Daughter of a Dixon ✔️

04: The Signs

It wasn't until the next morning that I learned they hadn't found Uncle Merle. I was too frantic the previous night to notice he wasn't there; after Dad came back, I stayed in the tent and didn't come out until late morning.

If I was being honest, I was upset that they didn't find Uncle Merle, but at least he wasn't dead. And, I didn't know what it was, but I had a feeling that some separation from him would be good for Dad. He had always taken after his older brother, and not in a good way. Before Uncle Merle got involved, Dad truly acted like a father to me, like he cared about me. It wasn't anything like how it was then, where he acted as if I were some mistake that cost him his happiness.

The morning after the attack was one I'd never forget. There wasn't one person who wasn't utterly grief-stricken, except for maybe Dad. Even Rick looked upset, and he didn't even lose anybody. Although, I didn't either, and I was still sad for everybody else. My Dad, on the other hand, wasn't like that; if it didn't involve him, he didn't care.

I spent most of the morning just trying to tune out everything that was going on. Mostly, it was just the men in camp burning the walkers and burying our people. It was a hard thing to watch, so I tried to avoid it as much as I could. Although, at one point in the day, something caught my attention, and I couldn't look away from it.

As Dad was putting a pickaxe through our people's head so they wouldn't turn (which was extremely painful to watch), Carol walked up to him. I looked down at the walker lying beneath her feet, and realized after a minute that it was her husband, Ed. He had been killed during the attack, and I honestly couldn't say I was sad about it. I saw the way he talked to Carol, treated her like a rag-doll, and Sofia, too. I hated the way he ordered them around, and how Carol and Sofia looked at Ed like he'd hurt them at any given moment.

I wasn't ashamed to admit I thought it was better with him gone.

Carol put the pickaxe through Ed's head about four times before she finally couldn't take it anymore, and walked away with tear tracks staining her face. After she left, I sauntered up to Dad with my head hung low. "Hey, Dad?"

He looked down at me and uttered under his breath, "yeah?"

I brought my eyes up to meet his, squinting due to the sun. "Did Carol do that because she wanted revenge?"

He furrowed his eyebrows at me, and shook his head. "Why the hell'd she do that?"

I let out a small breath and looked down slightly, away from Dad's scolding eyes. "Cause Ed hurt her, and now this was her chance to hurt him."

With my peripheral vision, I could see Dad look away from me, too. He was looking towards the ground slightly, and shuffling his feet. "Whaddaya mean he hurt her?"

"Couldn't you see it? She was scared of him, he treated her like she was nothin', like he didn't care about her at all. He hurt her and Sofia both..."

Dad stayed quiet for awhile, just stirring up dirt with his feet. I didn't know what was making him so quiet; he never got like that. "Just cause they're scared of him, that don't mean he hurt them, Sid," he told me.

"Yeah it does, Dad... I know the signs when I see them."

I didn't realize what I'd said right away; it just kinda of slipped out. Immediately after I uttered that phrase, Dad's eyes snapped down to look at me, and I felt myself growing small under his gaze. After a minute, I looked up to him, and was surprised to find that his gaze wasn't scolding or menacing, like I expected; it was almost confused.