AN: It's me again, did you miss me?
I'm sorry. I'm working now with my new schedule to get something worked out where I'm updating in a round robin fashion. I really wanted to get back to this story and I'm hoping that will help.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl had come home to find that dinner was ready and waiting on him to arrive so that everyone could eat. Carol had, by her own admission, been sewing all day and the girl came from the room that they'd designated as hers upon being called for the meal.
And though Carol didn't seem as warm and loving to him as she once had, she seemed to have lightened a little from her earlier hardness. She was at least speaking to him and he'd gotten a quick kiss and a smile upon his arrival home.
Dinner had been a fairly quiet meal. Daryl had informed them that he was registering Sophia for school. He had informed them that he was going to be late the next day because there was paperwork that he had to do. He'd informed them of several things…and neither of them had much to say back to him. Carol and Sophia both seemed to simply accept what he said and took it at face value.
When the meal was done, Daryl had tried to help clean up, but Carol and Sophia both had told him to sit and relax. They would handle the cleaning. And they did handle it, together.
Daryl watched the two of them with some curiosity while they'd cleaned, too. They were clearly mother and daughter. Any fool could see the resemblance between them physically. It extended past the hair, they eyes, the curve of the nose. It trickled down into the mannerisms. The way that they held their mouths when they were thinking about something…small gestures made with their hands…even the way that Sophia stood while she waited for Carol to pass her a dish to dry with the towel she held.
And for the moment it seemed that something had taken place in Daryl's absence that had lifted, however slightly, the uncomfortable air between them. Carol seemed a little lighter and Sophia seemed a little less reserved. And Daryl wasn't turning his nose up at any of the changes.
After all was clean, Carol had taken her leave of him to go to bed. She'd fixed him a drink, offered him a quick peck, and she'd gone to bed. Sophia had disappeared quietly and without any pomp and circumstance to her room, so Daryl took his drink and his cigarettes out to the porch to listen to the night as he relaxed and thought about things.
The creaking of the door turned his attention.
He'd expected Carol to be standing there, perhaps wanting to talk about what had happened, but it was the girl that stood in the doorway, staring at him in much the same way that Carol did when she expected him to do sess. omething or say something, with the light from inside bathing her in its glow.
He cleared his throat.
"You oughta sleep," he said. "You gonna be tired if you don't."
Sophia stood still, frozen to her spot. Daryl sighed and cleared his throat again.
"Come 'ere," he said, gesturing with the hand that held his cigarette caught between two fingers.
Sophia stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind her as gently as she possibly could. Daryl patted the boards of the porch next to where he was sitting and Sophia came over, sitting down and adjusting the dress that she was wearing.
"You're a lot like ya Ma," Daryl offered with a chuckle. "Same…way of bein', I reckon."
Sophia didn't respond to that, but Daryl didn't know if he really expected her to respond. He wasn't entirely sure why she was out on the porch with him, unless it was a case of her not being able to sleep.
Or it was a case, perhaps, of her having decided to run away and gotten caught.
Daryl's stomach knotted at the thought.
"You weren't runnin', were you?" He asked suddenly.
Sophia, barely visible now without the glowing light out the door, leaned toward him slightly and furrowed her brow.
"Runnin'?" She repeated, drawing the word out with confusion in her voice.
"Runnin' away?" Daryl asked. "You hate it here?"
Sophia sat there in silence for a moment before she answered, her words coming out with a sound of being carefully considered and calculated. She was clearly someone who was taught to think long and hard before they spoke.
"No sir," she responded. "What am I supposed to hate?"
Daryl chuckled to himself.
"You ain't supposed ta hate nothin'," he responded. "But that don't mean ya don't. Hate what happened, I guess? Hate that…we ain't never come for ya?"
Silence again. And then the voice, full of insecurity and smaller than before even.
"You came for me," Sophia offered. "I guess…you came when it was a good time to come?"
Daryl frowned to himself. It could have been a good time to come before. If he'd put his efforts into it…if he'd only known…they might have brought Sophia into their home so many years before. They might have had the life that they'd talked about and dreamed about.
He didn't know if he expected the girl to feel let down or if he simply knew how let down Carol felt about things…and how he felt because he was pretty sure that he was to blame for almost everything. All day long he'd spent at work was time just spent stewing over the things that he'd done wrong…how much he'd hurt the woman that he loved and how much he'd hurt, by extension, the girl that was supposed to be his daughter.
Daryl drank from his glass and took a final draw off the cigarette he was smoking before he searched for a fresh one to light.
It was only once it was lit that he felt at all prepared to speak to the girl and at all like he had his voice under control. He couldn't explain to her how everything made him feel because it was too much for her to understand. She wouldn't be able to comprehend that he was probably single handedly responsible for all this…and that Carol would probably never forgive him…that's what worried him the most and had plagued him all day.
"Sophia," Daryl offered, "do me a favor?"
She shifted like she might get up. The favor, apparently, she thought was going to be a physical one. Daryl reached the hand with the drink toward her enough to tap her into stilling.
"Don't hate ya Ma," Daryl said. "It weren't her fault. This…none a' this…it weren't her fault."
"I don't think I hate her at all," Sophia offered quietly. "Could I ask you something?"
Daryl swallowed.
"Yeah," he responded. "You can ask me whatever ya want. Don't gotta ask permission."
Sophia shifted around on the board she was sitting on a little uncomfortably.
"Did you know my father? My real father?" Sophia asked.
Daryl felt a little sting at the question. He wasn't Sophia's father. Carol might not have known the girl, but at least she had some kind of biological ties to her. He honestly wasn't much more than the man who had married her mother and had been married to her mother for ten years. He wasn't really her father at all. He might never truly be able to be more to her than the man who had brought her home far too late to know the woman that had given birth to her and then been drugged into forgetting that she even existed.
"No," he said. "I didn't know him. I'm glad I didn't."
"Why didn't he want her to keep me?" Sophia asked.
Daryl stared at the steps below his feet. Those were questions that, as adults, they could barely understand the answers to sometimes. They were certainly questions that were difficult to answer for children.
"He weren't married to ya Ma," Daryl said. "Ain't proper for a man and a woman to have a kid when they ain't married…I guess."
"He left her?" Sophia asked.
Daryl hummed at her for the answer to that question.
"And you married her?" Sophia asked, though Daryl thought that it was more of a question to allow her to work out thoughts out loud than something she expected an answer to. He hummed in response anyway, though, and waited her out. "You didn't care that she had a baby with him?"
"No," Daryl said. "And…hell…I couldn't get no real straight answer about you. Said you were gone, said you were dead…said you didn't exist. Everyone had some kinda answer for me that was a little bit different."
Daryl stared at the girl, the glistening of her eyes barely visible as she stared at him. He didn't know why, but he found it easy to sit here beside her on the porch and talk to her. In some ways it was easier than talking to Carol…and maybe it had to do with the fact that he wasn't afraid of losing the girl. He couldn't lose what he didn't really have.
"You love her?" Sophia asked.
Daryl chuckled to himself.
"More'n my life," he admitted. "Since the first day I saw her…an' every day since then? A lil' bit more."
"Did he?" Sophia asked.
Daryl thought about it for a moment.
"Don't know," he said. "But…I don't think so."
"Why not?" Sophia asked. "Because of me?"
Daryl sat there a moment.
"You ought not to be askin' all these questions like this," Daryl said. "I can't answer all of 'em for you no way and it ain't proper."
Sophia whispered an apology and Daryl immediately felt bad for saying something like that when he'd told the girl that she could ask anything. The truth was, though, that he didn't have answers for everything she might want to know. He didn't have answers for everything he wanted to know. And he was sure that it wasn't proper for a young lady to be delving into territory that she was stepping dreadfully close to.
Still, he hated having scolded her when she was talking to him after she'd guarded silence until now.
"It's OK," he offered. He cleared his throat again. "I don't know why he didn't love her. She don't know either an' she can't remember all that. But…for me? I don't think…you don't just stop lovin' someone. An' ya don't stop for them havin' ya kid. Don't matter what no one has to say."
Sophia made a noise in the dark that might have been something along the lines of an affirmative hum, but it was too low for Daryl to fully take it in.
He felt different, though, just after their little conversation than he had the entire day that he'd been playing out scenarios of how he should have done things…what would have made things better…how he'd failed Carol in all of this when he'd promised himself that he would take care of her. He felt different just because he was confirming, for himself just as much as for the girl who might not understand anything of what was happening, that everything he'd done, whether right or wrong, he'd done with the best of intentions.
Maybe the road to hell was paved with them, but they were better than what some people offered along the way.
"You got somethin' else you wanna know?" He asked.
Sophia was silent. He guarded that silence too. Finally, though, her voice broke through again.
"Can I call you Daddy?" Sophia asked.
Daryl smiled to himself. He'd imagined that one day there would be someone who would call him that. He'd hoped and he'd prayed, right along with Carol, that one day there would be someone who would call him that. Maybe the only difference was that he thought that there might be time with the child before it ever used the word.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "That'd be alright."
"Daddy?" Sophia asked, sounding unsure about trying the word out on her tongue. It came out sounding like the verbal equivalent of someone wobbling around on a bicycle for the first time.
"Yeah?" Daryl asked.
"I don't intend to run away," Sophia offered. "So, if that's why…Mama's…so sad, could you tell her that I'm not going to run away?"
Daryl felt his insides bunch at the concern in the girl's voice. He forced himself to swallow past everything that choked him at the moment.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll tell her. It's a good thing. Runnin' away from things…don't get you nowhere in life. Go to bed, you need to sleep."
Sophia, obedient to a fault perhaps, got to her feet without another word. She stopped, just as she opened the door and bathed the porch in light again, long enough to wish Daryl goodnight. He returned the sentiment and watched as she slipped into the house and closed the door behind her. He finished his drink, the cigarette long gone, and then got to his feet, ready to retire, and hopeful that Carol might still be hovering somewhere around wakefulness when he made his way in to go to bed.