Chapter Text
Chapter Nineteen: July, Year 2
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Joel, 3:9.
Now the sisters’ complaints revolved around the unavoidable, unsavory aspects of newborn care. As they sat on opposite sides of the dish tub, Maggie proclaimed that she totaled ten wakeups the night prior.
“Think that’s worse than the blowout she had night before last?” Beth asked, raising her brows at Maggie. “It was so bad I had to wake up Carl and have him help me rinse her off in the sink.”
Maggie laughed, scrubbing off a spot of gravy from a plate before passing it to Beth for drying. Patricia and Otis had no children of their own and with less than a year having passed since losing Sophia, no one thought it appropriate to ask Carol to do the rearing. Which was how Judith—and Carl, to a lesser degree—had fallen into the Greene sisters’ hands.
“I think she likes you better, though,” Maggie admitted. “She sleeps better on your nights.”
“Only because I sing to her,” Beth shrugged. “You should try it. Puts her right to sleep after a bottle.”
That morning, Beth crossed out July fourth on her calendar. There was no ice cream this year, no fireworks, no celebration. What was the point, when there didn’t seem to be a United States either? She doubted anyone knew the date, anyway, today or any day. That didn’t stop her from noting Judith’s birthday on the seventeenth of last month. Quietly, of course, because Judith’s birthday was also Lori’s death day.
After Daddy had measured and weighed Judith—eighteen inches, six pounds and five ounces—using more veterinary tools, Beth wrote that down, too. Rick might be lost in a fog of remorse, one that Beth knew well, but she thought he might like to have these details he missed.
“I tapped out and got Glenn after the eighth time,” Maggie admitted, though Beth already suspected that. Unfortunately, her body had become attuned to Judith’s cries. When Maggie walked by Beth’s bedroom door the night before, muffled as her vocalizations had been, Judith’s voice still pulled her from her sleep. She had sat up, patting her bed dazedly, before her eyes adjusted and she realized she was in her bedroom, not the room Carl shared with his sister.
“It’s nice that he helps,” Beth murmured when what she really meant was, it’s nice that you have someone to help. That flare of animosity wasn’t Glenn’s fault, though, and it wasn’t fair to pin it on him. As if summoned by their conversation, Glenn came through the back door smiling.
“I’ll go dump that,” he said, stooping to take the wash bin from them. The suds were low and dingy, the water gone cold. Beth took the bin that housed the plates and cutlery—twelve plates and twelve sets—while Maggie took the stacks of cups. They all returned inside together, moving around each other in a well-practiced dance in the kitchen as they dumped the water and placed everything back into their cabinets and drawers.
She had always thought of the farm as one big, complicated waltz. Daddy called it a well-oiled machine, but Beth preferred the imagery of dancing around the massive space, with everybody continually interchanging their partners as they went about their tasks.
Beth’s dance began with the sun, when she woke and pulled on her clothes and boots, and headed outside. The mornings were always glittering with dew lately. Early morning light refracted off the droplets on the grass as she made her way to the pig pen.
Sometimes Rick was already awake, or maybe he hadn’t yet slept when she saw him sitting vigil at Lori’s grave. Beth always waved to him when he was out there though Rick never paid her any mind, let alone returned it. Otis always waved back at her, though, when she caught sight of him far off with his bees while she went on to slop the pigs.
She still told the pigs good morning and scratched them between the ears as they lapped up their slops. Then she moved on, greeting horses and cows in turn. Carl usually turned up by then. He still very much liked to milk the cow and Beth didn’t feel any need to encumber him. She stood at his shoulder, though, watching both him and the cow to make sure everyone remained on good terms.
After that, the dance depended on the day of the week. Sundays still brought church services with them, though now Daddy and T-Dog took turns in reading aloud from the Bible. Her skill revealed on the night they hosted Dale, now Beth added a hymn or two to their services, though she never sang along as she played the keys. Only Judith ever heard her sing these days. Or, well, nights.
Mondays were washing day. Carol was her partner for this task. They collected all the laundry together, washed it together, hung it up on the lines together. Their conversations were limited to the happenings on the farm and Judith, but that was okay. She liked Carol well enough and found their lapses of quietude as comfortable and companionable as those she shared with Daryl.
On Tuesdays, she baked with Patricia. Potato flour was still their main resource, though Maggie was tending a small patch of wheat in her garden. If it grew well, she planned to expand it next year, letting it grow beyond the fence where it would have ample space.
Wednesdays were spent with Daddy, documenting the progress and growing stock he was making with the medicinal herbs grown both in the garden and harvested from the forest. With the threat of Shane always on everyone’s minds, Daddy didn’t like the thought of Beth leaving the fence. It was her love for her father that kept her complying.
Beth spent her Thursdays with Glenn and Maggie, helping with the garden or making lists of things they needed to look for on the next supply run. The issue with this activity was that the list was growing ever longer and there was no remedy in sight. It was agreed upon by everyone that, in the exception of a true, dire emergency, no one should be straying far from the farm until Shane was handled.
Unfortunately, with the ball in this veritable boogeyman’s court, they had no idea when that would happen.
Fridays she dedicated to Carl as much as she could. They played piano or churned butter or mucked stalls; whatever it was, they did it together. The last thing she wanted was for her little friend to fade into the shadows as she once had, eclipsed by the needs of his infant sister and the eccentricities of his unwell father.
It might have been a bit selfish, but Saturdays were her favorite. That was when she reserved time for herself to hole up in her bedroom with Arnie’s guitar on her lap as she sat cross-legged on her bed. She played for hours on Saturdays, sometimes cutting her finger tips, all of them forming calluses as she became acquainted with this new instrument.
And always, through all the patterns of the days, Judith was passed around amongst them, the tiniest dance partner of them all.
Beth didn’t always nap when she sat in the lawn chairs with Daryl. Sometimes she had something on her mind, something she had been pondering throughout the day. Carl still stuck close to her, still helped with the animal chores and still gamely sat through piano lessons. But, understandably, he had become quiet. Taciturn, even. His smiles were very rare, now, reserved for Judith.
Beth knew that quiet. She also knew that companionship was better than words, so she never pressed, never prodded. Carl would talk when he was ready, and she would listen. Until then, she would be his mirror, his shadow. A buoy in the ocean of sadness.
Exactly what she had needed when she turned to a razor blade herself.
So, she saved those ponderings for Daryl, on the nights she joined him in front of the Dixon camper. One evening, she sat with her cup of chicory coffee and said, “I think Lori made her peace with it, at least.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, taking a sip of coffee.
“There’s no way she didn’t know. I mean, that it was either Judith lived of both of them died.”
Next to her, Daryl nodded. He had his arrows in his lap, meticulously cleaning each one. Without his vibrant blue eyes fixated on her face, it was easier for Beth to say these things.
“My brother was the same way,” Peeking at Daryl, she found him still steadfastly cleaning. One would think that with how little Daryl responded outright it might feel like talking to a wall. Rather, Beth found his near silence comforting. He didn’t interrupt her or try to make her feel like her perspective wasn’t right. “He got bit, when it was all just starting. One of the walkers from the bar bit him, actually, and we didn’t… well, no one though to just hack his arm off.”
As she said it, she turned her attention to Merle, walking come ways off with Glenn.
“But Shawn, he was okay with it in the end.” She nodded to herself, a warm sense of conviction spreading through her chest. Or maybe that was just the coffee. Beth liked to think it was a sign from Shawn, confirming what she said.
“Easier to be okay with it when you’re the one leavin’.” Only every so often did Daryl toss a tidbit her way. She was getting the sense he wasn’t one for idle talk.
“Yeah,” she agreed, thinking now about Mama and Jimmy. Their faces still hurt the most to recall but it wasn’t debilitating anymore. Not a fresh wound but rather the bone-deep of an old injury that was carried for the rest of one’s life. “It’s everyone that’s left behind that has the hard time with it.”
For once, she didn’t think of herself, but Rick. She supposed he was doing a little better. Spent less time beside Lori’s grave and more time with Carl and Judith, even if the new routine was somehow more morose than the other.
“World’s for the livin’, though, regardless of what dead bastards would have you believe.” His arrows finished, Daryl carefully loaded them one at a time into his quiver. The rods gleamed and the fletching at the end was neatly prepared for their next flight.
“How long do you think the walkers will be around?” After setting his quiver aside, Daryl finally turned to look her in the eye.
“Depends, I guess, on how fast they decompose. Some of ’em don’t look so hot anymore. But everyone’s gonna turn eventually.”
“Do you think Judith would?” The idea occurred to her as he was talking. “Everyone’s infected, right? Or that’s what the news was saying when things were getting bad. But I wonder if it would cancel out, somehow, having two parents who were infected.”
Though he didn’t smile, his face softened a bit in the firelight, eyes shining with amusement. Beth felt her cheeks flush and ducked her head to look into the dark depths of her cup.
“You got a funny way of thinkin’, Bess,” he told her, “but I don’t figure any of us intend to outlive Judith to find out.”
Even this, words that would have been a reprimand in Maggie’s voice, was said so matter of fact that she didn’t feel any shame for her ‘funny way of thinking’.
Another night, she asked, “Do you think anyone let the zoo animals out?”
Daryl was always doing some task while she napped or rambled. In all honesty, she had to ask that question to avoid the one of surprise that nearly left her lips when she saw Daryl carefully sewing a large hole in the toe seam of a sock.
Now he looked up and asked, “Why, you got a better idea than a dog?”
A laugh bubbled up in her, spilling out. “A lion would eat a lot more than the chickens.”
Beth asked because she was certain she heard a peacock earlier that day. It wasn’t unusual, if not common, to keep peafowl on a farm. They had a distinctive call, almost like someone crying, but much louder.
“Merle always wanted a monkey,” he told her, nodding to the distant form of his brother walking his nightly rounds. “Knew a guy once who kept one as a pet.”
“A monkey? No, thanks. They’re too smart to be trained. They’ll eat your face or something.”
Beth settled back into her chair, letting her head loll back to take in the stars overhead. Without all the light pollution that once marred the night sky, the stars were dizzyingly thick. She always wondered what it would have been like to grow up with all of them visible. Would they have lost their wonder?
“Anyway,” she said to the stars, as if she was wishing upon one of them, “I hope someone let the free. What a terrible way to go, locked up and starving.”
She could feel Daryl’s eye on her cheek but Beth couldn’t bring herself to meet it. So, instead, she watched the stars, and he watched her.
As July wore on a nervous energy infected the farm. That awful promise of ‘Soon, Rick’ hung like a heavy cloud, threatening to unleash a storm at any moment. Beth found herself thinking of Dale more and more often as she scanned the land that lay beyond the fence.
The courage it had taken to seek them out, to warn them… God, she prayed several times a day, I hope he’s in heaven. There’s no one I know more deserving.
Every breeze that ruffled through the trees, every little sound that came from the far-off trees turned sinister. At night, when she held Judith in her arms, Beth cuddled the baby just a touch closer, glaring at the amorphous shadows that haunted the corners of the dark house.
Yet, with all that apprehension drawing her tight as a bow string, Beth was still unprepared when it all started.
When the evenings weren’t spent in easy conversation or easier sleep, Daryl still walked Beth back to the porch. It was a comfortable rhythm, the routine slotted in amongst her others. Early mornings feeding and caring for the animals, afternoons with various tasks, washing dishes with Maggie, patrol with Daryl, an alternating schedule of nights in the lawn chair and bouncing Judith in her arms.
On one such evening, when Daryl was walking Beth to the porch, listening to her prattle on about cattle breeding—Daddy and Otis had taught Glenn about insemination that day and he was not a fan—when a shot rang out.
They were on the far side of the farm, where the fence edged closest to the forest. After seeing Glenn and Merle appear on the opposite side of the farm, Daryl had wordlessly reversed their path so they could walk back toward the house. They had to round the pond, first, and were walking just along the bank when the shot sounded.
Beth screamed before the bullet hit a mark, and then she screamed louder when Daryl half-spun away from her. His foot lost purchase on the soft ground below them. On reflex, Beth grabbed his arm, meaning to keep him from slipping into the water. To her utter surprise, Daryl was clutching to her as well, throwing her to the ground none too gently before dropping his weight mostly on top of her.
When she slammed into the earth, the impact stole the breath from her lungs. She ended up face down, vision obstructed by the long grasses that grew along the pond bank and the glare of a blazing, setting sun. In her panic, her deepest fears telling her that Daryl was dead and turned, she kicked at him. He boot heel caught him sharply in the knee, earning a hissed curse as he threw himself more bodily over her, using his greater size and weight to pin her to the ground.
“Stop it!” He hissed at her. Hearing his voice took a considerable amount of fight out of her. She stopped struggling though her heart still threatened to burst from her ribcage and her breath was still half-sob, half-gasp. “I’m fine.”
“You got shot!” Beth argued. He scooted off her, though they remained belly-down in the grass. There was enough daylight left that she could see the blood streaming down the left side of his face. At his temple, just above his eyebrow, the skin was burnt and rent. She could smell it, burned flesh and blood, curdling in her stomach even as relief washed through her.
“Just a graze,” he corrected. “Piss poor shot.”
That piss poor shot was deep enough that Daryl had to rub the blood from his eye. It left his hand stained red. Beth swallowed back the sudden rise of bitter bile in her throat. She made herself breathe through her nose, ignoring the unpleasant smells Daryl’s proximity to her brought with it, and out through her mouth. Chaos was overtaking the farm, shouts and gunshots alike.
“Chicken coop’s closest,” he told her, and Beth understood immediately. They needed to leave the grass. They needed to assess the situation. “Stay low, follow me. A movin’ target’s a hell of a lot harder to hit.”
“Okay,” she nodded, chin hitting the ground with the motion. “Okay.”
Daryl rose first, staying crouched, taking a moment to swipe more blood from his eye before he motioned for her to rise. When she was on her feet, he took her hand, and then they ran.
It was the most desperate sprint of her life, zigzagging as muzzle flash lit up the forest. Whoever was shooting was doing so with abandon, at least five guns pointed at the farm from the back, the shooters concealed by the trees. The moving target strategy likely would have worked better had the gunfire not been so random. As fast as they moved, it wasn’t fast enough to stop Beth from catching one of the bullets.
This time when she screamed, it was in pain. Her arm burned. The bullet blazed a path clean through, she could feel that, tearing through skin and muzzle. Daryl only looked back for a fraction of a second to confirm she was still alive and then he spurred them on faster. All Beth wanted to do was curl in on herself, try to make herself small enough to escape the pain. It was only his hand and forward momentum that kept her moving until they were able to crouch again behind the cover of the chicken coop.
“Lemme see,” he commanded, not waiting for her to answer as he began tugging her cardigan off her shoulders. The bullet wound was in her bicep, the blood gluing the fabric to the site.
“It hurts,” she all but whimpered pitifully, tears falling thick and hot down her face. The pain and flames left in the wake of the bullet radiated outward so that her whole arm felt shattered.
“Yeah, bullet holes do that.” She grit her teeth as he manipulated her arm, checking that it could still move, prodding the wound. That made her vision blur and blacken at the edges, the pain almost too much, and Daryl murmured an apology. Once he seemed satisfied that it was a through-and-through shot and her bones didn’t seem broken—even if they felt that way—he ripped two strips from the bottom of her knit cardigan. One was tied hastily around her arm, the other around his own head to soak up the blood still flowing from his own wound.
“Remember when we talked about shooting to kill?” He asked and Beth nodded, trying her best to swallow back her fear. She swiped the tears from her eyes. “Now’s that time. For Judith and Carl, alright?”
“Judith and Carl,” she repeated like a mantra, nodding again. “Okay.”
Still, they lingered a moment, surveying the farm. The shots were still ringing at their backs, which was terrifying and had Beth continually flinching, but there was something happening at the front of the farm, too. Though the light was failing and details were becoming fuzzy and indistinct, she was certain she recognized Shane, though his head appeared shaved, at the front gate. And there was Rick, walking with his back ramrod straight to meet him.
“What do we do?” She could feel the tremor in her own spine, half inspired by pain and half by terror, but she knew they had to do something. They couldn’t sit here, hiding behind the poor chickens, while Rick marched toward what could very well be his death and a firing squad was doing their best to do in the rest of the farm.
“We ain’t got rifles,” he nodded behind them and then winced, “like them.”
“Returning fire wouldn’t do much, huh?”
“Nah.” His eyes slid over to Rick and fixed themselves there. “I’m goin’ for Rick, you’re goin’ to the house.”
“We’re splitting up?!”
“You wanna trade?” He raised a brow, notably the one on the opposite side of the graze. Beth opened her mouth to answer but her voice got swallowed up by a loud, desperate yell from Rick and Shane both.
“CARL!”
Beth turned in time to see the boy fall much less dramatically than Daryl had. For a split second he was walking and then he wasn’t. Shane rounded on his heel and sprinted a short way to another form that materialized from the gathering dark behind him. Rick dropped over Carl, bent protectively.
So much for splitting up. They were in tandem once more as they ran toward Rick and Carl. Beyond the fence, Shane took the other person by the shoulders and slammed his head into their nose. The other man dropped and Shane went with him, straddling his chest and pounding his fists into the man’s face with a ferocity that chilled Beth to her core.
“You idiot!” Shane’s voice was thick and terrible and punctuated by the meaty thumps of his fists. “I told you, I told fucking all of you, not,” the impacts turned wet, just like Rick’s hands, coated in Carl’s blood, “the,” it wasn’t a gut shot, thank God, but the abdomen was never a good place to be hit, “kid!”
There was a rattle, like dry bones in a grave, and Beth knew without looking that Shane had beat that man to death. What was more important was Carl and the wretched look on Rick’s face when he lifted his head to look at her.
“Take him inside.” Beth nodded immediately, her arm be damned. Good God it hurt when Rick placed Carl’s weight in her cradled arms, but Beth only grit her teeth again and bore it. “Hurry!”
She ran as best she could up the long drive, praying the whole time that no other bullets found them. There weren’t as many shots firing and Beth couldn’t—wouldn’t—consider if that was a good thing or not. Carl was limp in her arms, face deathly pale, blood staining his shirt. She couldn’t comfortably shift him to open the door, so she kicked at it instead, yelling as she did so.
“Daddy! Daddy, hurry! Let me in, please, let me in!” She was poised to kick again when the door opened under her foot. Beth stumbled inside, someone—Carol—catching her injured arm and drawing her forward. She cried out as the wound began to bleed anew and Carol apologized effusively. “Where’s my dad?!”
“With Judith, in his office.” Of course. It was the most interior room, the place where Beth used to huddle as a child, playing with her dolls under the desk when the odd tornado watch came their way. There were no windows in the office. Less chance of a stray bullet finding the baby.
She couldn’t hold Carl anymore, not now that her arm was angry again. Carol helped her bring Carl to the couch, where they laid him as gently as possible, and Beth immediately pressed her hands hard against his gunshot. “Go get him!”
The outside world fell away from him as, once again, the Greene residence was thrown into chaos. Daddy appeared but Judith did not. Beth was given orders for gauze, for antiseptic, for the long tweezers from the vet kit. “Bullet has to come out,” he told her. “Too close to his lungs to risk leaving it in.”
Carl was moved to the floor, atop an old sheet, and Beth found herself holding the highest wattage flashlight they had in the house over his prone body the same way she once held a light for Shawn as he worked on the farm equipment. Only Shawn poked into the innards of machinery, not that of a non-responsive twelve-year-old boy. Daddy retrieved the bullet while Carl bled and bled and bled. The wound was cleaned and sewn shut and never once did Beth take her sight off the faint, fluttering rhythm of Carl’s chest as he breathed.
“Oh, baby, you’re hurt, too.”
“I’m fine,” Beth shrugged off his hand on her shoulder. “It went through. I’m fine. Daddy, we can’t let Carl die.”
“I’ve done what I can.” When had her father aged so much? Deep worry lines scored his face and his eyes were shadowed by dark circles. “It’s in God’s hands now, honey.”
“And He’s been so helpful lately,” Beth grumbled, not feeling an ounce of guilt for her anger and blasphemy. Daddy didn’t scold her for it, either. He did, however, make her sit still and let him properly clean and dress her wound when she refused to leave Carl’s side.
He would have been more comfortable in bed, surely, but neither of them made to move him. “No sense in it when he’s this fragile,” Daddy told her. “I’ll go get him a blanket and pillow.”
Beth took Carl’s hand. It was limp in hers but neither too warm nor too cold. She watched his shallow breathing. The entire world had condensed to this. Even when others began streaming in and conversation began to fill the house.
“They ran after Shane died,” T-Dog reported.
“Where’s Rick?” Maggie asked.
“Burying Shane.”
“Everyone else alright?” Came Daddy’s voice, a professional inquiry if Beth had ever heard one.
“I think my ankle’s twisted, but it’s okay.” Glenn. “You good, Mags?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“My idiot baby brother got himself shot in the head, but he’s fine. Wouldn’t come in. Said he’s gonna cover Rick.” Merle.
“Any idea if anyone’s still out there? Besides Rick and Daryl?” Carol asked but her only answer was Judith’s cooing. Those coos turned into grunts and Beth knew from experience that Judith would soon be demanding a bottle if no one got one in her mouth. She barely spared a glance up at the baby before returning her vigilant watch of Carl’s breathing, though.
Beth squeezed his hand. Carl’s remained limp.
“Where’s Otis?!” Patricia asked, voice tinged with hysteria. She was the only one near a window, peering anxiously through the dark. “Has anyone seen him?”
No one had. A murmur buzzed just like Otis’ bees, everyone whispering, comparing notes. When was the last time they saw Otis? They didn’t see him during the firefight? No one remembered passing him on their mad dashes to the house, to safety?
An answer didn’t come until a long while later when, after a cursory knock and announcement of their names in a strangled voice, Rick and Daryl let themselves into the house. The former looked like death walking, his lip split, one eye blacking, a necklace of bruises not unlike the one they saw on Dale blooming around his neck. Daryl was a touch too pale but nowhere near the corpse white of Carl. Her cardigan had been tan but the strip around Daryl’s head was the color of rust.
Rick came to drop himself beside Carl and Beth relieved her post for him. She went to Daddy instead, perching herself on the arm of the chair he sat in, leaning her head on his shoulder.
“You seen Otis?” Merle asked. For the first time, she realized he had finished his prosthetic. A knife was strapped to the stump of his arm. He was cleaning blood from the blade.
“Yeah.” Daryl confirmed, leaving it to that one syllable. It was all he needed to say.
Beth closed her eyes but that did nothing to stop the stabbing pain in her chest when Patricia wailed.
In the morning, Beth was relieved to find all the animals alive. Spooked but uninjured. “Y’all are smarter than us,” she told the livestock, giving them their space as she fed them.
There was a fresh pile of dirt outside the fence. Another was awaiting Otis. Daddy had seen to that grave. Glenn was limping a little as he helped T-Dog and Daryl collect a few bodies for the burn pile.
The details of the night had come to her in surges. T-Dog told of running out of the fence to put down the walkers that resulted from the firefight—only one shot, but four more by way of that one biting them. That accounted for the blood on Merle’s prosthetic. “We didn’t want them walking into the fence,” T-Dog explained. “Had enough problems going on.”
Daryl reported that Otis didn’t turn, which was some small comfort for Patricia. “Found him before he was up again.” He died from a gunshot to the thigh. The blood all around him spoke to the nature of the injury.
Maggie was tilling the dark earth where Otis died. No need to draw in predators with the scent of blood.
Daddy gave a summary of Carl’s injury and treatment. He asked, tentatively, if Rick knew Carl’s blood type. When it was revealed that father and son were a match, blood was drawn for a transfusion before Rick would consent to his injuries being treated.
Maggie took Judith last night even though it was supposed to be Beth’s turn. Actually, it wouldn’t be her turn for a while, not until her arm healed. When she changed her bandage that morning, she found her arm deeply bruised around the hole there. It was too small to warrant stitches, so it was left open to dribble blood and heal on its own.
Daddy reassured her that the bone wasn’t broken. As she dumped slops in the pigs’ trough, the jolt of pain in her arm disagreed with that assessment. She probably shouldn’t have been doing any chores, but she was able-bodied enough, so she didn’t see a reason not to.
It was a lonely morning without Carl. He had woken briefly, had accepted some water, and fallen immediately back into unconsciousness.
With the animals taken care of, Beth trudged back to the house. She let herself inside and turned left for the hallway, for Shawn’s room. After a light knock, she let herself into that room, too.
“I’ll sit with him,” she told Rick. “Go sleep a little bit.”
“I’ll just be on the couch,” he said. “Holler if he wakes up.”
“Will do.”
The chair Rick vacated for her was still warm. She took Carl’s hand in hers. He still didn’t squeeze back when she did, but his eyelids fluttered a bit, and that was better than last night. She would take it.
With a sigh, Beth leaned forward so she was slumped half on the bed. She resumed her activity from the night before, eyes trained on Carl’s chest while her mind hounded her with the same question that had been in her head when she woke after a few fitful hours of sleep.
How many times can the farm fall apart and put itself back together?