AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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When the summer was on its way and starting to settle around them, Daryl took the winter wheat to market. As promised, it brought a much greater income than the spring wheat had brought and, finally, Daryl seemed to be able to breathe easier.

Merle offered Daryl cheaper labor than any other worker might. For enough money to buy pussy and whisky on his days off, Merle would work a full week. With Hershel and Jo keeping him housed and fed, he had little need to buy anything else. So Daryl put his brother to work.

The cabin was going up—one way or another—before winter fell on them and forced them all into the lull that being half-frozen caused everyone and everything. So Daryl poured all the extra time and energy that he could scrape together into working toward that goal. If he wasn't taking care of the other ins and outs of the farm, he was working on the cabin.

Despite the good income that the wheat brought, Carol had kept her job at the general store. In the mornings, she would get up to do her chores before Daryl even woke. Then she'd prepare his breakfast and make sure he was fed and ready to start his day. As soon as he was out the door, Carol would have her own breakfast and leave something for the midday meal that both her husband and brother-in-law could enjoy. Sure that everything was done and ready for her to go, Carol would saddle Jubilee and head to town with Toby, once he was finally big enough to keep up and understand that his job was to follow her, running along beside the horse.

Carol earned her ten cents an hour doing a variety of jobs around the general store. Mr. Wagner had seen fit to leave many of the decisions to Carol, and she handled the stock as well as the books while Mr. Wagner mostly stayed around to chat with the customers and stand in as a figurehead for the store. He took to Toby from the first day that the dog accompanied Carol, and because the dog was so well tempered, he let him sleep in the corner of the store on a few scrap rugs. Mr. Wagner boasted to everyone that Toby was the official store dog and he was there to greet them all. And for his work, Toby earned a treat at the end of each day that Mr. Wagner fed him before Carol rode back toward home.

In her free time, Carol had stopped by the schoolhouse and borrowed books. What had started as something that would simply help her kill some of the quiet moments of the day—reading her way through a school primer—had led to Carol slowly working her way through every book that the local teacher had to offer.

Carol devoured them one after another at a pace that seemed to shock the schoolteacher.

In her own youth, Carol had loved school but hadn't had the chance to finish it. Her teacher had left before she could get too far and they'd never found anyone to replace her. The small town that Carol had called home didn't think it was all that important that the children kept up with book learning beyond some reading and some ciphering, so they'd eventually simply gone the route of closing the school.

It hadn't mattered, though, because by then Carol was married. And married women, she'd been taught then, had no need for learning. It was especially true since her husband certainly hadn't seen a need for learning much of anything.

But things with Daryl were different.

Carol had learned that Daryl didn't know much in the way of books. He could read a little, as long as the words were small and time was abundant. He could, however, cipher well enough that he could handle numbers in his head that impressed Carol. A pencil and paper in his hand, though, and he couldn't well demonstrate what his brain was capable of doing. Still, he didn't find book learning to be useless or insulting when someone else was doing it—he simply had never done it himself. But he liked to be read to, and he appreciated when Carol would sit at the table at night and read to him, from whatever book she had, after he'd eaten his supper.

Daryl didn't have much use for reading and writing. Most of what he knew, he stored up in his brain and he never felt the need to write it down—if he could write it at all, which Carol wasn't so sure about. He was good enough at storing it up, too, that he had very little need of going back to learn it again. Once it was in his head, Daryl had a way of holding onto it.

Everything that Daryl wanted to learn, he learned with a thirst. Anything anyone wanted to teach him about the farm—or anything he might could do with the farm—he consumed in something akin to a frenzy. He gobbled up information about what they would do, and what he planned to do, and he shared it all with Carol over their meals. And then, when it was time to rest, he let her read to him.

Daryl liked that Carol was learning. She heard him telling Merle about it when Merle came around to work. Daryl seemed proud of her learning. It was as though her learning was his triumph over something. His wife could read as good as anyone could—every bit as good as Hershel. His wife could cipher as good as if she worked at the bank. She could write, in Daryl's mind, clearer than even the press could print the paper that she sometimes brought to read to him when Mr. Wagner was done with reading it.

So Daryl fully supported her when she told him that the schoolteacher, Ms. Sutton, had asked her if she was interested in taking the tests that went with the books she read—just the same as if she were a student—so that she could say that she'd completed school as well as anybody else had. Carol, honestly, had been afraid to take them. She'd been afraid that she'd fail at them and then she'd be left with nothing more than the necessity of facing the facts that she wasn't as clever as she thought she was—and she was every bit as dull as she'd been told she was before. But Daryl had convinced her that it was a good idea. She'd read the books and she knew what she read. She wouldn't fail the tests. He'd promised her that. And if she did? It wouldn't change anything, because she'd still be the smartest person that he knew, and she'd still earn ten cents on the hour for all the work she did at the store.

She had nothing to lose and a good deal of bragging rights to gain.

In the end, too, Daryl had given Carol the confidence to take the tests. She left work early on the days she went to take the tests and, leaving Jubilee tied outside and keeping Toby under the desk where she worked, Carol filled out her papers in the quiet schoolhouse that children had abandoned some time before.

One by one, and a good deal quicker than she would have done it as a child, Carol moved through the grades. Finally, the day came when Carol was able to say that she had completed school. She knew all that she could know, too, because she'd read every book that Ms. Sutton had to offer her. And some of them, even, she'd read more than once.

Carol was proud the day that she came home, and having brushed Jubilee down and put her out to graze, told Daryl that she'd finished all the tests that she had to take—the fastest that Ms. Sutton said anybody ever had—and she'd finished school.

But it was Daryl who'd looked the proudest. And he'd worn that pride clear through eating his supper that night. The look on his face, really, made Carol feel prouder of herself than just knowing what she'd accomplished.

"You could do it to, you know, Daryl," Carol insisted. "If you wanted to. All you gotta do is read the books and I could get Ms. Sutton to give you the tests."

Daryl shook his head at her and worked at sopping up everything left on his plate with one of the biscuits she'd made.

"I ain't cut out for that stuff," Daryl told her. "I mean I don't know nothin' about all that stuff."

"I didn't either," Carol reminded. "Not most of it. Not until I read the books. I didn't just—know it. Not all by myself." She shook her head at him. "Really there was nothing I ever knew until I did."

"I can't even read all them books," Daryl said, his mouth full of biscuit. "Not without you helpin' me. I know what you read me, but I couldn't read it on my own." He laughed to himself and coughed around a piece of the biscuit that he must have gotten sucked back in his throat. He washed it down with some of the water that he was drinking. "Hell—couldn't write the tests neither. My writin's just a step above makin' my mark."

"I could teach you that," Carol said. "I know what there is to know now, Daryl. I know all the stuff that Ms. Sutton knows. I could teach you about reading and writing. Right here at the table. Every night we just do a little bit. And eventually? You'd know how to do it all too, Daryl. The reading and the writing. And you could take the tests."

Daryl studied his empty plate long enough that Carol finally offered him something more to eat. He shook his head.

"Was just thinkin'," Daryl said.

"You want to tell me about what?" Carol asked. "Or it isn't any of my concern?"

"If I didn't learn it all, and I didn't take them tests," Daryl said, "would it bother you? That I didn't know all them things that you know? Would you—hate to be married to me 'cause I didn't know it and you was knowin', all along, just how much I didn't know?"

Carol shook her head at Daryl.

"I could never hate being married to you," Carol said. "I promise you that. I haven't hated it a day since we got married. And I just don't see a way that I would wake up some morning and decide that I did. I thought you might like takin' the tests because you seem so proud that I took 'em. That I—got all the education I could get. I thought you might want that kinda pride for yourself. But—I'm gonna love you just the same, Daryl, whether you can ever write more than your own name or not."

"Proud of you 'cause it made you happy," Daryl said. "And you done it. Even though you was tired sometimes, you still done it because it's what you wanted to do. But I don't want'cha bein' ashamed of me 'cause you got a husband that don't know nothin'."

Carol reached her hand across the table and rested it on Daryl's.

"You know how to double up the cows we got in a year," Carol said. "How to—build us a real good house that anybody in town's going to be jealous of. You know how to—get the wheat in the ground at just the right time to have it growin' like weeds for harvests." Carol shrugged her shoulders at him. "You know how to be the best kinda husband that anybody could ever have. And I don't count those things among knowing nothing, Daryl. I count them just as important as anything I read outta any of those books."

A hint of a smile appeared that just barely turned up the corners of Daryl's lips. He nodded his head at her.

"By winter we might be in that house," Daryl said. "Maybe we don't spend the whole winter there, but we'll spend at least part of it there. It won't be near as nice as what Hershel and Miss Jo got, but it'll be nice enough. We can work on it. Make it better. But it's somewhere to start."

Carol smiled at him and nodded her head.

"As long as it's warm enough to get us through the winter, Daryl, it'll be good enough for me," Carol promised him. "And I know you're building it nice for us. I know how much—how much care you're putting into it."

"Gonna be our home," Daryl said. "Supposed to be."

Carol laughed to herself.

"And it will be," Carol said. "Just like this house. There's nothing wrong it, either, you know? It's a home. But so will be that house. Just bigger. Anywhere we go, Daryl, it'll be our home. Long as we're there together. I could live in the barn, Daryl. Sleep in there with Nugget and Jubilee. With Toby and Shadow. Just as long as you were there? And I believe I could be happy. I believe it could be a home, if we needed it to be."

Daryl shrugged his shoulders gently. Carol had learned, by now, that it was his way to say that he was thinking about something. That there was something he wasn't saying. He wouldn't say what it was, either, until he was good and ready to come out with it.

Whether he came out with the whole of it or not, Carol couldn't be sure, but it didn't take him long to speak again.

"Might be havin' us some kids one day," Daryl said. "Couple young'uns. This house ain't big enough for us all. The new house, though—it oughta be pretty big. If it ain't—we can make it bigger. But to start? It oughta be pretty big."

Carol swallowed and nodded her head. She squeezed her fingers around Daryl's arm.

"It'll be plenty big," she assured him. "It'll be just right. Come on, Daryl—let's get ready for bed. I finished school today, after all, and I think that calls for some kind of present, don't you?"

Daryl looked at her with question in his eyes.

"Don't got nothin' for you," Daryl said. "What'd you want?"

Carol smiled at him.

"Just you," Carol said. "I think that's present enough. At least for me."

Daryl laughed to himself and put his hands on the table to push himself up.

"You got that," he said. "Any time you want it."