Bom's Letter (Part 1)

Disclaimer: Well, if I owned them, I wouldn't have to work, and then this story would have been finished yonks ago... As far as I know, Posy still owns them... the characters and stuff that is.

A/N: So, I have given up on writing Nick and Terry's letters... I figure that it's more important to finish this... mind you, I haven't written Becky's or Peter's either, so you'll all cope, I hope...

CSIcrazy: There are more chapters, just not when you wanted them... C'mon though, it's almost finished.

genevra: Glad you loved the flashbacks, I thought they were fun to write. Yeah, and sorr in advance that I skipped TNs... it was getting too hard.

LieutenantjgMegAustin: God thats a long name! Anyway, you don't have to wait too much longer! YAY!


SOME YEARS LATER

Alex Ryan walked down the staircase in the old homestead on Drover's Run, his arms filled with wrapped presents, and headed towards the kitchen to make a very special birthday breakfast.

"Daddy!" Alex's heart swelled at the small hurricane named Lucy who came rushing towards him, her short seven-year-old legs propelling her at an amazing speed. She had been a surprise, but was a great addition to the family, and none of them would have had it any other way.

"Good morning sweetheart. And how are you today?" He paused to put down the load of presents in his arms and swung Lucy up into the air.

"I'm good Daddy. Are those for me?" Alex had to smile at the eager look on her face.

"Sorry sweetheart. We've had this talk already. These are for Carlotte," he said, using Lucy's own nickname for her sister. "It's her birthday, remember?"

"Lucy? Where are you honey?" A tall, lean girl walked into the kitchen, obviously looking for someone or something.

"She's here Char. We were just talking." Alex was struck once again by how much his adopted daughter looked like her mother. He walked over to her, and enveloped her in a fatherly hug. "It's hard to believe you're eighteen."

"Don't I know it!" The three of them turned to see a blond haired woman standing in the doorway.

"Auntie Tess!" Charlotte ran toward her favourite aunt. "I didn't know you were back."

"Did you really think I'd miss you're eighteenth?" Tess look towards the child that had come charging in the door. "Daniel, no running in the house."

Alex walked over to his sister-in-law and hugged her, still holding his daughter in one arm. He had long ago learnt the trick of holding a child while doing other things. "It's good to have you back, Tess. It's been too long."

"Only six months Alex."

"And another six before that. How am I supposed to raise my kids without you bugging me about it?"

Before she could answer, another voice was heard flittering through the house. "Tess? Where are you?" A tall man limped into the kitchen, his arms full of bags.

"Nick? What, couldn't keep up with the pace in the big wide world?" Alex's banter was a thin mask over his emotions of seeing his 'baby' brother back home safe and sound. Despite their best efforts, Sandra and Harry had only had daughters, not that they minded. Harry had been as in love with his daughters as his sons had been with their daughters up until the day he died.

It had been hard to believe that the old codger had it in him, but he doted on his girls, who grew up to be close to Charlotte, much to everyone's surprise.

What was more surprising was that after Harry's death Alex had been the one to support Sandra through the time in the time directly after. He had been the one to look after his little 'sisters' when it all got too much for Sandra and help her through the hard times he himself had experienced with the death of Claire.

"Good to see you too mate. I didn't realise how much I missed this place until we flew over it last night in the plane."

"Yeah, I had to convince him not to drive back last night jet-lagged. As it is, we left at 3 a.m. anyway." Tess faked a yawn, but they all knew that had Nick not made her get up that early, she would have had him up anyway.

"Dad..."Alex looked across the room to see another 'youngster' looking on the scene through blurred eyes. "Dad, I'm hungry"

"Patrick, I was wondering when you'd resurface. You came in rather late last night don't you think? And you know where the kitchen is." Alex was forever trying to get his son to pull his own weight around the house.

"I was only half an hour late." Pat took after his dad in more than looks. He had also inherited both his parents' spirit for mischief. Charlotte looked at him and he realised his mistake. The first thing she had taught him was to try and avoid telling their father just how much he'd stuffed up. "Auntie Tess! What are you doing here?"

His change of subject did not go unnoticed, but Tess decided to aid the youngster. "It's your sister's eighteenth, or had you forgotten?" she replied with a smile.

"Eighteenth? Come to think of it, someone might have mentioned it..."

"Once or twice an hour for the last month." Stevie never got sick of teasing Charlotte about her obsession with things like her birthday.

Alex smiled and beckoned his wife over towards him. She was still as beautiful as the first time he saw her all those years ago at the rodeo, even after so many years of motherhood and life running a farm.

"Hello? Does no-one around here know how to open a door?" A new voice cut its way through the silence in the room. "A hand would be appreciated." The owner of the voice walked through the doorway.

"Jodi!" Stevie untangled herself from her husband and almost ran towards the girl she had originally given so much trouble to. After a very rough start the two women had become firm friends. "How long ago did you get here?"

"We got here about an hour ago. Mum insisted that we unpack before coming up here." Jodi smiled softly. "You know how she is when she's nervous."

There was a silence around the room because since they had all last met, Meg had lost her second husband to cancer. The country sun that Terry loved so much had eventually killed him.

"How's she been managing? I wasn't able to call or see her as much as I would have liked." One of the things that Tess hated most about moving around with Nick and Alex's ever expanding business was that she was not around enough to see those she loved.

"I think Mum's living it one day at a time." Silence fell around the room once more.

The front door creaked.

"Why all the long faces? You should all know as well as I do that Terry wouldn't have wanted us sad, he'd want us to throw ourselves into our lives with more vigour." The strong face that Meg put on in front of most people crumbled and she began quietly crying. Everyone seemed at a loss as to how to comfort the woman.

"Grandma!" An energetic twelve-year-old ran into the room in a flurry of long hair. Her "shadow", five-year-old Melanie, as the group knew her followed 'Cyclone Becca'. They ran towards their grandmother and cheered Meg by their presence alone. Rebecca, and thus Melanie, had been very close to her step-grandfather and been almost as hard-hit by his death as Meg.

"Is that really little Mel?" Tess quietly queried, careful that the girl should not overhear, remembering how she had not enjoyed being called small, little or young. Tess had missed seeing Jodi the last time she had made it up to Drovers' as the younger woman had been in the city visiting Becky, and her new baby boy. Jodi motioned for Tess to follow her to the study, where they could catch up not only in private, but also with their feet up.

"Yeah, its hard to believe, isn't it? Luke and I were talking about the same thing last week when I took the girls over to him." Jodi had married the reformed bad-boy a couple of years before Rebecca was born.

"And how is your esteemed ex-husband and son doing these days?" A few months after Melanie was born, the couple almost lost their second child, a boy named Jason, in an accident. The small boy had never been the same and neither had the relationship between his parents. Jason and his father lived in the city, and there was much travel of the three children during holidays and school term. Jodi still missed her little boy though.

"Jason's doing a lot better. You know how after the accident he had a really big fear of all large animals?" Tess nodded. She remembered that day. Jason had been thrown from his pony in the middle of a sheep paddock. He wasn't able to get up, and the sheep and a couple of cows had spent a lot of the day crowding around him. Even though he had spent all of his four years on the farm, helping with the various animals, he was still very scared by the sheep, and for many years associated the pain of his broken arm with the two types of animals.

"It took him a long time to get over, I remember."

"Yeah, well, he has decided that he wants to move back here when he's older and "become Dave", I believe his essay said." Jodi smiled slyly at Tess, who shuddered.

"God, more than one Dave Brewer? How will the world survive?" Since Dave had gotten remarried, for the third time, he and the whole Drovers' mob had become closer (probably because he had married one of their own).

"And how are things between you and Luke?" Tess asked somewhat innocently.

"They're good. We're thinking of giving it another try, as long as Jason doesn't mind coming back to the country." Jodi sighed and smiled softly. "The one thing we've always agreed on since Bec was born was that our children would come first in all decisions. So if they move back, we'll give it a try and hopefully not get their hopes up until we are certain about how it will turn out."

"You two have a lot of history. That's gotta count for something." Jodi may have always been the romantic, but Tess had learnt a bit from her over the years.

"I hope so." That was all that was said, and all that need to be.


A/N:
Ok, so, other half of the chapter is written, will be up once I've got a couple of reviews... So it's all in your hands... The sooner you review, the sooner it'll be up.