That night, after a long after-dinner conversation during which her family finally learned the full truth about her life in Los Angeles and the real reason why she had come home earlier that month, Della heard a knock on her door as she prepared for bed.
"Who is it?" she called softly.
"Your father and I," her mother's voice replied.
Della opened the door and admitted her parents into the room.
"I thought that you would not be in bed yet," Mrs. Street said. "We…we came to apologize."
Her daughter raised her eyebrows questioningly, surprised.
"Della…we were watching you today as you interacted with Mr. Mason, and it was as if we were watching a young woman whom we had never seen before. You were glowing and confident. It is clear that you are a woman with a good head on your shoulders, and at the same time, you are a true lady. And we are ashamed that it took a stranger coming into our house and praising you in order for us to realize these things about our own child!"
"Oh Mom, Daddy," Della murmured, "I forgive you. We may have disagreed, but I know that you always had my best interests at heart. And, truth be told, for every lucky girl like me, there are a hundred that were disappointed in city life. If Perry had not given me a job when he did, I would have likely numbered among the failures as well."
"Still," Jonah Street replied, "we should have had more confidence and trust in you, particularly as you tried to tell us that things were looking up for you. I never realized that besides quashing your dreams, we very nearly made your younger sister settle for second-best as well. I did not even know that she wanted to be a lawyer until this evening. I chalked up her fascination with Perry Mason's cases to a meaningless, frivolous interest."
"You were being cautious. After what happened to Francine Atwood, you would have had to be extraordinarily careless parents to let me go off to Los Angeles without a proper warning. I think we understand each other quite well…shall we call a truce and forget about the entire matter?"
"You are a very merciful woman, Della Street," her mother said, pressing a kiss upon her daughter's forehead. "We'll let you get your sleep now, my dear."
"Thank you, Mom, Daddy. Goodnight," their daughter replied.
…..
Her parents had not been out of the room for more than two minutes when Miss Street heard another knock at her door.
"Della?" Maggie softly called.
"Yes?" her elder sister answered.
Maggie opened the door and crept into the room.
"I am glad that you are not asleep yet," she said. Della noticed that Maggie was gazing at her in the same star-struck way that she had looked at Perry all evening. "I came to tell you how sorry I was."
"Gracious, whatever do you have to be sorry for?" the older Miss Street asked in consternation.
"For chatting about Mr. Mason so much at breakfast each morning. It must have been very hard for you to hear about him when you loved him and yet had left him because you thought that he was going to marry someone else."
Della immediately came over to her and wrapped her in a tight embrace.
"It was," she admitted. "But you had no way of knowing that, and therefore have nothing to blame yourself for. If anything, I should apologize to you! I overheard you talking to Mom, and I know that I hurt your feelings very much by avoiding you without an explanation. My only pitiful excuse is that I could not bring myself to speak about Perry, to anyone."
"I forgive you," the young girl exclaimed boisterously. "How could I not? Here I was hoping to see Perry Mason in court in six years' time, and instead, within a few months you are going to make him my brother-in-law. And I never even dreamed that he would be so nice in person!" She plopped herself down on the bed. "Tell me, Della, is defending murder cases as exciting in real life as the papers make it sound?"
"I am stunned that you did not ask Perry that question tonight," the confidential legal secretary teased.
"With Daddy and Robert talking a mile a minute about fishhooks, I could barely get a word in edgewise! I mean to ask Mr. Mason tomorrow, but I also want the opinion of my big sister on the subject," Maggie said, looking up at Della with fascinated eyes.
Della seated herself on the edge of the bed as well.
"Well, I'll tell you the truth," she said with a smile. "It is even more exciting in real life. The newspapers only report on the biggest developments in the case which are brought to light during the hearing or trial. There are a lot of other angles which never make it to the courtroom. Countless times, Perry spared a witness's reputation by simply saying 'no questions' when it was time for him to cross-examine, despite the fact that we knew something highly questionable about their past. But unless it is necessary for him to elicit a piece of information to save his client, he does not drag people's names through the mud just for the sake of theatrics. And words in a newspaper will never adequately express the joy and relief you feel when you see a wrongfully-accused defendant walking out of the courtroom after the charges are dropped."
"I thought so! I can't wait until I successfully defend a client!" Maggie gushed.
Della laughed delightedly.
"I knew an hour with Perry would convince you that there was more to life than a fenced-in east pasture and horseback riding!"
"Oh, certainly. I might open up a riding school as a hobby, but I want to spend most of my time working as a lawyer," Maggie declared. She gave Della another warm hug. "Thank you, Della, and congratulations again! See you in the morning!"
"Goodnight, dear!" Della responded.
Left alone, Della turned off her lights and smiled to herself. In the course of one afternoon and evening, Perry had managed to fix so many things.
She truly was marrying an extraordinary man!
Finally, all the breaches appear to be healed in the Street family :)
Thank you for all the reviews. They are truly lovely. I am overwhelmed by the fact that you all love this story so much – I really thought a lot of my readers would lose interest in it because of how much it focused on Maggie and other characters which were not in the TV series, but apparently, I was wrong! And I'm very glad to have been so!
Please keep the reviews coming! I still have a few more chapters to go – but they might be posted a little more infrequently since I still need to polish/write the last chapters.