the prospect wasn't particularly doable. Even if she managed to find enough phone numbers and addresses in a mostly pre-internet era to make any difference, no one would believe her or even take her seriously (and mailing anthrax, letter bombs, and other goodies was too risky for a variety of reasons). Maybe during the brief window between the first reports of strange behavior and the full-on outbreak, she'd have a chance at swaying hearts and minds, but more than a decade out and with a squeaky baby voice and the fine motor skills and accompanying handwriting best suited to crayons (and no access to anthrax, letter bombs, or other dangerous goodies)? Nope. All she'd accomplish was running up her daddy's phone bill and wasting time and stamps (and drawing heat from the feds), none of which would go over well.
So, encountering Jenny Jones had been a shock.
Coming home to find Michonne on Uncle Jesse's front porch (on the same day, no less) was surely someone's idea of a joke, especially since Uncle Merle was in the truck (his no longer Nazi-chic bike loaded in the bed so that he could spend quality time with his brother and niece during the long drive). He'd been remarkably well-behaved throughout the doctor visit, more concerned with Darla's health than with being a racist ass. However, there was a clear limit to his capacity for decent, rational behavior, and he was either at or past it.
And some totally unfunny asshole of a higher power was like, Here, another non-White person. Enjoy.
Not cool, the girl groused at said unfunny asshole, Not frickin cool.
Well, Michonne was cool (beyond cool; such a lady crush). Uncle Merle was the problem. Darla loved him to death; she really did. And she had to give him a lot of credit for never being overly drunk or high or vulgar in her presence. But he still dealt and used drugs—just far from where the rest of the Dixons lived—and still had a motor mouth and a lot of prejudices and very little impulse control—all of which were a pretty terrible combination, unsurprisingly.
"The hell?" Uncle Merle grumbled.
Daddy threw the truck into park and sighed, "Don't start." He then proceeded to ignore his brother and unhook Darla from her car seat (an unfortunate but necessary indignity).
"Who're all these fuckers?" Uncle Merle demanded. "And what the fuck're they doin here?"
In shock from spotting the awesome samurai lady (over a decade younger than her show incarnation and in a demure skirt-suit and with a ridiculous '90s cell phone brick in hand, her iconic dreads absent in favor of a sleek business-professional bob), Darla hadn't immediately noticed the small fleet of cars taking up the family's usual parking spaces close to the small cabin. There were four vehicles: a squad car (which was self-explanatory), a nondescript gray sedan (probably also government issue), a hideous yellow Lamborghini hardtop (which still had its factory shine beneath the thin layer of backroad dust and was probably the first of its kind to even pass through the county, let alone visit any of its residents), and a similarly expensive but far more understated black Mercedes SUV (which was also unusual for the area but at least didn't shriek "micro-penis" at the top of its metaphorical lungs).
"Cops," Daddy pointed out as he nodded to each vehicle. "Social worker, pro'ly. An' lawyers."
"Lawyers?" Uncle Merle parroted, dumbfounded.
With a weary sigh, Daddy explained, "The preschool's owned by a bigger company. Specialty education and private schools and the like. The company's lawyer started callin right away, wantin ta buy us off. I didn't like his damn tone, so I asked Uncle Jesse if he knew anybody who could help. He said he'd take care of it." At Uncle Merle's look of confused disbelief, which threatened to become anger, Daddy added, "I ain't sayin we won't be bought, just not for cheap. Medical bills and a college fund at the very least. Certainly saves yer dumb ass from goin ta prison tryin ta pay fer it all. And droppin the charges on those two psychos ain't even on the table, alright?"
Reluctantly, Uncle Merle nodded.
However, anything he might've had to say was preempted by Michonne's arrival. Showing impressive dexterity as she strode confidently forward in stylish stilettos on loose gravel, she offered a bland smile and a handshake (which only Daddy accepted). "Mr. Dixon?" she greeted. "Michonne Hawthorne. I'm assisting Ms. Lewis with your representation." She next turned her attention and offer of a handshake to the miniature human in Daddy's arms. "And you must be Darla," declared Michonne, giving no hint of condescension as they exchanged a lopsided press of palms in greeting. "Nice to meet you. I hope that you had good news from your doctor."
"I pro'ly don't need surgery," Darla reported with a weary smile. "And Daddy bought me paint markers so that I can have pretty art on my cast. But only if I don't hit nobody with it. Unless they really got it comin."
Instead of being shocked or amused, Michonne just nodded sagely and agreed, "It's a good general rule to not hit people unless they really deserve it. My dad used to tell me the same thing."
Despite wanting to hear more about what she and Michonne had in common, Darla demanded, "How come there's a social worker? I proved that Daddy didn't hurt me."
Said man tightened his grip on his daughter's tiny body, as though just daring anyone to try to take her away from him.
Michonne's friendly expression smoothed into something that was clearly concealed anger. "Even blatantly false reports have to be investigated before they can be closed," reassured the pretty… lawyer? almost lawyer? intern? paralegal? clerk? assistant? Well, whatever. "But we'll see to it that said closing is done with utmost expediency."
Glad that the bad-ass samurai (future samurai?) had her back, Darla turned to Uncle Merle and deadpanned, "That means really fast."
The sulking redneck scoffed and muttered something that sounded an awful lot like "Smoked a damn dictionary, I swear."
It was decided that they needed to get inside and get everything over with. Well, Uncle Merle decided to stay outside (chain-smoking and listening from an open window but with a half-hearted promise to keep his mouth shut), which was probably for the best. Michonne, Daddy, and Darla went inside and got introduced to Officer Eaton (the senior investigator, which in their small town was basically the head ticket-writer), Mrs. Jenkins (the social worker, who tried to be friendly and polite for all that she obviously wanted to be there as little as the Dixons wanted her to be there), Mr. Radcliff (the lawyer for the preschool, who needed to lay off the cologne and hair grease), Miss Nettles (his assistant, who was either an actual bimbo or devious enough to pretend to be one), and Ms. Lewis (the lawyer for the Dixons, who was the female equivalent of a silver fox (a silver vixen?) and looked like she thoroughly enjoyed legally eviscerating all opponents).
There were far too many bodies for such a small space. The addition of two bedrooms and a shared bathroom for Daddy and Darla had made Uncle Jesse's cabin a bit bigger, yeah, but that didn't change the dimensions of the living room/kitchen space.
Thankfully, the various members of the crowd were there for various purposes; while most waited with coffee and cookies on the couch or at the table, smaller individual meetings could take place either outside or in one of the bedrooms.
The first meeting was with Ms. Lewis and Michonne in Daddy's room, a tiny but tidy amalgamation of dark woods, dark greens, flannels, and some scattered Native American influences—the hooks on the walls housing an array of weapons well out of reach of curious little hands. The elderly lawyer reported that there was no active police investigation against any of the Dixons; however, Daddy and Darla would need to make official statements to ensure that the charges against Ms. Kathy and Ms. Blair stuck. That was why Officer Eaton was present. Mrs. Jenkins would likely ask to sit in, but she had already performed a home check and was more than satisfied with her findings; she just needed to interview Darla to close the CPS investigation, with a note in the file that the accusations had been entirely spurious. Family members weren't allowed to be present, but Michonne would observe. Once the government suits left, the remaining parties would begin hashing out details regarding what kind of settlement the school would be offering. Ms. Lewis seemed to think that the figure would be quite substantial.
"There's clear evidence of negligence, malfeasance, and abuse by the company and its employees," she remarked. "The company is, of course, liable for its employees' actions even in a situation where it did its due diligence, but in this case, it was laughably easy to uncover that Ms. Kathy has a history of abuse complaints under her maiden and other married names and thus never should've been hired. The company very likely did a shoddy background check or no background check at all, which compounds the damages that we'll be seeking. In addition, Ms. Blair was taped admitting to covering up previous incidents and framing other parents, so my office will be tracking down those cases, exonerating anyone who was falsely accused, and ensuring that they are generously compensated. At this point, Ms. Blair's only option for a plea deal and a lesser sentence is a full confession regarding all past actions, and if she's smart, she'll sing like a canary and throw Ms. Kathy under the bus."
The meetings to follow went down pretty much exactly as Ms. Lewis had predicted. Daddy and Darla gave statements, with Officer Eaton quite red-faced and surprisingly prim for career law enforcement as he kept reminding both of them to clean up their language and commentary for the official record. (Fat chance.) Mrs. Jenkins listened in and then went with Darla and Michonne into Darla's room to interview the little girl. Darla's room was also tiny and tidy, but her color scheme was purple and silver; the décor, the furniture, and the addition itself had been the girl's first birthday present from the three gruff marshmallows she knew as Daddy, Uncle Jesse, and Uncle Merle, which they'd built themselves over two long weeks of swearing and brawling.
Mrs. Jenkins asked open-ended questions about Darla and her marshmallows, and the girl answered brightly, the fact that she was healthy, happy, and loved shining through every response. The social worker also asked about Tommy, but Darla didn't have much to say about him other than that he was a crybaby glue-eater who needed to learn to keep his hands to himself.
(A few months later, Darla would discover that the questions had been asked because the Tinleys (a well-off family previously touted as paragons of Christian virtue in the community) were the ones being investigated. It turned out that Tommy's skirt-lifting had been an imitation of behavior the boy had seen from his father toward his sisters (ages six, seven, and nine). All four kids were taken away from said disgusting molester and the enabling bitch who'd birthed them and sent to live with their doting maternal aunt in Key West. There was therapy for all and plastic surgery for Tommy. So, really, beating the shit out of the little glue-eater was practically an act of heroism, and Darla didn't feel bad about it; she was, however, a bit miffed that she hadn't thought to investigate whether there was an underlying reason for the brat's inappropriate actions. Oh well. Lesson learned.)
"You have a lot of books," Mrs. Jenkins observed, lounging casually on Darla's neatly made bed, which wasn't fully lofted but high enough to allow adults to sit comfortably on it and children to play and store toys beneath it. The woman pointed at the corner that boasted built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (Darla's third birthday present from her marshmallows, which had been installed over only a day of swearing and brawling). "Does your daddy read to you?"
Nodding, pushing a toy monster truck around on the play rug, Darla replied, "He reads to me, and I read to him, and we read together but separate books. I read by myself, too, but it's not as nice cuz there's no cuddlin." Uncle Jesse and Uncle Merle were similarly very tolerant of reading to her and listening to her read, but they usually insisted on picking the material. Firearms manuals and hunting magazines were useful and fascinating but not nearly as entertaining as her preferred fare.
The social worker, a world-weary brunette who probably looked older than her actual years, prompted, "Do you have a favorite book?"
Darla eagerly showed off her complete Discworld collection, all twenty-plus currently available titles (with more to be added soon), as well as an array of classics by Poe, Steinbeck, and Tolkien. She even had the first two Harry Potter books and was looking forward (probably embarrassingly so) to getting her hands on the rest as they were published. After estimating the start of the apocalypse for 2010, she had been extremely pleased to recall that the last of the series came out in 2007.
She planned to buy the box set, and neither zombies nor inferi would pry it out of her stubbornly living fingers.
The lack of age-level material wasn't a surprise to Mrs. Jenkins, who had already inspected the Ray–Dixon home, but she did seem impressed.
Michonne seemed both surprised and impressed, jotting something in a little notebook
The questioning didn't go on much longer. They were all aware that the complaint was bogus, and the investigation had shown absolutely nothing of concern. Soon enough, the trio was back in the living room. Mrs. Jenkins promised to be in touch, and Officer Eaton walked her to her car.
As planned, the opposing lawyers got down to discussing a suitable settlement. Darla, Daddy, and Uncle Jesse mostly just sat and watched (Uncle Merle still listening from outside) as Mr. Radcliff tried every trick in the book to weasel his way into a low-ball number and Ms. Lewis calmly pointed out time and time again exactly why he was either stupid or delusional (or both) to think that her clients would accept such insulting offers.
Unfortunately, as much as Darla tried to stay awake and alert, her lingering exhaustion and latest dose of pain meds put her to sleep well before any agreement could be reached.
In fact, no agreement was reached that day. It took several more weeks of back-and-forth and the discovery of three more children who'd been assaulted by Ms. Kathy along with three accompanying parents (all low-income single-parents, unsurprisingly) who'd either lost custody or been incarcerated due to Ms. Blair's coverups for the school to realize that it wasn't going to get out of paying a ruinous amount to all the victims.
Ultimately, no one was going to be calling the Dixons poor White trash ever again.
Daddy was thrilled that Darla would have plenty of money for a top-notch college education—without him or her going into debt or Uncle Merle getting himself locked up—and anything else her little heart might desire afterward. Ms. Lewis set them up with an excellent financial manager, Mr. Kim, who arranged investment income and was shockingly open to taking stock advice from a four-year-old. Darla didn't specifically remember timelines for the big winners in the stock market and other revenue sources but figured she couldn't go wrong with Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, cryptocurrency, etc. (And if the accountant thought it was strange that some of the companies on the list Darla handed over didn't exist yet, he didn't say a word.)
When the time came to start stockpiling for the apocalypse, Darla and her daddy were going to have mountains of cash to burn and pristine credit scores to ruin.
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Trigger warnings: Violence against children; Inappropriate behavior by and toward children; Mentions of child molestation and child abuse; Racially and generally offensive language; Merle.
I still hold horrible grudges against my preschool and kindergarten teachers. It's like just because the subject matter is easy, any stupid psycho is somehow qualified to "teach." Not saying I got kicked out of preschool. But I did go through three in less than a year. Long stories short, reading kids Green Eggs and Ham isn't going to convince all of them to actually drink green milk during snack time. (I'm pretty sure my lifelong aversion to dairy was born at that traumatic moment.) And when a kid in your care concusses herself by jumping off the monkey bars (while you were obviously not watching in the first place), screaming at her for throwing up is not acceptable. And not napping is not a punishable offense. And if you don't learn a kid's name, you can't complain when her mom has no idea why she's getting notes home about some other damn kid. And telling a five-year-old that her shorts are too short makes you a pedo. And... Oh. Wow. This paragraph is already too long, and that is very, very disturbing.
God damn it. Why are childcare providers so fucking despicable?