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It’s the day that everyone in their lives had been waiting for, but none as long as Sonny Carisi.
-
Sonny told his mother about work, but never at the dinner table and never the things that would add to her long list of things to pray for. This was until his pregnant partner almost passed out at the courthouse and was rushed to the hospital.
There was something he always admired about Amanda even though how she felt about him was less predictable than springtime in New York. If not that day, soon, she’d be a mother, a title he always held in the highest regard.
Maybe she was beautiful to him even before then too, but he tried not to think about that with his badge on. However, that line blurred as he sat next to her hospital bed, the only one left from their squad.
He wouldn’t make it to Staten Island for dinner that night. Someone needed to be there when she woke up and it wasn’t just because she gave him butterflies - or maybe it was the guilt from not yet telling his mother to not set a place for him at the table.
Once he was positive Amanda was fast asleep, he stood up from the chair he’d pulled over next to the bed and stepped out of the room.
He called the house he grew up in, one of the few numbers he still knew by heart, and his mother answered the coil corded phone on the wall in the kitchen where she fed her family.
“Hey mom, it’s me.”
“Dominick, I’m glad you called. Are you on your way? I’m making my rigatoni tonight and I’m out of anchovies.”
“That’s why I called - my partner, Rollins, she almost fainted at the courthouse today. I’m at the hospital with her.”
“The baby’s okay?”
Serafina would never tell a soul, but the way her son talked about Amanda Rollins, she could safely guess that in one way or another he wished that baby was his.
“Yeah, I think so,” Sonny answered.
Her tone lightened. “I remember when I was pregnant with your older sister, oh, everything scared me, but your father…he was so good, always telling me it was going to be okay.”
He looked through the blinds behind him into her room. “She’s got no one like that.”
“Sounds like she has you, honey.”
“Yeah, she does.”
It hit him hard.
“Well, I better go to the store before your father gets home…and Dominick, I’ll light a candle for Amanda at the church when I’m out.”
He smiled and nodded graciously even though she couldn’t see. “Thanks, Ma.”
They said I love you and goodbye and Sonny quietly let himself back into the hospital room. She remained on her back, inclined with her head sunk into the pillow below. It hasn’t been easy for her - nothing has been easy for her - but she looked peaceful.
Sonny sat there another hour before her head rocked and her body shifted into consciousness. There was a hollowness to her eyes, lost but not afraid or surprised Carisi was there - and yet she still asked:
“What are you still doing here?”
“What do you think?”
-
Sonny looks at himself in a mirror in the back of the church that watched him grow up. He’d aged since the day he knew Amanda Rollins was the one, but it was more the job that grayed him than the waiting. Not a day in his life did he hold it against her, because the day she knew too, on the pier of a wedding held for someone else, she’d already given him all of what he could have asked for. Everything that came after was just a dream.
It’s their wedding today, only today is for vanity - for his mother who’d give anything to see her only son married off to a beautiful girl and that girl’s mother who never called her such. There was only one other person that knew they got married a month ago at the courthouse where it all started with the person who started it all, their witness and maid of honor, Olivia Benson.
The hard part is over, but he’s still nervous in a way - butterflies that he gets to marry her again. It’s also the second biggest secret he’s ever kept from his mother.
He wears a tie every day, but the one he tied that morning sits oddly on his chest. In the square mirror hung up for a priest much shorter than he is, Sonny brings his hands to his neck and tugs at the black silk. Heeled footsteps echo behind him on the stone floor of the church and from his crouch, he looks over his shoulder.
“Let your mother help,” Serafina offers.
Step by disjointed step he turns to face her as anything his mom says is rarely a suggestion. She’s in a floor-length gown the color of communion wine with chiffon that drapes over her arms and she reaches up to the loosened knot around his neck.
He grins down at her. “You look beautiful, mom.”
“Save that for your bride,” she says in concentration before patting his chest, satisfied with her work. “There.”
“You’ve seen her? How is she?”
“No more nervous than I was marrying your father,” she grins.
“But she’s happy?”
“Of course she is, honey.”
It’s all he’s ever wanted:
and he was the one:
who’d make her happy:
without also waiting:
forever.
Upstairs in the church attic, Amanda sits in front of a floor-length mirror in white lace that drapes over her feet, but doesn't trail behind. It’s almost time. She’s cried twice, something she thought being married already would have prevented, but with her daughters in their little flower girl dresses dancing around the room, today is happier.
Not even Beth Anne can ruin that for her.
But somehow her mother always seemed to have a glass of wine in her hand and someone to distract her until Serafina left to check on her son.
She would always be the woman who raised her, but Amanda Rollins is self-taught about what she deserves.
-
Amanda sat at a table on her mother’s covered porch on a rainy afternoon in Rockland County. Jesse, Billie, and Mason played in the house, and both women wished the clouds would part so they could run outside, but for different reasons.
Beth Anne came in with a tray and pitcher of sweet tea, one of the few comforts from home mother and daughter shared. Amanda took a sip and it took her back to sitting on their crooked front porch with Kim watching the neighborhood boys throw party snaps in the street before it was too dark.
There was something on her mind. “Mama, when was my first crush?”
“Crush?” Beth Anne fakely laughed. “You had no interest in boys…but they always liked you.”
“C’mon, you don’t remember?”
She looked into her tea. “Well…maybe when you were six…that little boy with a scar above his eye? He pushed you in the dirt and you followed him around for a week…why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” Amanda pushed off, swirling her ice in her cup before taking another drink.
Beth Anne’s chair scraped against the floor as she leaned in. “Oh, no, no, there’s someone you’re not telling me about isn’t there?”
“What? No-”
“I bet it’s that detective-lawyer you work with. The one always around your girls.”
“Carisi,” Amanda quietly said, looking away as her shoulders dropped from her cheeks, ever flushing.
“It is him. See I knew it…now why don’t the two of you just go get a hotel room and get it out of your system.”
“Mama,” she shushed, her eyes wide.
“Honey, he’s had eyes for you since Jesse. I don’t know how you don’t see it.”
“He’s…with someone else,” Amanda sighed.
Beth Anne’s laugh was almost a scoff. “Not according to your father.”
The whole hospital watched him stay all night with her two months ago - how he held her hand was like it was second nature and stood up the woman he wouldn’t tell her about. She didn’t recognize the look in his eyes because no one had ever loved her like that, but it seemed that everyone knew but her.
-
Her father is healthy enough to see his oldest daughter take a last name kinder than what he gave her, but is not giving her away. After the stroke, he was mostly wheelchair bound and Amanda didn’t fight for a way for her daddy to walk her down the aisle. If anything it’s a relief. She doesn’t have to lie in God’s home by smiling on his arm. Instead, she chose another man, older, but not quite her father’s age, who guided and protected her since her first day at SVU - Fin Tutuola.
The sergeant cleans up well. It feels appropriate that she was a guest at his “not” wedding which finally brought her and Sonny together. He compliments how great she looks and how Carisi is a lucky guy, and Amanda earnestly thanks him, but truly she’s the one who feels lucky. On the other side of the door is someone who always had her back, and always would.
The church organ plays an old song from a country album she liked when she was young and she crouches down to kiss Jesse and Billie to send them off first down the aisle. Their daughters skip with flowers towards the future Amanda never thought she could give them and Sonny stands at the altar proud of the family she gave him.
The girls sit in the front between Serafina and Beth Anne - there are no sides - and the wooden pews shift as everyone turns their attention to the back of the church as the doors open for the last time.
Amanda looks straight out of those Southern bridal magazines in their living room that she claimed to hate and a movie plays in Sonny’s head of every pivotal moment they shared with every step she takes toward him. Seven years of steps before they walked together.
He smiles quietly, the emotion behind his eyes as he helps his beautiful bride, already his wife, up the two steps that circle the altar.
They’ve done this before. It’s no big deal. Amanda cups his cheek and thumbs away the faintest tear that hadn’t yet fallen down his face.
“So you cry at weddings, now?” she says softly enough for only him to hear.
He moves to hold both of her hands at waist level between them. Sonny tilts his head and with the love that raised him answers, “only because I know how they end up.”