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Lee would probably be mad if he knew she had a picture of him. Not because Clementine had taken it without permission, because she’s taken lots of stuff without asking if she could first (but only if she knew no one needed it, that’d be unkind otherwise), but because it was Lee before he hurt the man. Before he killed a person that wasn’t a Walker or going to become a Walker or wasn’t trying to hurt them— or her. Someone who wasn’t trying to hurt her.
(She thinks she remembers hearing about it on the news when she was getting ready for school, but she doesn’t. Not really. She never paid attention to that kind of stuff before, never watched the news because it was always sad or boring.)
But she has a picture of him from back when they first stopped in Macon, and it’s a nice picture of him. He looks relaxed and he’s smiling just a little, like maybe he thinks taking pictures is silly and he’s got better things to do than stand around for a photographer. The lines creasing his forehead aren’t deep with stress, and his beard’s trimmed and well-kept and he doesn’t look like a wildman from sleeping on the floor of barns, or in the dirt, or in railcars.
This Lee slept in a nice, cushy bed in a nice, warm home in a nice, quiet neighborhood.
Clementine doesn’t know this Lee, but late at night when she’s perched in the boughs of a tree up away from the ground, she strains her eyes in the dark and pretends she does.
This Lee smiles at her and the creases in his forehead don’t get deep with worry, and he smiles all the way to his eyes, calls her Sweet Pea while he’s laughing, calls her Sweet Pea all the time. She goes to sleep imagining this Lee.
The edges of the torn photograph are worn, and Clementine has been licking her fingers to pinch the feathery bits down. There’s a corner of red shoulder on the ripped side, a puff of steely, gray hair, curly the way her mom’s is. Was. The way her mom’s was. There’s a heavy hand on that bit of red shoulder, a big masculine one, the fingers curled in and loose.
It must be his dad.
Clementine wonders if Lee looked like his dad, or if he took after his mom like she does. Except her mom always told her she had her dad’s nose and mouth, but she knows for a fact she has her mom’s eyes.
She touches her nose and forces herself to smile, tries to remember the way her dad did it, the shape his mouth would make and the creases that hugged the corners. She tries to remember how many lines he had on his forehead, and she thinks it was just one. Tries to remember his face, and it’s hard, fuzzy at the edges like her photograph. It keeps getting harder.
Clementine imagines her dad’s face and sees lots of creases and sad eyes and a scruffy, unkept beard, and she sees Lee. She sees Lee and feels so guilty that the force of it squeezes tears out of her eyes before she can stop them, and one tear chases another chases another all the way down to her chin.
It’s okay, Baby Girl, she thinks her dad would say, but it’s not, and his voice is beginning to sound distant, like the blare of a train horn traveling away from her. Somewhere far, somewhere better.
It’s okay, Sweet Pea, she rethinks, has to wipe her eyes on her dirty sleeves and force her tears back down because she hasn’t cried since Savannah and she isn’t going to start now. You gotta stop that crying. You won’t be able to aim right if you’re crying.
“Your tie’s loose,” Clementine whispers down at the photograph, when her voice isn’t shaking or crackly or thick.
Sure is, Photograph Lee says, and she breathes through her tears as quietly as she can until they go away, holds a little tighter onto the picture. It’s so wrinkled and creased and stained now; she’ll have to be careful. You should get some rest, Clementine.
“I know,” she says. Then: “Lee?”
Yeah?
She draws in a slow breath, repeats the nickname over and over in her head until his voice doesn’t sound like a memory. “Hold my hand?”
Of course, Sweet Pea.
Clementine listens to the dark for a long time and hearing nothing, closes her eyes. Her dad’s hat is heavy on her head, her gun, heavy, skin-warmed on her lap. She clutches Lee tight in her fist, makes believe that the warmth from the paper is the width and breadth and heat of his fingers steady around her own.
She pretends to sleep until she does, and dreams - for the first time since Atlanta - of better times.