Ever since Michonne left, Daryl had somehow found himself partial guardian to two children – Judith and RJ. Now he was their sole parent here in the Commonwealth, the man of the house, such as the house was – a rundown apartment with music thudding above and below them at night. And Judith wanted an allowance. A fucking allowance.

He hadn't agreed to it yet. His job was far from settled. He had a million suspicions about this place, the mayor, Mercer, all of them. There were a lot of things he didn't like about the Commonwealth, but there was one thing he did – the kids liked it here. Judith had said as much. And they were safe here. No Negans, no Alphas, no walkers tearing the walls down. No near starvation. Whatever Daryl couldn't stand about this place, he would learn to tolerate. He would play the game and tow the line and keep his head the fuck down – because if he did, he could afford to keep them here. He could pay the bills. And they could have a chance to be kids for once in their lives.

They were latchkey kids, of course, like he had been, but they were better equipped for it, and when their father figure came home, he wasn't drunk of his goddamn ass. He didn't drink at all, though liquor was available. He had the kids to think about. He didn't spend a cent on himself beyond what was necessary.

Today, when Daryl returned from work, Judith was in the process of capturing RJ's flag in a game of Stratego on the makeshift coffee table—an old barrel turned upside down. As the kids began putting the pieces away, Daryl slid the necklace he'd bought at the market. It had a cat for a pendant, and Daryl knew Judith loved cats. "Got somethin' for ya."

Judith's eyes lit up as she pulled herself into a standing position and came to look at it. RJ helped her put the necklace on, and her face broke out into a great big smile. "Thank you, Uncle Daryl, thank you!" She threw her arms around him.

"Got anything for me?" asked RJ, tilting his small head.

"Subtle," Daryl murmured. "But yeah." He fished into the front pocket of his shirt and handed RJ a plastic egg. "I used to love this shit."

With furrowed brow, RJ cracked the egg open and pulled out the soft pink putty inside. "Gee, thanks, Uncle Daryl, but…what is it?"

"Silly putty. Here get the newspaper."

RJ brought over the newspaper that bore Connie's front-page article. Nothing about the recent ruckus at the fancy pants painting reveal event. Maybe Connie was learning to keep her head the fuck down, too.

He showed RJ how to press the silly putty down on the print and peel it off to reveal the duplicate on the other side. The kid had never seen a photocopy machine, so it was magic enough. "Wow! Let me try!"

Soon RJ was on his knees by the barrel table, flipping the page and then pressing down the other side of the silly putty. Meanwhile, Judith had run to the one mirror in the apartment, which she had to stand on a chair to see herself in. She lifted the necklace around her neck, tilted her head left and then right, and admired her image.

"Look beautiful," he told her, because little girl should have someone to tell her that. Little kids should have someone to tell them they weren't just an underfoot, useless piece of shit. And maybe that's where the urge to buy them gifts had come from – his memories of Christmas. It was a lot closer to Halloween than to Christmas, but Christmas was the one time a year he didn't feel like his father hated him.

On Christmas morning, the unfinished floor beneath the forest-hewn Dixon tree overflowed with presents Will Dixon couldn't possibly afford. Half of them had probably been bought with questionable sources of income and the other half with even more questionable sources of credit, but it was a point of pride in those backwoods for a man to be able to fill the space beneath and around his tree. The more shit he gave his kids at Christmas, the bigger a man he was.

Over the years there were plastic Big Wheels, squirt guns, cap guns, pop guns, dart guns, lawn darts (Daryl almost lost a foot with those), plastic paddling pools, dart boards, bows and arrows, dominoes, marbles, Hot Wheels, punching bags, and on and on. Most of the stuff Daryl got one year would be broken or lost or stolen or sold in a flea market by the next, but when he was a boy, that floor beneath that tree was never bare. And Mama's stocking was always stuffed to overflowing with those little bottles of booze and lotto tickets.

If Daryl liked giving gifts, maybe it was because he still remembered what it felt like on Christmas morning to see those presents beneath that tree – like maybe his daddy really did care about him, like maybe things would be different from now on. They never were. But he remembered what the hope felt like, before the glorious Christmas morning melted away into the drunken, angry, same old New Year.

Given what he got each Christmas, Daryl had imagined that the kids in the middle-class houses in the valley beneath his mountain must have had entire living rooms full wall-to-wall of Christmas presents. It wasn't until he was in his twenties and he'd done some painting work on those houses that he realized that maybe that wasn't quite how it worked, that maybe if you didn't buy a lot of useless shit, you had more money to buy groceries and pay the electric bill.

In exchange for some choice motorcycle parts, Daryl had once painted the interior of the house of a mechanic who worked in the same shop as his father. Joe Mason had to make about the same amount of money as Will Dixon, and he had two young kids, but he lived in a nice middle-class house. There were no empty beer cans or liquor bottles in his living room. He only had one vehicle in the driveway, instead of a pick-up, a motorcycle, and two useless cars on blocks. There were no dirty clothes in the corners. No cigarette burn holes tore up the fabric of the couch, no legs had been kicked off the coffee table, and the backs of the kitchen chairs weren't broken and bent. Last year's Christmas gifts did not lay muddied, abused, and strewn across the yard. If that man had not worked with his father, it never would have occurred to Daryl that Joe Mason didn't have some white collar, easy-money job. It was the first time Daryl had ever considered that maybe his own poverty wasn't caused by lack of money.

After he painted Joe Mason's walls, Daryl started to pay more attention to where his money went. He'd buy two or three fewer beers every time he went out with Merle. He switched to a cheaper brand of cigarettes. He'd save and hide money in his boots, and within three years, he'd saved up enough for a small down payment on his very own trailer. That was when he finally told Merle about the money. He told his big brother he was done roaming from town to town and job to job, that he was going to settle down, and Merle could live with him if he wanted, or he could keep roaming by himself.

They lived in a one-bedroom efficiency apartment at the time, and Merle had the bedroom while Daryl slept on the living room floor. The next morning, Daryl woke up to an empty pair of boots. Merle apologized and said it was the stripper he'd brought home who stole it. "She must of snuck out when I was passed out." Daryl believed him back then, even after Merle's drug dealer suddenly stopped hounding him for money owed, because he'd wanted to believe him.

He didn't believe it now. But what he did believe now, as Judith smiled and twirled before the mirror, and RJ held that silly putty up to the light and looked at the printed words with wonder, was that even though he didn't have a lot of money, he wasn't poor.

THE END