Andrea has a baby boy that is the spitting image of his father, except for the eyes, which are as of yet a gray-blue, like Judith's. Lori looks away from his little Shane-like face and the thick crown of dark brown hair that covers his head.
"Dale's adorable," Rick tells Andrea and then thinly purses his lips and glances down at Judith in the snuggly across her big brother Carl's chest.
"Ain't that adorable," Daryl tells Carol privately later that night over their little dinner table. "Big ass nose for a little baby. And what's with the fro?"
Carol chuckles. "The fro?"
"All that damn hair. Looks like Elvis, if Elvis had a big ass nose."
"Most of the hair a baby is born with is lost in the first six months. For all we know, he'll be bald in three week."
Daryl looks at her doubtfully. "They lose all their hair, and their eye color changes?"
"Most of their hair. Not all of it. You act like you've never seen a baby before."
He shrugs. "I was the baby."
She smiles. Then her smile falters, because she knows he was treated like the baby, showered with love. "Someone's got to tell them they're half siblings eventually."
"Well he's gonna know T-Dog ain't his daddy."
"So you see romance brewing there, too?" Carol asks him.
Daryl, who has been slurping the remaining broth from his bowl of stew, lowers it to the table. "What?"
"Andrea and T-Dog. You haven't noticed?"
Daryl shakes his head.
"Well, I think it's only a matter of time before he's no longer on the couch in that houseboat. And then maybe the baby Dale will be in the living room in his crib instead, when he's a little older."
"Good for him!" Daryl exclaims. Pushing back his chair, he stands and grabs his bowl. "Man needs to get laid something awful."
"Well, I don't think that's happening anytime soon."
"Said it was a matter of time." He takes her bowl, with the spoon resting in it, and bring them to the sink.
"She needs six weeks to recover form the birth before she'll even be thinking about that."
"Six weeks? Damn. Glad you got your tubes tied."
Carol stands and pushes in her chair. "You wouldn't want a baby if I could have one?"
Daryl turns and leans back against the sink. "Can babysit Judith and get our baby fix whenever we want."
"And you do want your baby fix," she tells him as she comes over and hooks a finger through one of his belt loops.
"Long as it's Judith. 'Cause she is adorable."
"Don't play favorites, Pookie. You need to be a good uncle to both babies." She kisses his cheek.
"Yeah, a'right. Long as little Shane don't turn out as cocky as his daddy." He jerks his head toward her bedroom. "Wanna fool around?"
"You aren't even going to try to seduce me first?"
"Brought you that fox," he reasons.
"And I cooked you that fox stew."
"Well it was a damn good stew. I'm seduced."
She laughs. They do make love, and afterward, as she spoons back against him in the tiny bed, she says, "Sleep here tonight." He often goes back to his own cabin on the boat because the quarters are so cramp, the bed so narrow, and because they both likes their space. She likes the independence of her own room, the power of inviting him into it and closing him out of it. She was never allowed – or at least never had the courage - to close Ed out of her bed. "It's cold."
That's because they haven't lit the wood stove, which heats the whole houseboat. But they won't need to do that for much longer. Even tonight, the blanket of Daryl's body is enough.
[*]
One night, when Daryl is on watch, he sees Beth slink off the houseboat she shares with Hershel and walk to one of the empty boats further down the dock, a flashlight lantern painting the planks of the dock before her steps.
Ten minutes later, there's movement down the ramp from Glenn and Maggie's boat. It's Jackson. He hasn't turned on a flashlight, but Daryl can tell by the way he moves.
The next morning, when he sinks into the forest with his nephew to hunt, later than usual because he overslept after his time on watch, Daryl says, "I hope you wrapped it."
"What?"
"With Beth last night." Daryl walks forward. All around them, the forest is beginning to green again.
"I wasn't trying to be an asshole," Jackson says as he falls in step beside his father. "But Beth kept offering. And Michonne doesn't seem interested in me that way. I mean, sometimes I think she is. Sometimes, like when we went on that run together the other day, there's this…" He shakes his head. "I'm probably imagining it."
"Never said you were an asshole. Just said I hoped you wrapped it."
"But I am an asshole. I don't really want to be Beth's boyfriend, and I showed up anyway, just because I'm horny and it's been…it's been a long time."
"But you did wrap it?" Daryl asks.
"Gee, when did you become such a dad?"
"Don't need no more damn babies 'round here."
"It didn't come to that. She changed her mind." Jackson sighs. "Halfway into making out."
"Damn."
Jackson shrugs. "Her prerogative. But that blue balls thing is no joke. She said she still wants to have sex with me. But she wants us to date for at least a month first."
"Date?" Daryl asks. He looks up as a Goldfinch soars overhead.
"I think she just wants a boyfriend, really. A high school boyfriend type. But I'm not in high school anymore. I wasn't when this started. And…I don't know. I told her we should just be friends, and then she started crying, and I felt like an asshole. I was an asshole. I shouldn't have gone to that boat in the first place. I wasn't thinking about her feelings. And she's a sweet girl, she really is. She deserves a boyfriend who's really into her. I wish I was."
"Least you were honest."
"Finally," Jackson murmurs. "At least I was finally honest."
"You got a conscience. Ain't a bad thing. But don't beat yourself up with it. Can't be distracted. Got other shit to focus on." Like the sudden sound of a twig snapping.
Jackson takes off the safety and chambers a round in his rifle, but Daryl has already fired his crossbow at the walker that now rounds a tree. His bolts thunks into the creature's forehead, and it crumples to the forest floor. "Didn't have one chambered already?" he scolds Jackson.
"Like you said, I've been distracted."
Daryl recovers his arrow and searches the walker's pockets. He slips a pack of cigarettes and a pocketknife in the pocket of his leather vest. Not that he needs another pocketknife. He's got thirty by now. But he always takes them. You just never know. And he'll need to pick the best one to give to Judith one day. Dale can have the second best one.
Jackson pulls out the once-man's wallet. He looks at the driver's license. He always does that. Daryl doesn't know why. He doesn't understand why Jackson would want to know their names, but it's an odd ritual of his. The young man reads the name aloud: "Thiago Morales."
"Morales?" Daryl asks. He looks at the lightly decayed body on the ground. The walker is freshly turned, a week maybe. When they parted ways at the quarry, Morales said he was taking his family to Birmingham, to find relatives there, relatives who had some kind of compound. But Birmingham is over a hundred miles form here, and there's probably a lot of people named Morales in the world. "Give me that wallet."
With a raised eyebrow, Jackson hands it over. "There's nothing worth taking."
Daryl rifles through the wallet and pulls out a family photograph. It's the walker-turned-man on the forest floor with some woman and a baby. Then there's another photo of two little kids. They're younger, by about two years, but it's them, no doubt – Eliza and Louis Morales. "Damn!"
"What?" Jackson asks.
"Must be Uncle Thiago. Or a cousin or something." He begins to walk along the trail of the walker.
Jackson steps quickly to catch up. "Whose cousin?"
"We ain't hunting today. Gonna follow this trail. See where this walker came from."