Chapter One
Life changes in the instant-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
It had only taken one instant for Logan Huntzberger's life to change completely.
If he was honest, it had taken one of any number of other things - one lapsed maintenance check on a chartered jet, one phone call in the middle of the night, one missed birth control pill - to really alter his true course, and he would not choose to undo a single one of them.
Maybe it was callous, but he would grieve his parents a thousand times over if it meant he could have just one Lorelai Beatrix Gilmore in his life.
As it turned out, all the years that Logan had spent as the fun uncle hadn't really paid dividends into fatherhood in the ways that he'd expected. Even if he was top of the heap in terms of uncle-ing, his true goal was to be a fantastic father, and maybe the skillset wasn't exactly the same. The literature about fatherhood was overwhelming, the stakes were high, and his examples were...complicated, at best. Granted, simply by the grace of being present, not to mention both upright and breathing, he had already far exceeded any expectations previously held by most, if not all, of the Gilmore family.
Luckily for Logan, it was the little victories that he had chosen to relish.
Because without those quick and dirty wins he'd managed to eke out early, he'd already be falling behind.
"This isn't a competition, you know." Rory said, distracted. Not that he could blame her for having her attention pulled, since she was up to her elbows in lavender and chamomile scented bathwater and biting her lip as she doggedly scrubbed shampoo through Bea's hair. In response, their three month old daughter produced what had to be, from a developmental standpoint, a highly advanced, perfectly round set of saliva and soap-born bubbles. The foam cascaded down Bea's chin and landed lopsidedly on her rounded, glistening belly while Rory cupped her hand against the baby's forehead in an attempt to prevent the rest of the soap from testing its slogan. "Nobody ever wins at parenting."
"Tell me about it."
"Logan, come on. Don't tell me you're worried about a grade."
Logan raised a skeptical eyebrow as he tossed Rory a clean washcloth. No, that's exactly what he was worried about, along with a whole host of other unnameable parenting related anxieties. But to dwell on naming any one of them was proving difficult, especially since Bea had just intercepted the cloth and was attempting to pull it toward her lips. After an initial uncoordinated struggle, she inserted a particularly sodden corner into her mouth. As the light of hard-won accomplishment flashed through her young eyes, a similar swell of paternal pride swept down Logan's chest. Hand-eye coordination at three months? Bea was a genius.
"This isn't Intro to Economics, Rory. It's our child's life we're talking about. How am I the only one concerned about this? It is far more than likely that she's going to have an opinion, and with the way technology is headed, there's a better than average chance that it will be very public and accompanied by some sort of ratings system."
He paced across the bathroom, picturing the grown version of Bea squinting at a microchip that rated his paternal performance the way he currently rated his Uber drivers. It did not succeed in giving him a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Rory wasn't deterred. Logan could always count on her to be the voice of reason. "She may also be facing widespread famine due to clean food shortages and end up married to a cyborg or even a merperson. We don't know the future."
Or not. "No more Guillermo del Toro movies for you before bedtime, young lady." Logan chided both Rory and Bea with mock seriousness. Truly though, if the merperson loved Bea and made her happy, he wasn't going to get all bent out of shape about their sporting gills or having to serve kelp at Thanksgiving.
"They do make me kind of anxious." Her brow was furrowed in that academic focused way that she used to reserve for analyzing Kafka and Proust, but this time it was for determining the best method in which to hold a wriggly Bea while still managing to bathe her neck and torso. Water splashed onto the counter as Bea slid down slightly and Rory cursed softly under her breath.
"Kind of?" Logan teased.
"Shut up. Those Pan's Labyrinth dreams weren't that bad."
"Tell that to my shins, woman." Logan edged up behind the mother of his child, dipping his face into the back of her neck. Rory startled, almost losing her grip on the baby. "Sorry, Ace," he said as he backed up and out of her space. Bathing had to be one of the least safe activities that their newborn engaged in regularly, and he figured he shouldn't add to the complexity.
Rory harrumphed as Bea splashed a small torrent of bath water onto her mother's light blue t-shirt, darkening a patch on her stomach.
"I don't want the merman to turn her against us is all I'm saying, Ace." Logan lamented into the mirror, and decided to distract himself by digging into the basket of clean baby clothes. He sorted through options swiftly, in search of a sleeper that closed with a zipper. Rejecting any option closing via the dreaded snap method, he was able to find several zippered pairs that looked like viable options. Before the baby, he'd thought that snaps looked like a ridiculously simple, rudimentary way to dress a small person. Experience had indicated otherwise. Perhaps it was the lining them up and matching them back together that kept him from a one hundred percent success rate with the closures, but user error or no, it was an extra challenge level he couldn't possibly stare down at 3:00 a.m. Lorelai had once referred to snaps as the 'Devil's buttons' and in Logan's limited experience, she wasn't wrong.
"Butterflies or bumblebees?" Logan asked, holding up two sleepers for Rory's approval.
Thanks to the diminutive that he'd assigned his daughter at birth, ("Rory B., meet Rory A. Oh, Bea. Yep, baby girl, that's gonna stick,") a plethora of bumblebee related onesies, sleepers, blankets and related accessories had been bestowed upon the baby by all their friends and relatives. Enough bee memorabilia to make Logan worry that they were just setting their daughter up for a future barrage of Bea Arthur references or melancholic dances in music videos and he'd eventually be the only one that she could rightly blame. Granted, it didn't make him worry enough that he'd done anything to modify the behavior or the nickname, but it worried him all the same. There were just turning out to be far too many ways to screw up.
"What about the cute zebra one?" Rory asked, giving the baby a final once-over.
Logan would not answer in the affirmative until he could locate and examine the romper and its precise method of entry and exit. Zipper. "Cute zebra pajamas it is!"
If someone had told Logan a year ago that he'd be pawing through bumblebee onesies with purpose and assisting in the bathtime rituals of a female under the age of 30, he'd have laughed directly (and none too politely) in their face. But there he was, someone's dad, and the concept was wide and unwieldy enough that he was just now wrapping his head around it - barely.
They'd suffered through the yawning stretches of long term inconsolable crying jags and days upon days where it seemed like sleep might never visit them again, but inevitably, a routine had eventually emerged. To the untrained eye, it even seemed as if they'd developed a fantastic little egalitarian structure. Actually, it was pretty clearly evidenced through the color-coded and meticulous chart of bottle feedings, wet diapers, and nap lengths (the morning one could be longer, the evening one less so) that Rory kept housed on the front of the refrigerator for quick reference and easy access. Though God save Logan if he attempted to add his own hash mark instead of reporting it to the proper official (Rory).
And if Rory was the certified schedule keeper, disciplinarian, and nurturer, then Logan's role was more of a responsibility understudy - when Mommy couldn't perform her duties, he would sweep in and do what was required - but the majority of his skills laid in entertainment and distraction, which really did hold their own kind of weight in terms of utility. He was probably most proud of how quickly he was now able to change a diaper - especially after the less than auspicious start with all those tiny tapes and the fact that it took several incorrect attempts to realize how integral the concepts of "front and back" were to proper diapering success.
And yes, sometimes he was surprised at how well they managed to keep a tiny human alive and thriving with minimal practical experience. What didn't surprise him was how well Rory and he managed as a team. Sure, there were days when no one in the house had slept for more than fifteen minutes at a time and more than one person left a room in tears, but what mattered was they'd figured out how to do it all together.
After all, they'd both dodged their way through the initial Is She A Baby or Is She A Bomb minefield of the first few weeks, and having a companion, a partner , made it feel like they were actually managing to build something solid. Not just existing.
They'd existed separately before, and now they had a trio, and it was more exhilarating to Logan than any of the other death-defying stunts he'd pulled in his time. He'd be lying if he said he didn't start to daydream sometimes at particularly mind-numbingly dull board meetings, and even though he'd been repeatedly warned about savoring the early days, the daydreams were more and more about Bea growing up.
For some reason the scene he seemed to return to most often was this gauzy, faraway idea of a five year old Bea, with twin blond braids and a round, open face, gripping tightly onto the palm of his hand as they crossed a wide, busy street. There was just something about the sweet tangle of her much smaller fingers into his larger ones that made even his future self absolutely positive that Bea was safe and that it was him, not anyone else, that caused her to feel that way. Safe, beloved. Whole.
The tableau could go further, if he wanted it to, and often it did. In his mind's eye, he'd walk Bea to school, a little private one that emphasized a love of literature and critical thinking skills and that required parental volunteering on a monthly basis. (If it was an especially arduous meeting, Logan dream-volunteered as the Field Day Coordinator, designing obstacles and events that celebrated the school year ending. But it had to be an excruciatingly long meeting to get deep enough to do any real planning. Designing an imaginary zip line obstacle course required a two-day work retreat level of zone-out to accomplish, longer if there was also a bounce house.) A burly crossing guard with a pushbroom mustache and a warm smile- Logan had named him Stan - was stationed at their quaint street corner, and when father and daughter approached would say, "Howdy, Miss Bea. It's a lovely day, isn't it?" as he held out his hand to pause the oncoming school buses and SUVs. Safely across the street, Logan and Bea would stop on the stoop of her school to say their goodbyes. Bea would lift her adorably dimpled chin and gaze up at him, all wonder and adoration and sweetness, hugging his legs as tightly as her five-year-old arms would allow as they parted. She'd say, "I love you, Daddy, have a good day," and then inevitably, someone in the boardroom would cough or drop their pen with a clatter, and Logan would be shoved back into reality, all gooey and melted like a chocolate bar left too long out in the sun.
He loved the daydream, looked forward to it, on occasion scheduled extra meetings so he could space out and engage in it. There were other variations, of course. Ones where he carried Bea sleep-warm and boneless up to bed after falling asleep on the sofa watching The Princess Bride together, or where he took her sailing for the first time or taught her how to write her name in a big, loopy letters. His daydreams were admittedly fairly basic and probably not all that grand to the outside observer, but they still felt so much like dreams. Cloudy and far-off but hopefully, completely attainable. The problem was, he didn't want to get so wrapped up in what was to come that he missed anything about what was happening now.
And now it was bathtime. Or the end of it anyway. He was supposed to be getting the baby toweled off and dressed, and Bea's expressive eyebrows dipped as if she was inspecting the efficacy of each of his methods. From her quizzical stare, she was clearly dubious of most of them.
"You know, I'm doing the best I can here, kid. You have a lot of books and crannies where water can be trapped. It's a design flaw. No offense."
Bea blinked up at him and waited.
"Okay, okay, I'm all done." Logan waved his hands in the air briefly to indicate completion.
Bea continued to stare him down like he owed her money.
It was probably more than likely that Bea's occasional distrust of Logan was passed down on both sides of the family, considering his history (or the history that they'd foisted on him, at any rate). Other than that, Baby Bea was an inexact combination of both Logan and Rory's genetic material: her fluffy hair was a honeyed brown, naturally growing in an eerie resemblance to the messy haircut Logan had favored in the early 2000s; her eyes were evolving into oceanic blue saucers like her mother's and grandmother's. She'd inherited Rory's cleft chin, Logan's nose, and the lung capacity of a distant relative who had apparently been a deep sea diver. Anyone who encountered Bea and Logan on their daily walk through the Gilmore's gated community looked down into her passing stroller commented on her beauty, her calm, or her soul-quakingly enormous eyes. And without fail, Bea stared placidly back at each onlooker, further impressing them with her maturity and grace.
Okay, so maybe maturity wasn't something that he had personally bequeathed to his daughter, either, and that was fine. He could admit it.
Logan liked that Bea was a very solemn baby, and it also explained why she didn't always seem to appreciate the truly goofier aspects of his personality. Tricks that used to kill with his nephews - raspberries blown on naked Budda bellies, hilariously high and low pitched noises, even high-flying baby airplane games - fell completely flat with Logan and Rory's daughter. It was clear that Bea appreciated a more sophisticated wit, like being read satire from the New Yorker or listening in on NPR podcasts. Logan swore that she would straighten up all prim and proper in her bunny swing, little pink lips pursing in expectation, when Rachel Maddow appeared on MSNBC each evening.
But it was already after Rachel Maddow's time slot and Rory had quietly slipped away to sneak in a few uninterrupted hours of whatever she wanted (Logan hoped she'd pick sleep, because sleepless Rory had been getting progressively less patient with him), so Logan and Bea were left alone to huddle together in the nursery. Logan, of course, had hopes of lulling the baby into an unencumbered sleep after her nighttime feeding. Bea's plans were less clear.
"Daddy has mixed you the finest of formulas this evening, Mistress Lorelai. It's a full bodied soy protein. Very oaky barrell. I hear the bouquet is a bit sour at times, however, so I apologize, perhaps we let this one go too long in the aging process."
Bea responded by pushing her tiny palm into the bottom of the bottle near Logan's hand, as if the thrust or trajectory wasn't quite proper and she needed to recalibrate.
"I'll let the sommelier know that you approve." Logan said, tipping his chin down to hold the bottle while he readjusted in the glider. Finally satisfied with the positioning and procurement of her nightly meal, Bea languidly stretched her full twenty-two inches of body length across her father's lap and curled her toes into the meat of his thigh, her eyes half-lidded as she breathed heavily through her nose and gulped at her late night dinner.
It was too quiet, with Rory upstairs and just the sound of Bea's breathing and the occasional creak of the gliding rocker. Bea's weight was solid and warm in his lap and waves of affection surged through his chest as they rocked. She was beautiful and she was theirs and there were so many ways that it could all go wrong. That he could unintentionally screw it all up or somehow manage to lose it.
It wasn't like he'd had any practice. Parenthood was uncharted terrority and he didn't have a compass or a topographical map or anything more than the sense that he had to do it all the opposite way that Mitchum and Shira had, or at least much much better.
"Can I tell you something?" Logan stroked at the smooth hair near the baby's ear and by her slow and deliberate presleep blinks, she showed no indication of resistance.
Encouraged by Bea's agreeable silence, Logan swallowed thickly against the emotion that seemed to be rising in his throat. "You're my favorite anything, ever, and if you ever don't know that, really don't know it in your bones, then I'm not doing this right. So first, you need to promise me that you'll say something. This is me, telling you that you get a free pass for that, so take advantage of it, kiddo." Logan pushed his toes gently against the floor, inciting the rocker to glide backward. When the bottle accidentally jostled out of the baby's grip, he gently repositioned Bea so the movement wouldn't further disrupt her meal.
Bea took another long blink and emitted what sounded like a frustrated sigh around the nipple of her bottle as she settled back in.
"They say it's biology, you know. That you look like me so I love you more because my caveman brain wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. Just so you know, I think that's a bunch of crap." Moonlight glinted off her still dark eyes as she watched his lips form shapes. He wasn't even sure that she could make them out at all, but he knew she heard him, that she felt his heart beating against her, for her. "I don't need the extra help, baby, because I love you more than I've been able to figure out how to measure, so just know, no matter what, you've got me. And I need you to be clear on one thing. Well, probably more than one thing, but one main thing- it's my job to keep you safe, even though I can barely," he paused, deciding to change tactics since it seemed unwise to lay you and your mom are pretty much all I have and I'm barely holding it together as it is, so um, don't go getting distant on me at the feet of someone who neither walked nor talked. "So, I don't take a lot of things seriously, but that, keeping you safe, keeping you happy, that I do. Know, you have to know, that I would do anything for you...I would do absolutely anything. And I will. Always."
The house remained still and silent, while baby Lorelei gazed up at him, in what he chose to take for absolute agreement and inherent understanding.
He'd be the first to admit that he'd felt disconnected from Rory's pregnancy at times (the entire first trimester, for instance) but even once he'd found out about the baby, the fact that they were separated by layers of skin and uterus and amniotic fluid made her somehow less real. Maybe he was prone to hyperbole, but there at 12:37 a.m., with flesh and bone and a generous swirl of downy hair, she was absolutely the realest thing he had.
Bea was what love was, even if how she arrived was purely accidental.