Carol was the first one up the next morning, or so she thought based on the silence of the house and the closed doors. She'd always been an early riser. Ed liked her to have his plumber's uniform ironed and his clothes laid out and his breakfast on the table before he got up in the morning.
This morning, she dug around in the deep freezer and found a surprise at the very bottom – twelve packages of frozen bacon, probably for the bacon cheeseburgers. She took one out and put the strips on a plate in the microwave to defrost before putting on a pot a coffee. Then she fried them up – all 12 slices.
The scent brought people out of their rooms and their eyes got wide when they saw what it was, because they thought the freezer housed only hotdogs, hamburgers, and ice cream. Lori opened a big can of pear halves from the sit-down restaurant, and Sophia got out the plates and forks and cloth napkins to set the dining room table. Pretty soon everyone was in the open egg-shell shaped chairs around the ten-seat table except Daryl.
"I'll go wake him up!" Carl cried.
"No, I will," Sophia insisted.
"Race you!"
Both kids took off from the dining room and could be heard clamoring up the ramp and racing across the balcony. When they came back, Sophia reported. "He's not in his room and his crossbow's gone."
"Well, you know Daryl," Lori said. "I'm sure we'll see him by dinner."
"Well, you snooze, you lose," T-Dog exclaimed as he plucked the single piece of bacon off of Daryl's plate.
"I think it's if you don't snooze, you lose in this case," Glenn noted.
"Sorry," T-Dog said, handing the half-eaten piece of bacon to Andrea. "I should have offered you this."
Andrea accepted the gift, popped the bacon in her mouth, and smiled at him.
"Why Andrea?" Shane asked. "And not the pregnant mother who's eating for two?"
Andrea glanced from Shane to Lori and frowned.
"Well," T-Dog said, grinning, "I already know Andrea likes pig."
Shane glowered and Rick chuckled.
"Oh, you're laughing at this, are you?" Shane asked. "You know, you were a cop, too. He's insulting both of us."
"I'm pretty sure he just means to insult you," Rick said and chuckled again.
"I don't mean to insult anybody," T-Dog insisted. "We're all just having a good time. And there's two more pieces of bacon left anyway."
"Let the cook have one," Andrea said. "And by all means, let the expectant mother have the last one." Andrea looked directly at Lori. "She's going to need to eat for two for the next eight months, right?"
"Mhmh," Lori said as she picked up her water glass. "That's right."
Rick's grip tightened on the handle of his coffee cup. "Lori lucked out this time," he said. "Her morning sickness lasted less than three weeks. With Carl, it lasted eight weeks. But she's already over it." Now he turned to Lori. "That's nice to see, isn't it, honey?"
"Well, I still feel a little nauseous sometimes," Lori replied and then quickly looked away to Carl and Sophia. "Hey, kids, since we're all having coffee, what do you say you two get to have some hot chocolate?"
"Yeah!" Carl shouted.
When Lori slipped from the dining room to go make the hot chocolate, Rick said, with a fake cheerfulness, "Range day again today! Anyone want more practice?"
"I could use some," Carol assured him.
"Glenn and I are working on re-enforcing the fence," T-Dog said. "Daryl told us yesterday about a section that needed it. Shane? Are you going to help?"
"Well, I guess I better so I can keep an eye on you," Shane replied over his coffee cup. "The way you've been sniffing around my girl."
"I'm digging this jealous streak," Andrea told him.
"I'm joking," Shane insisted. "I'm sure T-Dog's no competition for me."
T-Dog shook his head and smiled. "Pride goeth before the fall, Officer. Pride goeth before the fall."
[*]
Carol got in some more practice on the firing range – they didn't do shotguns this time, because those were the loudest and because of the walkers Daryl said they had drawn yesterday to the fence.
Carol was proud to see Sophia had stopped flinching on the recoil. Rick had given her an AR-15 to shoot, to which Carol initially objected. It seemed quite the monstrous gun for a little girl, but Rick told her, "It actually has very limited recoil for the rifle, and the caliber is only .223. It's why it was one of America's favorite family guns. It's comfortable for children and smaller women to shoot. You should try it, too."
Carol did try it, and found the gun fit well in her grip. For the first time, she hit the bullseye. "I wish it could be my gun," she admitted.
"Then let's call it yours," Rick said. "We've got two M16s anyway, which are basically the military version of the AR-15."
Carol looked over the rifle. "Mine?" she asked.
"All yours."
She settled it by the strap on her shoulder and, when she did, she felt like maybe she stood a little taller.
[*]
When Daryl came back to the House of the Future in the early evening, he had a cooler full of five fish he'd caught at the lake. 50s rockabilly music was drifting from the fireplace and Carol was laughing as T-Dog danced in place while opening a can with a manual can opener in the kitchen. She had a kitchen towel slung over her shoulder and was mashing something with a wooden spoon in a silver bowl.
T-Dog pushed the open can across the counter toward her. Daryl strolled into the kitchen, looked the dancing T-Dog over warily, and set the cooler down on the counter opposite the kitchen island where Carol was prepping dinner. He jerked open the refrigerator to grab a beer. He clearly wasn't the only one who had been drinking them. One shelf was entirely empty now. He made a note to refill it with beer from the boxes in the hallway later. "Hell you dancing for?" he asked T-Dog as he let the door slide shut and popped the can open.
"Carol likes my moves."
"He's got the grooves," Carol agreed.
Daryl leaned back against the counter opposite the island with the stovetop and took a swig of beer. "Look like an idiot," he muttered. "And we shouldn't be wastin' power on music."
"Oh, come on," Carol said. "Stop being the power police! I read the displays, too. We've already agreed, no lights during daylight hours. No more than seven minutes in the shower. No magic ramp. No dishwasher. With those restrictions and only ten of us living here instead of the sixteen capacity it's designed for, we should be fine. Besides, it's sunny today."
T-Dog set down the can-opener and held out his hand to Carol, who smiled and took it and let him dance her around the kitchen for a minute before she returned to her cooking. "You've got smooth moves yourself, Carol," T-Dog told her as he grabbed a canister of salt from a cupboard and set it on the counter.
"Guess you ain't gonna need the fish I caught," Daryl complained. "If you're already makin' dinner."
"You caught fish?" Carol asked.
"Five."
"Well, of course we'll need them," Carol said. "Tomorrow. It'll be a nice change from beef and…whatever's in those hotdogs. Why don't you scale them and throw them in the fridge?"
Daryl glowered, seized the cooler, and took it outside. He didn't know why he was so irritated. They were all too flippant about the power usage, he thought, but that wasn't it. It was T-Dog, cooking with Carol, making her laugh, dancing her around that damn kitchen.
It shouldn't bother him. There was no reason it should bother him. Hell, she'd looked happy, and T-Dog was a good man. A bit light on brain cells, Daryl thought, with the way he'd lost those keys down the gutter, and the fact that he never made much in the way of suggestions, but a good man. Decent. The kind to rescue people and bring them to the quarry camp. The kind to go back to help find the man who'd treated you like shit.
Still, it did bother Daryl. Maybe because yesterday, he'd been the one making Carol laugh.
He set his cooler on one of the tables someone had brought over from the ice cream shop and put in front of the house. He threw the lid off, drew his scaling knife, and went to work.
[*]
Carol made two big meatloaves using the tomato soup, beef from the hamburgers, mashed canned pears instead of eggs to hold things together, and oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs. It was a bit unconventional, but the homecooked meal was well received. For a vegetable side, she had lightly broiled and seasoned some of the canned asparagus, which was less well received by the children, though Carol was surprised to see Daryl made no protests and ate them contentedly. She couldn't imagine he had grown up with much in the way of vegetables in his house. A lot of southern men, she found, didn't like any vegetable that wasn't deep fried or mixed with copious amounts of bacon and cooked in bacon grease. Ed had been that way.
"You don't mind vegetables?" she asked Daryl, who sat across the dining room table from her, next to Carl.
"Food's food," he said. "And you did somethin' to these. To make 'em edible."
"I just seasoned them."
"Mhm. Well. 'S good."
"Where were you all day, Daryl?" Sophia asked.
"Mr. Dixon," Carol corrected her.
"Was out fishin' in the lake. Caught five. Yer mama can cook 'em up nice tomorrow."
"There are fish in that lake?" Andrea asked.
"Mhmhm."
"So that's where my good pole went. You took it?"
"We got four fishin' poles," Daryl told her.
"Yes, but that one's my favorite," Andrea insisted.
"Didn't see you usin' it."
"Well, I will, now that I know there are fish in the lake. I was busy helping to fortify the fence today."
"I helped too," T-Dog said. "I've done my share of building for Habitat for Humanity."
"Such a good cause," Carol told T-Dog. She smiled at the man. "That was very noble of you." Then she watched to see if Daryl would react with the same grumpy half-jealousy he had earlier this evening.
"Yeah, all them houses sure are comin' in handy now," Daryl muttered.
[*]
After brushing her teeth, Carol stopped by the open doorway of Daryl's room again. She figured if he didn't want her bothering him, he'd have closed it. He was sitting on top of the rumbled blanket of his bed, his back against the headboard, knees bent with his bare feet on the bed, and his elbows resting on his knees as he held a book open between his legs.
"You're reading?" she asked. She stepped inside and sat facing him on the end of the second, neatly-made bed with one foot on the floor and the other leg pulled up and bent.
"Don't sound so damn surprised." He closed the book. "Ain't illiterate."
"I just didn't know you liked to. What is it?"
He slid his legs down flat and turned the book toward her: The Use of Medieval Weaponry. "Found it in the gift shop in the Medieval Kingdom. Figured I could learn something. Can't use guns forever. Run out of ammo. Even if we find a press, gonna run out of powder to reload." He tossed the book on the nightstand. "Ain't you got some place better to be? Dancing with T-Dog or somethin''?"
She chuckled. "If I didn't know better, I might think you were jealous."
"Pffft. Ridiculous," he muttered. He picked at a hangnail on his thumb. "Could of told me ya was planning' to cook dinner with him, though, and then I could of done something else all day instead of fishin'."
"Told you when? You were gone before I woke up, and I had no idea when you were coming back. And we'll have your fish tomorrow. I doubt that's all you did all day, either, was it?"
"Nah. Explored." He chewed at his thumbnail, lowered his hand and asked, "Whatchya want?"
"My three guesses."
He gave her that half-smile of his, where just one side of his mouth curled up. "A'right. Fire away, Miss Murphy."
"Bethany."
"'S a girl's name!"
"I know. You said you were embarrassed by it. So I thought maybe –"
"Nah. Ain't a girl's name."
"Well thanks for that little clue," she told him. "Babar."
"Like the elephant?"
"You know those books?"
"Like I said. Ain't illiterate."
"You also aren't a father," Carol said, "or a six-year-old child."
"Was. Once. A six-year-old child."
"Your mother read those Babar books to you?" Carol asked.
"Nah. But I seen 'em around. School library."
"So it's not Babar?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"Buster?" she ventured.
"Ain't Buster."
She sighed. "Well, I'll cross them off in my notebook."
"Got a notebook?"
"Sure. I don't want to forget and guess the same name twice." She stood from the bed. "Goodnight," she said, and then she walked over, rested a hand on his arm, and bent down to kiss him softly on the forehead.
He flinched when she started to do it. He flinched and then stilled when her lips were against his flesh. She regretted the tenderness, and then thought better of her regrets. He'd been abused as a child. It was instinctive, probably, when someone got suddenly close. She should have warned him.
"Goodnight," she said again softly and trailed her fingertips down his arm as she headed for the door.
"Nite," she heard him reply as she slipped out. "Sleep tight, Miss Murphy."
[*]
Daryl got up and shut his door, watching Carol turn the corner to the upstairs balcony as he did so. What the fuck was that? That kiss. What did it mean?
He threw himself back on the bed and looked at the flickering candles like maybe they could tell him what it had meant.
The candles were mysteriously silent.
Was it an affectionate thing, like a mother tucking in her son? Goddamn, he hoped not. Because if it was, he'd been having some terribly incestuous thoughts. And Carol was only two years older than him. There's no way in hell that's what it was.
Maybe it was an affectionate thing, but like with friends? A friend showing she cares about a friend. Was that what they were now? Friends?
He'd never really had a friend of his own. He'd hung out with Merle and his associates on occasion, but those weren't his friends. They were Merle's. As a kid, he'd hung out with the neighborhood kids on the street. They'd let him. But they let everyone. There wasn't one kid among them that was just his friend especially, that would come over to his house, just the two of them, the way Carol came into his bedroom at night.
Daryl wasn't used to affection from women. His mother had been distant, often drunk, and likely depressed. The only time a woman had ever even tried to kiss him was when he was about to fuck her, and then the kisses had been hard and almost angry. He would always turn her around eventually. He'd never had sex face to face. He liked to take them from behind – it was less intimate that way, less pressure - and no kissing required.
A woman had never kissed him tenderly, pressing her warm lips down on his forehead, as if…as if she genuinely cared about him.
Daryl touched the spot where Carol's lips had touched his bare flesh. The skin was still warm. He explored the lingering mark, as if he were touching his fingers to some track etched in the earth, as if by touching it he could understand it.
[*]
"Did you guess it this time, Mama?" Sophia asked from the trundle bed as Carol climbed into her bed and reached for the spiral notebook on her nightstand. The notebook had a knight on horseback on the cover. The pen she pulled form the spiral had Fun Kingdom written in five colors down it.
"No, not this time." Carol crossed off Bethany, Babar, and Buster. "He said it's not a girl's name."
"Oh." Sophia closed the book she'd been reading. "Sorry I made you waste a guess."
"No, it was a good idea. It was worth a try." Carol clicked her pen close and slid it in the spine. She lay her notebook back on the nightstand.
"When are you going on that supply run with Daryl?"
"Mr. Dixon," Carol corrected her. "And not for several more days. They want to get that fence completely reinforced fist, and Mr. Dixon thinks I should get in some more practice at the range and with a knife before we go. Are you worried about me going?"
Sophia shrugged. "Not really. Daryl will be with you. Mr. Dixon, I mean. I just don't really want to have to deal with Mrs. Grimes all day alone."
Carol chuckled. "Lights out, Sweetie. Time for bed."