He runs his hand along a wall, admiring the solidity, the craftsmanship that has withstood the decades. Things just don't last this long nowadays, he thinks. Things today are made overseas by eleven-year-olds working fifteen-hour days in sweatshops. The lumber comes from a country sacrificing its future for cheap profits. But this house, it's solid. The construction materials are first-rate, and the workmanship is incomparable. Made in the good old USA by legal workers who belong to unions and use homegrown materials. First-rate workers, first-rate materials. Yes, everything about this house reeks of quality. The whole thing must have cost a pretty penny; a fortune, something out of the reach of regular people, out of reach of the type of people who live in places like Stars Hollow.
He looks at the grounds in front of the house. The landscaping is precise, not exactly welcoming, but definitely well-manicured. Slowly, he circles the house, stopping at the front door. Stepping to the side, he peers into a front window. Of course, the home is exquisitely decorated. Only the finest items went into this house. Everything's in its place, everything's precise, and definitely expensive. But there are no people in this room, so he moves to another window, so he can look in on the inhabitants. He shakes his head at what he sees. So perfect. So clean. So sterile. So plastic, so fake, he thinks.
Look at the way the man is standing there, holding a champagne bottle in one hand and waving a cigar (no doubt Cuban!) with the other. That's not a dad, that's a father with a capital F. All dressed up, in his own home, truly the master of this domain.
Look at the lady with the champagne flute in her hand, all dressed up in taffeta and pearls and heels, her head inclined towards the Father. Her hair looks like a helmet, not the kind of hair a man can slowly run his hands through, or a baby tug on. She's "Mother" or "Ma-ma" (said with a Jane Austen screen-adaptation-like accent), not mommy. An Emily-apprentice, not a mom.
Look at the maid, holding the tray of fake-looking canapés, all arranged prettily in rows. Standing there in the stereotypical uniform, hair as neatly arranged as the canapés. He wonders if the maid lives here too; he'll have to check around the back of the house.
And look at the little girl, sitting there all quiet in her chair, wearing an impeccable, flounced dress, her porcelain china-doll face so serious, hands folded primly in her lap. The epitome of a child meant to be seen, not heard. Geez, where are the toys? A real family room has toys.
He shakes his head. This house is definitely not a home.
He wonders if April has a dollhouse. Of course, if he'd known about her, he would have carved one for her. He's good at that sort of thing, using his hands to serve the ones he loves. He thinks about the Chuppah he made for Lorelai, still standing outside, and its intricate carvings of animals and fruit and flowers and greenery. "I made this," he often thinks when he looks at it. And he's already specced out the cradle he's going to surprise Lorelai with, the cradle he's going to start carving the day she tells him the stick turned pink or blue or whatever color it is that sticks turn these days.
If only he'd had the chance to make that little girl a dollhouse, he thinks. It might have even been as big as this one, he muses. And each year for her birthday, and each year at Christmas, he'd have added pieces to it. Even more often than that, come to think of it. And it would have been a real dollhouse in a real home for a girl to play with, not a showpiece mini-mansion sitting within a big mansion. There wouldn't be a maid in there; there'd be a dad playing ball, or watching TV and drinking a beer, and a mom doing mom things, maybe coming home from her job. And because it's April and him, the dad might not actually live there, but it might be a girl's club and the dad would visit to be with the kid. And there would be kids because there'd be friends, and the kid-figures would be in play-clothes and smiling and look like they'd been moved around. And that would be because April would have actually played with them, and the furniture would have cracked, or a kid-figure's nose would have been broken off, and he'd have ranted about how she'd have to take better care of things, but together, they'd have fixed it. Oh yes, April would have become very familiar with wood glue...
But that's only fitting, he thinks, because April seems more like the kind of girl who'd want to build her own dollhouse. As she got older, he imagines that she would have designed an addition, coming to him with plans, having done research, and showing him careful measurements. And he'd have pretended to double-check the measurements, just because he's the dad and that's what he's supposed to do, but as she got older, he'd have realized just how smart and thorough she is, and so he'd have trusted her calculations. And then together they'd have built the addition to the dollhouse. And as April got older, and he got to know Lorelai, Lorelai would've come in and given decorating advice, because she knows how to make a house a home. Heck, Lorelai made a potting shed into a home. She can make any place into a home, he remembers, as he thinks about the time he needed to make a home for a surly boy.
Whoa. Lorelai. Who raised a little girl who also had no dollhouse. A little girl whose father couldn't even be bothered to buy her one. The little girl now grown, whose mother he loves, but yet he doesn't want that girl's mother to see that girl's father.
Lorelai.
Kneeling in front of Lorelai's childhood dollhouse, the dollhouse she was only allowed to look at, the dollhouse that has now been moved from the beautifully crafted mansion to the house that's become their home, Luke's heart sinks. He has to tell her.
But how? They're a family again, Lorelai and Rory and him, and Lorelai's over the moon. She doesn't know that he's the one hiding behind the façade, playing at being the perfect man, when all he really is, is a science experiment, a contributor of DNA, a complete hypocrite of a fiancé. The man who guilt-trips her into not taking a dream job because of the kids he claims he wants; the man who bought a house for her and him and their non-existent kids without considering her feelings about her home; the man who can't even bring himself to tell her about the one kid he already has.
He stands, looking at the dollhouse. Maybe he and Lorelai'll have a daughter who'll finally give that dollhouse a chance to become a home.
He's got to tell her. Because he doesn't want their home to be just a house.