A/N: I own neither Glee nor its characters.

"Yes. Yes. Tuesday for lunch. D'Artagnan's. Got it. I look forward to seeing you!"

Rachel Berry updated her phone calendar and sipped her coffee. It was a perfect early-autumn Saturday in New York City: slightly cool, flawlessly azure sky, people out and about. She was sitting in the sidewalk patio of the coffee house, and realized, to her delight, that she had nothing to do. In fact, she had nothing to do for three months. Maybe it was time for a vacation. She smiled, thinking about the villa she rented the year before on the island of Ischia. That wouldn't be bad, and relatively inexpensive. And she could be alone; being single had its advantages. Maybe Lorenzo still lived there…ahhhhh.

A shadow fell across her table, interrupting her thoughts.

"Ms. Berry?"

"Yes?" Rachel looked up. It was a young woman, a student, by her appearance. She was tall, at least five-nine, willowy, with shoulder-length, deep-auburn hair, fair skin, and gorgeous tawny eyes. If she was a student, Rachel thought, she hadn't been in New York long; she wore a red plaid shirt over jeans, and sneakers.

"I'm a freshman at NYADA, and I heard you were one of their most prestigious alumni, and wondered if I could ask you a few questions."

"Of course!" Rachel flashed her patented Rachel Berry beam. "What's your name?"

"Nell," the girl said, "Nell Hudson."

Rachel froze for a moment. She couldn't be. Then she studied the girl more carefully. The hair threw her off-too red- but there was the height, and now, on a second look, there was the bone structure of her face, especially around the eyes. The age was certainly right. She stood up.

"Nell Hudson," she repeated. " Kurt Hummel's niece? "

"Yes!" Nell looked pleased. "Uncle Kurt said you are a friend of his from high school, and that you are a NYADA alum. "

She hugged Nell, "It's so wonderful to finally meet you. I've never even seen a photograph. I wonder why your uncle never mentioned you getting in to NYADA?" Yes, she thought, what the hell? It must have been Finn.

Nell shrugged.

"I don't know, Ms. Berry."

"Call me Rachel. After all, you're practically family!" Family I was never allowed to even meet, she thought, bitterly. But the girl had nothing to do with that, so she beckoned, "Sit, sit!"

Nell, sat, with a shy smile.

"You have a younger sister, Sarah, right?" Kurt did tell her the bare bones milestones. Finn's marriage to Alice, Nell and Sarah's births, Alice's death in a car accident two years ago. That was it, apparently all Finn would allow. Which Rachel never understood—there had been no contact between them since he set her on that train, twenty-three years ago. The Universe had pretty much spoken, you know?

"Right. She's fifteen. Doing well."

"And your dad, how is he?" Rachel had no idea what Nell and her sister—hell, even his wife-knew about her and Finn. No sense in bringing it up now. "I heard about your mother, I'm so sorry."

"Thanks." Nell looked somber. "As for Dad… I have no idea, now." Rachel could see that she suddenly realized that she was talking to, essentially, a perfect stranger, and the family defenses came up. She started to smile again. "He's okay, I guess," she finished lamely.

Rachel nodded.

"Good…good." She sat back. "So, what do you want to know, Nell? How can I help you?"

Nell was in the composer program, but decided to take the basic acting, dancing and singing classes which were mandatory for Musical Theater majors. "I want to understand how it all fits together, even if it means taking a little longer for my degree" she said, and Rachel nodded her approval. Dancing was a problem.

"Dad says I dance like a duck," she giggled.

Rachel wanted to bring up Finn's legendary dancing skills, but caught herself. Just thinking about him dragged up old, but righteous (in her mind) resentment. She sometimes wished she didn't feel so bitter towards Finn and how it all turned out. But, she kept reminding herself, she had done nothing to deserve this 23-year-old silence, either. Nothing. But now wasn't the time to wallow in that mess. She pushed the anger down.

"I'm sure you're more graceful than that."

They chatted some more, and Rachel listened sympathetically as Nell complained about how freshman didn't get priority on rehearsal space after hours.

"Freshmen don't, that's true," she said with a wink, "But alumni do." Nell's eyes grew wide.

"Would you be willing to do that? I know you're busy…"

She liked this girl, liked her drive and self-awareness. Yes, she was Finn's daughter, but, more importantly, she was a NYADA student and Rachel, who credited a lot of her success to the education she received there, wasn't about to abandon her.

"You happen to be in luck," she said, leaning forward. "I'm free for the next three months, and nothing would please me more than to help you any way I can."

The girl looked overwhelmed, but there was something else behind her expression that Rachel couldn't quite figure out.

"I don't know what to say, Ms. Berry—uh, Rachel. This is so kind of you."

"It's my pleasure," Rachel said, "And there's something else we can get started. You know of the Broadway composer Tom Foley, right? "

Nell looked at her, trying to suppress a massive "DUH!", but just managed to nod instead. She is a delight, Rachel thought.

"Well, he happens to be a very dear friend of mine," she lowered her voice and whispered conspiratorially, "We even were together for five years," making Nell laugh. "Would you like to have dinner with him and me this week? I'll introduce him to you."

"Oh my God, thank you! Thank You!" Nell was ecstatic. She shook her head slowly in amazement. "I had dreamed about New York being like this, but I didn't dare think I'd be meeting two Broadway legends in a week!"

"It's an amazing place," Rachel agreed.

They exchanged phone numbers and Nell left, looking like she was on Cloud Nine. Rachel ordered another coffee, and was soon lost in thought. Nell hadn't mentioned her relationship with Finn. Surely she knew Rachel, her father and her uncle all went to high school together. And she must have seen the nationals video. Or did she? Maybe Rachel had suffered the fate of many Ancient Egyptian pharaohs, whose names and images had been erased from every public monument. As if they had never existed. Tears stung her eyes just thinking about that. But then came the outrage.

All she had done was love him, even agree to marry him, only to be left, just short of the altar, humiliated and stunned, before all of her friends, at a train station. Even then, everyone thought what Finn had done was noble, that he had sacrificed his own happiness so that she could be free to pursue her dreams. Hadn't anyone been listening to her? Since when had she given up that dream? All she had done was defer the dream one fucking year, in order to help Finn and Kurt get theirs together. The two of them would have been married, and would have launched themselves in New York as the team they had talked about so excitedly.

Even when that didn't happen, even when she arrived in New York, heartbroken and alone, she believed it could still work. So she had written. And texted. And emailed. And when she received not even one single reply, she had begged, abjectly, for something, anything to let her know he still loved her. Even dogs get bones tossed to them, if only out of pity. Rachel received nothing. Only a note from Kurt (who was now in Milan) that Finn had gotten out of the army. That note only raised her hopes, she thought bitterly. When he never tried to contact her, or even reply to her letter congratulating him on getting out safely, Rachel was at the end of her rope. All that noble talk, she decided, had been nothing but bullshit, and her hero was nothing more than a coward, unable to face and tell her that he no longer loved her.

Rachel Berry picked herself up, determined to move on. There was only so much blatant insulting of her self respect she would take. Kurt's updates about Finn's going to college at OSU Lima and getting married as a student only stung briefly, as she tried to move on with her life.

She had boyfriends. And she may have even loved a couple of them. Tom Foley, bless his sweet, decent heart, lasted the longest. And she found success, achieving her career dreams with three Tonys, and maybe even greater things when the film started up in three months. But she never found happiness. Finn may have found a way to mask her side of the tether, but she couldn't seem to cut that one final thread, the one that haunted the back of her mind when she began to love somebody else, the one that suggested there might still be hope for them, someday. Once she had spent four years praying every night for Finn's safety. Now she prayed to be allowed to find that one love which would mask Finn's side of the tether, like a dominant allele over a recessive. Like Alice had masked hers.

Rachel realized, at that moment, she needed to think about something other than Alice Hudson. Going down that tunnel always led her to the one feeling that frightened her, the one thing she allowed to loathe about herself: the fear she could never forgive Finn for loving someone more than her.

So she shook off that feeling, and thought about how she could help his daughter instead. But first things first. Pulling out her phone, she decided it was time Kurt Elizabeth Hummel received a piece of Rachel Berry's mind.