Bold and Simful

“You’re as cute as a button, yes you are,” despite the obvious, Jodie Gunderson insisted to his little girl that she was indeed adorable.

Alexa giggled as was expected of her, but inside she was thinking, ‘Yeah, and you’re not wearing your glasses.‘ Her hopes of inheriting her mother’s genes and becoming a raven haired version of her gorgeous Aunt Veronica had so far gone unfulfilled. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Veronica had suddenly stopped calling her by her full name and had started using only Alexa,’This birthday is my last chance, after that I’ll be over the hill.‘

“When would I have had time to read the paper?” Maleena mimicked her daughter’s Aunt Veronica. “It’s still laying on the sidewalk, I think.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you then,” Veronica ran down the contents of the article as they pertained to her. Not that there was much that pertained to her. Once again she had been mentioned only by reference as “the devil in the red dress” and chastised (though not by name) for bringing her new boyfriend to the Fete. “If Turner hadn’t slapped me, which he had no cause to do anyway, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in at all,” she lamented.

“Shouldn’t you be more worried about Zee being Lydia’s father? I mean, do you really want to get mixed up in that mess?”

“What? I already dumped him!” Veronica was shocked that her sister gave her so little credit, “Me the step-mother of a teenager? As if!”

“Is she gone?” Jodie inquired. He liked Veronica, but she could be more draining than a two year old so he had hid out with a real two year old until he heard the taxi honk.

“Yeah, she just left. You know, she’s obsessed with getting into that column, she actually thinks that any publicity is good publicity,” At one point in her life, Maleena would have been just as anxious to read her name in print but these days she was more interested in making ends meet. Jodie had been promoted to fashion photographer but she hadn’t been to work since the day she found out that she was pregnant with Alexa and things were still tight as far as she was concerned. The Heights wasn’t quite the lifestyle to which she was accustomed.

One of the things Maleena hated about the Heights was her neighbors. The Gibson kid had always been weird but now that he had become a teenager, he was constantly hanging around. All she wanted to do was get the paper so she could read the column to Jodie, but here he was again.

“Hi Mrs. B,” Jacob flushed red, “I was just out collecting bugs. Did you know Rigel Heights has more than 30 different varieties of beetle?”

“No, no I didn’t,” Maleena yanked her hand free. It was cute that the kid had a crush, but it made her feel old. Not that she needed to feel much older, Alexa’s birthday was today and it felt like just yesterday that she had been trying on prom dresses. “Shouldn’t you be getting home before it really starts snowing?” she hinted.

Maleena and Jodie had kept their daughter’s birthday quiet because, despite how often he reiterated the lie, Jodie couldn’t quite convince himself that Alexa was cute. Maleena had researched genetics as much as she could understand and had scoured the family photos for a chin like that, but her daughter was an anomaly.

So when Alexa’s big day came, it was with mother and father only present.

‘Whew, she didn’t turn out too bad.’ Anxiety and relief were obvious on Maleena’s face but her daughter was too busy admiring her new self to notice.

Jacob returned home to find his father and mother going ’round and ’round the same old argument.

“Did you have anything to do with this?” Jay demanded. He hated when Brenda played dumb, but man was she good at it. There had been a time, just after he had found out that his wife was using their daughter to scam presents out of the women of Orion Bay that he had considered throwing her out on the street, but Damien and Noah had just been born and he had just taken over the restaurant and he, well, he just thought he could change her back into the woman she was before she saw dollar signs. All that didn’t mean that he wasn’t suspicious every time a penny turned up.

“Not a thing, but how can this be bad? We would never be able to afford Hunter for one kid, much less for two,” Brenda saw the opportunity as a blessing, but Jay, who knew Catherine Mendenhall much better than his wife did, wondered what the woman was up to.

“She said they need to leave right away to start the new semester on time,” Jay mulled over Catherine’s proposition out loud. “I don’t even know if LC is ready for college, she’s so young yet.”

“She’s ready and even if she isn’t Jacob would be there to keep an eye on her and it’s not far away,” Brenda offered. She really didn’t have anything to do with this sudden windfall, but she couldn’t have planned it better if she tried.

Jacob backed out of the kitchen, hoping his mother could convince his father to send him and his sister to the ivory towers of Hunter College where he could finally converse with people of his own intelligence.

It wasn’t Brenda that finally convinced Jay that Catherine’s offer was too good to refuse, it was the twins birthdays. Three boys sharing one room when one of them was a teenager hardly seemed fair and Jacob had been ready for college since grade school.

Late that night, he called Catherine to accept her offer. L.C and Jacob would be leaving for Hunter in the morning, the first Gibson’s to go to college.

With a mixture of sadness and relief, Lakshimi the paper girl stopped to wave goodbye to Jacob. He had been flirting with her since he was a little kid in a pink coat and now he was old enough to go to college.

L.C. waited patiently for the next taxi to arrive, her father wanted to lecture her about the dangers of the real world before he let his little girl leave the nest but thankfully a crash across the street captured his attention and she was able to sneak into the taxi before he could stop her.

The Placer trashcan had been dumped more than a few times over the last 24 hours since the Winter Fete. The women of Orion Bay were pissed

and they weren’t about to let Shelly worm her way into their world whether she had given birth to Francis Mendenhall’s illegitimate child or not.

“Stay away from my father and keep your brat where it belongs,” Elizabeth warned.

“Afraid daddy isn’t going to love you anymore?” Shelly mocked. She wasn’t intimidated by Elizabeth at all, the girl’s almost obsessive desire to please her father was too easy to exploit. As long as she could get Francis to accept Delilah, Elizabeth would follow suit.

“Daddy’s coming tonight,” Shelly cooed to her daughter. There was no way Francis could deny Delilah, she looked exactly like him.

Delilah giggled, then threw up. Just days ago this would have freaked Shelly out but she was learning to deal with these things. She had even managed to figure out how to balance career and motherhood with the help of a nanny.

Things were looking up at home and at the office where a new girl had started, pushing her up the totem pole. She and the new girl had been pregnant at the same time so they had a lot to talk about and became fast friends. Kitty would be over later to wish Delilah a happy birthday but right now she had to get her daughter ready to meet her father.

Francis arrived just in time for his daughter’s birthday and was notably stiff and uncomfortable. Catherine had always dealt with the children, he had no idea what to do with a toddler. “So, what does she do?” he asked.

“Do? She doesn’t have a job, Francis. Right now she plays and learns to walk and talk,” Shelly could be a smartass when she wanted.

It took a few hours but when no one was looking, Francis figured out how to play with his daughter and more to his surprise, found out that he actually enjoyed it. He had missed all of these things with Xavier and Elizabeth.

“You’re life is going to be different, little one,” Francis explained to the still giggling girl.

Shelly, standing just outside the door, smirked, ‘you bet our lives are going to be different.‘

——-
Notes: Jacob really did have a crush on Lakshimi as a kid, he always ran outside to talk to her but when he aged, he dumped the paper girl and started hitting on Maleena, he loitered outside her house and did the attraction reaction whenever she wandered by. Maleena had no response for that.

Shelly had the lowest DR/LR with a baby I’ve ever seen, it was in the 20s there for a while and toddler Delilah doesn’t look a thing like Francis (except for the eyes) or Shelly. She actually looks like the receptionist at my dentist’s office. What the hell?!

 

Posted on August 26th, 2008 under Rigel Heights. Tags: alexa, brenda, delilah, francis, gibson, gunderson, jacob, jay, jodie, lydia, maleena, shelly. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.