The Way Back

xx3xx

Carol's girlhood room hadn't changed all that much. Same old wallpaper she'd always begged her parents to change, so faded and worn now, its pattern of pale roses looked like it had been painted by an impressionist's brush. Same antique vanity, with its stubborn top drawer and the crinkled Polaroid tucked in the mirror's top right corner, the smiling image of Nanny Sarah an unwitting witness to so many of Carol's firsts through the years. Same wardrobe, where Shane's letterman jacket and her ruined prom dress still hung side by side. And the same four poster bed, missing its canopy, but still massive, still utterly as lonely as it had always been.

Lost in that bed, mired down by an abundance of blankets and regrets of the past, Carol stared up at her bedroom ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes. Outside, a pastel sun started its slow ascent and twilight's purple shadows gradually faded away, but inside? Inside the stillness of the room, the light was powerless to chase away the darkness of Carol's mood. Daryl's snide words of the day before played on endless loop in her mind, as they had for many long hours during the night, and Carol frowned, the prescient push of tears causing her gaze to blur, to lose focus.

"You wouldn't."

"What does that even mean?" Carol's soft words were lost, swallowed up as the farmhouse's aging bones settled, and she sighed, rolling onto her side and pressing her cold nose into the crook of her elbow. She fixed her unseeing stare on the window across the room and its parted curtains, fluttering and dancing in the chill morning breeze, and his words mocked her yet again.

"You wouldn't."

Daryl was so angry, and it hurt, probably more than it had a right to, but seeing him again? Being just an arm's reach away from him physically when they were obviously still oceans apart emotionally? It reopened all those old wounds Carol thought she'd stitched closed, and God. Coming home wasn't supposed to feel like this.

"You wouldn't."

The alarm on her phone started to peal obnoxiously, and it was enough, finally, to wrench Carol back into the present. She resisted the mighty urge to smother her cell phone beneath her pillow easily enough; it was silenced with nothing more than a clumsy stab of her finger. But abandoning her warm cocoon of blankets was a harder pill to swallow, and she grimaced as she flung the covers aside to greet a cold gray morning that was definitely a marked change from the morning before, one of those wondrous little idiosyncrasies typical of Fall in Georgia. The hardwood floor was cool underfoot, icy even through the barrier of her thick, fuzzy socks, and Carol hissed, feeling every hair on every inch of her body stand up in protest. Within seconds, even her freckles had goosebumps, and she stuffed her feet into her nearby boots and hurriedly shuffled across the room, untied laces trailing behind her.

The window closed with a protesting groan, and the long, leafed fingers of the tree outside scratched against the pane in a similar appeal.

Carol rubbed at the little opaque clouds left in the wake of her warm breath and peered out across the neglected yard. If the room she was standing in had not changed all that much, the passage of time had not been as kind to the old barn, which seemed to list and waver whichever way the wind blew, nor the rotting fence line, draped with wild honeysuckle and surrounded by an abundance of weeds tall enough to tower over Mika. The state of rampant disrepair all over the property, in fact, had been enough to prompt Dale to offer up his services the evening before, but Carol had gently refused the kind offer, not wanting to take further advantage of his boundless generosity when he had already done so much for her and the girls. Thoughts of the girls had her straightening, stiffening her spine against a day that promised to be chock full of new challenges, a day no doubt teeming with more of those awkward, overwrought encounters that had thus far made this homecoming of hers both a blessing and a curse. A cold little hand touching her own almost had her jumping out of her boots.

Equally as startled, Mika dropped the doll hugged loosely to her small chest to the floor and stared up at her with big, welling brown eyes and a pout of dismay, the neat braid she'd fallen to sleep with all but completely unraveled. "I'm sorry, Ms. Carol."

Carol's heart swelled with affection for the tiny girl, and she knelt, scooping Mika up when she flew into her arms and pressing a kiss of apology into her soft hair. "You don't need to be sorry, Sweetie," she murmured. "I just wasn't expecting you." Bending to snag Griselda by the hand, she placed the doll back into Mika's arms and hugged the both of them tightly as she walked back toward her bed and the inviting mound of blankets she'd so recently cast aside. "What are you doing up this early?"

Mika's small fingers toyed with the thin straps of Carol's camisole, her frigid little toes burrowed beneath the elastic waistband of her cotton panties, and she tucked her nose into the crease of her neck, shrugging. "Me and Griselda were cold, and Lizzie was hogging all the covers again."

Carol pretended to be aghast, hiding the gentle curve of her mouth in Mika's unruly cloud of hair. "Lizzie's hogging all her own covers? Again?" Mika's muffled mewl of disappointment made laughter and guilt bubble up in equal measure, and her kiss this time landed on the little girl's sleep warmed forehead. Setting the child down in the center of her bed, Carol cupped her cherubic cheeks in the palms of her hands and sighed, making a sheepish admission that held more than a kernel of truth. "I don't always like sleeping in my own bed all by myself either."

Heartened by the confession, Mika's small shoulders slumped and she burrowed back into Carol's open, waiting arms. "You don't?"

Carol shook her head. "It's big. And lonely. And I don't have anybody to snuggle with me. Sophia thinks she's too big."

Mika tipped her head back, her big brown eyes shining with love and hopefulness and acceptance. "I give good snuggles. My daddy said so. He called me his snuggle bug." With those last words, a recalled memory that seemed to surprise even her, Mika's face fell and her pout returned. "I miss my daddy."

Carol's breath caught, and those tears she'd been fighting against all morning, all through the night truth be told, were back, just like that. "I know. I miss him, too. Your daddy was my friend." He had been. A really good friend, kind and supportive and sweet. They'd bonded over their status as single parents to their daughters, and Carol hadn't been able to refuse Ryan when he'd asked her to take on his girls as her own. "He was such a good friend. And an even better daddy. I bet he was right. I bet you give the best snuggles." Mika's trembling smile was bright and warmed Carol's aching heart.

"You do?"

"I do," Carol nodded, stroking Mika's hair back from her face and tucking it behind her ears. "How 'bout you give me some of those snuggles right now? We still have time before we have to wake Lizzie and Sophia for school."

Mika tackle-hugged Carol to the pillows below and cuddled up nice and tight to her side like a sleepy little kitten as she pulled the blankets up to their chins. "I love you, Ms. Carol."

Lump firmly lodged in her throat, it took Carol a moment to respond, but her words were no less sincere. "I love you, too."

xxx

Carol pulled into the last available parking spot at the elementary school and killed the Cherokee's engine with a sigh. "We're here."

Mika was the first to unbuckle her seat belt, sliding free of her booster seat and eyeing the nondescript brick building with much more awe than it warranted. "Lizzie, look. That's your new school. It's so big."

Lizzie remained stoic in the face of her sister's wonder, her hands folded neatly in her lap, but Carol had to smother a smile. Once upon a time, at this very school, she'd had much the same reaction as Mika. How times had changed. "What do you think, Lizzie?"

The little girl simply shrugged in response, wholly unimpressed.

"Sophia?" Carol tried, hoping for but not expecting an answer. When no response came, she sighed again, louder this time as she regarded the grumpy little thundercloud in the backseat currently glaring at anyone that so much as peeked in her direction. "Sophia, I'm sure your lucky socks aren't lost forever. Did you check your backpack?"

Sophia crossed her arms across her chest with a tiny huff of annoyance. "They're not in there. You know I can't go inside without them, Mama."

"Maybe they're in one of the boxes we haven't unpacked yet," Carol offered. It was a distinct possibility, after all. Though they'd made considerable progress the day before, the girls' bedtime had loomed all too soon and getting everyone bathed, dressed in their pajamas, and tucked in at a decent hour was not as easy as it'd been when it was just Sophia. They'd put off the rest of the unpacking for another day and called it an early night, but morning had seemingly dawned before they'd had time to close their eyes. At least it had felt that way to Carol, heartsick and sleep-deprived. "I promise. I'll look for them when I get back home. Mika will help."

"We'll look in every box," Mika vowed solemnly.

"Every box," Carol reiterated, tightening her fingers around the steering wheel as she met her daughter's hazel eyes over her shoulder. "Sophia," she pleaded. "We don't have time for this, Sweetie. You know we still have to get you and Lizzie checked in."

"Here," Lizzie volunteered, pulling her own fuzzy pink talisman out of her backpack. "You can borrow my rabbit's foot."

Carol's heart melted. Such gestures were routine from Mika, but from Lizzie? Not even a month ago, they were not necessarily unheard of, but grudging. Coming from Lizzie now, such a gesture was tantamount to a grand declaration of affection, and she wasn't the only one that realized that.

Sophia's arms fell to her sides, and her eyes softened. "You really mean it?"

Lizzie nodded, holding out the good luck charm.

"Thank you, Lizzie."

Carol's sigh this time was one of relief and she gave the little girl a warm smile. "Yes. Thank you, Lizzie." Pocketing her car keys, she took a deep, replenishing breath. "Now. Who's ready to go inside?"

"I am, Ma'am."

"Me, too," Sophia answered.

"Me, three," Mika giggled.

xxx

With Sophia happily ensconced in her new classroom and Mika enjoying an impromptu little art session and cookies in the secretary's office, Carol walked the winding halls of the little school with Lizzie and a stalwart figure from her own days spent within its walls by her side, Principal Deanna Monroe. Diminutive in stature but larger than life, the woman still commanded her attention after all these years, demanded her respect, and Carol, for once, found herself just as speechless as Lizzie.

"The place really hasn't changed that much. Storms a few years back damaged this wing, and our kindergarteners and first graders spent a couple of years in trailers, but you'll see for yourself. Everything is back to normal, and your classroom, Lizzie, is still one of my favorite rooms in the entire school." The older woman's eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled and dryly remarked, "It looks like it's one of Mr. Grimes's favorite rooms as well."

Rick Grimes parted from his wife's smiling mouth with great reluctance, his cheeks pinking beneath his shadow of a beard and his eyes studying the pointed toes of his boots as if they were of utmost fascination. One large, protective hand cupped the swell of the child pressing between them and the other braced itself on the frame of the open door.

He looked remarkably like the little boy he'd once been, hand caught in her nanny Sarah's cookie jar, and Carol stifled a snort of laughter when Principal Monroe took her teasing a step further.

"This is not the type of education I wish to offer my students, Mr. Grimes. Mrs. Grimes," she added, pointedly including Lori in her good-natured admonitions as she peered around the door to find roughly a dozen little faces pretending (badly) not to be hanging on their every word and action. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to introduce Lizzie to her new classmates while you two wrap things up here." Holding out her hand, she beckoned Lizzie to follow her. "Come along, child."

The door closed with a resounding thud behind her, and one more look at Lori, at Rick, had Carol dissolving into a fit of girlish giggles that Lori soon joined. "I see you two haven't changed."

Lori's bright smile dimmed, faltered, froze.

Rick's chagrined expression tightened.

The reactions to her innocent statement lasted but a millisecond, were gone in a blink of Carol's eye as Rick stepped forward, gathering her in a tight bear hug that stole the breath from her lungs. When she pulled back to study them once more, their smiles were bright again, but she could see the hairline cracks in the perfect façade they presented to the unknowing eye, see the obvious work and effort it'd taken to piece things back together again in the lingering hold of their hands.

"Lori told me you were back. I've been meaning to stop by."

Carol let him off the hook, gently teasing, "It's only been a couple of days, Rick."

"Really? Feels closer to a decade."

This time, Carol's smile slid away, and Lori gave her husband's hand a forceful squeeze.

"Rick."

Rick rubbed a rough hand over his tired face, sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to come out like that. I just…it's good to have you back home. It's been a while. A lot of things are the same, but so many are different, too. You have a lot to catch up on. We have a lot to catch up on. If that's something you're interested in."

"I'm interested. You know I am."

xxx

"This seat taken?"

Merle's toothy mug greeted her when she looked up from her stack of classifieds, and Carol rolled her eyes, a smile twitching at her lips as he slid into the booth opposite her without waiting for her express permission. "Guess it doesn't matter."

"Right answer," Merle crowed, stealing a wedge of Mika's pancakes with his thick fingers and dripping syrup all over the tabletop. "Mornin', L'il Bit. What you doin' out of school? You sick or somethin'?"

Mika wormed her little body beneath Carol's protective wing, staring across the table at Merle with wide, worried brown eyes.

A few more minutes of silence and Merle mused, "Don't talk much, does she?"

"You say enough for all three of us," Carol quipped, recapping her pen and picking up her lukewarm coffee. One sip, and she grimaced, setting the chipped mug back down and pushing it aside. "What do you want, Merle?"

"Always could read me like a book, Red. S'what I like most 'bout you," Merle remarked, hailing the waitress and ordering them both new cups of coffee. Only when she returned, and he'd taken a long pull of the steaming liquid gold, whistling and swearing beneath his breath, did he speak again. "Shit, that stuff would burn the Devil's left nut off."

"Merle!" Carol barked.

"What?" he winked exaggeratedly. "Kid's got a mute button. Right?" That comment earned him a small curl of Mika's lips, and Merle grinned like he had won the Georgia lottery, turning on the charm. Digging his wallet out of his back pocket, he held out a couple of bills to Mika. "Why don't you see Sherry 'bout gettin' some change, L'il Bit? Playin' us somethin' nice on the jukebox? Maybe winnin' yer mama a pretty prize?"

At Carol's nod, Mika accepted Merle's thinly veiled bribe, carefully crawling over Carol's lap and sliding from the booth. Soon, the pretty brunette waitress was taking her hand and leading her to the opposite end of the small diner where the jukebox and a few money traps awaited.

"Don't do that again."

Merle's frown deepened the lines between his brows. "Don't do what?"

Carol leaned back in her seat, matched his expression as she reached for her own cup of coffee. "Don't play dumb. You know what."

"Why not? Just 'cause you ain't that baby's blood don't mean you not her mama. S'written all over her face. Yours, too."

Carol's frown deepened. "Things aren't settled. Not as much as they could be. Don't be filling her head with ideas."

"The hell you gettin' at, Red? What do you mean things ain't settled?"

Ryan had been an only child in a long line of only children, but his late wife? Somewhere out there, his wife had a half-sister, a woman who someday might decide she wanted to get to know her little nieces, and that someday might happen sooner than later, now that Carol had decided to move forward and formally adopt the girls. It was a possibility that Andrea was trying to prepare her for, best as she could. It was a possibility Carol wanted to push away and ignore with every sweet snuggle Mika gave her, every small breakthrough Lizzie made. It was a possibility she didn't want to openly acknowledge and so, she shook her head. "Things aren't settled. Let's just leave it at that. It's not what you really want to talk to me about anyway. We both know it. Just spit it out, Merle."

"You sure that's what you want, Red? Don't say I didn't warn you."

Swallowing hard, gathering up all her courage, Carol answered in the affirmative. "I'm sure."

Merle smiled, but his eyes were hard, clear and ready to pierce through any bullshit excuse she might try to offer him. "Any fool with two eyes can see yer still hung up on my baby brother. When you two gonna stop fuckin' 'round? Better yet. When you two gonna start?"

xxx

The Dixon brothers always did have a way of getting in her head, and try as she might, Carol just couldn't push Merle's comments aside; his off-color method of stating the obvious lingered in the back of her mind the rest of the day, and she couldn't give anything else on her mile-long to-do list the attention it deserved. She quickly gave up even trying, retreating back to the farmhouse with her stack of classifieds and her sleepy almost-daughter and diving headlong into a task she'd truthfully be just as content putting off indefinitely. The boxes wouldn't unpack themselves, though, and the Maytag downstairs was already showing its age and irritable, unpredictable nature. Clean clothes for herself and the girls was a rapidly dwindling commodity, so Carol tucked Mika and Griselda in for their afternoon nap and started with the boxes in Sophia's bedroom, on a promised mission to find the pair of elusive lucky socks. She was halfway through her second box without a single sighting when she heard the knock.

Annette Greene beamed at her when she pulled the door open minutes later, promptly pushing a Tupperware container into her hands and holding up a steaming thermos. "Cookies. And cider. I hope you and your girls like Snickerdoodles. Beth helped me make them last night. Maggie's young man ate half his body weight of them, but there was still enough left over to feed a small army."

Some might say chocolate was her Achilles heel, but Carol's fondness for cookies in general had always had the regrettable effect of loosening her tongue, a fact Mrs. Greene was well aware of and had exploited more than once in the past. That the older woman came bearing such gifts was not a surprise. It was a foregone conclusion. "And you thought of me and my girls? That's us all right," Carol remarked, punctuating her statement with a small, self-deprecating laugh. Taking a step back, she invited her unannounced guest inside. "Please. Come in, Mrs. Greene."

"Annette," the vet's wife insisted, following Carol to the kitchen and doing little to hide her curiosity. On the contrary, her wide, friendly gaze soaked in their surroundings. "It's like stepping back through time itself."

For Carol, it had been. It was. Through all her life's ups and downs, the farmhouse had remained the same, a monument of sorts to the great grandmother that had had a hand in raising three generations within its walls. Her nanny Sarah had died in her sleep upstairs when Carol was thirteen years old. Her parents had split up, permanently, less than a year later, leaving only Carol and her mama and the postcards her daddy sent them in the sprawling old house. First they came from all over the United States. Like clockwork they showed up, pictures of big city lights and canyons wide and wondrous. Pictures of rolling blue oceans and bridges suspended over mist. Pictures of snow-capped mountains and desert flowers in bloom. Then they started to slow, started to come less frequently. Pictures of tall towers with clocks and crumbling castles. Pictures of winding, serpentine walls and opera houses shaped like shells. Pictures of cathedrals and buildings that climbed to the sky. Finally, they just stopped altogether, and the history, the regrets held inside the farmhouse's walls, became too much for her mama. She'd had one foot out of the front door long before Carol had ever stepped off that dark cliff and into a marriage with a man wholly unsuited for her, a man who'd quickly folded under the pressure of living a lie and had taken it out on her with first his hurtful words, then his angry hands. Unlike Carol, though, her mama'd yet to return, but nobody had to tell Annette Greene that. Her well-meaning neighbor knew more than most, and there was little point in denying it. Besides, all that was behind her now, the daddy that had just faded from her life and the husband that would never touch her or her daughter again. Softly, Carol voiced her own agreement, "Not much has changed."

"But everything has," the other woman murmured just as quietly, taking a seat at the table. It was a seat the Greene women had occupied often enough over the years. Annette now. Jo before her. They'd shared tea and cookies and conversation with their Mason counterparts for as long as the farmhouse had been standing, and though they weren't even of the same generation, it seemed Annette was here to continue the tradition.

Carol placed the container of cookies on the table in front of her guest and crossed the room to the cupboards, where she rose on tiptoe to retrieve a couple of faded blue mugs from the top shelf. She carried them with her to the old wooden table that had always seemed so big and empty in a house occupied by so few and set them down on its scarred surface. She helped herself to a cookie while Annette poured them both some cider, and the corners of her mouth curled as soon as the sugary sweetness hit her taste buds. "Go ahead. Ask. We both know you want to."

Annette didn't even attempt to feign ignorance. She hid her smile behind her mug and lifted a sly brow. "All I'm doing is offering a friendly ear. If you just happened to feel so compelled…"

Shaking her head, Carol drew one of her legs into the chair with her and grabbed another cookie, all but cramming into her mouth while she contemplated the wisdom of spilling the current confused state of her heart to the first person that asked nicely, and with cookies, no less. Taking a sip of her own cider, she sighed in resignation and set the mug down, wrapping her arms around both of her legs and tucking her knees close to her chest. "I just…I don't…" Carol's eyes grew warm with unexpected tears as her mind conjured up the image of Daryl from the day before, so closed off and so angry, and she tried again. "Things just got off track and he hurt me and then…"

The expression on Annette's face softened into solemnity, and she cradled her mug in front of her with both of her hands, looking every bit the mother figure that she was when words failed Carol completely. "Then you hurt him."

Carol covered her trembling lips with her hand, blinked against the sting of the tears that had started to fall against her will. "I hurt him, and I don't know how to fix that. I don't even know if I can. If it's even possible for us…I miss him, Annette. I miss my best friend, and I don't know how to get him back. I don't even know where to begin."

"Start with the truth. That's as good a place as any."

xxx

Carol picked the girls up from school a couple of hours later wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses and an apologetic smile. For lack of a better explanation, it seemed the lucky socks had fallen prey to whatever sneaky, cosmic force lost socks tended to fall victim to, and she didn't relish breaking the news to her young daughter that she'd ultimately been unsuccessful in her search. Not one bit. All her worry was for naught, though, as Sophia had other things on her mind.

"Mama! Did you know that we live right by the Pumpkin Patch?"

Mika's eyes rounded with wonder, but Lizzie looked unfazed by the revelation, plopping down in her seat and stowing her backpack on the floor between her feet before buckling her seatbelt.

Carol's apologetic smile morphed into a genuine grin at how very different the two little girls were, how excited Sophia seemed by something she'd taken for granted as a child, and she nodded. "I'm aware. Dr. Greene has his office out there, too."

That little revelation piqued Lizzie's interest, and her blue eyes narrowed. "The same doctor Greene that has all the cows?"

"The same one," Carol answered her, shifting the Cherokee into drive and following the slow-moving caravan as it moved around the small half-loop that led back to the main road. "He's an animal doctor."

"You mean like a veterinarian?" Sophia brightened even further and she practically bounced in place, her safety belt the only thing anchoring her to reality. "Does he have puppies?"

"Lots of barn cats, too," Carol told them as she merged onto the main highway, mentally plotting out a route she must have taken hundreds of times as a child. Thousands, really. The little town hadn't been as populated back then, but muscle memory took over, and there were enough echoes of familiarity to assure her she was indeed on the right track. "Least he used to."

"Can we have one Ms. Carol? Please?"

"Please, Mama?" Sophia added her two cents.

Both little girls wore their most innocent, angelic faces, their eyes pure and their hands prayerful, and Carol just had to laugh. "What about you, Lizzie? You don't like puppies or kittens?"

Lizzie lifted her skinny shoulder in the slightest of shrugs, but there was an unmistakable glimmer of interest in her eyes. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Carol teased, seeing the sign up ahead for the little locally owned grocery her parents had frequented and Nanny Sarah before them. She flipped on her blinker, the whistle and the rumble of a distant train audible even from miles away. "Really?"

"We ain't had a pet before, Ms. Carol," Mika divulged. "Our daddy said the ladyland wouldn't let us."

"Landlady." Lizzie muttered out the correction, her eyes downcast. "Least not a real, live one."

The landlady, Carol knew, likely hadn't been the only one to refuse the presence of a pet in the Samuels' household; Ryan's doctors had probably had equal reservations about the idea. Her good humor started to fade, and like so many things, she regretted pressing the issue. Boy, did she ever. Her daughter's next comments dredged up memories best left forgotten.

"I had a goldfish once," Sophia remarked, a small furrow forming between her brows. "I think. Maybe I dreamed it. Was it real, Mama?"

Pretending not to hear her, Carol instead turned on the radio and the poppy beats of one of the girls' favorite songs filled the interior of the Cherokee, then the girls' sweet voices themselves.

"Turn it up, Ms. Carol!"

"Yeah, Mama. Please?"

xxx

The chain store on the edge of King County was no doubt more spacious and had a much more varied selection, but Nanny Sarah had always sworn by Mary's Market, and Carol couldn't deny the little store had its own quirky sort of appeal. Its shelves were well stocked, with big name and locally produced items alike, and it didn't lack for customers. In fact, it was much more crowded than Carol had anticipated for an early Monday evening, and the intimate maze of aisles would have felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic in its design if she didn't have the chatter of the girls to distract her.

"Carl calls Mr. Mamet a nerd, but I like him, Mama. He's real nice."

"That's good, Sweetie," Carol murmured, tweaking Mika's thick braid when the little girl's knobby knee dug painfully into her thigh as she wiggled and shifted restlessly in the child seat. She was almost too big for it, but Carol wanted her where she could keep her eyes on her—losing her once in a department store was enough for a lifetime—and Lizzie was already holding on to the end of the cart. "What about you, Lizzie? Did you like your teacher?"

"I guess," Lizzie mumbled. "She's fat."

"Lizzie!" Carol sputtered.

Sophia's brows frowned right along with her mouth, and she stopped in her tracks, dropping her hand from the cart to her small hip. "That's Carl's mama you're talking about, and she's not fat. She's having a baby. Tell her, Mama."

"Mrs. Grimes is pregnant, Lizzie."

"With lots of babies?" Mika asked innocently.

Carol bit her lip, hard, and shook her head, not trusting her voice. Luckily, Sophia had no such problems, and she promptly set Mika and Lizzie straight.

"Just one. Carl's little sister. His mama and daddy told him he gets to pick her name. He wants to name her Judith."

Lizzie's nose wrinkled. "That's an old lady's name."

"That's what I told him."

Lizzie stumbled from her perch in surprise, and Mika started wiggling again, this time in an effort to get a better look at the boy standing at the end of the aisle, his feet spread wide and his arms wrapped around a box of Lucky Charms.

Carol winced and shifted away from the bony little knee, looking down when she felt her daughter's small hand slide in her back pocket.

"That's Ron Anderson. He's in my class. I don't like him," Sophia whispered. "He's mean."

Carol studied the boy with new eyes, smoothing a comforting hand over her daughter's soft hair. The kid was lanky, a head taller than Sophia at least, with shaggy brown hair that fell into his eyes. He wore a thick black hoodie, a bit overboard for a day that had warmed up nicely, and a pair of jeans with holes in both knees. Nothing exceptional, nothing too out of the ordinary, but still. It was all in his demeanor, defiant and daring, and she knew exactly why he rubbed her little girl the wrong way. Not seeing a likely parent around, she straightened and softly scolded the child. "That's not a very nice thing to say."

"Mr. Grimes isn't nice. Why should I be?"

"Hey!" Sophia cried.

"Mrs. Grimes is nice," Lizzie interjected. "I just said she's fat."

"I'm not talking about Mrs. Grimes, Stupid. You deaf or something?"

"Ron Anderson! Apologize this instant."

The skinny shoulders slumped under his mother's hands, but the brown eyes, what little bit that Carol could see of them, still held a note of open defiance, and the child's apology was half-hearted at best. Carol didn't dwell on it, though. She was too fixated on other things. Like the eerily familiar hazel eyes staring back at her from a pretty face. Like the little blond moppet sitting astride a pair of broad shoulders she'd recognize anywhere. Sophia's cool hand slid into her own, and Carol swallowed, grounding herself as her baby laced their fingers together in a subconscious attempt at comfort. Then she cleared her throat and attempted a smile. "Jessie. Daryl."

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