Roomies - The Baby Years

Chapter 30

I lived happily ever after for a few years with Gale. He helped me raise Ben to become the man he was today. He helped Ben get into a great college, they took trips on motorcycles together, and I honestly believed that Gale loved my son.

There was no doubt about it.

But life happened. Gale and Ben got into a motorcycle accident. Thankfully, Ben got away with a broken arm and a few bruises. Gale had not been as lucky. We spent weeks at the hospital with him, and eventually the doctors told us that there was nothing else to do. Gale had slipped into a coma, and his brain activity was no longer active so there was no chance he would come out of the coma again.Ben and I made the hard decision to let him go. It wasn't something that was easy for either one of us, but we made it together.

A few days later we had a funeral for Gale. Everyone showed up. Even Niall.

Ben's girlfriend also showed up. I didn't really like her, but was any mother supposed to like their son's girlfriends?

The funeral was beautiful, and people from all around the world showed up, people Gale and Ben had met on their travels and wanted to show their support. The house was filled with food and pastries weeks after the funeral.

Niall stayed in the house with us for a few days before he had to get back on the tour with Lorraine. It was kind of nice having Niall in the house with me and Ben. At the same time, it felt weird and as if I was trying to replace Gale.

After a while things got back to normal. Well, as normal as it could get without Gale. Everything in the house reminded me of him, and I could see that Ben was just as affected by it all.

Eventually, we decided to move.
We moved to a house a few blocks from where we had been living for the last couple or years. The house had these big black double doors by the front porch, and that's what I fell in love with.

Ben fell in love with the fact that there was a pool and a hot tub, and he said "Marissa sure will like this." and I quickly decided to put out those lamps that lit up in the middle of the night if someone walked past them.

The house also had a great back garden, with a path to a guest house. Ben decided that he would live in the guesthouse though, because it would be better with some privacy. I let him. He was after all old enough to decide for himself.

Ben had turned 18 just a few weeks after Gale's funeral. He didn't want to celebrate it though, so I had just let him be. He had ended up spending the night with his girlfriend, going to the movies.

Ben and I settled nicely in the new house. He wasn't home that much anymore because he was on his last year in the school of archeology. I wasn't completely sure what he was studying or what his degree would give him, but he insured me it was all worth it. I trusted him.

A year passed. I was now working on a different series. My show was cancelled after season 5 because we had some trouble with the cast. I still think the show got the ending it deserved.

At the end of it, a friend I had met whilst filming the show asked me if I wanted to come work with her on this other show she was directing. I read through their pilot and said yes. It was about a girl in a small town, who discoveres that her parents aren't her real parent's and it seems like the whole town is in on this huge kidnapping of her. We had a great cast and crew, and the show was getting high numbers each week.

The day I had dreaded for years eventually came. Ben's graduation. It was the 21st of June, and he was graduating from university. He had been studying since he was 16, at the same school. The year before he started uni, he had met Marissa and she was a year older than him. They had broken up last summer, and a few weeks later he introduced me to a girl called Lucy. He had been with Lucy for the last couple of months now, but I was sure she wasn't the only one because I had seen girls who looked nothing like Lucy sneak in and out of the guest house.