Amanda was just drifting off to sleep when she was jolted by the sound of shrill screaming coming from the girls' room. She leapt out of bed and sprinted down the hall, Lee hot on her heels. She quickly entered the room, snapping on the light as she did so, concern etched on her face when she saw Ivy shaking and sobbing, her big sister holding her and comforting her. "What's going on?" She knelt to Ivy's level and asked, "Did you have a bad dream?"

The little girl nodded and sniffled while Sunny answered, "She has them all the time…ever since…" She trailed off and held her sister tighter and crooned softly to her, "It's okay, Ivy. You're safe. I promise."

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Lee inquired as he knelt beside his wife.

Sunny shook her head. "I don't know what it would be."

"I want Mommy," Ivy whimpered through her tears.

"Me too, Ivy, but she's gone. I'm sorry." Sunny choked back tears of her own even as she tried to comfort her sister.

"Glenn said she didn't quite understand that your parents are gone. Is that what this is about?" He nodded to the trembling five-year-old.

Sunny shook her head. "Not exactly."

"I hate that phrase," he commented dryly with a knowing glance at his wife.

"Ivy, Sweetheart," Amanda cooed softly. "What is it? What did you dream about that's got you so upset?"

"She doesn't like to talk about it," Sunny explained.

"You know, I've been through this with my boys many times when they were little and in fact, even more recently with my younger boy. I…um…" She took a deep breath because she still wasn't quite comfortable talking about her shooting. "Well, the scars I showed you…they're there because I was…I was shot…straight through the chest earlier this year. That's why those scars go all the way through and…um…Jamie…he-he had a really hard time dealing with the fact that I nearly died and for a good two months afterward, he had constant nightmares about me not coming back and I had to keep reassuring him that I was safe and alive and-"

"No offense, but I don't think something like that will help because our parents aren't safe…or alive."

"I know that," Amanda responded sadly.

"Look, I know you just wanna' help, but unless you can get your wizard friend to magically bring our parents back..."

"Okay, so he's not a real wizard," Amanda conceded.

"But she wasn't wrong about the magic being in here," Lee put in and tapped his chest. "This woman right here, she helped me to see what was so wrong with my life when I thought I was done hoping for any kind of real life. When she was telling you her story - really, my story - she may have embellished a few details, but the point of the story was absolutely right. I do know what it's like to lose your parents young and to have your faith in people broken by being betrayed to the point that you just decide you don't need them in your life. She made me see how wrong I was; how unhappy it made me. It was mostly because I was afraid to be hurt again."

"You don't know what we've been through," Sunny replied softly.

"No, but we'd like to," Amanda replied. "Like you said, we want to help, but we can't do that if we don't know what's going on. I know I approached you the wrong way earlier when we were talking about scars. I tried to negotiate with you by saying I'd tell you my story if you told me yours, but really, I want to know what happened to you so I can understand where you're coming from better."

Sunny nodded. "You just told me what happened to you anyway." She gestured to Amanda's covered chest where she knew the scars were. "You were really shot?"

"Yeah, she was," Lee answered first. "And I was out of my mind with worry when we thought she might not make it. It was the scariest-"

"Ivy, Sweetie, are you okay?" Amanda interrupted when she saw the younger girl had stopped sniffling.

Ivy gave a dramatic shiver and said in a hushed tone, "Fire bad."

"Yes, it can be," Amanda replied in a soothing tone. "But it can also be good; it gives us light and heat when it's not out of control."

"That's the problem," Sunny snorted.

"Is that what happened to your mom and dad? They were killed in a fire?"

Sunny nodded slowly and she carefully rolled up the sleeve of her nightgown to bare her left arm. "That's how I got this."

"Trying to get out of the fire?" Lee questioned.

"No. Trying to get my mom out," she corrected, but then paused and looked at them warily. "Are you really sure you wanna' hear this? Nobody else cares."

"We care," Lee replied as Amanda said, "Yes, we want to hear this."

Sunny nodded and let out a deep sigh. "It was about eight months ago," she began as she blinked back tears that had begun to form in her eyes. "We were all getting ready for bed and Mom was reading Ivy a bedtime story - we shared a room - and she was in Ivy's bed with her with the Oz book, but before she could finish the story, we heard-" She broke off and swallowed hard.

"Big boom!" Ivy yelled with a wild arm gesture as she mimicked the sound of an explosion.

Seeing the pain etched on Sunny's face and the fear on Ivy's, Lee inserted, gently, "If you don't want to talk about it, we'll understand. If anyone gets how hard it is to talk about losing your mom and dad, it's me."

"How did your folks die?" Sunny inquired.

"A car wreck," Lee answered simply. There was no need to go into the details that the accident had been engineered by someone who wanted them dead. "Like I told you earlier, I was Ivy's age when it happened and I spent two years in a boys' home until my uncle could make arrangements to get me out."

Sunny nodded sadly. "It sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does," Lee agreed. "A whole lot. I was so young that it took me a long time to realize that my parents were never coming back."

"That's Ivy too," Sunny commiserated with him. "She understands that Mom and Dad are in heaven, but she doesn't quite get that they can't come back from heaven to be with us or why we keep getting shuffled around from place to place."

"That's lousy," Lee commented. "I've been there too."

"It is," Amanda agreed, "But just because you've got it rough now, that doesn't mean there's no hope for you to have a better future. There are people out there who would be willing to adopt all three of you so you can stay together."

"Yeah, right," the girl scoffed. "Most people only want babies or little kids. Besides, even if they didn't, who wants a scarred-up ugly mess like me?"

"Maybe we do," Lee answered at the same time Amanda replied, "you are not ugly."

The couple exchanged glances with Lee giving Amanda a 'let me handle this' look. When she nodded in response, he went on, "I'm thinking we need to add more to the real-life Oz story..." He paused as he tried to think of the best way to go about it.

"Go on," Amanda encouraged him, a warm smile on her face at him taking the initiative.

"Well, I told you earlier that Scarecrow's story was still being written, so here comes the next part. After the wizard with the help of Glinda made him realize that he really did have a brain after all, he started back down the yellow-brick road, only he took a different path this time. On the way, he met these munchkins and they weren't the singing, happy munchkins that everybody saw in the movie. These munchkins were sad and a little lost because they were far from home and didn't know how to get back. Scarecrow could really relate to that because he felt like that a lot himself before he met Glinda, so he decided that even though he couldn't get the munchkins back to the home they once knew because he didn't know the way, what he could do was offer them a new home with him."

"And Glinda," Amanda chimed in. "And two other munchkins who were willing to share their home with the lost ones."

Sunny eyed them skeptically. "No way."

"Yes way," Amanda replied with a chuckle. "That is, if you and your brother and sister would like that too." When she saw the girl still hesitating, she quickly added, "But you don't have to make a decision right this second. Why don't you sleep on it and we'll talk more in the morning?"

"Yeah, okay," the girl replied with a nod. She wasn't sure quite what to make of their offer and was almost afraid to hope that it was real.

"Ivy, Sweetheart, do you think you can go back to sleep now?"

The younger girl nodded and nestled herself back into the covers, cuddled up against her sister.

"Good, now if you need anything, anything at all, we're right down the hall, okay?"

"Yeah," Sunny replied as Lee and Amanda made their way to the door. As Amanda was reaching for the light switch, she quickly added, "Um...thanks."

"My pleasure," Amanda responded with a bright smile.

As they returned to their own room, Lee commented, "Well, we know a little more of their story now."

"Yeah, some kind of explosion, maybe a furnace blowing up, a gas leak or something resulting in a fire." She sighed as she climbed back into bed. "I just feel so bad that Sunny thinks she's ugly because of her burn scars. I wish there were a way to convince her that it's not true."

"Easier said than done," he reminded her as he slipped into bed beside her. "I seem to recall someone a few months ago who thought the same thing about herself." He gave her a pointed look. "I distinctly recall what a tough time I had convincing her that it wasn't true."

"Okay, okay, I admit that I was a bit self-conscious when I was no longer covered in bandages and the scars were just...out there and I imagine she feels the same way, but I feel like it's even worse for her because she's just a kid and other kids...well, they can be mean."

"That's for sure," Sunny muttered from the open doorway. When both adults turned to look at her, she hesitantly stammered, "Uh...d-did you really mean it when you...you said you wanted to hear about what happened to us?"

"Of course, we did," Amanda answered sincerely as she scooted over a bit to make room for her and patted the bed invitingly. "Come on in."

Sunny approached them and sat on the edge of the bed. "I...um...I-I-I didn't want to talk about it in front of Ivy, but she's asleep again and I-"

"What is it, Sweetheart? You can tell us anything."

She shot a pleading glance at Lee, took a deep breath and blurted out, "Is it wrong that I'm mad at my mom for leaving us when she's dead?"

"No," Lee shook his head adamantly. "Not at all. I was mad at my mom and dad for leaving me."

"But your parents couldn't stop the car wreck from happening. She could have saved herself and she didn't!"

"How do you mean?" Amanda inquired.

"Dad was in the basement fiddling with the furnace because he thought something was wrong with it. We were all ready for bed and like I told you before, she had Ivy on her lap and was reading that stupid Oz book and then..."

"The furnace exploded?" Lee supplied.

"Yeah. She hurried up and shoved me and Glenn and Ivy toward the front door..." she gave a slight chuckle. "And Ivy was still hanging onto that book when we ran outside." She swallowed hard and choked back tears. "But then when we got there, I saw that Mom wasn't with us so I told Glenn to keep Ivy out there with him and I ran back in. I saw Mom running and yelling Dad's name and she..." Tears were now streaming down her face.

"It's okay. You don't have to go on if you don't want to."

"I tried so hard to get to her and get her to come back where it was safe, but she was determined to go after Dad and see if he was okay. The kitchen, it was...by the time I got there, it was completely on fire and she...and I couldn't...it was...it was just too hot."

"Is that how you got the scars?" Lee probed gently.

She nodded. "My sleeve caught on fire when I was yelling for my mom and the fire spread so fast, she got trapped between the basement door and the backdoor and had nowhere to go." She took a shuddering breath and concluded, "That's why I'm so mad at her. She didn't have to die like that when she could've been safe with us and then we wouldn't have lost both our parents."

"Wow," Lee let out a low whistle.

"You think I'm horrible for hating my mom, don't you?"

"No." Lee assured her. "I thought about that so much when I was a kid. You know, what if my mom and dad hadn't been working late that night; what if she'd stayed home instead of leaving me with a babysitter or what if they'd both stayed home? But then I realized that as much as it hurt to lose them, growing up without them is what made me who I am today and made me so tough...like you."

She sniffled and replied, "I don't feel so tough right now."

"But you are," Amanda insisted. "You wouldn't be so determined to keep you family together if you weren't."

"Did you really mean it when you said you wanted all of us?"

"Yes, we really did." Amanda beamed at the girl. "But like I said, we can talk about that more in the morning. It's getting late so why don't you go on back to bed...unless there's something else you want to talk about."

Sunny shook her head. "No, there isn't. Thanks."

Once the girl was out of earshot, Lee blew out a long breath. "And I thought I had it rough as a kid."

"Yeah," Amanda agreed with a hint of sadness in her tone, but then in a more positive one added, "But they don't have to have it so rough anymore."