Lorelai hates Mondays, especially rainy, cold, nobody at the inn Mondays. Without much to do, the caffeine addict is sitting on the counter flipping through a magazine. Bored out of her skull, Lorelai is about to down her eighth cup of coffee when the front door opens and a soaked female in a trench coat with a baby carrier enters looking highly exasperated and ready to cry.
"Hey, what were you doing outside? It's raining like its monsoon season in Japan," Lorelai asks as she hops off the counter, grabbing her own coat from its hook. Before he female can answer, Lorelai is at her side, tugging off the dripping sweater and throwing her own, dry coat over the newcomer's shivering shoulders. She is about to say more when the stranger turns towards her.
Lorelai is assaulted with memories when she sees that the female is just a girl, with a young angular face and large gray eyes that are filled with tears. Her skin is beautiful and pale, but her perfect complexion is marred by three dark purple bruises. One is splashed across the right part of her forehead before disappearing into her hairline, another is at a direct diagonal to the first on the left of her chin, directly beneath the third, a black eye.
"How old are you?" Lorelai asks sadly as she looks into familiar desperate eyes.
"I'm eighteen," the girl replies, looking down at the baby carrier she'd set on the floor. The baby boy is fast asleep, his hand smashed against his chubby cheek. He looked to be about seven or eight months old. "I'm sorry, could we stay here? Just until the rain stops?" the girl asks hopefully, the tears threatening to spill over and down her cheeks.
"Of course," Lorelai says with a nod, smiling sadly as the girl visibly relaxed some. "Where are you from? Why are you walking by yourself with him?"
"Hartford, I got on a bus and it ended here. I left my husband. My parents made me marry him when they found out. I'm… tired of him hitting me."
"Do you need a place to stay? A job? We have a small area in the back you could stay in and we always need another maid," Lorelai told her, repeating the same words Mia once told her.
"I don't know how to clean," the girl admits sheepishly, the same way Lorelai herself had said it twenty-three years ago.
"I'll teach you," Lorelai replies, placing one arm around the wet girl and picking up the baby carrier with the other. Without another word, she led the stranger towards the back. Mia had showed her kindness and she would show this girl the same.