Chapter Eight
After learning that Jim had seen his family torn apart in front of him, Rick had insisted that the tormented man come back to the quarry with them. The man didn't exactly agree nor protest; he just numbly followed the sheriff and climbed into the police cruiser when the door was held open for him, a mask of complete indifference shadowing his weary face.
Before leaving Adamsville, Rick and Glenn did a quick sweep of the CVS to gather some supplies, including a can of white spray paint. While Jim sat in the car with his despondent thoughts, Rick made quick work of spray painting a large white arrow pointing east beneath the word "Morgan" on the stop sign at the far corner across from the pharmacy. On the way back to camp, while Glenn went on to raid a town near Mableton, Rick painted several more arrows for his friend to follow in case the walkies didn't work come morning.
Now back at the quarry, he leaves Jim in the care of Carol, Jacqui and Dale and heads toward the southern woods where he was told he would find his family.
Approaching Carl, Kelly and Erin as they chatter amiably while stringing more cans to reinforce the primitive walker alarm system, he catches his sister's eye as she drops a handful of small stones into an empty can of baked beans, preparing it for the line of defense.
"Hey, Rick," Kelly calls out cheerfully, causing Carl and Erin to immediately turn around. The joy that fills their eyes matches his own and warms him greatly. "How'd you make out?" His sister asks.
He sees Erin glance up at the wide-brimmed hat with the noble gold star sitting righteously atop his head. "You got it!" the redhead cheers exuberantly.
He'd never been more proud of his uniform than he was as that moment, standing taller than he'd ever felt as she gazes up at him.
"Afternoon ma'am." Tilting his chin, he lifts the hat an inch or two from his head while giving her a slight chivalrous bow just before Carl leaps into his arms.
Erin gives him a knowing smile. "That's a very nice hat, Rick," she beams, clearly recalling their conversation from the day before.
"Thank you." He can't help the ridiculously wide grin that splits his cheeks as he looks at her over his son's shoulder, shifting the boy to sit more comfortably in his arms.
"Can we go fishing now, Dad?" Carl asks, excitement seeping from every pore of his small body as he clings to his shoulders.
"I don't know. Are you done here?" Rick replies, setting the boy on his feet and looking at the two women for an answer.
"Yeah, as soon Erin ties that one off." Kelly gestures to the forgotten can of beets in Erin's hand.
"Can Erin come with us?" Carl asks Rick and then quickly turns to the woman. "Do you want to come fishing with us?" he asks, inviting her without waiting for a reply from his father.
"Oh, I don't know, bud. Girls are bad luck around fish," Rick interrupts, giving Erin a teasing wink.
"Hey, you owe me," she glares at Rick with laughter in her eyes and a finger poking at his chest. "I woke you up. Remember?"
I'll never forget. "Okay, fine," he laughs, grabbing her finger and trapping it against his chest. "I guess I owe you one fishing excursion for saving my life."
"It's a start," she replies, teasing him back with a playful smile.
God, she's beautiful.
Thirty-five minutes later, the slender 'We-no-nah' sways gently beneath the sun as it floats above the heart of the lake. From his seat in the center of the vessel, Carl casts his line again. On the narrow plank bench behind the boy, Rick watches his son's shoulders droop in an obvious display of frustration. Usually a patient fisherman, Carl seems to be more restless today. Being cooped up in camp all day for the past month must be taking its toll.
"How come nothing's biting?" Carl sighs, tilting his head back and gazing at the sky as if an answer will float down upon him.
"Chill out chief, they'll come eventually," Erin mollifies the boy as Rick sees her staring anxiously at her own bobber as it floats untouched on the surface of the water. "Just be patient and enjoy the peace and quiet," she says with a slight edge of impatience spiking her own voice.
Rick chuckles at her over Carl's head. "Good advice, Red."
"Hey, Erin, how come you don't have any kids?" Carl asks bluntly through the innocence of his youth.
She hesitates for a moment and then answers prudently, "I can't have kids, honey. When I was a teenager, just a little older than you, I was really sick and I had to take a lot of strong medicine to get better. The medicine screwed up my body so now I can't ever have a baby," she tells him and Rick can practically feel the tightness squeezing her heart. "But at least I'm alive to enjoy this day with you, so it's all good." She nods her head with a small smile at Rick, but it's not enough to erase the disappointment that he sees in her eyes.
"That's too bad. I think you'd be a good mom," Carl tells her with the frankness of all his twelve years as he absently dips his fishing pole in and out of the turquoise water.
"I'm so sorry," Rick says softly across the length of the boat, compassionate blue eyes boring into her sad green ones.
"It's okay. It's probably a good thing that I can't get pregnant with the world spinning off-kilter the way it is now anyway."
He nods in sympathetic agreement, but he sees through the brave smile she brandishes to hide the pain.
"Daryl must have been wrong about this spot. There's nothing here at all," Carl complains, shifting the conversation abruptly. "Hey, maybe he'll show me how to hunt with the crossbow someday," he says, changing gears once again. "That would be awesome."
"Maybe," Erin replies. "When you're big and strong like your dad."
"Shane says I'll grow into my balls someday and they'll be as big as his. But Dad's are bigger," he states matter-of-factly as Rick nearly chokes in his attempt to obliterate Carl's words.
"Woah!" Rick bellows as Erin covers her mouth to conceal her laughter. Her eyes dance, kicking the sadness that swam in their depths a moment before. Though he'll gladly take the heat to keep her eyes shining like that, he leans forward to admonish his son. "You shouldn't say stuff like that in front of girls," Rick warns in a low, fairly stern voice.
"But you do have the-,"
"Enough!" Rick cuts him off with a friendly swat to the back of his head, slightly upsetting the craft as it begins to pitch and sway. "Sorry, Erin," he says with a touch of humility. "Let me apologize for my insensitive son." Good Lord!
She lowers her hand to reveal a huge grin. "Oh, no need to apologize, Rick," she says, bright eyes shining with mirth. She brushes her long hair behind her ear in an almost shy gesture and he can practically see the band of heat that has nothing to do with the sun radiate up her chest and neck. Does she want me as much as I want her? Impossible.
Two hours and seven fish later, Rick gingerly climbs out of the boat, stepping on the smooth stones of the shoreline to pull the canoe up the last few feet to rest securely on the rocky beach. Jeans rolled up to his calves, the cool water soaks through to his knees as he turns back to help Carl.
His strong hands grip the boy's waist as Carl steps one foot carefully onto the railing with a hand on Rick's shoulder to steady himself. Without a second thought, he lifts his son from the boat and tosses the boy through the air to land with a giant screeching splash. Carl surfaces quickly in a combination of laughing coughs, threatening to get even.
Ignoring his son, Rick offers a hand to Erin as she carefully moves toward the front of the tipsy, not-quite-moored-yet canoe. A long coil of thick auburn hair falls over her shoulder as she braces herself with a hand on the last seat. Straightening, she wipes her palm against the black tank top hanging loosely over a pair of faded denim shorts and then reaches out to meet his hand. Before they connect, she quickly withdraws as if she'd touched a flaming torch, or just remembered that he could easily burn her if she got too close. "Come on, Red."
"Oh thanks, but I really don't need your kind of help," she laughs with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
"Come on, take my hand. I promise I won't throw you in."
"Get her, Dad!" Carl yells enthusiastically as he bobs up and down in the water like an oversized cork.
"You stay out of this, Chief!" she yells at Carl while her laughing eyes never leave Rick's mischievous gaze. "Rick, I swear – if you throw me in I'll sew all of your stitches back in!"
"Oh, hell no! I promise, I'll be good. Cross my heart," he promises with an index finger making a sloppy X over his chest.
Giving him a warning glare, she takes his hand and carefully steps to the railing. Still glaring, she quickly climbs out of the boat without giving him a chance to do anything drastic. Not that he was going to after giving her his word.
"See, I told you that you could trust me," he smiles sincerely with their hands linked between them, enjoying the feel of her palms against his too much to let her go too quickly. And now that she is on semi-solid ground with her toes in the squishy sand below the knee deep water, she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to release his hands either.
She returns his smile with tender eyes and his heart stutters inside his chest. Then the softness of her gaze shimmers with a sparkle and she grins wickedly up at him, tightening her fingers against his. "Yeah, you're no fun at all." A heartbeat later, he is happily stunned to find himself falling toward the water as Erin tugs hard on his hands, heaving her body backward and pulling him down with her.
As they come up sputtering and giggling together in deeper water, he takes a deep breath preparing to reprimand her and gets a mouthful of water right between his eyes. "That's it!" he shouts, grabbing her shoulders and shoving her playfully back down into the water.
"Yeah!" Carl shouts, happily encouraging his father as he shakes the water out of his hair like a shaggy dog.
"Yeah what, buddy?" Rick turns toward his son, staring at the boy with menacing amusement before he quickly grabs Carl and tosses him in the air to create another big splash.
As soon as his little boy hits the water, Rick feels a larger, softer, curvier body clinging to his back. Long sinewy arms dripping with lake water wrap themselves around the wet gray tee shirt covering his chest. He grabs onto a beautifully shaped leg at each of his hips and falls sideways into the water. Just before they go under, a warm wet tongue fills his ear in the form of the famously childish Wet Willy. And that is the moment he realizes that he is in way over his head - quite literally as they sink deeper beneath the surface of the water, clinging to each other as the world drifts away. But no matter how badly he wants her, he vows to keep it strictly platonic. There's no other way. For her sake.
As his lungs get tighter with the need for oxygen, Rick releases her legs and twists within her arms. They resurface with her thighs still wrapped around his waist, but now facing each other in the chest high water.
He hears Carl splashing directly behind him and notices the conspiratorial nod Erin tosses over his shoulder toward his son. A moment later, her fingers are pulling the neck of his clingy soaked shirt away from his nape as a much smaller hand grips his shoulder. He feels the water slosh against his shoulder blades as his son hoists himself higher, and then something cold and slimy slips into the opening that Erin created at his back.
"The hell?" Rick cries as what feels like a small frog thrashes between his skin and his shirt, searching for a way out. Submerging again, he lets go of Erin's legs as he hastily pulls the back of his shirt out of his jeans.
She leaves him to break the surface for a breath of air and Rick struggles to completely remove his shirt beneath the rippling water. He finally emerges, bare-chested and breathing heavily as he tosses his sopping balled-up tee shirt into his son's cackling face.
The next fifteen minutes are spent splashing, dunking, diving and digging and he doesn't remember the last time his cheeks were this sore from smiling so much.
A lot of it has to do with the beautiful redhead currently carrying his son on her back as they team up against him. He hasn't felt this utterly content in a long, long time, even with one eye on the moody survivalist watching unhappily from the base of the quarry wall.
Freshly dressed in black yoga pants and a pale green tee shirt, Erin drapes her wet clothes over the line stretched between a tree and a cross pole while the boys get changed inside the tent. After straightening out her capri jeans to dry faster in the hot sun, she walks over to the RV in a quest for a much needed water bottle.
Seeing a dark haired man with terribly haunted eyes standing in front of the camper with Dale, Erin assumes this is the man Rick told her about earlier. Dale introduces her to Jim and she offers to get him a drink as well, which he gratefully accepts with a soft 'please'. Returning with two water bottles, she finds Jim alone as Dale walks toward Andrea and Amy at the fire pit.
Handing the man a bottle of tepid spring water, she sees Rick and Carl emerge from their tent across the clearing and feels the flutter in her belly do a backflip, not for the first time.
"He's a good man, your Rick," Jim says solemnly. "You take care of each other," he advises, his dark eyes boring deeply into Erin's.
"Well, he's not exactly 'my Rick', but yes… he is a good man," she replies honestly, slightly uneasy at the intensity of Jim's gaze.
"He's yours. He just hasn't accepted it yet." Jim closes his eyes and tilts his head back with a deflated sigh, the sunlight erasing the shadows on the surface of his features as the ghosts seem to haunt his soul beneath.
"Is that how it was with your wife, Jim? Did she know before you did?" Erin asks softly, hoping to all that's holy that it may help him to talk about his family. When he doesn't answer right away, she regrets her decision and feels even more unsettled with the bearded man.
Lowering his head to look at her once again, his eyes seem a little lighter and a lot clearer when he finally answers with a crooked smile. "No. I knew it first. Took me a while to convince her."
Erin expels the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and gives him a light, compassionate smile. "So how did you convince her?"
"Lots of her favorite chocolate and a very big bottle of wine." He grins nostalgically, sadness shadowing his eyes momentarily before he blinks it away. "My Susie had a sweet tooth with a penchant for a nice merlot," he tells her with a contented smirk as he talks about his late wife.
Erin chuckles softly. "My kind of lady," she smiles warmly. "She sounds lovely."
"She was." He nods thoughtfully as he twists off the cap of the water bottle. "And she was a great mom. The best."
"How many kids did you have?" she asks gently, not sure how far she should push him, but believing that talking about your demons was the best way to deal with them.
After taking a long sip of water and replacing the cap, he looks down, covering his eyes as his thumb and forefinger smooth over the fine hairs of his dark eyebrows. Inhaling deeply, he squares his shoulders and lifts his head as if making a conscious decision not to let the agony of their loss debilitate him. "Two boys. Michael and David. Good kids. Made me proud, every day."
"I'm sure they were proud of you too."
He bobs his head as he looks up at the billowing clouds floating across the bright blue sky, clearly fighting the tears that threaten to choke him. He takes a steadying breath and glances back at her. "I think so."
"They're still proud of you, you know. For surviving. For keeping their memories alive," she tells him with a small lump in her own throat. "As long as you live on… so do they."
"You make it sound so easy."
"No. I don't think anything will be easy ever again. Not for a long, long time anyway. So we just have to make the best of what we have. Right now. And pray that tomorrow we get the chance to do it again," she says as she watches the man of her dreams walk steadily toward her. "And maybe it'll be even a little bit better."