Chapter 110

“Mom, it’s not what you think.” Jesse blurted as he turned to face Lexie.

“What I see is you two kissing.” Lexie put the mail down with her bag and went over to her chair and sat down.

“Well, I guess it was what you were seeing but, not why. Sal has been helping me with math class, she had just gone thought it last year. I wasn’t getting the concepts and she’s been helping me to understand it. I just took the pretest and aced it. I was just thanking her for helping me get through it.” Jesse tried to explain.

Lexie looked between Sally and Jesse, Sally quickly added to the explanation. “I had the class last year and I knew if it was hard for me, than Jesse would be lost too.  Mark is the math whiz and taught me and so when Jesse told me he was taking the same test, I showed him what Mark taught me.”

Lexie thought back to everything she had been told about the wonderful Mark, Math Whiz, was not the first thing that came to her mind.  She looked between the two of them and decided that keeping an eye on them, was her new part time job.

There was a noise on the monitor on the coffee table.

“Someone is up from their nap.” Sally made a quick exit.

“Oh, Mom D called and asked you to call her.” Jesse said as he headed to the kitchen.

Lexie got up shaking her head, she got up and grabbed her handbag and mail on her way up to the office. Grabbing the phone she punched in Dorothea’s number.

Getting Dorothea’s voice mail, she started leaving a message when Dorothea picked up the call.

“Lexie, thanks for calling back.”  Dorothea sat at her kitchen table.

“I just got back from dropping Jon off for two weeks.”  Lexie shifted through the mail again.  “What’s up, are we still on for Saturday Girls day?”

“That’s why I’m calling, have you talked to Steph lately?”  Dorothea asked as she sipped her coffee.  “She hasn’t returned my calls for the past two days.”

“Nope, not since we set this weekend up. Jon said he talked to her and she apparently has a new guy in her life.”  Lexie kicked off her shoes and checked the nanny cam on the trio.  “I sent her a text yesterday on my way to a meeting.”

“What does Jon say about this new guy?”  Getting up to fill her coffee cup, looking out at the skyline of lower Manhattan.

“I don’t think he trust him, something about not liking how she hasn’t shared any details, except he’s a little older and lives near the campus.”  Lexie told her as she got up and went to the mini fridge for a bottle of water.  “Has Sarah heard from her lately?”

“Sarah and I aren’t speaking to each other right now. I caught her smoking pot in the house and she informed me I wasn’t her mom, and that I let MY daughter smoke pot but not her.” Dorothea sipped her coffee.

“Sorry to hear that, I know Stephanie and Sarah are friends and I thought she might have heard from Steph.” She opened her water and took a sip. “Well, we’ll see if she returns our call, or blows us off this weekend.”

“I asked Sarah if she was going to go with us and I got a grunt.” Dorothea rolled her eyes.

“Well, I have a question, were we like them at that age?” Lexie asked.

“By the time I was Steph age, I was with Jon and traveling with the band.” She thought back to when she was eighteen, drinking and having sex.

“I was working and putting myself through college, eating peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches.” Lexie laughed.  “My parents didn’t care, I was a late in life baby of two business people, who didn’t understand my dreams.”

They ended the call with plans to meet at Bloomingdale’s in SoHo. Lexie went to check on the trio and made dinner. Snowball and the puppies were taken care of, homework done and checked, and after a little bit of television, it was time for bed.  She sat in the Trios room, rocking Cullen and watching her daughter’s sleep.  Yes she was worried about Stephanie, she was also worried about her daughters growing up and trying drugs and sex. 

“He’s asleep Lexie, do you want me to take him now?”  Sally asked.

Lexie had been so deep in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard Sally come into the room.

“I’ll do it.”  Lexie told her as she got up from the rocker and put Cullen on his back in the crib.

“Are you still upset about Jesse and me kissing?”  Sally asked her, as she sat down in one of the rockers.

“No, you two are old enough to have a relationship.” Lexie told her as she sat down in the other rocker.

“You just seemed so quiet and upset, I thought you might let me go.” Sally watched how she reacted to her thinking of being fired.

“I won’t fire you, I trust you to not let your romance get in the way of Jesse’s school and the trio’s care.” Lexie gave her the way things were going to be from now on.

“Thanks Lexie, I won’t let you down.”  Sally was close to tears.

“Don’t,” Lexie got up and headed to the master bedroom and changed into her grubby workout clothes and headed down to the kitchen.  Fixing her a cup of hot chocolate she decided to walk up and down the back steps before it got too late.  Checking on Snowball and the puppies she sat on the floor by the little family.

“What am I going to do Snow?  I have this bad feeling that somethings bad is going to happen.”  She pulled Inky onto her lap and stroked his fur, the same way she used to stoke Snowball when she was a puppy.  Leaning back on the wall she thought about this coming weekend and the girl’s day with Stephanie, Sarah and Dot.  This was going to be a new experience.  Putting Inky back with the others, she decided not to work out and instead she took her cup of hot chocolate to the bedroom and grabbed her laptop and propped herself up on the headboard and fired up her computer.

She was writing when she got the text from Jon, that they had landed and were headed to the hotel. He said they were dead tired and he was hitting the bed, and that he would call her tomorrow.

She felt bad for him, he wasn’t feeling too good before he left. The kids had brought home a bug, which had traveled through the whole family, except for her. Setting her phone on the bed she checked the time and went back to writing.

She must have fallen asleep, because the laptop was sitting beside her and asleep. Her cell was ringing and she had lost it in the covers. Glancing at the alarm clock and saw it read two in the morning. Who the hell was calling her cell at two in the morning? It wasn’t Jon, his ring was Thank You For Loving Me. She finally found it when it stopped ringing. She was checking her missed call and it read Clinton, New York. That was where Stephanie went to college, but it wasn’t her number.  Thinking the worst she was about to call the number back when her cell went off again.

“Hello?”  She asked.

“Mrs. Bongiovi?” The male voice asked.

“Yes, this is Mrs. Alexis Bongiovi, how can I help you?”  Lexie sat up and wiped the sleep from her eyes.

“Mrs. Bongiovi, this is Officer Davis of the Clinton P. D., I am at the Clinton Memorial Hospital.”  Officer Davis stopped to draw in a breath.  “You are listed as an emergency contact for your daughter Stephanie Rose.”