Chapter Nine: The Way The Light Shines

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Exactly Ten Years and Two Weeks After Mark Left

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Roger woke up and after realizing that the boys weren't up yet and Mimi and Mark were huddled over something in the kitchen; Roger made his way to the small balconly.

There was no point in denying it Roger was trying to avoid Mark, had been all weekend, and would have been regardless of the discoveries made. It was just that Mark had always been the constant person, his friend since they met. Mark had been there for everything. Then when Mark left, Roger had stepped up to the plate, had become that person for Mimi, had moved on. To help himself, he started finding faults in the person he had known just so the friendship wouldn't have seemed like much of a loss. But here they were again. A noise came from behind him,

"Hey," the sound of Mark's voice interuptted the flow of the outside noises.

Roger didn't reply, just kept staring out infront of him so Mark continued,

"Shea's the oldest of the two, craweld first. London walked first. I had sit them on the living room floor back in New York and it was raining outside, and I was sitting with Shea trying to get him to walk when the sound of thunder scared London into toddling over to where I was. When they were two we went to this new restaraunt and Shea got some food posioning and was in the hospital for three days. When they were four my parents came out here and took them on a road trip to Colorado and back to see my brother graduate. My father still goes on about the boys on the trip, he loves being the grandpa. Shea spent the second half of kindergarten on cruches when he tried to fly off the playground equipment during recess. And last year London broke his arm trying to break up a fight between Shea and some older kids. Both of them do really well in school, their teacher keeps a group of the kids to work on some harder stuff twice a week after school so they don't get bored. Shea saved up two years of allowance and birthday money and with some help from London and my father got a guitar when he was eight. London started taking piano lessons from the lady downstairs...about the same I started dating this woman, Mae, she was a professor at the college, engineering...we went out for three months then I broke it off, because I couldn't do that to the boys, it didn't seem like it would have gone anywhere, so I stopped it before I hurt the boys by introducing someone who would...

"Leave them, Mark? Like Mimi and I will?"

"No, someone who wouldn't have cared when she did leave."

"Why are you telling me this?" Roger spun around trying to put any anger into it, but failing.

"Because it's everything I should have told you in the last ten year, well some of it." Mark tried.

"Mark." Roger said, shaking his head.

Mimi watched from her seat in the living room as Mark and Roger embraced, boys, she thought smiling into her cup of coffee.

"Mimi?"

She turned around to see Shea standing very tired, "Where's my dad?"

"On the balconly." She answered, amused at the honesty in that answer. "Happy Birthday."

Shea smiled broadly at her, but it quickly disappeared when Roger walked backed in followed shortly by Mark.

"Happy Birthday." Roger said ruffling Shea's hair.

"Don't. Touch. Me." Shea let out gruffly.

"Shea, behave." Earning Mark a glare. "Why don't you wake up your brother?"

The ten year old stood there, "Dun, wake up."

"I could have done that. Go in there, goofball."

Mark absentmindley did the same thing Roger did, it had been something Mark had done all the time, yet Shea just laughed and walked back to his room. Roger stared after the boy, the action having not gone unnoticed.

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Hey I know it's short, but I wanted to get this out of the way...before we make another jump...I finally have the rest of the chapters in the editing fase but as the response goes ...chapter could undergo some make overs...

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Until next time, this is me...signing out.