Sonny never had to testify. As soon as the company heard that he was willing to do so, they had an immediate crisis of conscience and wanted to do the right thing for Lonnie’s orphans. They managed to come up with a modest but helpful cash settlement that wouldn’t set any unmanageable precedents, as well as a scholarship fund so that all the Beale children would be able to attend college.
Sonny was pleased about that. He felt good about his part in it. But his attention, by necessity, was focused on a new semester and a tough schedule of classes. When he wasn’t studying he was being a dad to his two little girls and exercising to regain full use of his leg.
“I wish I knew how Tonya and her family were doing,” he said to Dawn in bed one night as he rubbed the scar on his chest. “I’ve got to make some time to go out and check on her and the kids.”
“Do you want me to do it?” Dawn asked.
Sonny was incredulous. “You’ve got as much to do as I have,” he pointed out.
“The girls would love an outing,” she told him. “I could just get them all tucked in their car seats and drive over to Strawberry Plains. It would be good to get us out of the house for a while. And fun for me to talk to anyone who has a vocabulary of more than sixteen words and isn’t my mother-in-law.”
Sonny laughed.
“Thanks, Dawn,” he said. “I am not officially turning over my job of worrying about the Beales to you. You’ll let me know if it gets to be too much, right?”
She agreed.
The young Leland family settled into life with Sonny’s parents for a busy, productive and happy time. His interest was captured by his studies in a way that hadn’t been possible before his venture out into the real world. The safety and security of a roof over her head and good healthy meals seemed to enhance in Dawn a grace and strength that had previously gone unnoticed. The little daughters were practically princesses, with so many loving eyes upon them every day.
Of course, no situation is perfect. Dawn and Phrona were never going to be close friends. Vern adored having the children around, but the constant noise and activity made it hard for him to work at home. And just the mere lack of privacy was hard on both couples.
So it was with great pride of accomplishment as well as a tremendous sense of relief when three years later Sonny stood in Vols stadium, wearing cap and gown, and was officially granted a Bachelor of Science.
Up in the bleachers, his lovely wife, two pretty preschoolers and his parents cheered him on.
It was a pinnacle moment and Sonny felt fantastic. He already had a good job lined up with a multinational corporation doing forestry assessment and planning. It was going to mean good money and at last being able to provide for his family.
After commencement they all went to dinner at Sonny’s favorite restaurant, Chesapeake’s. The lighting was low, the atmosphere subdued and linen tablecloths and the crystal glassware didn’t exactly give the impression of being a child-proof sort of place. But Sierra and Dakota, neat and pretty in their new dresses, were on their best behavior.
He ordered both the crab cakes and the grouper. The little girls shared pasta and Dawn tasted lobster for the first time in her life.
His father had brought in a bottle of wine and when it was served Vern stood and held up his glass.
“I’d like to make a toast to my son, to his lovely wife and beautiful family,” he said. “Phrona and I are so proud of you. So grateful to have you as our son. And so glad that you brought Dawn and these children into our lives.”
It was a tearful moment all around. Sonny got up to offer his own salute.
“Dad, Mama, I don’t know how to begin to thank you,” he said. “And I don’t mean just because you’ve supported me and my family, paid my tuition and let us live with you. Those are all very big things and we are grateful. But what I want to thank you for is bigger than all that.”
He took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.
“I don’t think I understood this until I became a father myself,” he said. “But now I think I do know, at least to some degree, what it must have felt for you to want only the best for me and to see me disregard your counsel, defy your wishes and throw your advice back into your face. It must have been disappointing, scary, frustrating, even insulting. I really hope that if or when that time comes in the life of my children I’ll behave with the same kind of grace, forgiveness and understanding that you’ve shown me.”
His little girls applauded him. His parents tried to modestly disavow any laudable behavior on their part.
“I know that I am a lucky man,” Sonny said. Unconsciously, he ran a hand across his scarred chest, as had become his habit. “Not only has my wife given me a happy home and two beautiful children, she’s stood by me, helped me, encouraged me to go after what I want in the world, including a college education. She’s done this even though it’s meant giving up a lot of the things she’s wanted. I acknowledge the sacrifices she’s made and vow to try to make it up to her for the rest of my life.”
He leaned forward and gave Dawn a kiss, then they clinked glasses all around.
“Us, Daddy,” Sierra begged. “Drink something to us.”
He laughed. “She inherited that attention thing from you,” Sonny said teasingly to Dawn.
She feigned surprise. “I thought she got it from Phrona,” she said.
The older woman was momentarily caught off guard, then laughed with everyone else.
Sonny started his new job the very next week. And he gave to Dawn the task of finding someplace for them to live. He knew she was excited about the prospect of their own place. He also knew he could trust her to make a good deal, to consider the neighborhood school and stay within their budget.
“Whatever, wherever,” he told her. “If you want to live there, then the kids and I want to live there with you.”
He expected to come home the first week and find his things already packed and a new key for his pocket. That didn’t happen. Day after day, Dawn went out looking at properties and found nothing she really liked. It had been over three weeks and nothing quite suited her.
“Is the budget too tight?” Sonny asked. “Can we not find what we need in our price range?”
Dawn shook her head. “I don’t think that’s it,” she told him. “The truth is, some of these places are very nice. And all of them have more space than we’ve been used to. It’s just…I don’t know. They are not quite the home that I want for the girls.”
“It isn’t like we’re going to live there all our lives,” Sonny said. “We just need a little starter place.”
“I know,” Dawn said. “And I’ll know the right place when I see it.”
It was only a few nights later when his mother decided to put in her three cents’ worth.
“The McManns are moving,” she announced over dinner.
“Really?” Vern sounded surprised. “Finally decided to do it, did they? They’ve been talking about it for years.”
“The McManns?” Dawn said. “That old couple next door? They did say they were looking at those retirement communities.”
Sonny nodded. “Yeah, but have always been too scared to take the plunge.”
“They still are,” Phrona said. “I told them, ‘You don’t have to dive, just go and stick your toe in the water.’ That’s what’s been holding them back. They’re afraid that if they sell their house and then don’t like the place, there’s no going back.”
His mother hesitated, took a deep breath and gave Sonny and Dawn a broad smile.
“I told them, ‘Don’t sell now,’” she continued. “I said, ‘Find a nice couple that you can trust to rent your place for a couple of years, then when you’re sure, you can sell.’”
His mother looked down at her plate, no longer willing to meet anyone’s eye.
Sonny glanced over at Dawn. She was as surprised as he was.
“Phrona,” Vern said. “I’m sure the kids were thinking about getting a little farther away than next door.”
She shrugged as if that were no concern. “They’d have their own place,” she said. “Next door or the next county it would still be their own place. And it will be easier for me to help Dawn with the children if I’m right next door.”
Dawn wasn’t saying anything. Sonny felt like he had to.
“Mama, it’s very nice of you to do this for us,” he said. “And we appreciate all the help with the kids, but…well, I just hope you haven’t promised the McManns anything….”
“I’ve promised nothing,” she said. “Now don’t go and reject the place before you’ve even seen it.”
He shot another glance toward Dawn.
“We’ll look at it, Phrona,” she said. “That’s all I’ll commit to, we’ll look at it.”
Sonny was thinking they’d set up a visit on the weekend, but his mother got on the phone and a half hour later, the McManns were at the front door.
“We’ll just leave the key with you, Sonny,” the old man said. “We’ll walk down to the bingo game at the church. Take your time, look it over.”
“Excuse the mess,” Mrs. McMann told Dawn.
There wasn’t any mess, of course. Sonny and Dawn let themselves into the immaculately kept house. The walls needed new paint and the decor was shabby without the chic, but there was a warmth about the place, some intangible something that said this was a home.
“It’s like something out of another era,” Sonny said. “I honestly expect to see Betty, Bud and Kitten come running down the stairs.”
Dawn nodded.
Mrs. McMann’s furniture was vintage, complete with little crocheted doilies on the backs of the chairs. The hardwood floors were dust free and polished, but showed evidence of wear and the scarring of generations of kids and grandkids. The dining room had a built-in corner cabinet for china. The three bedrooms upstairs were not overly spacious, but the master had its own bathroom and the bedroom in the back had a little balcony overlooking the yard. The kitchen was the room most out-of-date. The countertops were covered in a wood grain laminate and the appliances were harvest gold. The worn linoleum on the floor was yellowed from waxing. And as they stood there silently, it was impossible not to notice the drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet.
“This is it,” Dawn said.
“What?”
“I knew it the moment I walked in the door,” Dawn said. “This is it. It’s the home I’ve been waiting for.”
Sonny was skeptical. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I like it a lot,” Sonny told her. “It needs some work, but I don’t mind that. I’d think it was close to perfect except, Dawn, it’s next door to my parents.”
His wife shrugged.
“They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” she told him.
Sonny opened his mouth to comment but she stayed him with a hand.
“Phrona and I understand each other,” Dawn said. “We’re never going to be friends, but we both love you and we both love the girls. That’s enough in common for us to manage a relationship together. And it will be easier having her right next door. She can see what I’m doing and be a part of their lives every day, without being visiting constantly.”
“Are you really sure?” Sonny asked again.
“I wasn’t until I walked into this house,” she said. “This is a home, Sonny. It’s the kind of place I imagined for myself all my life. It’s the kind of childhood I want for my little girls.”
And so it was decided. Over the next few weeks, the McManns moved out and the younger Lelands moved in. Phrona helped Dawn with painting and cleaning. Dawn took her mother-in-law’s advice on updating the look without decreasing the charm.
The Lelands’ friends and neighbors began showing up with wonderful things for the couple and the house.
“We were never able to give you kids any wedding presents,” Mildred Snyder explained to Dawn when she delivered a wicker bedroom set with twin beds for the girls. “Now everyone in town is scouring their attics coming up with something perfect for your home.”
“I know it must feel strange to have your house filled with other people’s secondhand things,” Carlene Ramsey told Sonny. “But recycling is all the rage, isn’t it? And with two little ones in the house, it will be better not to be tearing up the nice things you’ve spent hard-earned money for.”
In fact, the gently used furniture that graced their new home was tasteful, nice and in very good condition. A flowered couch that Susan Gillette brought over was deemed “totally wrong” by Susan herself with concurrence from Phrona and Mildred. It was quickly donated to the Goodwill and a much better one set in its place.
The term secondhand took on a completely new meaning when Phrona toted her grandmother’s Spode dinnerware into Dawn’s dining room.
“You’ll need something to put in that china cabinet,” Phrona said.
Dawn seemed shocked, off balance, and she shot a wordless glance to her husband.
“Are you sure you want to leave those dishes with us?” he asked.
His mother wagged a finger at him. “Sonny Leland, one does not refer to hundred-year-old English bone china as dishes,” she scolded.
“But with the girls in the house…” he said. “You know kids, something could happen to this.”
“I raised you with these in my house,” she said. “You only broke the one piece. I always thought you were worth the price. Besides, the girls need to grow up around fine things. It’s part of their heritage and one day this china will belong to one of them.”
It was a breakthrough moment for Dawn. He could see it in her face. She confirmed it later that evening as they walked hand in hand along the sidewalk. The girls, with Vern and Phrona, were locked in an intense game of Candy Land. Taking full advantage of their opportunity for grown-up conversation, Sonny and Dawn went up and down the streets of their neighborhood. He talked about his new job, the people he was working with, the successes he was making, the challenges he’d not expected. Finally he turned the conversation in Dawn’s direction.
“Things going well with the house? The girls?” he asked.
“Everything is great,” she told him.
“How is it with my mother? I know she can drive you crazy.”
Dawn nodded. “She definitely has that capability,” she said. “But she doesn’t intrude on our space without calling. And it is great having a baby-sitter right next door.”
He nodded.
“She and Vern are good for our girls,” Dawn said. “I can put up with anybody who’s good for the girls.”
Sonny smiled at her. “I’m really glad,” he admitted. “I felt like you were okay with all this and had made peace with my mother, but today when she brought you the dishes, I saw something strange in your expression.”
Dawn shrugged. “I guess it was just a realization,” she said.
“Of what?”
“I can’t run away anymore.”
“What?”
“Always, in the past, I kept open the option that if things went wrong I could run away,” she said. “Anytime we had an argument or I had a bad day, anytime your parents got on my nerves, anytime I just felt too pressured or overwhelmed, I’d imagine that I could just put the girls in the car and run. I’d drive somewhere that nobody knew us and I’d start all over.”
“You’d leave me?” Sonny asked.
“I always told myself that you’d be better off without me,” Dawn said. “You’d get remarried, this time to someone who was much more suited to you. You’d have other kids with her and forget all about me and the girls.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I know,” Dawn said. “It was always just a fantasy. Today I realized that.”
“So you’re not going to run anymore?”
“Who can run carrying hundred-year-old English bone china?” she asked.
They laughed together.
“I love you, Dawn,” Sonny told her. “I want you here with me always.”
“I will be,” she assured him. “This is the place I’ve been trying to get to. I love you, too, Sonny. That by itself is all I’ve needed to make me stay.”