Chapter 88: a-laughing and a-singing and thankful to be free

Okay, disaster might be a strong word for it. At the time he thinks it is; he interprets it that way and it ties him in several kinds of knots in the way a minor disaster would. Much later, looking back on it, he's not so sure. He's not certain what it is, only that something happened and it's staying with him.

Possibly for the rest of his life. Hard to say.

It's quiet and on paper it's little. That much is true.

But that's yet to come. For now he pulls up the Greenes' drive, breathing evenly, trying to ignore how the house somehow looks twice as big as it usually does, its graceful old white gables and balcony suddenly sort of ominous instead of offering the welcome they've come to extend to him. Carol is a comforting presence at his side and he's guessing she can sense his tension, and his gratitude to her for not asking him about it has all the force of something eternal.

He doesn't want to talk about it. He wants to put it away. He's being stupid. It's like he's been plucked out of these better days, where he feels like he belongs in the world and might even be able to make a real place in it for himself, and tossed back to the beginning of the summer where he had to do everything and didn't feel like he could do anything at all ever, and being calm was a mysterious state that happened to other people but which was entirely unattainable for him.

Back when it was Beth Greene tying him in knots. Back when she was the quiet little disaster, a whirlwind catching him up in herself and tearing off his roofs, knocking down his walls.

Oh my God will you stop.

On paper he has absolutely nothing to worry about. On paper.

But he still doesn't know what to say when he's asked what he's thankful for.

It's a gray day, as gray as it has been, clouds hanging low and heavy and wind whistling across open spaces and playing havoc with anything loose, tossing it gaily about. He sees Carol pulling her coat closer around her as they start up toward the house—her dressed in basic slacks and an attractive tan blouse, as simple as he is, which was also comforting, but neither of them are bundled.

Usually it's not this cold this early. There's something odd about the quality of the clouds, the light, and as they climb the porch steps and he casts a glance upward, he realizes what it is.

It looks like it's getting ready to snow. Muffled sun through clustered ice crystals, bouncing around in the way only snow clouds cause. It even smells like snow, something he's never been able to pin down or put words to, something simultaneously fresh and thin and solid.

Then he's knocking and Beth is opening the door for them, and he forgets about the damn clouds.

He doesn't stare. He's sure he doesn't do that, as she stands aside to let them in and gives them both a wide, cheerful smile. Or he doesn't stare with his eyes, shrugging off his coat and handing it to her when she offers to take it, but all his attention locks itself on her and goes tunnel-perception, everything else fading into the background. Once again it's like it was before—such a long time ago now, or that's how it feels—and he's helpless. Caught and trapped.

What she's wearing.

He hasn't seen it since that night. Not at the coffee shop, not coming out of church, not any other time. And it's strange that she should wear it now, because it's decidedly a summer dress, but she is all the same, and she doesn't look out of place in the least. As if she takes the space around her and makes it summer again.

Knee-length dress, sleeveless, speckled purple and blue and white. Or mostly white and speckled purple and blue now that he looks at it; he never really saw it close up. Her hair braided and wrapped in a loose coil around her head. Minimal makeup. Leather wrist cuff. Boots.

She's so beautiful he wants to fall the fuck down. Simply collapse to the hardwood at her feet. She can't possibly have known what wearing that would do to him.

Then again.

He allows himself to watch her for a few seconds as she walks away toward the hall closet with their coats—seems safe, it's only the three of them here. But there are voices coming from the parlor and from the kitchen, more than usual, and he's now conscious of utterly unearthly smells wafting to him on warm puffs of air and pouring into his sinuses—he can indeed identify turkey and biscuits and there's also pie of some kind and a host of mingling scents he can't separate blurring into an ideal of Deliciousness—and these are all things he's going to have to attend to.

Not exactly like it's a chore.

But there's her.

And this might be a problem.

Unsure where to go first, Carol standing beside him—to her credit, calm and quiet and not at all awkward, at least not compared to him—he defaults to the kitchen. That's where the smells are coming from anyway.

It's very, very warm—actually close to steamy—and though it's a big kitchen it seems unnaturally full. Annette is there, bending over the stove, and chopping green beans at the table in the center of the room is Maggie. Shawn's there, asking her about something, and as he stands, taking it in, Beth slides by and heads toward the fridge, pulls out a plate covered with squares of what looks like some variety of cornbread and carries it out again without a glance in his direction.

Okay, good.

Annette is turning to him when he reaches her, Carol still in tow, and before he knows exactly what's happening she beams, leans up and in and pecks him on the cheek. She's wearing a light green dress that sets off her hair, and she's flushed and a bit sweaty and she looks profoundly pretty, and he can only stand there and stare as Carol introduces herself and Annette gives her as wide a smile.

Annette has never done that with him before.

This already feels kind of out of hand.

Watching, though, he's getting all the confirmation he needs regarding the assumption they've made about who Carol is to him. Subtle turns of phrase, simply something about Annette's manner—and except for the fact that he isn't sure if Carol has picked up on it, he's discovering that he does not, in fact, have much of a problem with this. There are so many goddamn advantages.

He should make sure Carol gets it, though. Soon as he gets a chance.

He doesn't get that chance, though, not immediately. He's being ushered over to say hi to Maggie—Maggie looks slightly harried, her thick dark hair escaping where it's tucked behind her ear and falling around her face, and he doesn't think it's because of the beans—and she remembers him, smiles one of those warm Greene smiles, and this time he actually has the presence of mind to haltingly introduce her to Carol.

And they're sent into the parlor to say hi to Hershel and Maggie's guy—name of Glenn, apparently—and sit a while.

This is actually bearable. Awkward but bearable. He can do awkward. Once it was the water through which he swam. He was at home there, to the extent that one can be.

There's a fire burning in the grate, leaping and crackling, and Hershel and Glenn are sitting near it in a couple of ancient but comfortable armchairs in an arrangement that frankly looks comically picturesque—like one of those wholesome pieces of Americana artwork from old magazines. They both get up, come forward, and there are more introductions, and everything is more navigable with each iteration. Whatever conversation had been going on before they arrived, whatever grilling Glenn was being put through, he doesn't have the look of a man being hunted, and that's good for him.

Nice looking kid. Nice in the way Daryl imagines would be very acceptable to the Greenes. Clean-cut, with a hesitant but genuine smile.

Maggie's own age.

He and Carol sit down on the equally ancient couch and there's what he now understands as small talk, having been through the initial phases of it when he first started coming to dinner. Where you're from, what you do, what you like—none of them questions he ever wanted to answer in any depth if ever, and almost all of which he had been rescued from by Beth. He sucked at it then, and even if he's gotten better at a lot of other things he sucks at it now, and he's starting to get worried before he realizes Carol is doing exactly what Beth did, and with near as much skill. Steering the conversation subtly away. Filling in his silences. Being charming, and fielding the questions she herself must not want to answer. He observes her as unobtrusively as he can, and it doesn't take him long to realize why she can do this. Why she's good at it. Manipulating a situation. Placating. Distracting. Why she's had to learn.

He was never good at it, and if it could have been a skill he learned, it might not have been so bad for him. In the end.

Though he also doubts his father could ever have been placated by conversation, his time-bomb moods defused. His father generally talked with pain.

Most of it's true. Carol is here house-sitting for her older sister, Daryl lives upstairs, yes, it's a nice house, she's in the process of moving but this is a bit of a way station to give her a chance to get herself settled. One daughter. Father not in the picture. Carol is manipulating but Hershel also isn't an inconsiderate jerk, and seems to recognize a potentially sticky subject and backs off.

And that pings something else in him. All three of them, sitting here together with Glenn figuratively circling outside, all managing in their own way. Except those ways aren't so dissimilar.

My grandpa beat my grandma. Beat Daddy too.

God, what if he could somehow crack this all wide open. If the three of them could all see it, instead of only two out of three—the nearly invisible filament binding them together.

Maybe everything would be different.

There are the mini-cornbreads. They're good. Beth brings in iced tea, asks if anyone wants tea hot. She doesn't stay. This is a mercy.

Finally at some point it closes up in him. It's not any one aspect, and it's not panic; he's not even upset. It's just too much, he's feeling crowded-in-on, more overloaded with sensory input than he ever did in the noisiest roadhouse, and he gets up and excuses himself, goes out onto the porch in his shirtsleeves and fumbles in his pocket for his cigarettes. It's cold but he can breathe out here, and in fact he barely feels the chill. If he's fumbling, if his hand is shaking slightly as he raises his lighter and flicks it into flame, it's not because he's cold.

"Hi."

He doesn't turn. Doesn't jump—he didn't hear the kid come out but he's honestly not surprised that he would be followed, that his company might be desirable. Daryl is not a parent or a brother, but he's attached to the family in a way, and he's here. He's much less threatening.

Which is kind of funny.

He leans against the porch railing and inhales, taps ash into the bushes below, grunts. He doesn't dislike Glenn but he also doesn't much feel like talking to him. To anyone. That's why he's out here.

"It's cold."

He does half turn then, shoots Glenn a look over his shoulder. Really? "Hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, uh… Yeah." Kid is moving up beside him and he sighs; he might not want to talk but he also doesn't much feel like being an asshole, especially not to someone who doesn't appear to be feeling much more comfortable with this than he is. This isn't exactly a kindred spirit, fuck no, but.

"It's pretty here." Glenn rubs his hands together, tucks them into the sleeves of his sweater and folds his arms across his middle. "Must be nice in the summer."

You have no idea. "Ain't bad."

"You were working for them then?"

He takes another long drag, staring out at the distant, empty road. Christ, it really does look like snow. "Started in summer." He must not have mentioned that. He honestly can't remember.

"So you know them pretty well?"

Daryl shoots him another look, shrugs. He has the feeling that this is going somewhere and he's not sure he's going to be pleased with the destination. "Guess so."

"You don't know Maggie."

"Only met her the once."

"Her parents, though?"

He doesn't whirl, but he does turn to face Glenn with a degree of sharpness in the movement, one elbow still on the railing, not far from glaring. "You goin' somewhere with this, or what?"

Glenn somehow takes a step back without moving at all. He looks abashed and without any attempt to hide it, and Daryl does give him credit for that, and a fair amount of it: Glenn seems to be almost as lacking in artifice as Beth. He doesn't think he's seeing anything other than what he would get.

That counts for a lot.

Glenn glances at the front door and takes a breath. "Okay. Look. I know… I know I don't know you, I know you have no reason to give a shit about me, but if I tell you something, will you not mention it to anyone? And I mean anyone?"

Daryl blinks at him. He had expected to be talked at, he had expected it to be weird, but he hadn't expected to be taken into anyone's confidence here. It's baffling.

Given that, he doesn't suppose he has much of a reason to say no.

And he's already keeping one motherfucker of a secret. What's one more?

He shrugs again, slides the cigarette back between his lips and drags. "Ain't got no reason to tell no one nothin'." He allows Glenn a thin smile. "Unless you're some kinda serial killer or some shit."

This is where you serial-kill me, isn't it?

"I—No." Glenn appears unsure about whether Daryl is totally kidding. "No, it's nothing like that. It's…" He takes another, deeper breath and gathers himself. "I want to ask Maggie to marry me."

Oh. Well.

Daryl fixes him with a cool, level gaze. "You got my sympathy."

Glenn's already furrowed brow furrows more. "What's that mean?"

The women in this family are fucking forces of nature is what it means, and can't be resisted or fought against, and you probably don't know what you're getting into.

Run. Run while you can. Save yourself. It's too late for me, I'll only slow you down.

"Nothin'." Glenn doesn't look ready to let it go. Too bad for him. "Why're you tellin' me this?"

"Because—" Glenn drops his voice again, hugging himself tighter. "Because I just met her parents and I'm trying to figure out if there are… You know… If there's stuff I should know. Stuff I could mess up."

"You ask Maggie any of this?"

"Yeah. But she's… They're her parents, I don't know if she would see everything. If she would tell me everything. Look, I just want to make sure."

Daryl regards him in silence for a moment, cigarette burning down between his fingers. The kid is practically squirming and clearly bad at playing his cards anywhere in the remote vicinity of his chest, and one thing is abundantly clear: Glenn is in love, hopelessly so, and he means everything he says. He desperately does not want to fuck this up.

You poor stupid sap.

But Maggie isn't Beth. And Glenn is not in Daryl's position. Glenn's position is considerably more solid, considerably more advantageous. Daryl doesn't have a position. He's the rough drifter farmhand. No one is going to give him a position. He's in love, he's loved, he's not some redneck asshole who ruins everything, he's a good man, but it's still true.

"They're good people," he says quietly. Because the truth works best here, so far as it goes, and he might as well tell it to the degree that he can. "I think they wanna like you. I don't know Maggie, like I said, but you don't seem like an asshole. Think you'll probably be fine."

If you love her, if you're good to her, if they see that—and if you can give her a life, if you have something real to give her and they see that too—you'll be fine.

"Oh," Glenn says quietly, and he looks down, away, out at the deepening gray and the brown fields, the bare trees, everything falling into true winter even if calendar winter is a month distant. "Alright. I… Thanks."

Daryl goes for his pack, pulls out another and lights it. Something to do with his hands. Suddenly he doesn't want to be here any more than he wants to be inside. "You gonna pop the question here?"

"I'm not sure. I have a ring. Maybe, if it feels right."

"Think she's gonna say yes?"

Glenn passes a hand down his face. Most of the nervousness has gone out of him—rather suddenly but without making a big deal about its exit—and now he seems merely thoughtful. Maybe uneasy, but manageably so. And Daryl understands that even if he tried to talk Glenn out of this—and why the fuck would he? It's not his damn business and Maggie is very pretty and if she's anything like the rest of her family she'll be also be pretty goddamn extraordinary—it would be a fool's errand. You don't reason someone out of love like that.

Fuck knows he's tried.

"I hope so."

"Yeah," Daryl murmurs, and he doesn't say anything else. He smokes the cigarette down most of the way, flicks it over the railing into the dirt and dry grass—something he normally wouldn't do but it's largely hidden where it is—and turns back to the door.

"Good luck."

He means it.

He goes inside and leaves Glenn to stand and gaze at the world in meditative silence, apparently now heedless of the cold.

Dinner.

In many ways it's not much different from any other Greene dinner. Hershel says a short but eloquent blessing. Everything is delicious and there's a lot of all of it. Conversation isn't raucous but it's not exactly quiet, either, and increased numbers and high spirits means people interrupt, talk over each other, rush to finish sentences and stories. Share news. Maggie is taking a job at a law firm near where she lives, and while it's primarily administrative stuff, she's thinking—in the least committal way—about law school. Annette is going to be volunteering at the vet clinic a couple of times a week starting in January. Shawn and his girlfriend—who Daryl has hardly seen—have been together almost a year, and Shawn scoffs and looks down at his turkey-piled plate and actually turns a little red, and says that yeah okay maybe it's getting kind of serious, whatever. Teasing laughter, and Daryl can tell he doesn't really mind all that much. Beth's classes are going well except for Calculus, which she's perfectly able to handle but finds dull, and doesn't try as hard as she could. Has she joined the school chorus yet? Finally? She has one more semester to do it. No, she hasn't. She makes a bit of a face. She doesn't like Mrs. Gates, the new choral instructor, and she doesn't want to sing with that big a group. It's not that she thinks she's too good; she just doesn't want to. It's not fun for her. She's considering going out for the play in spring, though. It's going to be The Tempest—she likes it about a hundred million times better than Romeo and Juliet, which was last year's production.

Glenn and Daryl listen. Once or twice they exchange glances. Not anything like kindred spirits, but yeah, they are in somewhat similar situations. They've both been welcomed in. But neither of them truly has a place here.

For Glenn, that comes with a caveat of not yet.

For Daryl it simply is.

Carol, for her part, might have been awkward at the end of the table but isn't at all, quietly eating and not saying much either but appearing totally content as she is. Once or twice she catches Daryl's eye and the message is clear—are you okay? And he nods. He is. This isn't easy, but it's not at all the disaster he was afraid it might be.

And he's still very glad she came.

After a while the circulation of plates slows down and everything settles. No one has announced anything but Daryl can feel it—the rhythm of something long codified into ritual. Sitting at the head of the table, Hershel produces a battered, leather-bound Bible and opens it to a marked page.

Daryl doesn't know the Bible. Has never had any reason to, and has never missed the knowing. He knows it's lengthy and terribly complicated and that there's a tremendously long history of people fighting bloody wars over what amount to notes in the margins, and he knows the basic stories with which most people are at least sort of familiar—Noah and the Ark, Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, something about a parted sea, David and Goliath, and the more salient details of the life of Christ.

He didn't know there was poetry.

Hershel slips on a pair of gold-framed reading glasses and looks up and around at them, and lowers his head to the book, clears his throat and begins to read.

He sendeth the springs into the valleys,
which run among the hills.
They give drink to every beast of the field:
the wild asses quench their thirst.
By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation,
which sing among the branches.
He watereth the hills from his chambers:
the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works.

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,
and herb for the service of man:
that he may bring forth food out of the earth;
And wine that maketh glad the heart of man,
and oil to make his face to shine,
and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.

He appointed the moon for seasons:
the sun knoweth his going down.
Thou makest darkness, and it is night:
wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom
hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

It isn't like what he knows, what he's become used to. But there's a rhythm and a cadence to the words that isn't unfamiliar, and as he listens he finds himself being lulled in the same way. Pulled in, drifting through the sounds and the images they call up in him. Everyone else's head is bowed, and he's done the same—sure, he doesn't share in this devotion but it seems like the polite thing to do—but his mind gently separates the lovely words from the entity toward whom they were originally directed and refocuses them outward, makes them diffuse, far-reaching. Because there's so much. Ancient stones scattered and formed by hands into structures, oceans of grass, forests that were old when he was born and which will outlive him, perhaps by centuries. The calls of the birds of the air and the whispering passage of the beasts of the land. Every river, every creek, every chuckling stream. Sunshine and moonshine and the light from stars that may be long dead but touch the living all the same, and might eventually make it to the edge of everything before the photons go their separate ways. Galaxies innumerable.

This is a universe full of light. Until her, he never knew. And at the heart of it, there she is: fallen down naked into the grass, idle and blessed and soaked in light, warm and soft and wet and open to receive him, laughing and singing, calling his name.

I didn't know what a prayer was. I still don't.

But this might be all I need.

He doesn't realize Hershel has stopped until he's aware of new movement and new voices, and he tunes himself back in time to realize that they've started going around the table, and he better figure out what the fuck his answer is because if they're going clockwise it's his turn after Maggie, and Annette—to Hershel's left—is currently talking.

He's only half focusing on what Annette is saying, but he gets the gist. That it's been a good year, that they're all together and happy. Hershel has the book Beth mentioned—a small notebook not unlike what he's imagined her journal might be—he's nodding, writing it down. Maggie next: Maggie is thankful that she's met Glenn, and she smiles and blushes when she says this, and the latter is something Daryl somehow doubts she does very often. Hershel glances up at this, and Daryl catches the hint of his own smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

He still doesn't know what he's going to say.

Then it's his turn.

It's easy. Should be simple. Say a thing, make it sound okay, make it a coherent collection of words, and shut up. This does not have to be and should not be a complicated thing, or a thing to be terrified of. Yet he is—he's frozen and his mouth is not cooperating, and even if it was it wouldn't make any difference because his brain is rocking back and forth in a corner of his skull with its face in its hands and whimpering, and is therefore unlikely to be helpful.

Not because there's nothing. But because oh fucking Christ, where the hell does he start.

Everything changed. Everything fucking changed and I couldn't stop it and it just kept going, and I lost some things but I have more than I ever thought was even remotely possible and I know things and I can do things and I'm not nobody and I'm not nothing and I'm not some redneck asshole who ruins everything and I'm not a creep and I'm not a jerk, and I can be a good man, I can… and maybe that was always true. And now nothing is the same and it never will be the same again, and it's still so scary and I still don't know how to live in the world but I'm thankful. I'm thankful for all of it. Every second of it. Everything.

Her. I'm thankful for her. But also everything.

Because it's all precious.

He clears his throat, looks down at his hands where they rest useless on either side of his plate. At the scraps of gravy-soaked turkey, remaining globs of sweet potato. Biscuit crumbs. A stray length of green bean. Stuff. Things.

He can clear his throat, so maybe he can do more with it. And it should be simple.

And maybe it is.

He raises his eyes and there she is, sitting diagonal to him at Hershel's right, and she's looking at him. Not any differently than any of the others, except she is. He's seen that look before, so many times. That sweetly coaxing look. But firm. Unyielding.

You should do this, and you can.

"I'm here," he says softly, gruffly, and he meets her gaze and blinks hard, looks down again. "I'm here. That's… Guess that's all."

Quiet murmur around the table, the scratch of Hershel's pen, and everything moves on. He doesn't hear what Carol says—for which he feels guilty later but can't figure out how to ask her. He doesn't really hear anyone else. He's sitting there and he's basking in Beth's warmth, radiating to him from across the jumbled collection of mostly empty serving dishes, the half-picked carcass of the turkey. Bathing him like sun.

He's made her happy, and he doesn't have to see her face to know it. But it's not only her. He did it. He can.

So he's happy also.

When they get to her, she says she's thankful to be here too.

They all get up, stack a mountain of plates in the kitchen, and head back to the parlor for dessert and coffee and tea. A couple of extra chairs are pulled closer to the fire along with a wooden coffee table bearing dishes and pie. Daryl and Carol are sitting side by side on a small worn cream-colored settee, just the two of them, and he's freshly conscious of how it looks and freshly grateful to her for being there. Her shoulder nudges his as she sips her coffee, his knee now and then bumping hers, and the moments of contact are like anchors. He's not floating. He's grounded.

He gazes across the semi-circle they've all made, at Beth—a second or two of eye contact, something that might well be accidental—and catches a smile playing around her mouth that he knows is totally for him.

He ducks his head. He's almost gotten through this. It's okay. More than okay. It's…

It's been nice.

But then Beth gets up, goes to a corner by a tall bookshelf and comes back with her guitar, and he remembers what they haven't yet done. What they're doing now.

Well, that's fine. He can listen. By now he's very good at listening.

There's no real introduction, and in fact it doesn't begin with Beth or the guitar. Annette sets down her tea and rises, goes to the nearby piano and takes a seat. Hershel follows her but doesn't sit on the long bench beside her; he stands, one hand on the piano's glossy top, as Annette begins a soft melody adhering to a slow and steady rhythm. When she and Hershel start to sing it's also soft, and where Annette's voice is sweet—though not as sweet or as clear as Beth's—Hershel's is low and slightly wavering. But there's strength under it. And there's strength in the words, and in how their voices join to form them.

sweet is the day of sacred rest
no mortal care shall seize my breast
oh, may my heart in tune be found
like David's harp of solemn sound

then shall I see and hear and know
all I desired and wished below
and every power find sweet employ
in that eternal world of joy

The song dies away. Glenn appears as if he's about to applaud, pauses, sees that no one else is and drops his hands into his lap and clearly tries to not appear sheepish. Maggie gives him a sidelong look, equal parts sharp amusement and affection.

Yeah, the kid will be fine.

At the table, events proceeded in a circular fashion. There's no circle here. There's no order to anything that Daryl can see. People seem to be moving as they're moved. Beth picks up the guitar and she and Annette and Shawn fall into a wistful ballad about a soldier and a fair maiden who would rather not talk to him.

you're not a man of a noble honor
you're not the man I had taken you to be
or you wouldn't impose on a single lady
who your bride can never be

The fire is burning down. Shawn builds it back up again, and then abruptly everyone's attention swings toward Glenn. He looks around with widening eyes, looks at Maggie, swallows, and for the span of a second Daryl half expects him to bolt from the room. But Maggie grins and takes his hand.

"C'mon. We can do one, we were listenin' in the car. You know which one I mean."

Glenn glances away and back at her and is practically squirming, but he squeezes her hand and manages a smile, and he's looking at no one but her as he and Maggie make their way through something quiet and a little halting, pretty in a strange way, prettier when Maggie lifts her voice into harmony.

I will write you letters that
explain the way I'm thinking now
I will return to you
what I have taken long before
I will return again
when it gets dark and day is done

and lay me down
in the hallowed ground
down by your side I will stay

so lay me down

Then actual applause at this, gently teasing and genuinely pleased, and Maggie laughs and pulls Glenn close and kisses him—quick but firm—and then Daryl knows without requiring gifts of prophecy or hard evidence that by the time Maggie leaves at the end of the weekend she's going to be wearing a new piece of jewelry.

That might actually have been the question. Right there, in front of everyone, but between the two of them. Like music could be a secret language, like Beth standing in the kitchen in front of the sink and singing let's play hide and seek inside my bed.

He's seeing this and it's so familiar, and it's also untouchable. Out of reach.

He has coffee but he hasn't drunk very much of it, and it's getting cold. He doesn't care. He thought he could listen and believed it was something he was good at, but he wasn't ready for this, this cascade of music right here in front of him and somehow unlike anything he's ever experienced—because when Beth sings for him it's just her and it's just him but this is everyone, so much music, and it's so easy for them. It flows out of them without any apparent thought or effort. It doesn't seem like they think about it at all. Even Glenn didn't have such a hard time once he took Maggie's hand and let her get him started. Beth has always been this way, and it makes sense that ease would come from somewhere, but now he's immersed in it, trying to keep his head up, a knot slowly tying itself under his breastbone and the air thickening in his throat.

When Beth picks up the guitar again and sings alone, he has to take part of himself away.

It's like the pain. Disconnection, distance. He pulls back and floats over everything, observing but not part of it. He does it without meaning to, without trying, and as he realizes what's happening the knot in his chest jerks into a clenched fist. Because he shouldn't have to do this. He should be able to be present for something like this, her graceful fingers moving over the strings and her head bent, her eyes half closed, a few tendrils of loose hair tickling her cheek and jaw. Her voice, that sweet terrible voice—listening to it like this is like being naked in front of everyone.

does life seem nasty, brutish and short
come on up to the house
the seas are stormy
and you can't find no port
come on up to the house

If he lets himself feel it, he doesn't know what they might see. So this is necessary, this distance. He has to protect himself. He has to protect both of them.

But it feels like blasphemy. He has to look down at the floor, at his cheap clean boots, biting at his lower lip, the world blurring into shapeless firelight. He doesn't know if he could tell her he's doing this. He's ashamed.

Then everything is quiet, and when he hears his name he raises his head and he knows—he knows, like watching a bullet coming at him in slow motion—what's happening. What he's being asked.

It's not a big deal to them. They have songs in their bones. They can't hear the deafening silence in his.

"You have anything?"

Annette, brightly, taking another slice of sweet potato pie. He stares at her, at everyone, their faces blurring like the world around his boots. If Carol is next to him he can't feel her anymore. He can't feel anything. The rest of him has simply drifted away into that safe distance and left him behind to cope with this fucking oncoming freight train of a question.

Fuck's sake, just say no. It's not a big deal. She said it wasn't a big deal, it's NOT.

But it is.

Because he can see her. She's all he can see, and she's looking at him with her beautiful doe eyes, wide and expectant. No pressure there. No sense that she'll be disappointed if he does say no. She meant what she said; he can do whatever he wants.

But she hopes he'll say yes.

I don't have anything. That's what Annette asked. If he did. No. No, I have nothing.

I have nothing to give you.

Except there was one thing. There was something. When he was much smaller, back in those few short days before everything got so bad, when life was almost good sometimes, when his mother would stand at the sink on an evening in early summer and do the dishes and sing. And he would be fucking around with broken toys on the grease-stained kitchen floor, playing in that aimless way a bored child plays, except now and then he would stop and listen to his mother's cracked, tired voice. Cracked and tired—but not untuneful.

Those songs came from somewhere.

Sticky linoleum under his hands and heels, rough edge of the fractured plastic of a stegosaurus plate against his thumb, cicadas thunderous outside, drunken laughter from the next room and the TV turned up way too loud—and his mother's voice, and a song.

And each minute of that song was a tangent universe, and within each one everything might have been different.

Or maybe it was a language. Maybe she was calling, to anyone who could hear her. Maybe she was reaching for something or someone and he was there, and she gave him something of her own. One of her pretty things.

Fighting back.

He stares down at his hands. They're strong, ungraceful hands—thick fingers, skin cut through with scars, a new one on the left edge near the base of his thumb. Nails ragged here and there where he's bitten them—not as much as he did, but it's so habitual that he doesn't notice it anymore. They're not ugly, these hands, or he doesn't think so, but they aren't far from it.

But she took them in hers. And he knows she would take them now if she could.

He rolls a shoulder. But it's not a no. He knows the words, he remembers the melody—it was sweet and sad, it was aching, and it's still inside him, all still there. Making its way through all his cracks like shafts of late autumn sunlight.

He's not silent. He has this. He opens his mouth-

And it's her. It's only her. Everything else vanishes and it's just them alone, together, looking at each other across an expanse of nothing. Because there are these moments where you look at someone and you can see only them, and you never want to see anyone else for the rest of your life.

And he couldn't stop it now if he tried.

one morning, one morning
one morning in May
I overheard a married man
to a young girl say

go dress you up, pretty Katie
come along with me
across the Blue Mountains
to the Allegheny

I'll buy you a horse, love
and a saddle to ride
I'll buy myself another
to ride by your side

we'll stop at every tavern
we'll drink when we're dry
across the Blue Mountains
goes my Katie and I

they left before daybreak
on a dapple and a roan
past tall shivering pines
where the mockingbirds roam

past dark cabin windows
where eyes never see
across the Blue Mountains
to the Allegheny

He only truly hears himself after he falls silent. And she was right. She was. He doesn't sound bad. His voice isn't unlike his mother's—rough, low, clearly untrained and not used much, not for this, but there's something in it. A spine.

A bone.

Then the world is fading back in, light and focus, and suddenly panic grips him—because he was looking at her. He was looking at her, at her and no one else, and he was singing that, and fuck, fuck, did they see something? Did they see him? Did he break it all open, spill it all over the floor? Did he give them away? Fuck, he must have, they must have seen. They must have noticed. Annette and Hershel might be a tad bit oblivious, but they aren't stupid, and they aren't blind.

And they aren't deaf.

But like at the table, people are murmuring approvingly. Like it's nice but it's not a big deal, not a bigger deal than anything else anyone has done. Hershel is nodding. Annette is smiling at him, carving off a forkful of pie. Carol is squeezing his hand. Beth is smiling too. But it's that same smile, the one from before.

The one just for him.

The evening winds down. Outside, the darkness is deepening. It's getting on to six. No one is sending any actual pressure in Daryl's direction, no one seems to actively want him and Carol to leave, but he figures they probably should all the same. He offers to help Annette with the cleanup; she waves him off. That's why she had children. She'll be fine.

She gives him leftovers. A lot of them. There's no way in hell he'd turn them down.

When he takes the tupperware from her, his hands aren't even shaking anymore. So this hasn't been completely horrible.

It was good. Weirdly. He almost fell apart—kind of did—but he's pretty sure no one saw it. Maybe not even her. Maybe she couldn't tell how close he came to ruining everything. It was hard for him to do what he did because it could never be anything else. That's all.

Except it's not. Standing in the front hall and catching glimpses of her in the parlor clearing plates and coffee cups away, he knows something else has happened. Something big. He doesn't know quite what, but something in him is unlocked and open wide, and what's emerging can't be put back.

He didn't merely succeed in doing a thing he was afraid of. He changed. Again. Or he found something that had always been there, like hidden ruins. And he doesn't think she understood the language he fell into using. He doesn't think she understood what—without ever meaning to—he was asking her.

What he doesn't actually want.

He's confused. He's tired. Part of him hurts. He wants to go home. Carol can sense it, or some of it, and as they put on their coats and head for the door she's studying him, brows drawn together. He hopes she doesn't ask. Not because he doesn't want to tell her—though to be honest it's not what he would prefer—but because he's not sure how he would.

There may simply be no words for this. No arrangement in which they could get the job done.

They say their assorted goodbyes, brief ones to Maggie and Glenn and Shawn. Beth catches his eye on the way to the kitchen, waves, passes on. Annette hugs him, Hershel shakes his hand. They're glad he could come. It was good to meet Carol. Have a safe drive back. Happy Thanksgiving. Goodnight.

Okay.

Cold wind washes across them as they step out onto the porch. It's getting dark, sure, but there's also a bizarre quality to the darkness, the low cloud, and in fact it's getting light. When they make their way down the steps and toward the truck, he glances up and understands.

Tiny cold points of contact on his brow, his cheeks, his chin. His eyelids, when he closes them. Tiny frozen fingertips.

The snow has come.

Note: The psalm Hershel reads is Psalm 104: 10-24 (King James Version). It's not one of the more well-known psalms, I think, but it's lovely and it fit.

The hymn Hershel and Annette sing is "Sweet is the Day", but I first knew it as "Devotion" from Sam Amidon's wonderful album Lily-O. It's beautiful.

Beth, Annette, and Shawn sing an old folk song called "Pretty Fair Damsel." Maggie and Glenn sing "Lay Me Down" by The Frames. Beth sings "Come On Up to the House" by Tom Waits.

And the song Daryl sings is "Blue Mountains", an Appalachian folk song. There are many versions of it, but his version of it is Sam Amidon's as well. It's gorgeous, and when I say it aches, it fucking aches. It's probably the best auditory representation for his emotions right now that you could get.

The video for it is also beautiful. It has a feel that matches this story eerily well. Seriously, the girl should just be Emily Kinney.

I need more people to love Sam Amidon with me. Sam Amidon and his weird Kermit the Frog voice.