They sat outside the Dean’s office, after making their
way through a mine field of reporters. Jon
has handled it like the pro he was, he kept the reporters away from Stephanie.
As they walked in, no one was smiling, and the folders in
front of the Dean looked awfully thick to Stephanie. The other folder was
Ryan’s, who thankfully was meeting separate from the Bongiovi’s. The Judge from the student court was also
there.
“Miss Bongiovi, we here at Hamilton College and the
Student court have looked over the incident and we have suggestions.” The Judge
from the Student court opened the discussion.
“We feel that since it’s your first offence, we recommend that you be
suspension indefinably. We also expect you to complete a drug rehab. At the end of the rehab you can apply to come
back to Hamilton.” The young man looked
from Stephanie to Jon. “The Dean is in
agreement, the suspension would be immediate.”
Stephanie couldn’t believe this, one screw up and she was
suspended from college. Hell she had never been suspended from Polly Prep, not
even in school suspension. They were
making her go to drug rehab on top of the suspension. Granted she understood
rehab, hadn’t uncle Mookie gone through rehab? She would get her dad to send
her to Serenity like Uncle Mookie went to.
“How long will she need to be in rehab?” Lexie asked.
Martine had given then the list of rehabs that were local, where she
could take college courses while in treatment.
They, she and Jon and maybe along with Dorothea, would have to be
available for family counseling, while she was in rehab.
“Most of the programs are thirteen weeks, Miss Bongiovi
can take classes online to keep earning college credits.” The Dean informed them. “Seaforth is our suggested rehab, they permit
supervised internet access for verified students. Stephanie can take college online
here at Hamilton.”
Seaforth, where had she heard that name before? A pamphlet was handed to her and her parents
to look over. It was in the Hamptons. No that was too close to home! She wanted California or Utah, not Seaforth
and the Hamptons. Thirteen weeks, that was almost three months! Stephanie looked over at her father and
Lexie, she wanted to tell them where she wanted to go. But by the looks on
their faces, she was going to Seaforth.
They were given two weeks, one for her to clean out her
dorm room. One to report back to the court with their decision. As they waked out of the meeting, they saw
Ryan and his lawyer were there in the waiting room. His parents were with him and gave Stephanie
and her dad a dirty look. Martin told
Jon that Ryan had made threats to take Stephanie down with him. But Martin had
shut that down, he would get nothing from the Bongiovi family.
The road home was very quiet, no radio, no talking. Jon had allowed Lexie to do the driving, not
wanting a stranger in the car in case they did have a discussion. Granted he trusted the drivers who did the
driving when they had to use them, but you never knew who they talked to, their
wife who told her friend who then would sell the juicy information to a rag
magazine, like the Star and Enquirer.
Stephanie went right to her room, since as a part of her
punishment from Lexie, she was home bound.
She was allowed her computer and her phone, but Lexie was monitoring her
calls and computer time.
She was getting messages from Ryan, even if it was
through her friends she was allowed excess too. He had been expelled, which his
parents still blamed on Stephanie. They
were going to sue the Bongiovi’s, or so her message said. She would have to tell her dad, how did this
all go so wrong?
Jon headed straight to his office, Lexie followed him in
and shut the door. He put the envelope
from the Dean on the desk and fired up his computer.
“It’s like they had this all planned before we got
there.” Jon told Lexie as he waited for
the computer to load.
“I was thinking the same thing, I think Martin had a lot
to do with that. He was the one who handled all the Student Court and the
meetings with the Dean.” Lexie went over and sat on his lap. Jon pulled up the site that Hamilton sent to
them. Clicking on the Bongiovi,
Stephanie Rose link was an eye opener.
Missed Classes and failing grade in Design class. Out of fifteen classes
she had only attended seven. Failure to
turn in assignments. Barely passing with
a low C in some classes.
“This is not the child that graduated top of her class in
high school.” Jon placed his chin on her
shoulder reading the screen. This was an
eye opener to what had been going on for the past three months, since they
dropped her off.
There was a tap on the door, it slowly opened and
Stephanie walked in.
“I wanted to let you know that Ryan was expelled and his
parents are suing us.” Stephanie held
out her iPad to Lexie. “They have this
idea that it was all my fault. Daddy you
have to believe me it was the first time I ever did this drug. I promise.” Tear formed in her eyes. It was then the phone started to ring. Dorothea’s name come up on the caller ID. “I don’t want to talk to mommy, not after the
mean things she said at the hospital.”
Jon took the phone.
“Dotty, we can’t talk right now, can this wait till
tomorrow or next week?” Jon was so tired and talking to his ex was not on top
of the list of things he wanted to do.
“She is my daughter and I want to know what happened
today and why I was not there.” Dorothea
asked. She had said she was going to
look into getting the kids back, and she should have been there when they met
at the college.
“Dotty, do you forget that you signed papers allowing
Lexie to adopt the kid? You took money
and signed away your rights as their mothers.” Jon repeated the same thing he
told her when she called while he was in London.
“I have been checking with a lawyer about reinstating my
parental rights to my children.” She
told him. Graham had gone and applied
for a loan to please Dorothea, so she could fight Jon to get the kids back.
“I don’t care if you get William F Buckley to rise from
the dead to take the case. You took a
large amount of money to sign your rights to your kids away. In fact it was
more blackmail, and you know it.” Jon was getting mad, he was not firing on all
his cylinders from lack of sleep. “Fine
you get your lawyer and we’ll meet with a judge and if you lose, you will have
no contact with these kids till they are over twenty two and they can decided
if they want to see you. But right now I don’t need this shit, grow up Dorothea
and let me deal with this family problem right now.”
You could hear her yelling at him when he disconnected
the call.
There
are days when I wish I had an old desk phone so I could slam the phone down on
calls like this, Jon thought as he looked at Stephanie. They
really didn’t need her throwing a monkey wrench into this right now.
“We’ll give Martin the heads up on the Smith family, and
let him also know about Dorothea’s latest move.” Jon sighed and looked at his
oldest, his baby girl and what was covered today. “Steph, we need to talk about this, but not
today. Not after all that has happened,
I love you, you know that.”
“I know Dad, I never meant to let you down.” Stephanie told her dad. Lexie got up and made a quiet exit out of the
office. “If I could do it all over
again, I would’ve never gone to that party.”
“Life doesn’t give us do overs, we learn from this and
move on.” Jon got up and came around the desk and sat in the chair by
hers. “There are a lot things I wish I
could do over, but I learned from my mistakes and I think it made me a better
person.”
“What do you want to do over Dad?” Stephanie asked her father.
“I wish I was there more for you and your brothers. I
missed a lot of school plays and chorus concerts, I missed your brother’s
sports games.” He ticked off items he
wished he could do over. “I left a lot
of how you grew up to your mom, I see where I should’ve stepped in and put my
foot down, like the drugs and the drinking.”
“Dad, you had a job to do, so you weren’t there at times,
but we knew you were doing it for us.”
Stephanie told her dad. “We got
the best schools, the best houses and we weren’t spoiled. You made us work for our allowance and taught
us to value that money.” She thought
about what it was like growing up Bongiovi.
“Yeah, I didn’t want you to grow up like I did. I wanted you to get an education that would
take you far in this crazy world.” Jon
sat back and watched his daughter. “Do
you want to continue to do the class work while in rehab?”
“I kinda wanted to go where Uncle Mookie went to, but I was
listening to the Dean, I need to finish my classes and keep my grades. So I guess I’ll go to Seaforth for thirteen
weeks.” Stephanie said after realizing just how much of a hardship it would be
on the family.
“We’ll go down and look the place over, if it’s not what
we want, we’ll look into Serenity.” Jon
reached across and took her hand. “Now let me call Martin and take a nap.” Jon
yawned “I love you baby girl, always remember that.” He stood up and bent down and kissed her
forehead.
“Dad can I ask you one thing?” Jon was just about out the door.
