Cinn: OK, I have spent a long, long time away from this fic, and I still have no idea where I'm going. So we'll see what happens. After staring at a blank screen for 10 minutes I decided to clear up a few more things from earlier on in the fic and then continue onwards because I had no better ideas.
Chapter 7: Reflection; Forgive and Forget.
:Hi Lucille!
How's everything? Everything's great over here, everyone's fine. Nina tells me to tell you she's settled in fine in her new job, she says she'll email you as soon as she gets an internet connection down there - an Archaeological dig, she's done well.
Oh yeah, guess what's happened? After, oh how long is it now? 15 years if I'm correct, after 15 years of arguing like hell Debbie and Mel have finally made up! How great is that? And it's not a plot of Debbie's, because she's now about to get married to her boyfriend, you'll probably remember him, they started going out just before you moved to America, Jack. So after all these years of hell they've made up completely! I even saw them out for coffee the other day. Remember when it was at its worst? When Debbie was threatening to ruin all of Mel's special days and everything, oh god, it seems comical now.
So yeah, they've made up, and Debbie wanted me to tell you about her and Jack getting married because she thinks you'd ignore her email if she sent you one herself and then you wouldn't know, and she apologises for being a complete bitch about everything when you two were last in contact with each other. You and Jeff are invited of course, and Mr and Mrs Tracy and your boys (I still can't believe you have five kids!) are invited to the after-do. Debbie wants you to contact her ASAP about it.
Oh, and I'm pregnant with my first child, I really hope it's a girl, but I'm not overly bothered. Three months now, so it should be born around March/April. I'm still annoyed that you couldn't come to our wedding, but I guess you had a valid excuse, having your fourth child three days before.
That's about it for now, everyone's fine and everything and everyone says "Hi!" and I hope to hear from you soon,
Love Jade.:
My reaction to that email was this: Oh. My. God. I think I was actually sat there fore five minutes letting it sink in. It was October, middle of the week, so all the boys were back at School/Nursery. Jeff was at home that day; I turned around and said "What do you think the chances are of Debbie and Mel making up?"
"Next to none, why'd you ask?" He replied, looking up from his paper.
"They have." He didn't believe me. "Jade says that now Debbie's going to marry Jack she's forgiven Mel completely!" He actually got up at this point and read Jade's email.
"Are we taking the boys to the after-do?"
"If you think it wise..." I replied, "Scott, Virgil and John would be perfectly well behaved, and I guess I could coax Gordon and Alan into behaving themselves..."
Well, I wasn't too wrong. They were simply entertaining themselves, in the loudest way possible. Actually, Gordon ended up with a camera being chased by Virgil all evening. I don't know why, I never got the pictures off him; I think Scott stepped in at some point and deleted them. But for all I know Gordon could still have them to this day.
Aside from that they could've have been better behaved...for them.
Everything was normal until Jade's first child, a little girl whom they called Maria, I went over to see her and she was a quiet little thing, small too. Nina was there too, with her new boyfriend, and very happy. She told me how mother was, not that I cared overly, and apparently she's still on the booze and nights out.
So practically everything is normal, apart from Debbie and Mel's new attitude to each other, it's quite amazing. The four of us went out for dinner on my last night in England and I've never known us all get on so well.
I was glad to return to America though, after being greeted by five frantic small boys and their relieved father.
After that things went normally, all the boys moved from Junior School to High School, and then one by one to university. Though there were times when we worried about their grades, usually when we couldn't find their report cards. I once found one of Gordon's crumpled up in his socks which had just been washed. Luckily he admitted his results and had only taken such drastic measures so his brothers wouldn't find them because he hadn't done as well as they had done in his year. But he'd done ok, Gordon wasn't the academic type.
When his brothers went to University Gordon took it upon himself to "welcome" them to their new rooms. This is why I personally think he didn't go to University but went to work practically and study underwater.
When Scott went to Oxford he simply made a few automated wake-up calls for him until Scott figured out how to turn them off. When Virgil went to Denver he left some mice in one of the drawers, unfortunately his paper drawer so he had no paper at the beginning of term. And when John went to Harvard he smeared ink on his telescope and John didn't know until his roommate told him about it.
Therefore it was tradition to pass down the right of 'getting even with Gordon' down to the next eldest Tracy in the house. So Scott told Virgil what to do, Virgil told John what to do and John told Alan what to do to get even with Gordon. Scott told Virgil to rewire Gordon's alarm clock so it beeped once every hour so that he'd wake up but not know what woke him. Virgil told John to deposit a spider in Gordon's room (I dunno where they found it, but it wasn't the smallest one I've ever seen) and John told Alan to dye all of Gordon's swimsuits horribly embarrassing colours for him, pink seemed to be the favourite colour.
Scott had finished his Oxford studies and Astronaut and had joined the Air Force by the time Gordon had finished High School. Gordon didn't go to university but decided to start training with the WASPs after winning his Olympic Gold Medal. Alan hoped to be able to go to Colorado.
So by this point in my story all my boys had practically matured (yes, you did hear correctly) or at least started to and had some idea of what they wanted to do when they'd finished education. Something which I hadn't decided until I'd actually got to the point of having to decide.
I was so happy for them all, and so proud that I didn't even think that anything would change so dramatically.
Cinn: Well I didn't think it would be right to kill her off in this chapter. So you'll have to wait for that, when I actually know where I'm going to go with the chapter, because I didn't know where I would end up going with this one. I apologise if I have the names of any colleges/universities wrong. Hope you liked it, please review.
Mentions:
Boleyn - Thanks, that's all I have to say. And sorry I took a while to update.