"WHAT?!" exclaimed Dawn and she looked at her husband, completely dumbfounded.

"That's what he told us" replied Jack Schaefer, Dawn's father.

"How long has he even been out?" asked Dawn.

"About two years now" replied her dad.

"How often do you talk to Jeff?" Ben asked Jack.

"Not a whole lot" he replied. "Maybe once every few months."

"Yeah," muttered Carol. "But it's usually to ask for money or he needs a favor. I can't say I look forward to hearing what your Dad has to say as soon as he gets off the phone with him."

Jack gave his wife a bit of a nasty look, not appreciating her badmouthing his son but at the same time, knowing she was absolutely right.

Dawn looked at Carol and said "why didn't you tell me he was out?"

Carol sighed and said "You have a nice life, Dawn. I didn't want to bring Jeff's drama into it. I know how you feel about him."

Ben let the conversation continue and started asking more questions while Dawn just sat back in her chair, ignoring the food on the table and the background noise of the restaurant and began to recall all the things that have happened that led them to be having this conversation in the first place.

Dawn and Jeff hadn't had a good relationship for well over 10 years now. It started when Dawn got a little older and was about to graduate high school when she noticed Jeff started acting out a lot more. He was mostly just mouthing off to her, Jack and Carol but it really turned into this crazy snowball effect. First the mouthing off. Then the decline in his grades and he began hanging out with a new group of kids. BAD kids. When weird smells started emitting from under his door, Dawn knew he was smoking pot but she decided not to rat him out. After Jeff got arrested for shoplifting, she assumed her dad would crack the whip but it wasn't until he got arrested a second time and expelled from school for getting caught with drugs in 10th grade that finally sent Jeff packing and he was shipped back out to Stonebrook to live with Dawn's mom and stepfather, Richard.

With Jeff gone, there was peace in the household again and Dawn had just started working for Carol. It had been almost a year before Jeff was sent back by Sharon, who was unable to deal with his erratic behavior and having caught him stealing her painkillers she had left over from a previous surgery.

Things went from great to terrible almost immediately and Dawn had decided to get her own place and began saving as much money she could as quickly as she could. She had managed to hoard almost $1,500 in 3 months and she found the perfect studio apartment not far from where she worked but after signing a rental agreement and trying to pay the deposit, her check bounced and she found out her bank account was empty. It didn't take her long to trace the theft back to Jeff and was provided with a copy of a stolen check that Jeff had made out to "cash." For Dawn, it was the final straw and she decided that stealing hard earned money from a sibling and him refusing to return it was unforgivable. While she declined to press charges, she refused to speak to him either, despite still being stuck in the same house with the guy.

By the time Dawn was 24, Jeff was still at home reeking havoc but she had long since moved out and into an apartment with her then-boyfriend, Ben. Jeff had managed to get a sales job at a major department store and while Dawn kept her contact with him to a minimum, she was hoping that having a full time job would make him grow up and put an end to his bad boy behavior. That quickly changed when she got a phone call from her sobbing father saying Jeff had been arrested at work. He had stolen a $2,000 television from the electronics department and had been charged with felony theft and her heart broke. Not for Jeff but for her father and she convinced him to stop giving him chances and NOT to bail him out of jail. Because of his prior offenses, he was originally sentenced to 8 months but due to his constant defiance and fighting, he had managed to buy himself 3 extra years in jail. Dawn hasn't spoken to him since the day he was arrested.

Her attention shifted back to the conversation and she was still trying to process what her dad had just told her: That Jeff was out of jail and he was engaged.

"So he just calls you out of the blue and tells you he's getting married?" asked Dawn.

Her dad replied "Yeah, pretty much."

Ben chimed in, asking "and who the hell is this girl?"

"Her name is Julie. He didn't really tell me much about her."

"How did they meet?" asked Dawn.

"All he said was that he met her through work" said Jack.

With anger and tension building up inside her, Dawn decided she had enough of the conversation and said "This is too much for me right now" before looking at her husband and saying "I think were going to go?"

"Yeah, honey. We can go" he replied.

Her Dad started talking again, saying "I didn't mean to upset you, Sunshine but you need to know about this."

She waved her hand at him and said "it's fine, Dad. I'm just done talking about it" and walked away from the table without even saying goodbye. Before following Dawn outside, Ben asked Jack "do you need me to get the check or..?"

Knowing Ben needed to get Dawn out of there, Mr. Schaeffer said "it's ok" but paused for a second before adding "the wedding is in three weeks. Jeff said he wants all of you there." Ben nodded as he went to go catch up to Dawn.

When they pulled into their driveway, Ben asked Dawn "are you ok?"

"I'm fine" she said. "I'm just a bit in shock. I mean, I literally haven't even thought about my brother in years. Now I find out that he's been out of jail, Carol and my Dad have been talking to him the whole time..and all of a sudden I have to attend a wedding of a person I don't even know anymore?"

"I feel ya. This is all very sudden" he said.

Knowing that River was inside her house with her most trusted baby-sitter and best friend, she said "I just want to be with my son right now..and I just want to talk to Sunny."