"Did you get much sleep last night, Carol?" Jacqui asked in concern as she looked at the paleness of Carol's face and the dark shadows beneath her eyes as a few of the ladies from their camp attempted to wash the copious amounts of laundry in the cool waters of the quarry. Carol looked over to check the whereabouts of her young daughter, Sophia, and spotting her a little further down the lakeshore answered Jacqui's question with a slight shake of her head.

"Not really, Jacqui; my ribs are still ache terribly and I kept waking up thinking that any minute Ed was going to come storming into camp after us. It's only really been a few weeks since Sophia and I left town; you know that I discharged myself early from the hospital without Ed knowing, right?"

"Yes, you left the hospital; hired a car and hit the road – that was when you met up with Lori and Shane out on the interstate." Jacqui nodded, she was familiar with Carol's tale but noticed that the two blonde sisters, Amy and her elder sister, Andrea might not have heard it all.

"How would he know where to find you though?" Amy asked curiously as she held out a hand for another dripping wet shirt to wring out. "It's not as though he would have known where you would go." Carol looked over at the younger woman and shook her head ruefully at the question.

"Ed would have known that I would have tried to head for a big city as soon as the trouble started, it's a lot easier to hide within a thousand people than it is in a small town." Andrea sighed heavily at the answer and lay a hand on Carol's shoulder as she took the basket of laundry out of her hands.

"Well, you're safe enough here with us now, Carol. We've got a big strapping Deputy Sheriff watching over us and they didn't call me a Shark in the courtroom for nothing, you know!"

"Andrea, you were a Civil Rights attorney, that hardly qualifies you as a shark!" Amy protested and was rewarded with a wet set of boxer shorts in the face for her impertinence and gasped as she got a mouthful of liquid detergent. "Ugghh!"

"Settle down ladies! Anyone would think you were Carl and Sophia's age." Jacqui smiled at the giggling sisters and nudged Carol's shoulder to point her in the direction of where the group's youngest members were trying to catch frogs with the aid of Shane, the Deputy Sheriff watching over them all. "Do you ever remember being that young and carefree?"

"Not really, when I was Sophia's age I had already lost my Mama so it was just me and my Daddy working the farm together. I would go to bed at night and dream of a handsome Prince to come along and rescue me from my Cinderella life." Carol smiled wistfully at the sound of her daughter's laughter floating down the shore to them.

"Was it really that bad?" Jacqui asked quietly as they continued to sort through the piles of laundry that Shane had very helpfully carried down to the quarry for them.

"Not really, it was just hard work. I'd get up at the crack of dawn to help Daddy with the milking and turn the horses out; then it would be time to collect the eggs to prepare breakfast before I'd put in a whole day at school before coming home to muck out the stalls then it was off to bed and repeat the next day. When my Prince Charming did finally come along, well we all know how that turned out…" Carol gestured to her still tightly bound up ribs and fading bruises around her cheeks and neck.

"How long did you put up with it for?" Andrea asked quietly as she reached for yet another shirt from the pile.

"Longer than I should have, I suppose. It was only when he started to threaten Sophia that I decided enough was enough. I knew I couldn't go back to my Daddy's farm, that would be the first place Ed would look for us; so I just picked the nearest city I could find and here we are."

"Yeah, here we are… Still, enough of this morbid conversation, let's lighten the mood a little!" Andrea squeezed Carol's arm to let her know that she was secure and surrounded by friends and called over to her sister. "Hey, Ames!"

"Yeah?" Amy looked up from rinsing one of the last shirts in the pile.

"What do you miss most now that the world's gone to pieces?" Amy smirked at her sister and raised an eyebrow.

"My phone, I miss texting."

"Hmmm, from the conversation we had on the drive up from Florida I think you mean 'sexting'…" Andrea smirked back and turned to Carol and Jacqui. "Apparently little Miss Amy has a thing for one of the teaching aides at the college."

"Oohh, Amy!" Jacqui let out a slow whistle and chuckled as the younger girl blushed at the attention. "I miss my coffee machine with automatic drip feature…hmmm….."

"My Beemer… and my vibrator." Andrea leant back against the boulders and let out a slow moan of dismay. "Yep, definitely my vibrator the most." She gave a sideways glance over at Carol. "What about you, Carol? What do you miss the most?"

"The fairy tale." Carol's softly spoken words had all three ladies gathering close to her. "No more hopes, no more dreams – just cold, hard facts. There will be no more fairy tales for Sophia…or for me." With those last few words, Carol rose stiffly to her feet and walked along the shore to re-join her daughter; wanting to soak up all of the joyous sounds of the children's laughter whilst it was still possible.