A/N: This is just a little something I came up with after reading Even Now by Karen Kingsbury. It's all Luke and Lorelai but there will be appearances by Chris and Rachel.
June 6, 1994
Lorelai Gilmore and her nine year old daughter Rory had just finished loading the moving truck with the boxes of their stuff they had. Lorelai had just bought her first house a few weeks ago and she was very excited. It was going to be good to have her own room and bathroom. Rory would even have more room for all the books she kept saying she needed. The two looked around the potting shed that the two of them had called home for nearly ten years. She hated leaving it but she knew that having a house would be good for her daughter. Then Rory noticed something in the corner. "Mom, what is that?" she asked heading to where she pointed. When she got to the other side of the room she saw that it was an old box of her mothers. "It has your name on it." Rory picked up the box and brought it to Lorelai. When Lorelai saw it she got scared. She knew Rory wanted to find her father and the box held all the answers. She wasn't sure if she was ready for Rory to know who her father was, yet she knew her daughter needed her father.
"It's just an old box, sweetie," said Lorelai. "Come on, we need to get to our new house and unpack all the boxes." She led her daughter to the waiting truck outside.
"Do you think I'll find out who my Dad is?" asked Rory. She wanted to find her father. She didn't know much except that her mother was madly in love with him when she was sixteen but that they had been forced apart when Lorelai had gotten pregnant.
"I don't know," she told Rory. She understood Rory wanted to find her father, but Lorelai needed to find him before her daughter did. She couldn't have Rory go up to him and say that she was his daughter. He'd probably freak out. After Lorelai had moved to Hartford with her parents at sixteen she had met Christopher Hayden and told him everything that had happened after they got to know one another. He would even tell people that Rory was his daughter when he and Lorelai began dating a few years earlier. But Rory quickly figured out that he wasn't her father and got mad at him for pretending to be her father. Lorelai broke up with him not long after that but he still called the inn asking to speak to her.
When they got to their new house Lorelai saw their next door neighbors sitting in the yard. She waved at them and started to get a box out of the truck when the woman came running over. "Hiya, doll!" she said. "I'm Babette. I live in that house right there." She pointed to her house. "And that's my husband Morey. Morey! Come help these two unload their boxes!"
More than an hour later Rory and Lorelai had all there boxes unloaded and waiting to be unpacked. Rory was in her room looking through her mother's old box looking for clues about her father. Lorelai and Babette were in the hallway talking. "What made you decide to move to Stars Hollow?" asked Babette, wanting to know more about Lorelai and Rory.
Lorelai wasn't sure what to say. Should she tell this woman her story? She barely knew her neighbor but yet she seemed friendly enough. She decided to tell her story. "And right now Rory is probably looking through my box of things from when I was sixteen," she said, finishing her story. "All I know is that Luke lives in this town. I don't know where but I'm going to find him before she does. He needs to know I'm here and that he has a daughter."
"Wait, do you mean Luke Danes?" asked Babette, shocked. She knew Luke and she knew that he didn't like kids.
"Yeah, do you know him?" asked Lorelai, getting excited. This could be her chance to find Luke after searching for him for ten years.
"Of course I know him! He owns the diner in town."
Lorelai couldn't believe it. She had heard about the diner for a few months and even heard it had good coffee, but she couldn't go because she had needed to save her money for the house she just bought. Luckily she had managed her money well because she had enough to even buy some furniture for her house and she and Rory would be able to eat out most nights. "Babette, I gotta go," she said grabbing her house keys. "Look after Rory for me will you?" She ran out the door and as she ran towards the diner she couldn't help but remember the day she and Luke told their parents about Rory. It was also the day their parents decided to force them apart by moving away.