The Way Back
xx2xx
As an only child growing up, Carol had always wanted a sister or brother. Bigger or little, it didn't much matter to her. She just wanted a friend that would never leave her. Like Andrea never left Amy, even if she sometimes wanted to, and loud-mouthed Merle Dixon never went anywhere his little brother couldn't follow. All her birthday candle wishes and letters pleading with Santa went unanswered, and eventually, Carol learned to accept that she was always going to be on her own. As the years wore on, she moved past her tears and sent up thankful prayers instead that there wasn't anybody else but her when her parent's marriage finally fell apart. There wasn't anybody else but her that had to wake up, day after day, and swim against a terrible, endless rip current just to keep from drowning in the ocean of distance that had formed between two people who once claimed to love each other. That kind of life wasn't any kind of life for one child. Forget about two. And for all their failings, she felt a new kind of respect for her parents after Sophia was born. They'd loved each other once. Madly. Passionately. Tumultuously. And yet, somehow, they'd known it wasn't going to work out in the end. They'd known it was better not to bring another child into a marriage that was doomed to crash and burn from the start. Carol knew her parents had loved each other, once. But Ed? He'd never owned even the smallest part of her heart, and she didn't fight him on his choice to have a vasectomy two days after Sophia's birth. The simple surgery was performed with her wholehearted blessing. Any buried dreams Carol might have harbored of filling this house with babies had died long before she'd ever agreed to accept Ed's hand in marriage. Sophia, like her mother before her, was an only child.
At least she had been for the first seven years of her young life. Now she had sisters. Two of them. And where Sophia went? Mika, and inevitably Lizzie, followed.
Stepping through her daughter's open bedroom door, Carol regarded the scene in front of her with a smile.
Amidst a sea of blankets, pillows, and well-loved dolls, in the very center of a massive four-poster bed that had probably predated the room it stood in, a pile of little girls slept. And it could only be called a pile because there was no other word for it. Little arms and legs were everywhere. Never mind that she'd tucked Lizzie and Mika into their own beds halfway down the hall. Never mind that Sophia had promised she was okay sleeping all by her lonesome, had seemed excited, in fact, to finally have a bed to herself again. The two older girls fit together like living, breathing puzzle pieces, and Mika was sprawled out atop the both of them, with one braided pigtail falling across Sophia's dream-furrowed brow and another fluttering beneath Lizzie's nose.
She knew she was being sentimental, silly even, but Carol wished she had her phone on hand to snap a quick picture, send it to Andrea. There wasn't enough time, though. There never was any more in the mornings. If Sophia had found the transition difficult, going from an only child to one of three, Carol had found it twice as hard dressing three little girls to their satisfaction and that day's whims and making it out the front door at anything remotely resembling a decent hour. Crossing the room on careful, quiet feet, she knelt at Sophia's side and gently brushed Mika's pigtail from her face. "Sophia? Sweetie?"
Sophia frowned and wrinkled her nose when Carol traced a fingertip across her furrowed brows and down the length of her nose. She whined, and with great reluctance, blinked her hazel eyes open. "Mama?"
Carol watched her short legs stretch beneath the mound of blankets, could barely make out the motion of ten little toes fanning out and doing the same. Her smile soft with affection, she murmured her daughter's name again when those pretty hazel eyes disappeared beneath sleep-heavy lids. "No you don't, Sweetie. You can't go back to sleep. We don't want to be late."
"But school's not 'til tomorrow," Sophia mumbled into her pillow.
She sounded so aggrieved and so very sleep-slurred that Carol could only laugh. "It's not," she agreed. "We're not going to school. We're going to church, and we're going to be late if you sleepyheads don't wake up," she declared, including Lizzie upon noticing her blue eyes were open and watching her intently. "Now get up. Get up, get up, get up," she said in a singsong voice, tickling Sophia's sides and making her squeal. For good measure, Carol tickled Lizzie, too, and the little girl smiled before squirming away. "I mean it. We don't want to be late, do we?"
Sophia whined but slid out of bed, rubbing at her eyes with her fists and tossing a baleful look at the little girl that still snored peacefully, completely oblivious, as usual to all the commotion surrounding her. "No fair. What about Mika?"
Carol had Mika scooped up and cradled her against her chest before Lizzie could chime in with her own protest. "I'll take care of Mika. You two go brush your teeth."
Sophia pouted but shuffled out of the room dutifully.
Lizzie, on the other hand, lingered in the doorway, her small fingers fidgeting and somewhat fretful as they circled and twisted at the doorknob.
"You know you can ask me anything, Lizzie. Anything at all, don't you?"
This time, Lizzie barely hesitated before nodding her head.
"Well," Carol prodded, adjusting her hold on Mika when the tiny girl moaned and wrapped her arms and legs around her in a clinging hold. "Really, Lizzie. Anything at all. So you just go ahead, okay? Just go ahead and say whatever you have to say. I promise I won't be mad." She waited, breath bated and heart held in check for whatever spilled from Lizzie's unpredictable mouth. When the words came, they weren't at all what she'd been expecting.
"Ma'am, what is church?"
xxx
In spite of Carol's best efforts, they were late anyway. As it turned out, they weren't the only ones.
A pretty girl with a bright (if somewhat harried) smile and short brunette hair scampered up the church steps just ahead of them, pulling a young man behind her. The young man scrambled to remove the baseball cap from his head and tucked it awkwardly against his chest as the girl pulled the heavy wooden doors of the church open and swept up the aisle, on a mission it seemed. A few words between her and a tall, lanky youth, and a quiet, questioning murmur soon filled the small building.
Carol used the distraction to squeeze herself and the girls into the only available space left, a small section of the final pew. Then she watched as a man she recognized as her long-time neighbor, Hershel Greene, stood up and made his apologies, ushering the boy to precede him.
"Excuse me, folks. It would seem Bessie has made a break for it yet again. This time, it just so happens, she's enticed a dozen of her friends to join her." He paused to offer his Bible to a broad-shouldered black man sitting just a few pews ahead of Carol and the girls on his way down the aisle. "T, I hope you don't mind teaching my lesson if I don't make it back in time. On my word, that cow is a menace."
The quiet murmur morphed into amused laughter, and Mika joined in, her eyes bright and her smile wide, even though she had little to no idea what was going on.
Carol pulled the child into her lap and hid her own smile in Mika's soft hair as Sophia likewise erupted into infectious giggles.
Lizzie was more reserved, offering up the smallest of smiles and scooting to the edge of her seat in order to get a better look at the goings-on. "What's so funny, Ma'am?"
Carol was saved from answering by the timely arrival of an old friend.
"Some of Doc Greene's cows broke out of jail," Dale Horvath informed the curious little girl with a twinkle in his eyes.
Sophia's hazel eyes lit up, and she stood up to wrap her arms around the older gentleman's waist. "Uncle Dale."
"Uncle Dale," Mika mimicked, holding out her short arms for a hug of her own.
Lizzie hung back quietly but accepted the affectionate ruffle of her hair as Dale settled himself on her other side.
"Where's Ms. Irma?" Carol whispered over the top of the girls' heads.
"It's her time to mind the nursery. I hope you girls don't mind me sitting with you until it's time to go to class."
Lizzie frowned. "I thought you said we weren't going to school."
xxx
By the time those church doors opened again, Lizzie had decided she didn't much like class (of any kind), Sophia had made a small handful of new friends (Luke and Meghan, Molly and Carl), and Mika had dozed off again.
Carol's arm prickled with returned sensation when Dale lifted the slight weight of the sleeping child into his arms. "Thank you," she murmured as she rubbed lightly at the abused appendage.
"If memory serves me correctly, you were well into your teens before you made it an entire service without drifting off," Dale chuckled. "You did good, Kid."
Carol smile warmly at his familiar teasing, grateful all over again for his care and kindness. After all they had been through with the loss of their natural-born parents, Andrea and Amy were lucky to call the man in front of her family. She only hoped Lizzie and Mika thought the same of her one day.
"I'm not just talking about today, you know."
Carol felt her eyes grow damp as all her misgivings and all her suppressed doubts flooded to the surface, just for a moment. 'Thank you," she said again.
Dale merely smiled back at her and clapped a hand over her shoulder. "I've got this one. Looks like you've got some catching up to do."
That was all the warning she got before a crowd of old friends and curious churchgoers converged on her, and Carol did just that, caught up. With Annette Greene and her doe-eyed little daughter Beth. With Theodore Douglas, who nearly lifted her out of her shoes with the force of his lung-crushing hug. With a heavily pregnant Lori Grimes and Sophia's freckle-faced new friend Carl. Invitations to dinner were accepted, promises were made not to be a stranger, and play dates were scheduled as Carol bravely waded back into the deep end of a social life in King County. To say she was overwhelmed when the last well-wisher had departed the church parking lot and only Dale, Irma, and the girls remained was a gross understatement. She wanted nothing more than the peace and the comfort of her own space, and Dale, bless his heart, must have realized that.
"Irma and I were thinking we'd take these three pretty little ladies off of your hands for a few hours, grab a bite to eat at the diner in town. Somebody might not have much room in her belly after all the candy corn she's eaten, though," he said pointedly.
Mika pressed a sleepy smile into the crook of his neck, and Dale brought her small hand to his mouth for a smacking kiss that made her giggle.
Irma smiled indulgently at her husband's antics and loosely draped a hand over Lizzie's shoulder as Sophia burrowed into her side. "Want us to bring you something, Dear?"
"I'm good," Carol declined softly. Allowing the older woman's embrace, she pulled back with a smile. "Do you three think you can behave yourselves?"
Mika answered with a distracted nod.
Sophia made a solemn promise, "Yes, Mama."
But it was Lizzie's response that made Dale and Irma laugh and (later) had Carol smiling all the way home.
With a shrug of her skinny shoulders, the little girl decided honesty was the best policy. "I don't know, Ma'am."
xxx
The old Ford was back, but this time, Carol pulled up right beside it, pushing the Cherokee's door open with apologies spilling from her lips. "I'm sorry, Merle. I completely forgot about…hi. You're definitely not Merle."
The girl sitting on her porch steps in her cutoff overalls and her child-sized combat boots laced all the way up to her skinned knees wasn't Merle, but she smiled like another Dixon Carol knew. With one corner of her mouth curled up in the tiniest of smirks and her blue eyes shy. She couldn't have been much older than Sophia, if she was at all.
Carol's mouth molded into frozen smile, and she felt a rising tide of emotion press against her convulsing throat. "I'm…my name's Carol. Are you…is your dad…" Merle's solid form loomed in the periphery of her suddenly blurred vision, and Carol reached out for him as he neared. Her fingers tightened around his meaty hand, and she lifted her shimmering gaze to his rugged face, bewilderment overcoming her when he cursed beneath his breath and pulled her into his side.
"Shit. Shit. Should have known," he rasped out. With the hand Carol didn't have a death grip on, he beckoned the child watching the two of them with open curiosity. "Enid, girl. Won't you do your old dad a favor and grab our friend Carol some water from the back of the truck?"
Carol blinked hard against the tears still welling in her eyes and braced her hands against his chest as a bubble of hysterical laughter escaped her. "You? She's yours?"
"You surprised I got a kid or you surprised I'm a daddy? Because I'm a right mind to be offended. I done told you things had changed 'round here since you been gone, Red."
Carol chewed on her lip to keep from blurting out an answer that might have done just that, and when the child returned with a cone paper cup in her hands, she gladly took it and brought it to her mouth, sipping slowly.
The girl ducked the hand that reached for her, but Merle got in a fond ruffle of her long brown hair anyway, and it couldn't have been more clear whose child she was when she turned around and gave them both that patented ear-to-ear Merle Dixon grin. She steered clear of the porch this time, making a bee-line for the two-hundred-year-old Oak and the tire swing that had hung from it for as long as Carol could remember.
Directly below the swing, courtesy of the previous day and evening's rain, rest a mud puddle about as wide as the girl was tall, and Merle cautioned her about making a mess when he noticed her running the toe of one of her boots in the sludge. "You 'member what happened the last time I took ya ass home lookin' like a hobo!"
This time, Carol bit her lip to keep from laughing, earning herself a right Dixon scowl.
"What you laughin' it up about?" Merle growled. "Girl's damn mama kept me away from the kid more than a month. Had to threaten her with gettin' the court involved."
Carol's mouth dropped, knowing how much Merle despised law enforcement in general, and her eyes grew wide. "You didn't."
Merle's lips twitched, and he wouldn't meet her intent gaze as he made a sheepish admission. "Might be I groveled a bit. Weren't the way I usually like to conduct my business on my knees."
As they had so many times growing up, Merle's crude insinuations brought a hot flush to Carol's cheeks and she pressed the paper cup and the cool water it held within against her neck.
Merle reached a hand up to scratch idly at the whiskers covering his chin. "What?" he demanded when he finally noticed the look Carol was giving him.
"Some things haven't changed."
xxx
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Those words kept repeating in an endless loop inside Carol's brain less than twenty minutes later as she stared, wordlessly, at a figure that had haunted her dreams since the night she'd first left this place, so long ago now.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
After letting Enid play her fill and convincing Carol to let him hitch the empty U-haul to the back of his old truck (promising, with a mocking scout's honor, that he would deliver it safely to the nearest return station first thing in the morning), Merle had collected his daughter and a handful of candy corn from Carol's sweater pockets and was backing out of her driveway when he sent her world into a tailspin with a simple request.
"You mind givin' the boy a ride, Red? M'sure he'd be real appreciative-like."
For a moment, an all-too brief moment, she'd been struck dumb. But reality, along with Carol's stalled heart, had come roaring back with Merle's lascivious wink and naughty smirk.
"Tell 'im I'll leave the light on."
Then Merle was gone—simple as that—and she'd turned around and Daryl was there. He was there, and he was different, yes. He'd grown up (so had she). But those wary blue eyes still belonged to the boy she'd lost her heart to all those years ago, and he was looking at her like he might have lost his heart, too, and Carol just couldn't find the words to tell him how much she'd missed him (every day), how good it was to see him (so good), how her heart still ached for him (so damn much). No, she couldn't find those words, but she finally mustered up a teasing accusation. "You broke into my house."
"Place is locked up tighter than fuckin' Fort Knox."
The corner of his mouth curled up in that (shy-eyed) Dixon smirk, and Carol felt her heart seize her throat. "Merle left you," she explained hoarsely.
Daryl nodded, little more than a dip of his chin, and brought his thumb to his mouth. "Figured."
Carol squeezed her hands into tight little fists, fighting the age-old urge to draw his hand away, distract him from the nervous gesture.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
At a loss of anything else to say, she cleared her throat and said, "There's still some boxes."
The gentle reminder spurred Daryl into action, and he turned on his heel, bending to grab the biggest box from the stack Merle had left behind. "Where you want it?"
Carol hurried to catch up with him as he went inside, her heels clicking against the dusty hardwood floors. "It might be better if I show you." In front of her, his broad shoulders shrugged beneath the faded denim of his shirt, and she swallowed back the rest of her stupid words.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
"Know my way around."
"It's been a long time," she murmured softly.
"Ain't been that long." He met her eyes over his shoulder and mounted the long staircase. "Want this one in your room?"
xxx
Daryl was right.
But so was Carol, and the next couple of hours only served to drive that point home. Because they worked together, unpacking boxes and moving furniture in relative silence. But it was nothing like the easy silences of their youth. It wasn't like the time her mama and her daddy got into that big fight when she was eight years old, hurling hurtful words and Nanny Sarah's china, and she'd run away, made it no farther than the end of her own driveway. She'd walked alongside Daryl's bike for the better part of an hour, tears streaming down her dirty face as he peddled over and over that same stretch of road before she felt brave enough to head back home. It wasn't like the time Merle and Daryl come home from school to find out their daddy had used his shotgun on old Bo, claimed to have put the arthritic hound out of his misery. She'd been ten years old, and it'd taken the better part of a week before she managed to clean all of the dirt from underneath her fingernails, but she'd never left Daryl's side as he buried the sweet dog. It wasn't like the time Merle left for the military with nothing more than a note left behind to say his goodbyes, and twelve-year-old Daryl climbed through her bedroom window, curled up on her cold floor, and stayed there until the night stars started to fade into morning light. It wasn't like that last night. The night before she told him she loved him, she wanted to be with him forever (as more than the best friend either of them had ever had). It wasn't like that time at all.
Daryl was quiet. But then…he always had been. He was polite. But then…he'd always been respectful.
Carol tried to get him to open up, tried to get him to talk to her, but it seemed he'd used up all this words in those first few moments outside on the porch, when time and memory and being confronted with her presence for the first time in years had snuck up on him. So she did what she used to do, back when they were first getting to know each other as children; she talked at him. "Merle seems pretty hung up on that girl of his." When all the comment elicited from him was a small grunt of acknowledgment, she suppressed a sigh. "How old is she?"
"Nine."
"Sophia just turned eight."
Daryl ducked his head, fumbled behind himself for the screwdriver he needed as he worked on putting Lizzie and Mika's bunk bed back together. "Know."
Encouraged, and more than a little bit surprised, Carol remarked, "Never took Merle for a beggar."
Daryl's eyes narrowed in concentration, and a little furrow of frustration formed between his brows. "He ain't. Just loves his girl is all."
Leaving her position against the opposite wall, Carol walked behind him and pulled the lace curtains back to peer outside the window. She frowned when she realized clouds were moving back in, and the clear blue sky that'd been present when she'd woken that morning, when she'd left the church even, had all but disappeared. "You know her mama? Enid's?" Carol elaborated needlessly.
With a shake of his head, Daryl climbed to his feet and tossed the screwdriver in his hand on top of Mika's unmade mattress. "You seem awful interested in Merle's business."
Carol bit back her smile. More than just annoyed, Daryl actually sounded jealous of her innocent interest in his brother, and the very idea amused her, gave her hope that maybe he wasn't as cold to her overtures of renewed friendship after all. "C'mon. You can't blame a girl for being curious. Merle's…well, he's…"
"A no good Dixon?"
Carol's smile vanished when she realized those blue eyes of his weren't looking at her with any kind of warmth at all. Their depths were bordering on chilly. "Daryl, I didn't mean that at all."
"What did you mean then? Go 'head. Tell me."
Flustered, Carol pulled her sweater tighter around her body, looked away from him only long enough to gather her thoughts. "Merle's Merle," she finally said. "He's loud and uncouth and he doesn't do relationships, Daryl. He never has. I'm just wondering what kind of woman…you know what? Never mind. It was an innocent question. I don't understand why you're so worked up about it," she muttered.
"You wouldn't," Daryl grit out. "Bed's fixed. Just in time, too. Looks like your girls are home. S'time for me to go."
A glance at the window confirmed that the girls were, indeed, home, and Carol inwardly cursed Dale and Irma's timing as the girls spilled from the older couple's vehicle, racing each other up the porch steps and sounding like a stampede of baby elephants. "Daryl, wait."
"Don't need no ride home. Know the way back. Walked it before," Daryl shrugged off her show of concern. "See you 'round."
Carol hurried after him when he stalked from the bedroom. "Daryl, don't…" Any further protests she might have made faded away when she realized they had an audience, and her baby girl's hazel eyes landed accusingly on Daryl.
"Mama?"
Daryl's angry scowl softened, and he held up a hand to reassure Sophia, Lizzie and Mika, and Dale and Irma as he passed them on his way down the stairs. "Afternoon, Dale. Irma. 'Phia. Girls. I's just leavin'."
Dale was the first to speak up, but Daryl was halfway across the yard before he managed more than a few words. "Daryl, you don't have to leave on our account."
Daryl held up a hand in parting, cut across the overgrown yard to a path that was even more unkempt due to years of disuse. "See you 'round."
Carol curled her arms around Sophia's skinny shoulders when she wrapped her arms around her waist in a tight, comforting hug.
"Who was that, Mama?"
"Just somebody that I used to know, Sweetie. Just somebody that I used to know."
Obviously, my plan to write a cute, fun, Fall-inspired Caryl story has backfired. LOL.
There's a little language in this one; not enough to up the rating (YET), but we might get to that point eventually.
Mistakes are all mine. Thanks so much for reading!
Fedback is love.