With the genes of Fred off her back, Sunny's niece Tammi found the strength to go to AA, winning the battle over alcohol that had been her albatross since Junior High School. She returned to work at the college and met Tom Calliopus, the school pool maintenance man, and sober and with her wits fully about her, fell in love. She fell a little too hard though, finding herself sitting him down, dangling their legs in the cool pool water about six months later to tell the young man she was pregnant. Tom was only eighteen, and fatherhood was not on his agenda for a number of years, and he took the news in a confused chlorinated fog. He was raised a gentleman though, and saw as his only proper move to marry Tammi, and they visited the Justice of the Peace two weeks later, Tom actually happy by then that this had all happened this way, being a rather indecisive man who preferred for life to happen for him rather than being saddled with the responsibility of planning it.
Tammi received her first AA chip just in time to go into labor and deliver a healthy baby girl, a beautiful baby with flaming red hair, simply named, Cally. Looking at his daughter, Tom was struck for the first time with the creeping fear he would not know how to be a father, but the fear melted away as he held her and she reached her tiny hands to his face and touched his cheek.
Tom and Tammi were happily in love in the blissful ignorance of the very young, and moved to Florida where Tammi had landed a teaching position, with Tom staying home to take care of Cally. Within a year Tom was nominated and won Father of the Year for his small Florida town, proudly hanging the certificate in their newlywed living room, which was otherwise pretty bare of furniture, and the young couple settled down with their now babbling baby, looking forward to their future.
A baby also had an unexpected effect on another family member. Sunny, realizing that she'd have to explain the women she spent time with to Grant as he got older, decided to come out, figuring it would be best for her family to be used to it first before that time came around. She drove to her mother's house, sat down Victory, and simply told her she was gay, and Todd was gay, and they had a marriage of convenience. Her mother sat on the edge of her dinette set plastic chair and stared blankly at her.
Sunny tried again, "Todd and I are legally man and wife. He is also biologically Grant's father. We are raising him just like any other mother and father would. Except, I date women and Todd dates men too. Should I find one I wish to spend my life with, or Todd a husband, gays can't marry, so Todd and I have done this so we can all have a family and all have the benefits of marriage."
"What are you going to tell Grant?"
"If Todd has found someone, that he has two fathers. Hopefully by then he'll have two mothers too."
"I'm having a hard time with this. I mean I don't care that you're gay if it makes you happy, but I worry about you living in sin with a woman - why can't you two marry if you fall in love?"
"It's not legal mom."
"Oh. I didn't realize that. But wouldn't living with both Todd and a woman be like bigamy?"
"No. I don't have sexual relations with Todd. It's a different kind of relationship. Think of him as our live-in nanny if that helps."
"Can I think about it and maybe you come back this weekend and we can talk about it more?"
"Sure, mom." Sunny smiled and hugged her. Her heel had barely left the threshold when Victory was on the phone to Helga, falling on her sister for advice as to how to handle this one. Helga, not surprised by the news, told Victory not to worry. That Sunny seemed to have her head on straight, and if she loved women, to at least be glad she planned to love someone and would not grow old alone. She confessed to having had fleet thoughts of that herself, but was happy she had chosen to be with Cobb, for however brief their love was, it had times that had given them wonder and joy. She had hoped Sunny would find someone who could bring her the same, having watched her go through an assortment of men, and assured her sister that things would be alright.
Dinah, on the other hand, when she learned of it sent Sunny a blistering letter warning her how she had eternally damned her soul, momentarily shaking her faith, causing Sunny to add to her journal a disturbing poem.
Ahead of me a city burned,
Behind, a pillar of salt
Stood melting in the heat.
I tried to turn, to run away
And fell,
But they said those with faith
Don't go --
Todd read it and told her to burn it. He sat down with her and told her about gays and faith, how King James was a homosexual, that there were homosexual couples sainted together, and that at one time there was even a rite of same sex marriage in the Catholic Church. He showed her how the bible condemns straight sex far more times than gay, particularly far more than lesbian, and that if you were to be sexual at all you were condemned, so why not love the person you are attracted to and not what you are expected to love. He further told how research was showing that being gay was probably genetic, and Sunny thought back on the women in her family, realizing he was probably right.
He took her in his arms and told her firmly, "Sunny, you have a deep faith. You have always believed you are loved, even when everything happening around you should have made you lose that faith. Even when everyone around you, even those you loved most, had lost faith. You have been tested more than anyone I know and always risen above the fire. One of the things I love most about you is that; you have given me strength in your faith that you aren't even aware of.
"Sunny, you see God like a child sees God and I don't ever want to see that change. It's as if the face of God himself is in your eyes. I want you to teach that faith to our son, and keep that faith in yourself. You have fought long and hard to understand your relationship with God, don't lose it over a stupid remark from an ignorant, rote-verse-spouting, blindly following, bible thumping, so-called Christian." Sunny curled up in his arms, crying for the first time since her father died, with Grant in her arms, and the little modern family shared the warmth of their mutual love.
Back in Georgia, Dinah struggled through nine long years of nursing Peter, constantly searching for an answer, finding none. He was diagnosed with a myriad of problems, all falling through as time progressed, from multiple sclerosis to chronic fatigue, and a brief frightening flirt with the possibility of AIDS, none exactly fitting what was wrong, none having treatments that improved him. She tried legal and illegal solutions, all failing or making him worse; she tried faith healing, which had no effect. Eventually he found himself in a wheelchair, his muscles and joints so painful he could no longer walk. Early in the morning on February 5, 1996, Peter stopped breathing and passed on, never having had the chance to save the souls he had so wanted to rescue, never understanding what had taken him at the tender age of 28.
Dinah left his deathbed, walking in the direction her feet took her, not noticing her cotton shift house dress was not enough to stave off the chill in the frigid winter morning, or the fact she didn't have a bra on, and ended up in church, where the full force of her son's passing struck her as a lightening bolt and she took up the crucifix and repeatedly struck the altar, screaming how He had failed her and how He had failed his missionary, wildly going on a rampage in the church destroying everything she could lay her hands on. Eventually she was found by the Pastor, whom she took one look at and tore into him, accusing him that if he had not lured her into adultery this punishment would not have happened, trying to push from her mind the emerging guilt she also felt at planning to murder her husband and having been first a weak, then controlling mother to her son and daughter.
The Pastor tried to console her, and to hush her loud declarations of their relationship, but to no avail, and bleeding from scratches she left gouged across the side of his face, called Victory, asking her to come help. By then Dinah had worn out her anger and lay on the floor before the altar, sunlight painting her all the colors of the rainbow through the stained glass, curled into a tight fetal ball shivering, her muscles so tense that the Pastor picked her up bodily and her position did not shift, gently laying her on a pew and slowly forcing her into a prone position until her mother could arrive. He laid a blanket over her, fearing she would go into shock, and waited, kneeling before the altar and praying for her soul, his black robes spread out around him like a bridal train.
Once more Victory made arrangements, this time the entire family showing up to give her and Dinah strength, who attended in boneless resignation, her eyes blurry from tears and deeply circled from lack of sleep. She refused to allow services to be held in any church, wanting a grave site memorial presided over by Victory instead. It wasn't until two years later that Dinah learned about Gulf War Illness, and the shy southern belle gathered up her skirts and began a campaign of education and public speaking, testifying before congressional committees about the senseless death of her only son.