I originally wrote this up as a drabble celebrating #NationalMapleSyrupDay, but I liked this concept so much I'm also putting it out there on its own. It may stay a one-shot or it may not: if anyone wants me to continue with it, please let me know.

March 1996

Lorelai Gilmore's journey to becoming an active participant in Stars Hollow town life was a bumpy one.

She stepped off of the bus in Stars Hollow a few months after her eighteenth birthday, freshly divorced and clutching her almost two-year-old daughter by the hand, determined to talk herself into whatever opportunity presented itself to her. She wasn't able to work on her charms on Taylor Doose at the grocery store, or Fran Weston at the bakery, but William Danes at the hardware store gave her directions to the inn at the outskirts of town and an offer to work the counter at his store if things didn't work out. Fortunately, the owner of the inn observed a tenacity and resourcefulness hidden behind the image of the disheveled teenager in front of her, and gave Lorelai a job and a place to stay.

Lorelai hadn't intended to stay in the potting shed as long as she did. Her parents knew where she was staying, and often pleaded with her to return to the original plan they had lain out once Lorelai's ill-fated marriage had reached its inevitable conclusion: they would raise Rory while Lorelai went to college, and once Lorelai had graduated and was earning enough money to support herself, Rory could then resume living with her mother. Lorelai declined every time: she was determined to make her own way in the world with her daughter by her side, and if that meant patching together Rory's clothes from donated scraps and subsisting on leftovers from the kitchen while living in a place that was designed to stock garden tools, she would do it. She had tried to do what her parents thought best, and it had blown up in her face in the exact manner she had suspected it would. She was going to do the rest of it on her own, and someday they would move from this temporary home to a permanent one.

Lorelai worked her way up to the head of housekeeping and was promoted to working the front desk right as Rory entered kindergarten. Mia protested the two of them leaving their shoddy but cozy little nest, but Lorelai knew it was the right time. She and Rory had outgrown the shed, and it was time for them to move forth in the world. They moved to a one-bedroom apartment where Lorelai set up a room for Rory and pulled out her bed every night from the sofa in the living room: a year later, they upgraded to a two-bedroom apartment where they could both have their own room. Lorelai became assistant manager of the inn two years after that, and they moved to a rental house not far from the inn. The money Lorelai saved on gas money went a long way towards sustaining the life she had built for them: even as hard as she had worked to make a good life for the two of them, far too often the bills seemed to overwhelm them, and that elusive dream of a home of their own still seemed like a fantasy most of the time.

Throughout it all, Lorelai's involvement in the life of the town was often sporadic at best. She knew that her choice to move away from the inn probably cost her a lot in terms of money and energy: even if the end result was a more normal life for Rory, sometimes she lacked the reserves to participate in that life alongside her. Rory was enrolled in dance classes and Girl Scouts and often took center stage in town festivals and pageants, but Lorelai only participated occasionally. There were seasons when she would be the center of it all, but sometimes those faded away under the din of bills and responsibilities and her diminishing ability to have energy for much of anything else.

Lorelai became manager of the inn the year Rory finished fourth grade, and at last things seemed to be looking up for them financially. She had earned a moment to finally breathe and appreciate what she had worked for, and she used that moment to plunge forth into becoming the Stars Hollow denizen she wanted to be. She and Rory went to town meetings every week. Having long supplemented her income by doing dressmaking on the side, she started making the outfits for the festivals and elementary school pageants. They started eating out more, and they ended up eating half of their meals at the diner that had recently replaced the hardware store. The gruff diner owner repeatedly resisted her attempts to flirt and needle him, and Lorelai took it as a new daily challenge while Rory rolled her eyes next to her.

Then a slightly worn-down two-story house came up for sale near the center of town, and Lorelai realized that her dreams of homeownership were no longer a fantasy. She could do this. After so many years of working towards this goal, she could have it: a real home for herself and for Rory, one that she owned and that she could call theirs at last. Lorelai moved herself and Rory in and fell into her old patterns while she focused on fixing the house up and managing her mortgage payments. Town life became something the loomed on the periphery of her attentions, and she knew it would be a while before she was able to return to it.

Things had changed a lot by the time she was able to make it back.

Lorelai and Rory walked into the diner one night after not having been there in almost a week: they had slowly worked their way back to eating their meals in town, but it wasn't yet a daily occurrence. Lorelai felt a bit dismayed when she didn't see Luke behind the counter, but her mood brightened when she saw him nestled in her usual table near the window. Luke wasn't dining alone: his companion was a pigtailed toddler in a booster seat, covered up in maple syrup to her elbows.

Luke was also covered up to maple syrup to his elbows, of course.

Lorelai strolled up to the table, a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"Take a seat anywhere," Luke told her, focusing on cleaning up the toddler's face.

"I want to sit here," Lorelai whined.

"Anywhere else," Luke said. He let his eyes meet hers. "I hate when you do that," he told her.

"But who else is going to help you out with baby-sitting duty?" Lorelai asked.

"Mom," Rory implored, clearly embarrassed.

"This isn't baby-sitting duty," Luke said roughly. "She's mine."

"Luke has a daughter?" Lorelai said, shocked. She turned to Rory. "Did you know that Luke had a daughter?"

Rory shrugged. "Kind of."

The little girl looked up at Lorelai with generous brown eyes and lifted up her spoon. "Pancakes?" she asked.

Lorelai smiled, remembering Rory when she was two or three, her eyes shining as she plunged into a rare treat of ice cream. She had looked just like this.

"I think I would like some," she told Luke's daughter. "But your daddy usually doesn't serve breakfast after eleven AM."

The toddler turned her head to Luke's. "Pancakes," she repeated.

"This isn't a Denny's," Luke argued.

"What's good for the kid is good for Rory and me," Lorelai replied.

Luke groaned, clearly sensing he was not going to be able to talk Lorelai out of this. "Fine," he agreed. He waved one of his waitresses over and whispered in her ear before she disappeared behind the counter.

"Luke can never resist my powers of persuasion," Lorelai bragged as she and Rory pulled out chairs to the table and sat down.

"That or he's learned it's better not to begin fighting it," Rory said.

"It's the second one," Luke told them as he watched his daughter cut into her remaining pancakes with her plastic spoon. He looked up. "I notice you didn't ask before you invited yourself to this meal," he remarked dryly.

"I want to know more about this little one," Lorelai said, gesturing to the girl, whose face was once again smeared in maple syrup. "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Abril," said the little girl, still struggling to swallow her bite of food.

"It's nice to meet you, April," Lorelai said, marveling at this new aspect of Luke as he reached out to wipe her face again. "How old is she?" she asked.

"She'll be three next month," Luke said.

"You're not married," Lorelai remarked, turning her gaze to his ring finger. At least that hadn't changed the last time she had looked. She tried to remember to back when she and Rory first started visiting the diner, and she hadn't noticed a ring on his finger at that point, either.

Luke turned his gaze up to meet hers, steeling his intense blue stare on her. "Neither are you," he remarked.

Clearly Lorelai hadn't been the only person who was observing the lack of a ring on the other's finger.

She let that thought quickly slip to the back of her mind.

"I tried," she protested. "I was married to Rory's father for all of seven months." She let out a deep sigh as the waitress brought both her and Rory fresh cups of coffee, and brought the steaming mug to her lips for a sigh. "Wasn't really for us."

Luke looked up from where he was cutting up the scrambled eggs that the waitress had just brought to him.

"I want ketchup on my eggs, Daddy," April said.

Luke looked over to April's plate, which contained about three remaining bites of pancake. "One more bite," he told his daughter.

April frowned and slowly fumbled with the spoon in front of her before giving up and picking up the pancake with her hands. Luke sighed and reached out to attempt to clean her hands again before squirting ketchup on the eggs and passing them over along with a fresh spoon.

"What happened?" he asked Lorelai.

Lorelai shrugged. "We were just kids," she explained. "We had to become adults all of a sudden, and we found out that we didn't really belong together as adults. I knew all along it was a bad idea, but I let our parents talk us into it." She sighed and took another sip of coffee. "I'm glad it happened, though. If we hadn't tried that early and failed, we would have kept prolonging it and that wouldn't have been good for any of us." She turned to look at Rory, who was absorbed in a book. "Especially her."

"Does Rory still see her dad?" Luke asked, keeping one eye trained on April as he attempted to eat his own plate of eggs.

"He lives in California," Rory said, not looking up from her book.

"He's remarried and has another daughter," Lorelai told Luke. "She goes there during the summer and holidays." She raised an eyebrow at Luke, who was wiping ketchup off of April's mouth. "What about you?"

"I didn't really try that," Luke said as he put the soiled napkin down and pulled an extra few from the dispenser. "I lived with April's mother for a year. After that, we split her up between us until about six months ago. She's been with me since then."

"Oh," Lorelai said, wondering if she was poking at a recent emotional scab with this line of inquiry. "So you're a full-time dad, then?"

"I guess you could say that," Luke said as he let his gaze meet Lorelai's. "Nothing really tragic happened," he clarified. "April's mother, she's older, she's a professor at UConn –" he shrugged. 'We weren't together long before April came along. We didn't have a lot in common. April's grandmother has Parkinson's, Anna's having to take a lot of time to take care of her – it just wasn't a good environment for April to be in. She was staying with me most of the time anyway. Anna comes and takes April out to do something about twice a month."

"I just think it's odd I haven't seen you with her until now," Lorelai said softly. "I mean, you had this really important part of your life that everyone else knew about but me. I didn't really see you as the dad type, I guess."

"Me, neither," Luke said as he gazed adoringly at April clumsily spooning a bite of egg into her mouth. "I can't really imagine what it was like before at this point, though."

Lorelai looked at the two of them, her heart again sent aflutter at seeing Luke in this whole new light.

She cleared her throat, and Luke turned his gaze back to her.

"Can I just suggest something, one single parent to another?" Lorelai asked.

"Sure," Luke said uncertainly.

"I know for a long time I was by myself, trying to do everything by myself because I didn't want to ask for help," Lorelai said. "This town was there for me when I needed it, but there's always been times when I kind of retreated because I was too tired or overwhelmed or maybe too focused on this one goal to really rely on them. Even recently. But I know you're in this situation too, and if you need some advice, or someone to complain to, or just someone to come over and help, I want you to feel free to call me and ask. I don't want to be the only one kept out of this part of your life. Especially when I think I might understand it more than a lot of other people would."

"I think I'm doing okay most of the time," Luke told her. "But I'll keep it in mind."

Lorelai smiled. "Good."

She took in a deep breath as food was placed in front of her and Rory, grateful for the prospect of new beginnings.