It doesn't take long for the folks from the mainland to settle in, although Beth notices a distinct pattern in how the Americans blend into the existing island residents. Hilltop disperses like dandelion fluff in the wind, only families staying together much at all. Alexandria clumps up a bit, but there's no cohesion to them either, not with their old leader so recently dead and Carol new to leading them. The Kingdom? They take over a neighborhood to stay together yet assimilate so easily and happily that Gillain comments it feels like they've always been here.
Grady, though, they follow Carol to dot along the hillside below where Beth and Shane's little cottage is. The cottages were a trio of vacation rentals, once upon a time, and Beth isn't surprised one bit when Daryl and Carol accept her invitations to them. Carol looks upset that Maggie wasn't included, but wisely, she stays out of it.
Glenn and Maggie stay in a small house down in Davy Hill. There's less than a mile between the sisters now, but most days, Beth feels like it might as well be as far as between Montserrat and Georgia. They've been on the island a month now, long enough for mid-July to become mid-August.
Closest Beth's been to her sister since the journey here is what Maggie's doing right now.
"She do that often?"
Pausing in hanging laundry on the line stretched across the sunny area of the yard shared by the trio of cabins, Beth glances over her shoulder. Sure enough, Maggie's slipped up the hill again and settled in the chair on Carol's porch. Sighing, Beth returns to the chore, enjoying the monotony of the task.
"Every day I rotate off."
Neither Michonne nor Beth feel comfortable leaving Andre and Judith in the crèche meant for everyone's children while they work. It's not mandatory, and technically, Beth could probably sign off to be a full-time parent. But she wants - needs - to finish her medical training, so it is easy enough to rotate the adults' days off so that between the five of them, the smallest prison survivors are always with a parent.
Those three days Beth takes off every week? Maggie ends up on Carol's porch every single one of them. Never any closer, and Beth isn't about to bridge the gap. Maggie's the one in the wrong here, and Beth's days of bending to Maggie's will to keep the peace died with their father.
Shane sighs, and from the crease between his brows, Beth thinks maybe she should have mentioned it before now. But the guilt Shane feels about the ongoing silence between the sisters was already deep enough without adding to it. He squares his shoulders, though, leaving it to her like he promised, and reaches for a towel to help her hang the laundry.
"You're home awfully early. Something happen?" she asks, curious. It's not even lunchtime, and Shane was scheduled for a scavenging run to one of the other islands. He doesn't look upset.
"Broken rudder on the boat we were taking. They're hauling it into dry dock, but didn't need all of us for the repairs. We'll head back out tomorrow." He clips a shirt on the line, one of Judith's tiny blouses, tipping his chin toward where Andre is playing in the sandbox Daryl built for him. "Judith napping?"
Beth nods, hanging the last bit of laundry up, a shirt of Shane's worn soft and silky, which is now her favorite nightgown. "Up on the porch."
Ignoring their audience, she drapes her arms around Shane's neck and draws him down for a sweet and teasing kiss. It's easy to get him to linger after, exchanging little nips and kisses. He's aware she's taunting her sister, but one of the things she loves about Shane is that he doesn't mind helping her get a little revenge. Maggie flaunted her relationship with Glenn for years, so it's Beth's turn now.
His hand slides between them to cup against her belly. Her pregnancy still isn't widely known, despite being well past the risky period. The loose blouses she favors to cope with the Caribbean summer heat hide the gentle swell of her baby bump even at twenty weeks. She covers his hand with one of her own, smiling.
"Baby being a wiggle worm today again?" he asks. The fluttering of movement Beth can feel but Shane can't fascinates him. So far, they aren't strong enough for him to feel yet, but it's just a matter of time.
A choking gasp from across the yard makes Beth smile. The ugly, spiteful part of her coils happily, remembering those signs looking for Glenn while assuming Beth was too weak to survive. She could have told Maggie she was pregnant, or bypassed her sister to tell Glenn, but she hadn't. Letting Maggie enjoy the attention of her pregnancy might have been her initial desire, but as time passed, Beth just didn't think she deserved to know.
Moving away from Shane, Beth turns just as Maggie reaches them. She's smaller than her sister, always has been, but she's spent months training her body for strength and agility. Catching Maggie's arm and spinning her away from the slap she was trying to land on Shane is easy compared to the grind of martial arts she's put herself through.
The spin Beth sent her into tumbles Maggie to the ground, and she shrieks in protest. "You could have hurt me!"
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Maggie?" she growls out. Not that she needs an answer. Maggie's dislike of Shane hasn't abated, and landing a blow on a man who won't strike back? That's just how Maggie is.
"Is that why you married him? Because he got you pregnant?" The mix of gossipy delight and scorn in Maggie's voice makes Beth feel ill. "This isn't like back home, where you have to be a good little girl and marry for the sake of a kid."
Everyone else sees how happy Beth is with Shane, but Maggie? She just can't seem to wrap her head around it.
"No. I married him because I wanted to, and if you'd done more than stalk me and sulk, you could have seen photos of our wedding."
Just like back home, where her parents' wedding photo hung with pride in their living room, Beth has her favorite framed in the cabin's main room. It's not of the wedding itself, but a shot of them dancing afterward. There are plenty of the others in an album, and everyone's seen them now except Maggie.
Maggie's eyes narrow as she gets to her feet, dusting off her hands. With her nurse qualifications underway, Beth ought to feel bad about the tumble Maggie took, but she's moving easily enough.
"Shane? Why don't you take Andre and Judith inside for a bit? He could probably use a bath."
It makes Beth love him that much more when Shane doesn't argue. He just goes to coax Andre inside, which is easy enough with the promise of playing in the water. Maggie watches suspiciously as Shane lifts Judith's entire playpen to carry it inside.
"Aren't you just the handy little housewife," Maggie snaps, drawing Beth's attention back to her. She's flexing her hands in the fabric of her loose cargo pants as Beth watches. "Doing his laundry, raising his kid, popping out another. Guess he needed to see all the things he missed by getting another man's wife pregnant, huh?"
The venom practically dripping off Maggie's words makes Beth feel more tired than angry.
"So much hate for a man you don't even know." Beth sighs softly, resting her hands across her belly. "I took care of Daddy when he lost his leg. I raised Judith so no one else had to give up what they wanted to do. Maybe my life isn't one you want to admire, but it's the one I choose to have. There's nothing shameful in it, and if you can't see that, if you can't respect that I love Shane, then just go home and leave me alone."
Maggie blinks a couple of times, swallowing hard as she stares at Beth's hands. "We're family. You choose him over me?"
"You act like you didn't choose Glenn over me a long, long time ago."
Giving up on the conversation, Beth turns to head into the cabin, only to be halted by Maggie's hand gripping her bicep. "Don't you dare name that man's baby after Daddy."
Funny enough, Beth hasn't really begun to consider names for the baby, and honestly, it feels like a heavy burden for a child to bear. If Hershel had lived, maybe it'd be different. She isn't admitting that to Maggie, not when her sister is leveling orders at her like she has some sort of say in Beth's life now.
"Guess you best hope it's not a boy then, yeah? I'm thinking Hershel Shane Walsh sounds like a mighty fine name."
Maggie grips her arm tighter and gives Beth a little shake. "Don't you dare," she hisses.
"I'll dare all I like. He was my father, too, and unlike you, he understood that people can be redeemed from their worst moments." Snatching her arm away from Maggie, Beth strides away, only looking back when she reaches the porch. "Go home, Maggie. Poison your own life with your bitterness, not mine."
Shutting the door behind her is a relief. She can hear giggling from the bathroom, with enough splashing to tell her there's probably more water on the floor than in the tub, but that's just fine. This is her life now, her family, her home. What Maggie chooses is not Beth's to worry about, not anymore.
Shane loves the routine they fall into after they bring their family to the island. The only real pushback on him and Beth is from Maggie, and after the spat they had when Maggie realized Beth is pregnant, he hasn't seen Maggie at all. Glenn comes around, officially to visit Carol or Daryl's cabins, but Shane hasn't missed that Glenn always takes five minutes to play with Judith and say hello to Beth.
Honoring Beth's request to leave it be, he concentrates instead on his own sibling. Even after all their mistakes, all the hurt and pain, Rick is still his brother. Shane got lucky and came out of the worst of it better off than he was back at the farm. That same luck hasn't favored Rick.
Snagging two beers out of his fridge, he presses a kiss to Beth's hair where she's sitting with Carol, patiently following Carol's knitting tutorial. If the lesson happens to contain as many tips about alternate uses for the sharp knitting needles as actual sock making, he isn't going to comment. Judith is sitting on the floor, doing her best to force a plastic square block into a triangle on her shape sorter, paying the adults around her no attention at all.
Beth snags him before he can head for the door, gripping his wrist and bringing his hand down to rest on her stomach. At six months along, there's no hiding the pregnancy under loose shirts anymore, but she knows he can't get enough of feeling the baby move. The steady thumps against his palm make him grin, and he looks up to see both Beth and Carol smiling at him with those soppy sweet expressions that make him want to squirm and preen at the same time.
"Going to see Rick?" Beth asks, rubbing her thumb along the back of his hand.
"Yeah. Gonna help him repaint the living room that shade of mint green Carol wants."
Carol laughs, the sound more natural than the brittle laugh she had when they first reunited. "It took me a week to talk him out of painting it red, since that's my favorite color. There's too much of a good thing when it comes to turning the entire room fire engine red."
"I'll make sure he got the right color and isn't planning a surprise, then," Shane notes. Since Beth's already interrupted her lesson, he leans in for a quick kiss, not surprised when she runs a hand through his curls before setting him loose.
"Me kiss Dada!" Judith demands, getting to her feet and tumbling her way into Shane's knees. He lifts her with ease with one arm, keeping the beer in his other hand, and presses a kiss to her plump cheek as commanded. Her return kiss is wet and leaves his cheek a little sticky, but he doesn't mind. Considering he once thought he'd never see her, he'll take all the slobbery toddler kisses he's offered.
"Bye bye, Mama," she waves at Beth. "Bye bye, Arol."
"Oh, so you're going with Daddy, little miss?" Shane asks. "Gonna help me and Uncle Rick paint?"
"I don't know that Carol wants to see how her living room turns out with Judith helping," Beth says, looking amused.
"Maybe next time, princess. Daddy needs you to help Mama with her knitting, alright?"
At first, Judith screws up her face in the tell-tale beginning of a tantrum, but something he said catches her attention. "Me help Mama?"
Beth catches on quickly, reaching down for a spare ball of yarn. Waving the soft bit of blue fluff, she pats the couch next to her. "Gotta sit here with me and Auntie Carol if you wanna knit, baby girl."
Judith pitches forward so quickly Shane has to drop the beer bottles into the chair next to the couch, but he gets her safely next to Beth. By the time he's repeated the goodbye kisses pressed to their hair, Judith has a good four feet of yard unraveled, babbling happily about helping. He takes advantage of the distraction to snag the beer and slip away.
He finds Rick waiting on his porch and passes over one of the bottles of homebrew. There's a handful of experimenters on the island, all trying to come up with good brews that mainly get called beer because of the yeast added to the process. Today's bottles are sugarcane beer, and the taste may be nothing like what he drank back home, but it's the ritual he enjoys.
They sit on the steps in the evening sun, sipping quietly. Months on the island have settled Rick enough that Shane can almost close his eyes and imagine they're sitting on Rick's back steps in King County, with Lori and Carl bustling around inside. Many an evening was spent that way, and Shane's missed it. So much has changed since then, but what Shane likes most? Rick's hands are finally steady when he lifts his bottle to drink.
"Carl and Sophia down at the beach party?" Shane asks, realizing the house behind them is awfully quiet. Neither teenager came out to greet him, which is unusual.
"Yeah. Daryl and Michonne took Andre down there, too."
The kids will be just fine on the island without adult supervision, but it's nice to know there's family down there with them. He finishes his beer and flips the swing top back in place to return the bottle, taking Rick's when he passes it over and setting them both down next to the steps where they won't get broken. Rick doesn't get up immediately, seeming lost in thought. Waiting him out is easier these days for Shane, who learned the value of silence in the months on his own.
"I'm going to ask Carol to marry me."
Startled, Shane turns to look at Rick, who is studying his feet instead of looking at Shane. Whatever is going between Rick and Carol is unique, he knows. He can't really call it an open relationship, because only Rick seems to wander down to the occasional parties that seem to always end in hookups not all that different from Friday and Saturday nights back in Georgia. Shane has seen Rick wandering back in the early hours, though, so he never stays overnight, and Carol seems content and aware of Rick's wanderings.
"Why get married?" he asks, puzzled. It's not like there's someone frowning over them living in the same house, and as far as Shane knows, sharing the same bed.
"I just…" Rick trails off and finally looks up. "I need her."
Rick's never been eloquent, but this is worse than normal. Shane drapes an arm over Rick's shoulders and drags him in for a hug. "Have you talked to your therapist about it?"
"Yeah." Leaning into Shane's side, Rick signs deeply. "We even do couples therapy."
Shane chuckles at that, because Rick sounds a bit perturbed by it. "How's that going?"
"Well, there's a lot less questions about our sex life once we told him there wasn't one." Rick finally moves away from Shane. "He says some people need definitions and some don't, so if I need that official tie, it can't hurt to ask Carol. But that I should be prepared if she doesn't need or want the same label."
It makes sense, Shane supposes, that Rick would need to label his obvious devotion to Carol into something that fit his old world sensibilities. "If you need me to make the kids scarce some night, just let me know, alright?"
Rick nods and gets to his feet, glancing over at Shane's cabin with its scattering of toys near the front steps. Judith and Andre tend to push the various toys around and leave them all over, roaming between all the cabins as if they live in all three. In a sense, they do, eating supper wherever they happen to be when the meal hits the table, and sometimes sleeping wherever they tip over at the end of the day.
"I'm glad you're getting all the milestones this time. All the ones you should have gotten with Lori." Rick smiles at Shane, warmth reaching his eyes amidst the regret. "Beth makes you happier than I've seen you since we were kids."
"Yeah. I really am the happiest I've ever been." Clearing his throat, Shane motions toward the cabin. "Now let's get this living room painted before our ladies decide it's just an excuse to drink beer and hide out."
Chuckling, Rick leads the way into the house, shoulders straight in a way they haven't been in a while, and Shane knows they're both in good places again finally.
It's not just Beth that makes Shane feel like his chest might burst most days from just too much positive emotion. It's Judith and Carl growing up happy and joyful. It's Rick finally putting on weight and looking less wild animal and more like the brother Shane's always needed by his side. It's everything good he has here, all his family. It's hard to believe it's only been a year since he found Beth hiding in Atlanta, but he's blessed that something led him there that day.
Happy feels damn good.
A/N: One chapter left to go... almost done with their journey. :)