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It’s silly, Beth knows, but she can’t bring herself to stop. The little shred of normalcy it brings to their home is something she isn’t prepared — or willing — to give up. Still, she pauses at the base of the stairs, a faded and tattered copy of The Grapes of Wrath clutched tightly in her small, musician’s hands. The house is abuzz with noise where silence usually sits. She doesn’t mind it one bit but the ruckus reminds her that her home is full of near-strangers that don’t know. But the Greene girls are stubborn and Beth doesn’t back down once she has her mind made up. She moves quietly into the living room, the hardwood floor cold on her bare feet, and waits. She stands in the doorway until Hershel sees her and doesn’t move until he speaks.
“Bring it here, Bethy.” He says.
The din dies down uncomfortably as Beth crosses the room to take a seat beside her father on the worn little couch. He takes the book from her and thumbs through the pages to find the little slip of paper he’d used as a bookmark the previous evening, before there were nine extra people jammed into their not-so-small-but-still-not-big-enough-for-this, home.
“I think we might have to start over.”
“Start what over?” Carl asks, attention piqued by the vagueness of Hershel’s statement. He’s still bouncy at twelve, moving to sit cross-legged on the floor by the kitchen chair Lori had brought in after dinner. Beth can’t help but notice the look of pain and sorrow that crosses Carol’s face as she watches the boy, and it twists at Beth’s heart, too. A flash of that little girl, blood still welling from the wound that killed her, makes Beth shudder in her spot. If anyone else notices, they say nothing.
“We read a book before bed,” Beth explains, cheeks warming with how juvenile that makes her sound.
“I mean,” she amends. “Daddy reads me an’ Maggie part of a book every night. He’s done it since we were little and I thought — well, I thought everybody else might enjoy it, too.”
The silence that follows only deepens the flush on Beth’s face. She can’t believe she came down here with that stupid book, expecting everybody to fall into her routine just because she wanted to keep it. She should’ve just stayed upstairs and finished it herself. Dramatic though she knows it is, Beth’s about two seconds away from taking the book back and retreating upstairs to cry when Lori — bless her soul — speaks up.
“I think that’s a great idea.” She wears a genuine smile as she speaks. “I think we’d all benefit from a little distraction.”
To Beth’s incredibly pleasant surprise, it goes over well. She can see how bored Daryl and Andrea look at the start, but the both of them slowly begin paying attention as Hershel reads further. By the end of the first few chapters, they’re just as absorbed in the story as Beth herself. She notices that even Shane seemed to enjoy it, though she could tell he had been pretending not to pay attention. He’d stayed near the door, quietly whittling at a stick so he had an excuse to stay out of the way. But there had been pauses in the slide of knife against wood, and during those pauses, Beth had caught Shane’s gaze on her father, listening intently as he spoke.
They continue nightly story time throughout the winter. The fifth night is the first time the book is out of Greene hands, when Lori asks if she can take a turn. It’s Beth’s decision, since this is "her little rodeo," and she agrees. There’s a little part of her that’s sad to have to discontinue her habit of sitting next to the reader, head propped on their shoulder so she can follow along as they read. By now, though, Beth ought to know that Lori is full of surprises.
“Come on, sweetie,” she says, patting the spot next to her as she takes the book from Beth’s hands.
And so they go, just like that, every night. Somebody volunteers to take a turn, and Beth takes a spot next to them. After Lori, it’s Glenn. Then Jimmy, then Rick, and after that, Carl. Beth enjoys his reading the most, because Carl tends not to take himself so seriously during this part of the night, and he does a different voice for each character.
The night Daryl takes a turn, he acts like he doesn’t really want to. Everybody’s absorbed in a conversation and the eye contact they made was clearly an accident. He avoids her eyes as much as he can, but after a few minutes, it's clear that he can’t just leave Beth standing in the doorway while she waits for them to finish. She’s too polite to interrupt, but Daryl certainly isn’t.
“Bring me the damn book,” he huffs, holding his hand out like he’s being forced. Beth perches on the arm of the couch, unsure whether or not she's allowed to invade his space the way the others had let her. There's easily enough room for her to slide in next to him on the couch, but she stays put. She wants to let him make that decision. As he flips through the pages, looking for the bookmark, he glances toward the space and huffs. It's nearly inaudible, but, Beth's close enough to hear.
"I can't see the words," Beth says, mostly to herself, then slides into the empty space and does what she always does. The moment her head hits Daryl's shoulder, then tension drains out of him. It's the first time she realizes that she's never touched him before. Casual, friendly touches are something Beth doles out like pennies -- often and without regard for how many she's losing. But Daryl had always seemed too standoffish, too distant to want to be included. She understands now how much that idea must hurt him, especially if she isn't the only one who holds it.
She’d never admit it, but, Beth’s honestly surprised to find that Daryl can read, especially as well as he does. There’s barely a word he stumbles over and his cadence isn’t awkward. She gets the sense that everyone in the room is thinking the same thing and it makes her smile to think that Daryl probably feels a little superior to them all right then. He has every right to, as far as she's concerned.
Screw us all, she thinks. That’s what we get for assumin’.
The only night Beth hesitates is the night that Shane asks if he can “take a whack at it.” They’ve cycled through everyone by now, even Beth herself, but never gotten to him. She pauses because she can’t stop seeing blood on his hands. Maybe that’s stupid of her. The others have killed people, too, not just Shane. Maybe her mother hadn’t quite been a person when Shane had blown her head off, but, she had been once.
“S’okay,” Shane says after a moment. He can sense her unease and even if he’s faking it, he seems to understand it. But Beth would rather be damned than back down, so she marches across the carpet with purpose. She holds the book out until he takes it, and as if she has a point to prove, settles in beside him on the floor. He’s incredibly stiff for the first ten minutes but relaxes slowly as he falls into a rhythm. It’s the first time since the incident at the barn that Beth really sees him as a human. It makes her feel less uneasy. She’d much rather see him as a person living under her roof than a monster.
Nothing about the situation they’re in is normal. Fourteen people living under one roof while the dead get up and walk isn’t the situation any of them would’ve ever imagined themselves in, but they’ll make do. They fight and argue, they laugh and joke, and they survive. Things are tough more often than they’re easy, but they have the little, quiet moments to remember that they’re family now.