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Carol was getting ready to think about what to make for supper—never an easy task, given the sameness of the food and the general discontent of the company—when she saw Daryl heading for the barn with a saddle hitched on his hip. She understood immediately what he intended, and she was so grateful for his determination on Sophia's part … but after the way he had been pushed around by Shane, the horrible things that had been said, the injuries Daryl had sustained the last time he went out—
She loved her little girl, she did, but … could they afford to lose Daryl in the search for Sophia? After all this time, was there still a Sophia to be found? On her good days, Carol imagined her daughter had been found by another group and taken in. On her not so good days—well, the chances looked worse with every day that went by with no sign of her.
Following Daryl to the barn, she saw him heave the saddle onto a saddle stand, and the pain and effort it cost him. He hadn't healed from his earlier injuries, had barely taken any time to rest and recover before pushing himself to be back to full strength. He couldn't go out there.
"You can't," she said bluntly as she approached him.
"I'm fine," he snapped.
"Hershel said you need to heal."
"Yeah, I don't care." Daryl took a piece of equipment off a hook and slung it over his shoulder.
That was the tragedy of him, Carol thought. He didn't care, no one else cared, and he assumed that was the way it should be, that he was expendable. Only he wasn't. They needed him. "Well, I do," she told him. "Rick's going out later, follow the trail," she added as Daryl opened the stall door and approached the horse inside.
"Yeah. Well, I ain't gonna sit around and do nothin'."
"No, you're gonna go out there and get yourself hurt even worse."
Daryl ignored her, looping complicated straps over the horse's nose, deftly, like he'd been doing it all his life. Maybe he had. None of them knew because no one had ever asked him. Carol wished she knew half of what he knew. She wished … Painfully, she admitted she wished she still believed the way he did.
"We don't know if we're going to find her, Daryl." She had never said it so bluntly to anyone before. It kind of felt good to say it out loud at last. As Daryl turned around to look at her, she said it again. "We don't."
She read judgment in the way he stared at her. A good mom would be out there looking for Sophia herself, no matter what it cost. A good mom would never have lost her in the first place. God knew Carol had tried to be a good mom, but she had been so frightened herself she was hardly the right person to give her daughter courage.
Under the weight of Daryl's look, she admitted softly the shameful truth: "I don't."
He came toward her, still looking at her like somehow she had disappointed him. Probably she had. "What?" he asked, as if he hadn't understood her.
Carol could feel tears stinging the back of her eyes, but she fought them off. She had cried enough for one lifetime. "Can't lose you, too," she told him. Not when she was just learning how smart he was, how honorable, how determined. He was worth two of that loud-mouthed Shane, maybe three.
Despite her best efforts, a tear welled up and slid down onto her cheek, and then another.
Carol's tears, and the way she was trying to keep them back, tugged at Daryl's heart. He didn't want them to. He didn't want to care about any of them, to get close to any of them. But when the little girl went missing—that was something he could do, a way he could contribute, that no one else could have done as well.
He had tried. Pulling himself up that ravine, getting shot in the head trying to deliver that doll to her mother—god or the devil or whatever spirits were out there knew he had tried.
And now Sophia's mother was standing in front of him telling him that he had failed, that she no longer believed they could get her daughter back.
In mute anger and frustration, Daryl heaved the saddle off the stand and as far across the barn as he could throw it, doubling over in pain almost immediately as something tore inside him. Ripped a damn stitch, it felt like. 'Cause he was such a screw-up he couldn't even look for a little girl without getting himself injured.
Carol rushed toward him. "Are you all right?"
"Just leave me be!" he snarled at her. He didn't need her concern, or anyone's. Dixons looked after themselves. He stared at Carol, wishing he didn't feel so sorry for her. So he did what he did when anyone got too close, or it seemed like they might—he walked away. "Stupid bitch," he called back over his shoulder, just to make sure she got the message. He didn't need her pity. He didn't want her tears. He didn't want to care about her grief or worry about her lost little girl. He just wanted to be left alone.