This story takes place approximately nine months after A Year in the Life, since I needed a little closure.
"I forgot the cigars."
Lorelai was ringing her hands together in the passenger seat of Luke's truck, looking over at him with the most pathetic face he'd ever seen.
"What?"
"The cigars. I forgot the cigars."
"I doubt Rory's going to be in the mood for cigars."
Luke reached over to take her hand, but she swatted him away. "Ten and two, buddy. I want to get there in one piece. I can't die and not get cigars on the same day. What would my mother think?"
Making a show of placing his hands firmly on the steering wheel, Luke glanced over at his unusually frazzled wife. "There. Better?"
She nodded, giving him a small but grateful smile before continuing her chatter. "She's going to be so disappointed. 'There are ways one gives birth,'" Lorelai said, doing her best Emily Gilmore impression. "'Why, when I had you your father had enough cigars for the whole hospital. He forced them on all of the staff until half of the nurses were sick. One does not simply waltz into a labor ward with nothing in hand!'"
"That never happened," Luke said, though there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice. The elder Gilmores had always seemed like a force of nature to him, blowing in and out of his life like a tornado. But even though they had stirred up more than enough trouble for him and never seemed to quite understand the unique charms of their only daughter, he had to admit they had always loved Lorelai and Rory more than anything. Those two girls had been their world. So, yeah, maybe he could imagine that giant of a man causing a ruckus in honor of Lorelai's birth.
Lorelai laughed. "Oh, you better believe it! I got the story straight from my dad, one year on my birthday."
The memory seemed to strike her unexpectedly, and she grew quiet for a moment. Gazing out the window, she said, "I must have been nine or ten. I'd been begging them for weeks to let me have a pizza party with my friends, but my mom insisted on a formal dinner party with canapés and foie gras. I sulked the whole night, refusing to talk to anybody, and finally locked myself in the hall closet.
"The maid had tried to get me out for an hour when my dad finally came to deal with me. 'Come out this minute,' he said. 'You're being rude to your guests and disrespectful to your mother and me.'
"I started crying and told him that he should have just not had a kid if I was going to be such an embarrassment to him. He sighed and didn't speak for so long I thought he'd left, and then he told me how proud he had been at my birth, and how he'd bought a hundred fancy cigars, and how my mom had made an intern cry after he dared to suggest that I had an abnormally large head. And then I came out and we ate chocolate cake in the kitchen like vagabonds."
She wasn't crying, exactly, but her voice was tight with emotion. "He wasn't the perfect father, but he was always good at birthdays."
Luke's gut twisted with helplessness, a feeling that had become rather familiar in the two years since Richard's death. But what could he do? There was nothing to fix, no one to fight, nothing he could do to take away her pain.
"He'd have been over the moon today." Luke wasn't sure if he was saying the right thing, but he soldiered on anyway. "He'd have bought a hundred and one cigars."
"Yeah," Lorelai said quietly. "He wouldn't have been happy about this tradition of having children out of wedlock, but he would have gotten past it, for Rory."
"He would have done anything for that girl."
Lorelai looked at him, smiling faintly, and allowed him to take her hand. "Everything changes today, you know? I'm going to be a"—she pretended to gag on the word—"grandmother. I'm going to have to learn to crochet and bake cookies and do all those little old lady things."
"You're not going to be a little old lady. I don't think you'll be a little old lady at 90. And being a grandmother does not give you permission to get near my oven. Please don't burn down our house."
She laughed and slapped his shoulder lightly with her free hand. "People are always telling me what I can't do. They told me I couldn't get a dog, but I haven't once let Paul Anka die. You just wait, I'll bake the best old lady cookies you've ever seen!"
"I'll believe it when I see it."
"She's going to be okay, right?" Lorelai asked suddenly. They were pulling up to the hospital, and the anxiety she'd been keeping at bay returned in full force. "Rory. She's going to be okay?"
"Of course she is. She's got all those people with fancy medical degrees looking out for her, and Paris to yell at them for doing it all wrong, and your mom to make sure she has Egyptian cotton sheets and ice chips imported from France or wherever, and Lane to find the perfect labor playlist."
Lorelai nodded, looking somewhat comforted by the thought. "And Logan's on his way. I'm not sure about how his new wife feels about it, but he told Rory he wants to be there for the birth."
"Well, that's something," Luke said grudgingly. He didn't entirely approve of Logan—what kind of person impregnated the sweetest girl in the world while engaged to another woman?—but Lorelai seemed to have warmed up to him again, and he couldn't say that Rory had been entirely innocent in the whole thing. Besides, Logan had stepped up, telling Odette right away and paying all of the hospital bills and having long Skype conversations with Rory so that the baby could get to know his voice.
In fact, he was planning on transferring to the New York office next quarter, so that he'd be able to take a more active role in his daughter's life. At least the littlest Gilmore wouldn't grow up without a father, the way April had. The way Jess had. The way Rory practically had.
"Did you talk to Jess?" Lorelai asked. "I don't know what's going on between him and Rory, but he's been hanging around more than usual recently. I think he deserves to know she's giving birth."
"I'll give him a call when we get inside."
"Okay."
Luke found a parking spot near the entrance and shut off the engine. "I don't know why you're worried about Rory. You're forgetting the most important thing."
"Besides the cigars?"
"Jeez, would you quit with the cigars, already?"
Lorelai rolled her eyes and raised her hands in defeat. "Fine, fine."
"No, the most important thing is that she has you. How could she not be fine when you have her back?"
Clearly touched, Lorelai leaned over and kissed him sweetly. Moments like these, they were worth all the years he'd waited for her. She sat back in her seat and flipped her hair flirtatiously. "Aw, you know just what to say to a girl. I guess I'll keep you around after all."
"You better."
Lorelai gathered up her purse and a bag she'd packed weeks ago with everything they could possibly need for the labor and delivery. It was full of extra clothes and Pop-Tarts and magazines and DVDs of all of the best movies about unexpected pregnancies—Knocked Up and Juno and Where the Heart Is and Saved! and Fifteen and Pregnant. The only thing missing was the cigars.
"You ready?" Luke asked.
Lorelai took a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's do this."