The other half of the search party clamors up the stairs of the porch and spills into the cabin, weapons ready, and lowers them when they see the scene. "Is he all right?" Henry asks.

"He's going to be," Enid replies.

Cyndie makes her way past Henry and into the center of the room. "Well," she tells Rosita, "it looks like you won't have to send out the eradicators tomorrow morning after all."

The hunter Marcus comes in, belatedly behind the others, a dead bobcat strung about his shoulders. "I was right about it being a bobcat trail at least," he tells Daryl.

"These woods must be infested with them," John says. "At least one of us snagged one."

Henry helps to make a stretcher from blankets they find in the cabin and small branches he and Cyndie saw from a couple of trees. While they work, John insists he can just limp home.

"'S probably four miles," Daryl says. "Get on the damn stretcher. 'Sides, yer drunk now."

Daryl's demand is probably a good thing, because John passes out for a good three miles of the hike. Back inside the gates of Alexandria, Julie is waiting anxiously for her ex-husband and hugs him after Daryl helps him to his feet. John leans heavily on his good leg and hugs back hesitantly for a moment, draws away, and asks, "Don't you have someone's bed to be in?"

Julie steps away with a sigh. "I am happy to see you alive, John. Why did you go out all by yourself? You know - "

"-You don't get to nag me anymore." John looks around at the weary search party. "Sorry for the trouble I caused." He limps off toward his trailer.

Henry walks Cyndie back to the dorm where they both live, and Carol trails after John to ask if he'd like to stay at their cabin tonight. "In case there are any complications."

"Thank you for the generous offer, but I'll be fine."

"You scared people disappearing like that," she tells him as he draws to a stop by his trailer stairs. "I know you're hurt, emotionally, and maybe you don't really care all that much right now whether you live or die, but other people do. Daryl does. Your son does."

John nods. "Point taken." He opens the door to his trailer. "But I'll be fine, really."

"Dinner tomorrow then? At our house?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'd appreciate that."

[*]

Daryl and Carol stop by Barbara's cabin where Henry deposited Hershey, but as he's fallen soundly asleep on the couch after an evening of playing with Barbara's kids, they decide not to disturb him. "I'll send him home after breakfast tomorrow," Barbara promises.

In their own bedroom, where Merle jumps up on the bed and curls himself at the foot, Daryl lights the fire as Carol changes into her warm flannel pajams. "Did you get a chance to talk to Henry?" she asks.

"Got interrupted," he mutters. "Talk to 'em tomorrow."

Daryl lets that little white lie slip because he's tired. So very tired. The relief at finding John alive has unwound his tension, but that tension took a lot out of him, and he just wants to sleep. He knows if he tells Carol what he knows, she'll be up half the night worrying aloud.

But when she settles into bed and pushes back against him, like she does when she wants to be cuddled, and he obligingly slings an arm around her, he begins to feel guilty. "Did talk to 'em," he admits. "Jessica's knocked up."

"What?!" Carol sits up abruptly, turns up the oil lamp – and looks down at Daryl.

Daryl sighs and drags himself into a sitting position. "Ain't Henry's."

"Who's is it then?"

"Dunno. But she 'n Henry only had sex once. Last week when we was there."

"And she already knows she's pregnant?" Carol asks doubtfully.

"'Zactly."

"Maybe her period didn't start when she expected, and she only thinks she's pregnant. Maybe it will start in a day, or maybe it already has since she wrote the letter, and this will all just be a false alarm."

"Or maybe she's knocked up by some other guy," Daryl suggests. "'N she knew 'fore she pushed Henry to go all the way."

"She pushed him?" Carol asks.

"Mhmhm. 'S what he said. Didn't seem to be lyin'."

"Or maybe she doesn't think she's pregnant at all," Carol speculates, "and she just wants to get her talons in Henry. He's a pretty good catch. He's loyal. He's gentle. He can hunt. He can fight. He's a good-looking young man." She covers her face with her hands and growls before dropping them. "What did he say he was going to do?"

"Didn't say."

"What did you advise?" she asks.

"Told 'em to talk to 'er. Find out what the hell's really goin' on."

Carol throws herself back on the bed, settles her hands on her stomach, and says, "I thought she was too dumb to be so conniving."

"Ain't exactly the most brilliant plan. Dumb ass bitches do it all the time."

"All the time, huh?" she turns her head to look at him.

He settles on his side, his head on a hand, facing her. "Ain't never happened to me," he clarifies. "Happened to Merle. Happened to my daddy, too."

"What? You mean, Merle was only your half-brother?"

"No. Nah. Not my mama. Some other woman after my mama was dead. He married her, too. 'N then kid came out half black."

Carol blinks. "What? You had a stepmother?"

"Nah. I's twenty when he married her. I's long gone. An old friend of Merle's from the neighborhood called 'em 'n told 'em our daddy was 'n jail for smackin' his new wife up when he found out he wasn't the daddy. She called the cops on 'em. Pressed charges. My mama never did. He wanted bail money."

"And did you bail him out?"

"Hell no. Just left 'em. Heard he ended up spending six months in the slammer, but we never saw 'em again. 'Cept in his coffin. Same friend of Merle's called us when he drank 'emself to death."

Carol sighs, rolls toward him, drapes an arm around him, and kisses him gently. She presses her forehead against his. "Life's better than it's ever been for either of us, isn't it?"

"Mhmhm."

"At least it was until this Henry mess." She draws back and shakes her head. "I'm disappointed in him. He said he was gong to wait."

"Don't be. Kid wants to do the right thing. Can't spect 'em to be too smart 'bout woman. Ain't never had one 'fore."

"I'm going to ride over to that Kingdom and see that wo – "

"- No, ya ain't. Yer gonna let him handle it."

Carol sighs again. "I hate it when you're right about parenting things."

"'Sides, election's comin' up soon. Can't leave now. But I'll go with 'em when he goes."

"Thank you." Carol kisses him again. She rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. "I'm going to be up all night now."

"Mhmhm."

She throws off the blanket and stands. "Might as well get some work done." She pads across the wooden floor and heads out the door.

Daryl rolls over toward the fireplace. That wasn't so bad. She's going to be up, but she's not going to be pacing around him. He closes his eyes, hears Merle whine once, and then drifts off to sleep.

[*]

Carol finds Henry and Jacob depositing their kill – another bobcat - at the butcher's table the next afternoon and asks to speak to him privately. Looking uneasy, Henry follows her to a picnic bench beside an oil-can bonfire that still flickers faintly from earlier when someone was lunching there. "Sit down," Carol tells him.

"Do I have to?"

When she raises an eyebrow, he plops himself on the bench, and she takes the bench on the other side. Her suede-coat clad arms on the cold table, she leans forward, "You told me you were going to wait."

He sighs. "Daryl told you everything?"

"Of course he told me."

"I tried to wait," he says.

"You can't let someone pressure you into doing things you don't want." Carol always imagined this was a conversation she would have with Sophia, not with a son.

"Well…I can't honestly say I didn't want it."

"Things you've determined not to do for very sensible reasons, then."

"Look, I'm sorry. I did what I did and now…" He shakes his head. "Now she says she's pregnant. Do you think Daryl's right? Do you think it's not mine?"

"What I feel like is that I've done a terrible job with your sex education. And like maybe our new Director of Education needs to expand the biology curriculum."

"I know how a woman gets pregnant," he insists.

"So you know the egg can be fertilized within a few minutes, or it can take up to five days? And you know that implantation occurs five to ten days after that? And you know it's not very likely she can be sure she's pregnant by you a week after you had sex?"

"I don't understand why she'd lie," Henry says somewhat despondently.

"For the reason Daryl said, maybe, or maybe because she just wants to get you to marry her. Has there been any talk of marriage between you two?"

Henry traces and indentation in the wood with his fingertip. "She asked me if I thought I'd get married someday, and I said, yeah, maybe when I'm twenty-one or twenty-two."

Carol asks a question that makes her very uncomfortable, because she's half afraid the answer is yes. "Henry, do you love this woman?"

"I don't know. I mean…I like her. But I don't think about her that much when we're not together. The way I think about – " He stops suddenly.

"Cyndie?"

"Enid."

"Enid?"

"I know she's with Alden. I know that. And he's way older than me, and she doesn't want some kid like me, and she's probably going to marry him. I'm not an idiot. I gave up that idea. But ever since I was fourteen..." He trails off. "Anyway, it doesn't matter."

"I thought you liked Cyndie."

"I do. Just not like I like Enid. I like a lot of women. I could probably manage to be happy with just about any woman. If she didn't lie to me."

"Even if Jessica wasn't lying to you, do you think you could be happy with her? Living with her? Being family with her?"

"I don't know," he admits. "Maybe? Mom, I want to do the right thing. I wish someone would just tell me what the right thing is."

Carol extends a hand across the table and pats his. "You're going to have to figure that out on your own."