There was a bit of a struggle in naming the newborn baby girl. Anthony wanted a traditional name for his daughter but Erica wanted something unqiue. So while her husband was out, Erica named and completed the birth certificate her husband had already signed. Anthony was pissed but there was nothing he could do. Three days after her birth, Tinlee Grace Dawson, went home with her family.
Erica loved every single moment of her daughter's first three months. She loved having a newborn in the house but the sleepless nights didn't help her keep up with her son. He constantly tried to sell his sister to the neighbors and often hid things from her room so that his father would have to come and deal with him. As she grew, Tinlee developed a strong personality and wasted very little time in marching to the beat of her own drum. That was great for any normal little girl, but not the reverend's daughter. She was expected to act a certain way and to be the docile little angel that everyone wanted her to be. But Tinlee was completely different. Her church dress only lasted until three minutes after the service ended. She always climbed into the car with her dress torn and dirty, her fair hair falling out of the meticulous pigtail braids that her mother plaited her hair into.
Anthony did everything he could to try and change his daughter while Erica was content to let her daughter be who she was. But when she became pregnant for the third time, things shifted within the house. Tinlee was six years old when her younger sister was born and she wondered why her mother didn't bounce back the way she was supposed to. No one knew that Erica's third pregnancy resulted in Post-Partum Depression. Anthony felt his wife needed to get her act together and take care of their children. When she continued to struggle, he began secretly seeing a woman from his congregation. No one knew of the affair and he was insanely secretive about it. Tinlee sensed something was wrong with her parents but she was too young to fully grasp what was going on.
Her father's affairs continued as Tinlee progressed through school. Her mother's condition also continued to decline. Her Post-Partum went unchecked and with the whispers floating around about her husband, she languished into a full depression. Tinlee couldn't understand what was going on with her mother, only that she was at every church function with a smile on her face and her husband keeping a watchful eye on her. No one could know what was going on behind closed doors; Anthony forbid it. Tinlee wanted to help her mother and hated seeing her so upset. She was the only one to catch her mother crying in the bathroom with the shower running. Erica was suffering while Anthony found happiness in his work and affairs. He refused to believe or admit that anything was wrong with the woman he had married.
High school was a very confusing time for Tinlee. She found herself attracted to girls as well as boys, and had no one to talk to. Erica had completely shut down and by her daughter's fourteenth birthday, was refusing to even leave her room. Anthony had already moved out of the couple's bedroom but was still being as discreet as possible with his dalliances. The whispers stopped all together when a suspicious car accident took Erica's life on July 9, 2003. He was free to do whatever he wanted, but he played the grieving widower card to perfection. Everyone felt horrible for him and the three children left behind. Women came out of the woodwork and several tried to take the place of Erica with her children as a way of trying to impress Anthony. Six months after his wife's accident, he dropped the act and stopped hiding the fact that he had been seeing another woman. A lady named Jennifer Carlisle that wanted a wedding ring and the last name of Dawson.
Like her mother, Tinlee put on the image of a perfect young lady. She had a handsome boyfriend that worshipped the ground she walked on, and amazing grades. She was even on track to graduate early from high school. But no one knew about the girls she secretly dated, or that her boyfriend was completely fine with the threesomes his highly sexual girlfriend participated in. Those threesomes backfired when, just weeks after her sixteenth birthday, she found him in bed with another girl. It was a huge break of the rules and she immediately broke things off. Anthony and Jennifer, who were now married and living as the perfect Baptist couple, worried about their daughter spiraling with the end of her relationship. She continued to maintain her grades and extracurricular activities. But she slipped up when her stepmother came home early from a church meeting and found Tinlee in bed with a female classmate.
Jennifer was the one to decide that Tinlee needed to leave. She was an abomination in her stepmother's eyes and the family would be ruined if it got out that the reverend's oldest daughter was bisexual. Plus they didn't want her ways rubbing off on her younger sister. So when Tinlee came home two days after being caught, she found all of her belongings on the front porch with a note. They were taking the car back and she was on her own. With nowhere to go, she turned to the girl she had been kissing for help. The girl's family allowed Tinlee to stay for a week before she was expected to find other arrangements.
Help came from extended family. Her maternal aunt, Lulu, gave her a place to stay and through her husband, Johnathan, Tinlee caught a glimpse at what normal families were like. She also began to think about her future, after high school. But was a neighborhood boy that ended up leading her into her future.
Tucker Carson was a neighbor boy with no ties to the Dawsons. He was interested in Tinlee but she could take or leave him. Still, she gave in to the pressuring of her friends and agreed to go on a date with him. That one date led to a year-long romance that helped propel her out of Midland. They'd struck up a friendly little bet shortly before Christmas their senior year. Tucker wanted to be a cop and didn't think women had what it took to do the job. Tinlee, wanting to prove him wrong, did everything possible to make sure she got in to the same college he did in order to study Criminal Justice. They both enrolled in the Criminal Justice program at a nearby school and started doing what she needed in order to get accepted into the Dallas Police Academy. While she attended school and waited to hear from the Academy, Tinlee busted her ass waiting tables and studying, celebrating with friends when she got a spot in the Academy. Her love life took a big hit when Tucker couldn't handle the fact that his girlfriend was getting her shield while he washed out. By the time she became a full-fledged police officer with the Dallas Police Department in summer 2011, she had no romantic life to speak of and didn't really mind it. The job completely took over her life.
Her love life continued to suffer but it helped keep her out of trouble. When she did venture into the romantic world, she kept herself at a distance. Her entanglements were loose and easily broken but very few and far between. Being a patrolman took a lot of time out of her schedule and she was eager to prove herself. She wanted to make detective by the time she was 30 and if she wanted that, nothing else mattered. But with the way things had ended with Tucker, there was no way she thought she could make Dallas home.
Everman soon became home to the young blonde. She was eager to jump in and loved the people she worked with. But the loneliness was starting to get to her and in late 2012, she agreed to go out with some friends from college. TInlee was officially off the clock and didn't resist when a Reaper named Cain Vega caught her eye. They ended up going home together that night and in the weeks that followed, she found herself crossing paths with him time and time again.
No one spoke of the fact that Tinlee was a police officer and Cain was associated with a known criminal element. She refused to try and push for anything serious. She liked spending time with him and loved the sex. She was happy with things the way they were and eventually started helping them out. Her superiors worried that Tinlee would have a weakness for the Reapers but when she carted a few in on DUIs and Drunken and Disorderlies, their tunes quickly changed. She didn't discriminate but she also tended to look the other way on lesser offenses.
Even though she had secured a little spot for herself in Everman, being a cop ran the risk of past offenders coming back for revenge. Despite not being serious with Cain, they had been sleeping together for four years and she was pretty much acting like a taken woman. No other man entered her bed, even though it wasn't a conscious decision on her part. She was out, leaving a bar with some friends when a disgruntled criminal she had arrested two weeks before hit her from behind. At the time, she had no memory of what happened. Six weeks later, she was clued in to just how the guy had gotten his revenge.
Telling Cain had felt like ripping toenails out with rusty pliers. She honestly didn't know how he would take the news and she shut down almost all conversations about it. They had always been so careful with birth control that she knew, without a doubt, that he hadn't fathered her child. Her superiors found out and put her on immedate leave. She needed time to deal with the trauma and now, she was pregnant. TInlee heard the whispers around the district and decided that it was time to finally reclaim Midland.
Tinlee was foolish in her choices. While she did clue Cain in on her plans, she didn't expect much more to happen between them. In four years, he had never once wanted more and she knew that a kid further complicated matters. She settled back in Midland, renting a house for herself and her baby on the way. By the time Levi Samuel Dawson was born on October 5, 2016; she had settled in and was pulling desk duty at the Midland Police Department. She still has dreams of making detective, but for now, she's okay with where she's at. She went back on patrol three months after giving birth, and is shocked that she's not angry every time she looks at her son. But she does miss the place Cain used to frequently occupy in her world.
