Alice was not worried of the unknown. She was worried of what she already knew. She was worried of the promises that the new people were making to her-the ones bringing the people of a fallen Woodbury into their own settlement. The girl felt sorry t...
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A L I C E
ALICE DUNLAP SHOULD HAVE known what all would come with Carl's sudden conquest for peace. Several years and one civil war later, all of the estranged communities merged for one last attempt at it. In Alice's mind, it seemed as though Carl's death and the Kingdom's first annual fair were linked. Bound to happen as a result of something that occurred so long ago.
The woman felt just a smidge of the sentiment that a young boy once died in the name of. A feeling she tried to chase after, but let grief and combat beat her to it.
Alice Dunlap never did well with parties.
She wondered how long she'd have lasted—sitting all on her own, at a picnic table under the shade of a century-old tree, a half-eaten candied apple in her hand and an old comic atop her knees—before Carl would've dragged her to socialize with the rest of civilization. If she had to guess, she probably would have never made it as far as the tents on the outskirts.
She caught herself smiling at the thought.
The words on the page fizzled out, as if they were never even there. A soccer ball skidded across the freshly cut grass. She instinctively stopped it with her heavy foot.
"Mom!"
Alice's head turned at the sound she'd been trained to hear. The voice that could pull her from the deepest sleep and also send her into the easiest fit of emotions.
"Having fun, Junior?" She swung her legs over the bench, closing the comic in her lap. She set it to the side.
He was running up to her, harnessing an excited face dusted with freckles that spanned across the bridge of his delicately upturned nose and traversed either rosy cheek. Eyes that doubled the color blue. A smile running wild underneath a cupid's bow that came to distinct peaks and divots along his upper lip.
She still wielded the stick of the candied apple. His candied apple. Half-eaten and covered in child slobber, to be resumed once he was finished enjoying himself.
The sweetest outcome from another stick that once only existed to tell her what she wanted to hear. Not what she truly needed. Alice Dunlap should've known not to trust a device that'd baked in the sun longer than she'd been pregnant for. But the order in which everything happened, back then, seemed to work out for the best for her deteriorating psyche.
