AN: Here we are, another little addition to this story.

Warnings for not super detailed discussion of infanticide and domestic abuse in memory form (which will occur occasionally, given the background of Carol in this one).

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

Carol pushed the button to start the coffee pot brewing and ran her fingers through her hair. It was early—too early, probably, for most of the world to be out of bed on a Saturday, especially if they had no reason to be up—but Carol had always been an early riser. On top of that, she hadn't really ever learned to sleep solidly since the loss of her daughter—not that she'd slept well even before then, when living with her husband had taught her to sleep with one eye open. It had gotten worse, though, since she'd lost Sophia.

The accident. That's what everyone else had called it at first, and it was primarily one of the reasons that Carol had moved and severed ties with anyone who even somewhat knew her during her marriage to Ed. She had to get away from that town.

It hadn't been an accident. Her daughter had been murdered. Carol wasn't sure, exactly, why she, herself, had been spared from death. She wasn't sure why she'd recovered from her injuries when Sophia hadn't. There had been many, many nights that she'd laid awake in bed and wondered that. Why had she lived when her daughter hadn't?

She knew it was wrong of her, and she prayed for forgiveness for the intrusive thoughts that came into her mind nearly every day, but she hoped that her ex-husband was suffering in prison. She hoped that he suffered daily: morning, noon, and night. She hoped that every person in the prison who had access to him knew that he had nearly beaten his wife to death, after years of abuse, and that he had killed Carol's baby girl—she couldn't even bring herself to think of Sophia as his daughter after what he'd done to her.

Carol's thoughts had drifted back to Ed while she'd been sleeping. She'd had a nightmare—she'd been reliving something of a memory, really, but that was a nightmare where Ed was concerned—and it had woken her in a cold sweat. She'd gotten up, splashed her face with cool water in the bathroom, and swallowed down a few handfuls of the cool water from the sink, but she'd never gotten back to sleep.

It finally seemed late enough to consider it reasonable to get up on a Saturday.

While Carol listened to the soothing and familiar gurgling of the coffee pot doing its work, she moved around her own kitchen, looking it over and purposefully seeking distraction from the lingering unease that made her stomach feel uncomfortable after such a close encounter—even one created by her imagination—with Ed.

Carol's eyes slid over the pictures on her refrigerator. There were the same, slightly discolored pictures that had been there since she'd moved in. They were starting to show the passage of time and the year between when they'd first been colored and now. Carol had kept everything of Sophia's. Everything. Most of Sophia's things were in a box in a spare room, but she hadn't felt able to part with anything that had belonged to her daughter. The pictures on the refrigerator had been on the refrigerator before—the last few things she'd hung up that Sophia had made with crayons and toddler art skills.

Now, among those pictures, was a new picture. It was a puppy streaked with heavy lines of varying colors—all of them, Carol was sure, the artist thought were beautiful colors. The jagged edges of the picture, ripped free from a coloring book outside the Pancake House, were somehow even more endearing than just the piece of artwork was alone. In the bottom corner, just as she'd done with the other pictures on the fridge, Carol had labelled the multi-colored puppy with the artist's name and the year of its creation.

Poppy.

Just the thought of the little girl and the sight of her picture on the fridge made Carol's mood lift. She was adorable—precious and precocious. She was a little bundle of energy, and light, and life. Just sitting next to her in the booth at the restaurant had made Carol feel happier than she'd felt in a little more than a year.

And then there was her father—Daryl.

Carol's sex life had never been wonderful with Ed. He'd been her first and, admittedly, her only actual partner. She had bought, for herself, a small vibrator. On more than one occasion, she'd indulged herself in fantasies about men who would sneak into her life, usually rescue her from Ed, and do the wonderful things to her body that her fingers and the little vibrator could do. Those fantasy lovers had been quite good to her, but Ed never really had been. Carol thought he might not have known what he was doing, exactly, and he was clumsy. Beyond that, he was an excessively selfish lover—something that mirrored his way of being in every aspect of their married lives.

She had been a silly young woman to marry him in the first place. She'd been naïve, and she'd been easily swept off her feet by the first person to pay attention to a somewhat aloof wallflower. She'd been raised in a town where she'd been taught that a woman's greatest purpose was to become a wife and a mother. She'd been afraid that it would never happen for her since it hadn't happened immediately after high school.

Now, of course, she realized that she hadn't exactly been that open to anyone. She'd been aloof, distant, and absorbed in her fantasy world. She had been waiting for Prince Charming to practically charge into her life and sweep her off her feet. Instead, it had taken a man like Ed Peletier—a man who wanted someone he could easily take away somewhere to have her all to himself, and a man who charged after what he wanted whether or not she was fully receptive—to break into her world and convince her that what he offered was love, and the best she'd ever get.

Carol still ached to be a mother and a wife—that part of her had never changed—but Ed had made her certain that she would never be with another man again. Her fantasy men didn't exist, after all, and she shuddered to ever imagine hands like Ed's touching her again. When she'd been free from him, she'd told herself she never wanted another man again—real or imaginary. Even her vibrator had been packed up since then.

Carol had only unearthed it in her belongings a few days ago—Halloween night. And, eyes closed to better see those blue eyes and that crooked smile as she imagined him coaxing her to feel everything she wanted to feel, Carol had indulged her imagination once more.

She was almost ashamed of using Daryl in such a way, but she hadn't felt that kind of attraction since…ever.

Carol's cheeks burned, even now, as she thought of the night before when she'd allowed Daryl—or, at least, her mind's recreation of him—to tuck her in for the night with some loving attention to parts of her body that she'd tried to will dead.

As the coffee pot finished its morning labor, Carol poured herself a cup of coffee. She smelled it, warmed her hands on the mug as part of the ritual of drinking the beverage, and sipped it. She hummed her approval as she swallowed it, and then she nearly spilled it on herself when her ringing phone, piercing through the silence of the morning, made her jump.

Carol put the mug on the counter and picked up the phone. She nearly dropped it when she read the name. For a moment, her heart felt like it stopped, and some superstitious part of herself wondered if she was somehow capable of conjuring people up out of thin air simply by thinking of them. Her face burned warm. She knew that wasn't the case, of course, but if it were, then the person on the phone would have been aware of a great deal more than just her musings while she waited on the coffee to brew.

Daryl was face-timing Carol.

Carol ran her fingers through her hair and felt a little embarrassed by the fact that she was wearing her pajamas and, other than splashing her face in the middle of the night, she hadn't even washed her face. Still, she quickly answered, not wanting him to hang up.

The first thing Carol saw was darkness. Then, she saw a little light around the darkness. There was a great deal of staticky sound as the phone rubbed against a face or, perhaps, cloth.

"Look—now—you see? You gotta…you gotta hold the phone away from you. Like you do with Aunt Andrea. You callin' her on the camera, Poppy, it ain't on the phone. She can't see not a thing but your ear like that."

"Hi!" Poppy announced loudly. "Hi! How you? Hi!"

"Put it here…away from your ear. Now…look, see?"

Carol almost felt a little nauseous watching all the movement of the phone, but soon she was looking at Poppy. Daryl reached over the little girl's shoulder and held the phone. Poppy looked precious. She was adorable in her pajamas and lopsided pigtails that Carol was sure her daddy had done for her.

She was, clearly, sitting in her daddy's' bed. Behind her, Carol could see Daryl lying on his side without a shirt. She could see a tattoo on his chest, though she couldn't really make it out, and she could see his muscles—and she felt ashamed for looking at them when she should only be looking at the precious toddler who was trying to get her attention now that she knew how to see her.

Poppy kept moving close to the screen. Carol would get a close view of a nostril, teeth, or an occasional eye before Daryl pulled her backward to sit on her bottom again.

Finally, Carol answered Poppy's repeated question about how she was, and she asked Poppy the same question in return. Carol didn't fully understand Poppy's response, but it had something to do with her daddy. Of that much, Carol was sure.

"I hope it ain't too early," Daryl said, tipping the camera a little more in his direction. Carol wondered if her kitchen was illuminated enough for him to see the redness she could practically feel in her cheeks. "Poppy wanted to call Miss Carol, and she's like a dog with a bone when she wants something."

Carol smiled.

"You mean she's like a cute little puppy with a bone," Carol said.

Poppy, pleased with being called a puppy, butted her face into the phone for a moment and then barked happily before she practically body-slammed her daddy. He laughed and wrestled his squirming toddler, wearing cartoon pajamas, to the side, all the while holding the phone, so that she wouldn't hang up on Carol, with his free hand.

"Sorry to introduce you to this madness so damn early," Daryl said.

"I love it," Carol said. The fluttering in her stomach made her aware of how much she meant those words.

"It ain't too early?" Daryl asked.

"I hardly ever sleep," Carol said. "And—last night wasn't a great night."

Daryl's smile over Poppy's playful antics fell and he patted the little girl on the back to calm her as he furrowed his brow and frowned at Carol. He was holding the phone above his head, now, and Poppy rolled over on her back and snuggled in next to him to look up at the phone. Her feet, as she squirmed, became visible long enough to make it clear that she had on feetie pajamas.

"You wanna talk about it?" Daryl asked.

"If I did, it wouldn't be now," Carol said.

Daryl raised his eyebrows and gently nodded his head.

"Audience?" He asked.

Carol smiled.

"Little minds don't need grown up worries," Carol said.

"I hear that," Daryl said. "I don't wanna like shelter her, ya know? But—I do think there's things that's bigger than her right now."

"There certainly are," Carol said with a smile. "And it looks like you're doing a wonderful job protecting her just the right amount."

"Miss Carol…" Poppy said. Carol's smile renewed when she heard the little girl's slightly garbled name for her. "I'ma…I got…my daddy and me…we're gonna swing and go weeeeeeeeee on the rounda round thing…you wanna? Huh? You wanna?" Poppy sat up and leaned her face close enough to the phone to bump it and block Carol's sight. She whispered this time. "You wannaaaa?"

Carol laughed as Daryl situated the toddler again.

"Stop lickin' the phone," Daryl reprimanded.

"I'm a puppy," Poppy protested.

"Puppy or not, don't lick my phone."

"I'm givin' kisses," Poppy explained.

"Don't lick, OK? People don't like it. So—just give people kisses an' they gonna like 'em better'n puppy kisses anyway."

"OK, Daddy," Poppy said. Carol winced when the toddler slammed her face roughly—and obviously unexpectedly—into Daryl's face before kissing him. It clearly hurt her nose, because she grabbed her face and dissolved into tears. Daryl grabbed her face and nuzzled her, kissing her a couple of times and assuring her that she was fine before he examined her nose and teeth and repeated his assessment.

With tears hanging in her lashes, Poppy returned her attention to Carol.

"You gonna?" She asked, her voice shaky with tears.

"I don't know…" Carol said. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Park," Daryl said. "She wants to go to the park. Don't know if you been there. They got a nice lil' playground she likes to play on. Covered little picnic area, too, so you can just sit an' watch if you want. You don't gotta go. Don't feel like you gotta go. Even if she gets upset, she's gonna get over it pretty quick."

"No, Daddy," Poppy protested. "No…please…Daddy…no, thank you!"

"Poppy, she ain't gotta go to the park," Daryl said.

"Please?" Poppy asked. She looked at the phone again and reached to try to take it, but Daryl moved it out of her reach and reminded her that he'd hold it. "You go, OK? You wanna, OK? Please, OK?"

Carol laughed quietly. The little girl's pleas tugged at her heart, though, and Carol felt a little embarrassed at the fact that she felt nearly choked up at the request to go to the park.

"What time?" Carol asked.

"Seriously," Daryl said. "You ain't gotta go."

"What time?" Carol repeated.

"Around 11, probably," Daryl said. "But—it depends on her N-A-P because she's been up a while an' she's gonna need to crash a lil' bit before she goes or she'll be ill like you wouldn't believe."

"I tell you what," Carol said. "You—pick me up, and I'll pack a lunch."

"I'll warn you that my vehicle ain't all that clean," Daryl said.

"I'll survive," Carol assured him. "Unless—you don't want to pick me up."

Daryl smiled. There it was—that crooked smile that made Carol's face run warm because she'd already conjured it up more than once to imagine him, over her, pleased at making waves of pleasure ripple through her body. She did her best to push those thoughts out of her mind.

"Might be too forward to say it," Daryl said, "but pickin' you up has been the only thing on my mind since I saw you leavin' the Pancake House."

Carol's heart kicked into high gear.

"Then…I expect you to be here," she said. She wanted it to be flirty and smooth. She feared, though, that it had come out a little choked from her overwhelm.

"Nothin' could stop us," Daryl teased.

Carol managed to say goodbye to him and to Poppy—and to make sure the call was entirely disconnected—before she laughed to herself with the silly exhilaration that she felt over such an innocent phone call. She didn't need to be thinking about every facial expression he'd made—and every muscle the call had revealed to her. She didn't need to be thinking about that crooked smile or how incredibly, unbelievably sexy she found it to see him happily fathering his child.

She needed to be making a picnic lunch that would make both a grown man and a happy, sassy little toddler happy to eat.

Still, there was time, and even though Carol didn't need a nap like Poppy did to be tolerable later, she wouldn't mind slipping off to her bedroom to close her eyes for a moment and indulge in a fantasy or two of the little girl's father.