…

They didn't talk about it over dinner – not wanting the kids to ask endless questions when neither Daryl or Beth had any answers yet to give – but as they cleaned up, they talked about it. Daryl was right. It was a really good promotion and it came with a really nice raise. In fact, when Daryl told her just how much he was going to be making yearly if he took this job, Beth admitted that she felt the floor shift slightly beneath her.

They did just fine now honestly. Daryl worked for GE and that was an international company. His health insurance and benefits were fantastic and he made $55,000 a year, which, where they lived, with such a low cost of living, it was truly an amazing yearly salary to have. They had two children, yes, so they weren't exactly rolling in the dough but they always did just fine. More than fine in their humble opinion.

But if they moved to Bennington, West Virginia, Daryl's responsibilities and job role would grow and therefore, so would his salary. Julie had told him that the starting offer was $68,000. "She said that was negotiable though," Daryl added as if he would dream of asking for more.

Together, they got Olive and Chris bathed and changed into their pajamas and they were allowed to play for one more hour before they had to be put to bed. Beth and Daryl didn't talk about it in that time though Beth sat on the couch, on her laptop, reading up on the state of West Virginia and the small town of Bennington in the southwest corner of the state as Daryl sat on the floor with their kids, playing with them. Moseley had finally come out of his hiding spot and the Beagle was now curled up, sleeping at Beth's side, as she scrolled through the pages on her laptop and rubbed the dog with her other hand.

When Daryl bought this cabin six years earlier, it had the large room downstairs consisting of the kitchen and living room with the bathroom built off of that. And upstairs, there was one large, open lofted bedroom. Beth got pregnant with Olive and neither wanted to move. They loved the cabin in the woods too much and Daryl was the sort who could solve problems like this so that's what he did. The loft was big enough where Daryl could split it into two bedrooms and knowing that he and Beth wanted to give Olive a little brother or sister – eventually – one of the bedrooms was for Olive and the other was for the baby that wasn't there yet. On the ground floor, he then built a bedroom addition for him and Beth and now, with the four of them, the cabin still had all of the room they needed.

On the real estate website though, Beth was looking at any and all houses for sale in Bennington, taking Daryl's raise in account. She wasn't going to look for a house that would blow a budget out of the water but she wasn't going to look for a house that was so below what they could afford, it would be an endless fixer-upper. She and Daryl could buy a nice small house in, what looked to be, a nice small town.

Daryl was right about West Virginia. It was a beautiful state – the only state to be completely covered with the Appalachia Mountains and was popular among tourists who enjoyed hiking, camping, hunting and other outdoors kind of activities. But it was also one of the poorest states in the country. More people moved out then moved in and in the past few years, more people in the state died than had been born. They were also low on the lists for healthcare and education.

But no state was the perfect state, Beth reminded herself as she continued her research.

"Alrigh'. Bed time," Daryl told the kids, standing up. He swooped Chris up into his arms and began ushering Olive towards the stairs. Beth began to set the laptop aside and stand up, too, but Daryl stopped her. "Nah. You keep doin' your research. I'll be back."

"Are you sure?"

Daryl ignored that and began heading up the stairs, Olive in front of him.

"Good night, mama!" Olive called out to her with a wave.

"Night, mama!" Chris echoed.

"Good night, you two," Beth smiled at them both. "Sweet dreams. I'll be up in a little bit to kiss you both," she promised.

When she heard them first go into Chris's bedroom, Chris telling Daryl that he didn't want to go to bed – as the boy told his parents every night – Beth followed Daryl's instructions and resumed her research. There was so much to research. This wasn't just moving to a different part of Georgia – which would still be a big move. This was moving to an entirely different state and already, just the idea of it and everything she and Daryl would have to do to make that possible was just a little bit overwhelming.

She had only moved twice in her life and that was all within the same town. First was when she went to college and moved out of the Greene farmhouse into her own little apartment. And the second was when she moved from the apartment into this home with Daryl. She didn't know how to move across states.

She was knee-deep on a realtors website when Daryl joined her on the couch.

"What do you think about this one?" Beth asked him, placing the laptop onto his lap without even waiting for him to make himself comfortable.

There weren't that many houses for sale within Bennington so she had widened the search to the entire county. Some of the houses she found were very cheap – and with good reason, she quickly learned – but then, other seemingly simple houses were surprisingly more in the six-figure range and that was because they came with land; usually a lot of land.

"Wanna go for a ranch?" Daryl asked, looking at the white one-story house with gray shutters and a teal painted front door. He knew that the door color was the reason Beth first clicked on this one. Looking to the map, he saw that it was just inside Bennington; the house more rural than the already rural town.

"I think so, yes," Beth nodded. "I like the idea of it for a reason I don't know. Three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, an attached garage. I'm super excited at having an actual garage, I'm not going to lie."

Daryl smiled a little at that as he went through the pictures. It looked lived in but not worn down or neglected. It wasn't too bad and they were a family of four with a Beagle. They didn't need some house with thousands of square space that would go unused. There was an unfinished basement where the washer and dryer was and Daryl brought the laptop closer to his face so he could take a look at the pictures of the heater/air conditioner unit and the water heater. Neither seemed to be in too bad shape. The basement being so empty – no frills – it would offer plenty of play space for Olive and Chris if they couldn't go outside that day and would also give them plenty of storage, too.

Beth loved holidays – especially Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas – and they had plastic containers stacked in the shed outside filled with all of her decorations for each.

Once there were all of the pictures of the inside of the house, there were pictures of the out. He saw that it came with its own generator and backup water tank, which were both good things to have because God knew what could happen when out in the country like that.

He glanced down to see that the house sat on about three acres of land – a long blacktop driveway from the road that curved through the trees before coming to the house, a bit of flat backyard for the kids and Moseley – and beyond that, woods; woods that stretched on and on, far past what might be their land.

"Olive'll like that," Daryl noted at the small stream that cut through the property.

"I like that the house has a one-out-of-ten chance of flooding," Beth pointed to another of the house's stats.

"'s a lot of land to maintain," he commented though they both knew he loved the idea of owning land.

"We could always hire a bit of help if we need it."

Daryl looked to his wife with a smile. "Look at you. Found out your husband is gettin' a raise and you're already thinkin' of ways to spend it," he teased.

And Beth knew he was just teasing her because she was smiling but she blushed, too, and elbowed him gently in the side. "Stop." She took the laptop back, propping it against her thighs. "I am so proud of you, Daryl. This is such a big deal – that higher ups in your company think of you – and I hope you see that."

Daryl didn't answer. He knew it was a pretty big compliment on the job he did in the warehouse; that Julie, his boss's boss would think of him to run an even bigger warehouse with bigger responsibilities but he didn't want to say it out loud. He could still hardly believe it, to be honest.

"You 'member when I first got the promotion at this warehouse?" He asked her instead. "You came to see me when you had a break from school and you helped me figure out all of the paperwork."

Beth smiled, remembering the memory well, and she rested her head on his shoulder, nestling close. "And now look at you. A job transfer. A raise. Warehouse leader."

"You wanna do this?"

She didn't answer that right away. She looked to the house's page still open on the real estate webpage and then she looked to him. "This is such a good opportunity for you, Daryl, and I think this could work for our family. I think we have to do this, don't you? Do you want to do this?"

Again, Daryl didn't answer but there was only one answer he thought of giving and he and Beth had been together long enough for her to be able to peek in and see it for herself.

With the faintest smile, she leaned in and kissed his cheek, close to the corner of his mouth.

"Then let's do this," she decided in a soft voice with the same smile.

Daryl looked at her for a moment, staring into her eyes because he could peek into her mind, too, and know what she was truly thinking and feeling, and then, he leaned in and gave her a soft kiss on the lips.

He was then the one to click the "Contact the Realtor" button.

…

They agreed to not tell either of their families of what they were doing. They wanted to see Bennington, West Virginia with their own eyes before making a final decision. Daryl asked Abraham if he could have a couple of days off to go check things out – he had vacation time built up but there was still a party of him that always felt guilty when he actually used it – and neither he or Beth told Olive and Chris what they were doing either. Their kids liked to blab everything and haven't learned to keep secrets and the last thing they needed was one of them mentioning "West Virginia" to anyone they knew.

Although they shared no blood between them, Beth and Daryl both thought that the kids got that from their Uncle Glenn because everyone knew that he could not keep a secret to save his life.

Hershel, Maggie, Shawn and Glenn just assumed they were going up to Kentucky for a long weekend and though Beth felt bad for keeping this from them, she let them assume and didn't say one thing or another.

(She didn't want to think about how any of them would be when she and Daryl made an official decision.)

They loaded the car up and brought Moseley, too, because the motel they were staying at in Bennington allowed dogs under a certain weight and both Beth and Daryl wanted the dog's opinion on a house, too. The drive from their house to Bennington was going to be about six hours and Beth made sure that Olive and Chris had plenty in the backseat that could, at least attempt to, occupy them for that time.

As Daryl drove, she hummed along to the radio, checked on the kids and read the book on West Virginia that she had bought from the bookstore in town. Daryl didn't really believe in shoving screens in front of kids' faces but for Christmas, Beth's family had bought both kids iPads and Daryl, begrudgingly, admitted that when it came to road trips, it did the trick and Chris could watch movies and Olive played memory games – one of her favorite things to do – and she could even color pictures using her finger.

They stopped at rest stops as they worked their way north –mostly for the kids and Moseley but for Beth, too, because she had drank an entire thermos of coffee before they even crossed the Georgia border and his wife had a bladder the size of a thimble.

"It's so beautiful," Beth said at their final rest stop of the day, this one in Virginia, before crossing into West Virginia and reaching their destination of West Virginia. The first time Daryl and she had driven up to Kentucky to meet his family, she had promptly fallen in love with this part of the country and now, she and Daryl and their family might be living here all of the time now.

Trees grew all around them, some of the leaves beginning to change colors in accordance with the nearing autumn season, and the air felt crisp and clean in their lungs. After seeing to all of their businesses, Moseley was running around as he and Olive chased one another, both girl and dog stretching their legs, and Beth was quick to stop Chris from wandering into the parking lot. For some reason, the boy loved walking towards moving cars.

She swung him up and promptly handed him to Daryl to hold, who had just come back from inside, emptying his own bladder.

"It'd be a mess if you died out of state like this," Daryl told the boy. "We'd have to drive your dead little body back home and do you know how hard that would be on us?"

Chris just smiled though and rested his head heavily on his daddy's shoulder, he more than ready for sleep.

"Come on, Olive. Come on, Moseley," Beth called out when they had stayed for a bit. "We have to get back on the road!"

Moseley came obediently, running back to the car, and he jumped right into the backseat, Beth smiling and giving both of his floppy ears a good rub. Olive was the one to drag her feet.

"I'm tired!" She whined.

Daryl had fastened Chris back into his car seat and then pulled himself from the car. "Well, stayin' in some rest stop ain't gonna help with that."

"Will Clemmie have biscuits for us?" Olive asked as she permitted Daryl to put her into her own seat.

Clementine was Daryl's cousin – one of his many cousins – and anytime they visited the Sparrow family, almost all of them still up in Clay County, Kentucky, she always had fresh buttermilk biscuits for the Dixon family when they arrived.

"Not this time, baby," Beth said and then gave her a kiss on the head. "Maybe where we're going, they'll have biscuits for us to try."

Olive frowned at that. "Where are we going?"

"Told you we were goin' on an adventure," Daryl reminded her as he got himself settled behind the steering wheel again. Beth hadn't offered to drive – both knowing that it would be a waste of breath on her part. Daryl always liked to drive – no matter the distance. "Don't you wanna go on an adventure?"

"No. I wanna go to bed," she pouted and crossed her arms over her chest, sticking her bottom lip out.

If there weren't any biscuits waiting for her, it wasn't much of an adventure.

…

They arrived in Bennington just as the sun began creeping down behind the rolling of the mountains that the town was nestled in and Beth leaned forward with excitement, wanting to get her first look at everything.

The small "downtown" area was typical of a small town – a bank, doctors' office, police station, the fire station, an insurance office, a diner. Thank goodness. A coffee shop, too. A couple of second-hand stores. A few churches. A sign pointed in a direction for the library and Bennington School. American flags hung from every lamppost on the main drag of road and on the exposed brick wall of one building, there was a painting in memorial to the coal miners of their community.

Daryl found the Black Clay Motel with no issue and pulled into a spot in front of the front office, a red neon sign that said "OFFICE" glowing in the window. There was an in-ground pool surrounded with a fence and covered with a heavy tarp, closed for the season. Each door – painted pink – had a porch light next to it, giving everything a warm bath of light.

"Alrigh', I'm gonna go check us in and after we get our things in the room, we'll find somethin' to eat," Daryl told them all – mostly Beth – the plan.

They both looked to the backseat. Olive was still pouting about not being in Kentucky and not getting biscuits and Chris was sleeping, his head resting against the side of his car seat and not knowing they were anywhere. Beth then looked to Daryl and gave him a smile.

"I'm excited for our adventure," she let him know and Daryl smirked a little even though that was exactly what he needed to hear – without even realizing it – and he leaned over, giving her a kiss to let her know.

…

I kept going back and forth on this one. One-shot or add to it. One-shot or add to it. So here we are lol

THANK YOU very much for reading!