Charlie desperately wanted to belong to a family and even though his foster mother Barbara didn't provide the feeling of love and acceptance he always dreamed a real mother would offer, he forced himself to believe this is what a family was like. When Caroline entered the house as an exuberant five year old, Charlie found the only person in the world he thought of as family.
As the years and Barbara became more and more cruel the pair believed they slipped through the cracks in the system when no one ever came to check on them, only to find out at the end that the system was the crack.
Torn apart by pain and disappointment the pair find they are the only family each other really ever had and learn that family is everything.