my tears ricochet

Chapter Seventy Five

The late afternoon sun was glittering off of the apartment windows while Daryl waited patiently on a bench, watching for Glenn to finally wrap up his business with a smaller group down the street. When he came over he dropped a letter off in his lap and took a seat beside him.

"The hell is this?" Daryl asked, squinting as he examined the paper folded in shape of a flower.

"Don't open it, man. Beth wants you to pass it off to Ivy. I already got an earful about keep it in shape and if you wreck it, she'll be out for your blood and I'm not saving you."

He sighed, looking at the hard ridges of paper folded back, Beth's narrow script barely visible. "Should I be worried that the jailbirds are posting messages back and forth?" Daryl frowned. He had already slipped Tyreese a letter to hand off to Maggie earlier that morning. "Because we're gonna look pretty stupid if they're just using us to pass off plans."

Glenn laughed. He tipped his head back and gazed up at the line of buildings, vines starting to work their way up the one end. "Honestly, I'm positive this is Beth's manifesto about Fleetwood Mac. She's on a real kick about it or something. I wouldn't stress over it."

"I know that music died when the world ended but is she ever going to upgrade decades?"

"Beats me."

Daryl had pointedly dropped off a stack of heavy metal CDS in their mailbox which had been returned with a single note in Beth's handwriting, 'Absolutely not'. She even underlined the two words with an aggressive scribble and matched it with a doodle of a frowning face. "How's it going over there?" Daryl asked, bending slightly for the bag at his feet and pulling out two bottles of beer.

Glenn accepted the offering and twisted the cap off. "Beth told Maggie that she was the worst sister in the entire world and wrote her a song to that exact tune. But they've stopped screaming at each other and now they're picking flowers over at Bob's. So, I couldn't really tell you."

"Merle and I'd always just settle it out with fists."

"Yeah, well. I don't think that was healthy."

He snorted. "Probably not."

"How's it going up there?" Glenn asked, nodding towards the windows. "She climbing the walls yet?"

"Nah. Ivy's pretty good," Daryl admitted, looking at the beer in his hands. "Abe dropped off that bookshelf for her so she's been fiddling with it."

"Hey," Aaron called as he walked up. "You see Enid anywhere?"

"Nah. Might have some luck over by the walls, I know she climbs up the supports sometimes," Glenn said, shrugging. "What? You didn't know that? It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to get over."

"You know when Deanna has those incredibly important council meetings where people come and discuss concerns?" Aaron asked, disbelief written across his face. "That's definitely the sort of thing that you should be bringing up."

Glenn tipped his beer towards the man. "Sorry, man. I just fix cars."

"He delivers pizzas sometimes," Daryl muttered. "Got a pretty flexible resume."

"Good luck wrangling that one."

Enid was as prickly as Ivy could be. He didn't imagine that she was making it easy for Aaron and Eric to sort out and it was almost enjoyable sitting on the other side of the divide, watching the chaos of figuring out how to process the relationship. "Try the garden where they're setting up that look out platform," Daryl suggested. "If she's climbing, less people are probably hanging around to catch her."