I was gonna hold the epilogue for ransom, but I've decided to post it, since you guys are awesome. I'm glad you liked the last chapter...

Epilogue

While Jack had taken a job in the capital, at the Rumah Sakit Umum Propinsi Sanglash, Bali's best hospital, the city was polluted and congested with traffic, so they'd built a house on the coast to Denpasar's west. It was a fair commute, but after sharing so many life-altering moments with Kate on the beach, Jack couldn't imagine making a home with her anywhere else.

Parking his car in the garage, tired from the long drive, and an even longer shift, he parked his car in the garage, letting himself into the house. Normally Kate would drop whatever she was doing and come to meet him, but today, the living room was empty; Jack called up the stairs, but there was no answer, from the second floor, or anywhere else.

Confused, he stopped at the bottom, trying to remember if she'd said anything about going out that afternoon. He was pretty sure she hadn't. She could have gone to the store, he supposed, but they hadn't been that long ago.

Moving on to the kitchen, to check the backyard, he was relieved when the back door swung open, and a little girl with dark curls and brown eyes came hurtling towards him, trekking muddy footprints across the tiles.

Seeing the mess she was making, Jack opened his mouth to call her on it, and insist she go back out and wipe her feet, but he checked himself when he realised that he was the reason for her excitement. Coming down on her for being a kid was the kind of thing his own father would have done. He would ask her to help him mop it up later, but it really wasn't worth hurting her over.

Returning her grin, he caught her as she launched herself at him, lifting her onto his hip, surprised at how heavy she was getting. She wasn't the tiny, smiling baby they'd brought to Bali anymore, but Sam was right, the adoration he'd had for her then had only grown in the years since they'd arrived.

"Guess what me and Nat are doing with Mommy?" she prompted as she settled into his arms, positioning her bony arms around his neck.

She looked so anxious to tell him that he decided not to hazard a guess, shaking his head instead. "I don't know – what are you and Nat doing with Mommy?"

"Sinking," she told him proudly, smiling so that he could see the gap where she'd lost her front teeth. "It's really easy – you just put your feet in the sand, and you wait for the water to come, and when it goes out, you sink," she explained, her words reminding him of the ones Kate had spoken to him so long ago on the island.

"Where is Mommy? Is she still on the beach?" he asked, struck by the urge to see her. After more than five years together, he still looked forward to coming home to her every day, maybe more now that time had deepened the feelings he held towards her.

"Uh huh – so's Nat," she agreed.

"Why don't we go see them, and you can show me how you sink?" he suggested as he manoeuvred out of his work shoes, carrying her towards the back door.

"Okay, Daddy." She tightened her grip on him as they descended the stairs on the deck, relaxing when they reached the sand at the bottom.

Jack smiled when he spotted Kate standing at the edge of the water, staring out to sea, the smaller figure of their youngest daughter at her side. While Izzy was undoubtedly a daddy's girl, Natalie seemed to gravitate more towards Kate, following her around the house like a second shadow. She was also the one who bore the strongest resemblance to her mother, inheriting her green eyes and freckles along with her curls.

Their fears of Izzy being jealous had been unfounded, however; with only a year between them, the girls were as close as two kids could be, so long as Natalie let Izzy have her way. They'd bonded so well that Jack and Kate's biggest concern now was how Natalie would handle it when Izzy started school without her.

Setting Izzy down, Jack wrapped an arm around his other daughter, kissing the top of her head. She let him hold her there for a moment, looking up at him with a shy smile, before squirming away to join her sister.

He watched them caper around the beach for a moment, chasing sea birds, Izzy hyping Natalie up to her own level of excitement, all thoughts of sinking forgotten, before turning his attention to his wife.

They'd gotten married at the end of their first month in Bali, before Kate started showing, in a small civil ceremony attended only by Izzy, Marc, Sam, and to their surprise, Margo, who'd changed her mind at the last minute. She'd flown in again six months later for Natalie's birth, bonding with Kate as she helped her care for the girls. The tension between them hadn't evaporated completely, and Jack doubted it ever would, but his mother no longer treated Kate with the contempt she once had: she remembered her birthday, and spoke to her when she called, coming to Bali for Christmas so that they could all be together.

"Hey," he said softly, kissing Kate's cheek as he wound his arms around her, letting his hands rest on the seven-month swell of her stomach. "How's our boy?"

Though he'd shared in her disappointment at delivering a second girl, Jack hadn't been prepared for the surge of excitement he'd felt when a scan revealed that their third child was male. Until that moment, he'd never been sure that he wanted a son, but now, he couldn't wait to meet their little boy, and start building the kind of relationship he wished he'd had with his own father. He loved his daughters, they were his world, along with Kate, but somehow, this was different: a second chance, a way to get over the demons his father had left him with when he died.

Kate smiled as she settled back against him, bringing her own hands up to cover his. "A little restless – I think he kicked a hole in one of my kidneys – but other than that, he's great. We're both great. We're sinking," she added with a laugh.

Kissing her again, Jack rested his chin in the crook of her shoulder, moving his hand to prod gently at the top of her belly, grinning when their son prodded back. "He's not shy, is he?" he said. When he'd done the same thing with Natalie, she'd shifted away from the intrusion, withdrawing into her own private space.

"No – he's his father's son," Kate agreed with a laugh. "He can't wait to come out and take on the world."

"And I'm rooting for him, just as long as he doesn't want to be a surgeon," he said, giving her a wry smile as he added, "I'd rather that family tradition died with me."

"Nat's the one you should be keeping an eye on then," she told him, her grin fading a little, serious now. "You and Izzy might be close, but she's more like you than you know. She's so hard on herself – the last few days, I've been teaching Izzy to tie her shoes for school, and since Nat was around, I've been showing her too. This morning, I found her on the floor of her room, crying, because she couldn't remember the story I told them. I have to keep reminding her she's only four."

"What story?" Jack asked curiously, resolving to talk to their daughter later. He didn't want her obsessing over things the way he did, always wanting to be better than she was at that moment. It was no way to live; it had taken him forty years to get the place he was now, a place where he could be happy.

"The one about the bunny," she said, as if that explained everything. When he raised a sceptical eyebrow at her, she flushed, embarrassed. "Your mom never did that with you? I thought that was how all kids learned to tie their shoes."

Jack shook his head, sobering as he thought back to his own childhood. "My mom never had time to do all that Mom stuff. I was pretty much on my own." She was making up for it now, with the girls, but he would always regret that she wasn't there for him when he needed it. It shouldn't have taken a plane crash for her to be his mother.

Watching his expression, Kate turned away from him with a sad smile, her eyes falling on their daughters as they scurried up and down the beach. "Me too. She tried, but she was never there for me either – her or my dad. I guess things are going to be really different for them."

That's a real hospital by the way...

So that's it, the end. I haven't settled on a new idea yet, but I'll start posting again as soon as I do, so long as you guys promise to keep up your lovely reviews. Thank you so much for your words of encouragment, and general enthusiasm -- it really does make it all worthwhile.