Daryl was absent from breakfast again. The group split up after eating, each with their own plans for the day. T-Dog, Glenn, and Shane were working on the fence reinforcements. Rick was collecting and burning trash. Andrea went fishing. Carol was now washing the dishes from breakfast, while Lori tutored the kids at the four-person table in the breakfast nook.

"Why do we need math if the world is over?" Carl whined.

"Because you're going to need math for all sorts of things," Lori insisted. "To calculate food rations. To build things. That requires geometry."

"Baking and cooking," Carol told them as she hand-dried a plate. There was a dishwasher, but they'd agreed not to use it to save power.

"Can't we just learn it when we're doing that stuff?" Sophia asked. "Why do we have to do all these problems?"

"Because I said so," Carol told her.

"That's a very poorly constructed argument, mother."

Carol set the dry plate down on the stack and plucked another from the sink. "When did you become so sassy?"

Sophia used to be afraid to talk back. She was glad her daughter was gaining confidence in herself, but she wasn't sure she wanted to see what the coming teenage years might hold.

"Sorry," Sophia apologized, but out of respect, not fear. There was no chance her father would overhear, after all.

"Why don't we bake cookies?" Carol suggested. "Why don't we do fractions while we bake oatmeal raisin cookies? We have all of the ingredients."

Carl pumped his fist. "Yes!"

"I don't know," Lori said. "They already had those sugary pears for breakfast."

"You're eating for two," Carol insisted as she set down the last dry plate on the stack and tossed the hand towel on the counter. "The baby wants oatmeal cookies." She disappeared into the pantry, ignoring Lori's protests.

[*]

When the cookies were in the oven baking, with the kids intermittently turning on the light and peeking inside, Carol left Sophia under the watch of Lori.

She went to the balloon popping game booth, the one where you pop balloon with darts, and blew up several balloons and attached them to the board. But instead of using darts, she practiced stabbing them with her knife. They weren't moving targets, but it was something, and she got use to the popping sound, so she wasn't flinching by the end. That would help with firing guns, she thought, or with ignoring the growls of walkers.

After that, she took a long walk around the park. She didn't quite admit to herself that she was in search of Daryl, but she was. She found him at the lake by the Ferris wheel fishing.

With Andrea.

The fact bothered Carol. She didn't know how else to put it. She was bothered to find him fishing with another woman. Not that they were really fishing together, exactly. Daryl was sitting on the rail of the dock, his feet on a lower rung, his pole in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Andrea was about seven yards away, standing, her straw hat shading her eyes, her line cast far. There was a cooler somewhere in the space between them.

It was no big deal, of course. Andrea had fished back at the quarry camp. It's not as if she were seeking out Daryl's company. That stuff Andrea had said about Daryl not being bad looking, and about how it might be fun to have sex with him because he would like it rough and raw…that had only been to make Shane jealous. And even if she had sought Daryl out, it wasn't any of Carol's business. It might be Shane's business, but it wasn't Carol's.

"Hey, Carol!" Andrea cried and then quickly turned her attention to the tug on her line.

Daryl turned at the greeting and nodded slightly.

Andrea reeled in a tennis shoe, took it off the hook, and sighed. She threw it at the trashcan at the end of the dock, where it landed laces down on the planks. "How much trash is in that lake?" she asked.

Up close now, Carol could see seven fish flopping inside the cooler. "I guess we're going to have a fish fry tonight."

"I caught half of them," Andrea noted proudly.

"Yeah?" Daryl asked. "What's half of seven?"

"Okay, I caught the three biggest ones."

"Well, you can scale all of 'em," Daryl told her. "Gonna sit out here awhile longer."

"Suit yourself," Andrea told him. "I for one could use a beer after catching all those fish."

She left her pole leaned in the corner of the dock but plucked up the cooler.

"Don't waste the meat!" Daryl called after her as she walked away. "With your sloppy knife work."

"I know what I'm doing," Andrea called back.

Daryl stubbed his cigarette out on the rail, and then handed his pole in Carol's direction. "Hold this 'fore me a sec."

Carol walked over and took it. He flicked his cigarette butt onto the dock and fished out and lit another cigarette. Then he waved his hand to reclaim his pole, and she gave it to him.

"You're not much of a Boy Scout, are you?" she asked. "Never heard of leave no trace behind?"

"Biodegradable anyhow," Daryl muttered.

"That bottle you threw on the bank the other day isn't."

"Ten people left in the world, dead bodies piled up, dead monsters lurchin' 'round, and you're worried about litter?" he asked.

"Well, like you said, I like things pleasant." She glanced at Andrea's back as she made her way around the bend. "So…given then size of those fish…thirteen from the last two days, that'll yield about six ounces of meat per person?"

Daryl glanced at her with a surprised look. "Yeah. How'd you figure that?"

She shrugged. "Ed used to fish. I'd prepared his catch sometimes. Such as it was." She looked out over the lake. "Nice out here again today."

"Yeah. Was nice and quiet, too, until the uninvited company showed up."

Carol felt like she'd been slapped across the face. She pushed back from the rail. "Sorry, I'm on my way. I was just taking a walk."

"Nah! No! Didn't mean you! Meant Ms. I Caught Half the Fish over there. Likes to run her mouth."

"And I don't?" Carol asked with a smile as she leaned back against the rail again.

"Not 'bout dumb ass shit, at least." He patted the rail beside himself. "C'mon up, Miss Murphy. I'll let you reel the next one in."

"Sitting on a rail? I'm not sure I could reel and balance. I might fall over."

"A'ight, I'll go down then." He handed her his pole, saw her amused expression, and said, "Don't say it."

She chuckled. "But you keep setting me up. How's a girl to resist?"

He put his cigarette between his lips and climbed down to the dock. Then he leaned on the rail beside her.

"Is this what you've been doing since before sunrise?" she asked.

"Nah. Walked the entire train tracks from the Kingdom Depot. Goes through some woods and past this little fake ghost town. Just wanted to make sure it was all clear. We didn't go out there yet."

"And was it all clear?"

"Didin't see no walkers, but I could do some small game huntin' in them woods, without leaving the gates. Grouse. Rabbit. Squirrel. Maybe even some possum. Got to leave the gates for deer, though. Will, in a couple weeks, when there's room in the deep freezer for that much venison. Be gone two days. Maybe three, depending how long it takes me to track."

"You mean you plan to stay out overnight?" she asked. "Alone?"

"Ain't the city or the burbs. Don't need people to have m'back out there. Ain't never more than a few strays in the forest."

"Well, tell that to the horde of walkers that flooded the quarry camp and killed Amy, Jim, and my husband!"

Daryl looked at her warily.

"Sorry," Carol lowered her voice and looked at the line swaying lightly in the breeze where it stretched into the lake. "I just…I worry about you out there by yourself."

"Be fine," he assured her. "Set up an alarm 'round my camp at night."

"What kind of alarm?"

"Cans and barbwire for a perimeter. They jangle, alert you what's comin'. Suggested it at the quarry, but ain't no one listened to me back then." He blew out a stream of smoke over the rail. "Merle was supposed to bring back barbwire from Atlanta, but Slippery Fingers and Officer Friendly left him there."

"You still hold that against them?" she asked softly.

"Not really. 'Cause they both went back with me to get 'em. Willingly. Even though, apparently…Merle might of called T-Dog something not so nice and then tried to beat him up."

"I wonder who would have won that fight, if Rick hadn't broken it up and cuffed Merle?" Carol asked.

"Definitely Merle. But T-Dog wouldn't be bad to have in a barroom brawl neither."

"Did you used to get into a lot of barroom brawls?" Carol asked.

"Merle used to. And me…" He shrugged. "Had to have his back when it happened."

"Did you get into much trouble?"

"Only if you consider the women who got turned on by it to be trouble."

"Oh? Did you pick up a lot of women that way?"

Daryl glanced at her and then took another puff of his cigarette. "That's how Merle's future wife first took serious notice of him. He'd tried to pick her up once before, but…no luck. But one night, she was tending bar, and some asshole just reached out and squeezed her tit. Just like." He waved a hand toward her breasts, glanced at them, and looked away. "Just went for it."

"So Merle was her knight in shining armor?"

"Not exactly at first. 'Cause first, Dixie just," he drew his arm back and mimed a slap. "Straight across the face. Hard. We were at the pool tables cross the way, but you could hear it from there. That guy stumbled off his stool, said something about teach you a lesson bitch, and started opening that swinging door thing, you know, goes back behind the bar. That's when Dixie drew her piece. And that's when the titty groper drew his. And that's when Merle intervened. When the guns were out."

"How?" Carol asked.

"With diplomacy."

Carol laughed.

"Nah, he did at first. Merle can be a real sweet talker in certain company. To certain people's ears. He's got this way about him, you just kind of…listen even if you don't like what he's saying. Enough to get distracted, anyhow. And when the titty groper was distracted, Merle reached across the bar, snapped that gun out of his hand, and pistol whipped 'em good." Daryl laughed. "Damn good, too. Should of seen him holdin' his bloody nose and running out the door."

"So what happened after that?" Carol asked.

"Dixie holstered her piece. Merle kept the one he grabbed from the titty gropper, and then he asked Dixie, 'Wanna come back to my trailer when you get off work and fuck me?'"

"Just like that?" Carol asked. "That sounds about as charming as the titty gropper."

"Ain't at all the same!" Daryl insisted defensively. "A grope's a grope. A grope's sexual assault. Merle was just askin' a simple yes or no question. What do these college kids call it? Informed consent. Hell, the consent Merle got was always straight-up informed. Hell of a lot more informed than what half them frat boys get, I'll bet you."

"Fair point," Carol conceded. "And she said…"

"Sure. Give me half an hour, sugar, and I'll cash out."

"Just like that?"

"Yeah. And Merle told me to find another place to crash for the night and took her home to the trailer. And then when I came home the next day, he told me to fuck off again, which was rare, 'cause usually me comin' back was 'sposed to be his excuse to kick them out of bed. You know - oh, my little brother's home, I gotta deal with him. You best be goin'."

"How efficient," Carol said drolly.

"And then when I came back the third day," Daryl continued, "he said, Dixie's gonna be stayin' with us, you get the couch now."

"I thought you had a two-bedroom trailer."

"Yeah, but she wanted her own room when they weren't fuckin'."

"I can't believe she kicked you to the couch."

Daryl shrugged. "Liked fallin' asleep watchin' TV back then, anyhow, and that was in the livin' room. If I couldn't have crickets and birds, like in the woods…liked the hum of the TV. Anyway, I was only on the couch eight months. They got married a month after she moved in, divorced seven months after that."

"He married a woman he'd dated for one month?" Carol asked.

"Merle was gone. He was just gone over this girl. And then she was gone. Just like that." He snapped his fingers.

"No idea why?"

"Oh, I got an idea," Daryl said. "Merle's a hell of a pain in the ass to live with."

Carol chuckled. "I never would have guessed."

"Guess I am, too."

"Well…we've only been housemates two nights so far," she said. "But so far you're a pretty decent housemate. You do check to make sure all the lights are off at night. But you might consider picking up your bottlecaps off the floor and wiping down the basin after you brush your teeth. How much toothpaste do you use anyway?"

"How you know that wasn't Sophia?"

"I know. And…" She shrugged. "You might leave notes."

"Notes?" His face was all confusion.

"When you're going out. So people know where you are. Just a little note on the fridge. Went fishing. Be back at three."

"How in the hell am I s'posed to know when I'll be back?"

"Okay, then just write – went fishing."

"Who the hell cares where I went?"

"It's just reassuring," Carol said. "So people don't worry."

"Worry?"

"About…Never mind. Forget I mentioned it." She had a tug on her line anyway. She reeled it in, but it was only a can of soda. "Litter bugs," she muttered as she unhooked it.

"That wasn't me," Daryl insisted.

She threw the empty soda can toward the trashcan at the end of the dock, where it landed on the dock, rolled, and hit the bottom of the can. "Got anymore jerky bait?"

"Nah. I ate it. Got hungry. Didn't eat breakfast. Or lunch."

"Well let's go round you up some grub then." But before they left, she picked up the empty soda and put it in the trashcan.

Seeing that, Daryl walked to the grassy bank, recovered his Corona bottle from the other day, and put it in the trash can, too. "Happy now?" he asked.

[*]

When they got back to the house, the kids were playing on the wide asphalt pathway with skateboards they'd snagged from one of the many gift shops and Andrea was scaling the fish on one of the tables outside. T-Dog was helping her.

Glenn was also on a skateboard, showing the kids how it was done. He was wearing a dark red baseball cap with a castle embroidered on the front as he came zooming down the slight slope in the pathway, past Daryl and Carol, and then jumped the board up onto the low stone rail of a tree bed, rode the rail, and jumped off.

"Shit!" Daryl muttered in surprised admiration. Then he smirked. "That impress the chicks?" he called to Glenn. "Back in the old world?"

Glenn smiled as he hopped off the board, slammed the tail of it with his foot, flipped it, and caught it. "Sometimes."

"Enough to get you laid?"

"Well…" Glenn flushed.

Daryl chuckled and kept on walking.

Rick and Shane were inside the house, standing on opposite sides of the counter, each with a beer, when Carol and Daryl stepped into the living room. They were arguing.

"You don't have to be so damn protective of her," Rick was saying.

"Well maybe you should be a little more protective of her, did you ever think of that?" Shane asked. "Your indifference – your distance - it's one of the things that strained your marriage in the first place!"

"Oh, did she tell you that while you were looking out for her while I was in the coma?"

Carol glanced up to the balcony and saw the door to Rick and Lori's bedroom was closed. Maybe Lori was napping.

"I was trying to do right by you, Rick. I was trying to do right by you by looking out for your family. I knew you wouldn't want them to – "

"- Is that why they thought I was dead?" Rick hissed. "Because you were trying to do right by me? Is that why you're always hovering over my wife now? Telling her to rest, take a load off, put her feet up. Go take a nap, Lori. Because you're trying to do right by me?"

Daryl and Carol exchanged a wary look. Neither man seemed to have noticed their presence, they were so engrossed in their own heated exchange.

"I am trying," Shane said thinly, "to make sure she has this baby safely."

"Oh?" A line jumped in Rick's jaw. "And why is that, exactly?"

Shane took a step closer to the counter and put both hands down flat on it and stared at Rick. "You haven't even fucking considered it have you? What might happen if she miscarries."

"It would be sad, yes – "

"-It wouldn't just be sad, Rick. Dr. Jenner told you. He told you!" Shane slapped the countertop. "We all have this thing inside us. All of us. And when we die, we all turn. So, if that baby dies inside her?"

Rick's mouth dropped open. Carol gasped. She hadn't thought of it. She hadn't considered it. Daryl's eyes flitted to hers as if maybe this was the first time it had occurred to him too. Rick looked over Shane's shoulder and seemed to notice them for the first time. He took a step back and ran a hand over his mouth.

"It wouldn't turn," Rick insisted as he dropped his hand. "She'd miscarry it, it would come out, and then it would turn."

"If it did come out," Shane said. "But remember that silent miscarriage she had four years ago? And how it didn't come out? Not on its own. Not without a hospital intervening."

Rick breathed in. "It's way too small to hurt her. At eight weeks, it's not even more than an inch."

Carol caught Daryl's eyes again. He'd said at eight weeks. Rick had rejoined his family less than three weeks ago.

"Now, maybe," Shane said, not seeming to notice Rick's confession of knowledge. "But it's way too late for a morning after pill."

The door to the bedroom upstairs creaked open. "What's all the yelling down here?" Lori asked as she stepped out, her hair matted from sleep.

"Just debating about the supply run next week," Rick called up to her. "Who should go. Shane said he didn't want to go after all. So, I will. You go back to sleep, honey. Get your rest. You need it. I'll wake you for dinner."

The door clicked shut again.

[*]

Daryl had an electric light on tonight. He'd figured out he could dim the one on the wall over the nightstand, so he didn't feel like he was wasting too much electricity to use it. He sat on his bed, back against the headboard, sharpening the blade of one of his bolts.

He glanced toward the door he'd left wide open as a not-so-subtle invitation, but there was no one in the hallway. It was getting late. And it wasn't that she was in the shower, either, because he couldn't hear that running.

Maybe she wasn't coming tonight.

It wasn't a guarantee. That she would. He couldn't take it for granted.

He heard a creek in the hallway and immediately returned his eyes to his bolt. He pretended not to hear the creek near, or to notice when she slipped inside.

[*]

Daryl was engrossed in sharpeneing the blade of his crossbow bolt and didn't notice her when she sat down on the bed opposite him, so Carol said, "Hey."

He looked up from his work. "Hey yerself."

"Crazy day, huh?" she asked.

He laughed. "Yeah."

After the fight between Rick and Shane, Daryl had seized one of those ice cream cones with the nuts and chocolate from the freezer and promptly disappeared, walking away as fast as he could, re-emerging for a dinner that would have been tense if not for Andrea and T-Dog's friendly joking with one another and Carl and Sophia's impressed blather about Glenn's awesome skateboarding skills. After dinner, he'd gone out for a smoke, and not come back until the stars were out.

"Do you think it really might turn in Lori, if it didn't come out?" Carol asked him.

"All humans turn when they die, according to Jenner. Ain't never seen an animal turn, though. So a fetus…depends. Guess it's an existential question."

"Well, it's a human fetus," Carol replied. She smiled. "Existential?"

Daryl chuckled. "Four whole syllables."

Carol's smile faltered. That was Andrea who had said that, back in the nursing home, about Daryl using a word with three whole syllables. He and Andrea had joked about it a few times since. "That's your inside joke with her. With Andrea, not with me."

Daryl looked up with confusion crinkling his brow.

Had she sounded jealous? "Andrea's all right," Carol said hastily.

"Never said she wasn't. Just runs her mouth too much."

"She contributes to the group. More than I do."

"How ya figure?" Daryl asked.

"She fishes. She's been on actual supply runs. She can shoot better than me."

"Can she?"

"Well, maybe not anymore," Carol conceded.

"You're hella useful," Daryl told her. "Contribute in spades. Cook for us. Do laundry. Sew. Wash dishes." He smiled. "Make a bed real nice, too."

Carol loved his smile when it was genuine like that. It was so subtle, so gentle. So understated and yet…It was adorable is what it was. "I wasn't fishing for compliments," she lied, because, in truth, maybe she was. "Bjorn," she guessed.

"Pfft. I look Swedish to you?"

"You do have a bit of a Viking quality about you," she teased with a smile. "Bernardo."

"Bernardo? I look Italian to you?"

"It's a Hispanic name. It means bold as a bear. Which you are. In some things. Not so much in other things."

"Like what other things?" he asked.

"Things," she said vaguely. Like trying to kiss her, which he hadn't done yet, even with all the hinting in the world that she wouldn't mind if he did.

Maybe she had overestimated his interest in her. Or maybe he was just too shy to do anything with a woman that didn't involve bending her over his motorcycle and hiking up her skirt in some dark alley after he'd gotten into a barroom brawl that had turned her on. Not that he'd ever claimed to have done that, but that's what Carol pictured him doing.

Last night, after Sophia was dead asleep, she might have pictured him doing it to her.

Not that she really wanted him to do that to her. She didn't want it rough like that in real life, but in her sexual fantasies, she did. In her real-world wishes, though, she mostly wanted a kiss, wanted to know what his lips might feel like on hers, wanted him to want to kiss her. She wasn't sure, exactly, when the flirting had ceased to be a game to her and she'd begun, very much, to want a response.

"I only have one more guess for tonight," she said. "I better make this a good one." She tapped her lips with the tips of her fingers. "Boyd."

"Why would I hate Boyd? Boyd is a bad ass name. Wish my middle name was Boyd."

"Well," she said. "That's it for my guesses. But after all…" She put on her best Scarlett O'Harra impersonation, "Tomorrow is another day."

He looked confused by her accent.

"Gone with the Wind?" she asked. "It's a line, from Gone with the Wind. You've never seen it?"

"Ain't that a chick flick?"

"I suppose it is. And frankly, you don't give damn."

"That was Rhett Butler," he said.

"Aha!" she smiled and pointed an accusatory finger at him.

"Ain't seen it! Just seen the clips. From the movie shows and shit."

"Oooh….Butler! For your middle name."

"Thought you was rationing yourself to three."

"So, it is Butler?"

"No, it ain't Butler. You ain't never gonna guess, Miss Murphy. That baby's all mine."

"All right, Rumpelstiltskin," she said as she stood. She walked over to his bed, and this time he didn't flinch. He seemed almost to be anticipating her kiss when she bent down and pressed her lips against his warm brow. She pulled away. "Goodnight."

"Nite," he murmured, and when she glanced back at him in the doorway, he was chewing on his hangnail and watching her. She smiled once, slipped through, and shut the door behind herself.