Disclaimer: None of this is mine.
Author's Note: For the Gilmore Girls Improv.
*
Hartford looks nothing like Lorelai remembers it. She remembers more colour and variety, less of the solid grey. Perhaps she's rewritten reality with the indeterminate memories of all the places she's passed through since, but she could swear there used to be a second-hand bookstore on that corner, and a flower shop across the street, rainbow displays spilling riotous over the pavement. Instead, she's looking at a closed down Italian take-away and a pharmacy. Even the ancient church looks wintry in May.
It has been sixteen years, but she didn't expect to feel this alien.
She's been lingering over her coffee for too long, and she's starting to feel like a coward. She drains the dregs, gags on all the bitter, and forces herself to her car.
An airport rental, by the day, in case her belly's really that yellow.
After five minutes, she realises she's forgotten how to get to her house. She feels stupid, not knowing her way home. It's not hers, though, she thinks, not after all this time. Her parents', and her daughter's. Not hers.
They're expecting her, but she doesn't want to phone ahead. She turns around and buys a map.
*
When she arrives, she has to park on the road; the driveway's full. She had a key once, remembers tearing up over it in a blank motel room in Toronto, when Chris was out somewhere and she was thinking about going home. When it had still been home. The locks have probably been changed dozens of times since: her mother always went through maids like tissues, and was afraid they'd return in the afternoon, when the alarms were never set, and steal the silver.
After she's rung the bell, Lorelai stands very still on the doorstep, afraid to move, afraid she'll bolt, back down the highway to the airport, out of the country, away from the pain.
She doesn't move, and after a moment, the door opens. Lorelai blinks, looking into her mother's eyes. She looks away quickly.
"Lorelai. Come in."
Emily walks away. Lorelai follows, shutting the door behind herself.
"Rory is indisposed at present. I'll inform her that you've arrived, and she'll join you once her visitors have left."
Emily opens a door and gestures Lorelai inside the room. By the time Lorelai turns around, the door is closed and Emily is gone.
Guests wait in this room, she knows. She doesn't know where she's staying tonight.
Lorelai's always sent her daughter cards at Christmas and on birthdays, and she knew, from the ones she received, that her daughter kept the nickname she was given at birth. The cards stopped coming years ago. Lorelai is pleased Rory hasn't dropped the name yet. She loves her daughter, even if she doesn't know her.
She wants her daughter to love her back. Lorelai doesn't think she has that love, now, but she wants it. She wants to earn it. She thinks she'd need to be a magician to pull that trick off, but she wants to try.
It feels like hours have passed when the girl enters the room. Lorelai is exhausted, less ready for this than she's ever been, but her spine stretches and her breath catches.
Rory is slim and pale, splashed with colour, splashing it, like the flowers Lorelai thought no longer existed. Beautiful.
Rory pauses in the doorway, staring at her, then takes a decisive step forward. "Hello."
Lorelai is standing, crossing the room, reaching for her daughter. When she touches her for the first time, Rory's eyes shine brighter and Lorelai thinks she's about to cry, but she steps back instead, and turns away. Lorelai's arms fall.
"Hi, Rory."
Rory has control of herself again. "How nice to meet you."
"It's— It is. It's wonderful to see you."
Lorelai sways on her feet, towards Rory, but she's still holding herself aloof.
"Well. Let's find Grandma. She'll need to have the maid make up a bed. We weren't sure you'd come."
Now Rory is the one walking away. Lorelai watches Rory's back, and thinks that if her hair were shorter, she'd look just like Emily. She walks just the same.
They find Emily in the second living room they try. They find her father too. He takes one look at Lorelai and then leaves the room without a word. Lorelai thinks she should have known better than to imagine she could come home.
*
The next day is Saturday. Lorelai spends all day looking for somebody to talk to. The maid is the only person in the house. That night, her father comes to her in the bedroom she's been given.
"Rory is ours, Lorelai."
"She's my daughter, Dad."
"Biologically. She doesn't even remember you. You should just leave. Don't you think you've done enough damage to the poor girl at a remove? I dread to think what you'll do to her in person. Leave, Lorelai. You have no right to be here."
"Dad—"
He waves the word away.
On Sunday, Lorelai finds Rory in her father's library. Maybe it's Rory's now too. She's drowning there, breathing underwater. She doesn't look up until Lorelai coughs.
"Oh. It's you." Rory turns back to her book.
"I want to talk to you."
"I'm busy."
"The book's not going to sprout legs and sprint away."
"I'm going out. I'm supposed to be gone."
"You were out all day yesterday."
"I have friends here."
Lorelai could be imagining the faint emphasis on the 'I', but she doesn't think she is.
"Just a few minutes."
"Until—"
A boy slides into the room. For a second, Lorelai is reminded of Chris, but this boy is harder, sharper.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Yeah." Rory leaves the book on the table and stands.
"Just a few minutes, Rory."
Rory hesitates.
"We're going to be late."
"I know. Just give me five minutes. Wait in the car."
The boy looks like he wants to protest, but just glares at Lorelai and disappears.
Rory sits down again. "Five minutes. I'm going to be late."
Lorelai thinks this is why Rory has agreed to talk to her now. Five minutes is all she's willing to give. This is Lorelai's chance.
"Who was that?"
"My boyfriend."
"You have a boyfriend."
"Yes. Tristan. I've known him for years. He goes to Chilton with me. Before I went to Chilton—"
"Look, I wanted to talk properly. About us." The seconds are ticking away, and Lorelai can spot avoidance a mile away.
"There is no us. Do you mean yourself?"
"I want there to be an us. You're my daughter, Rory, I love you."
Lorelai has said this to Rory before, but she was a little ball of pink squishiness at the time, so she doesn't think it counts.
Rory leans back in the chair and crosses her ankles, casually letting her knees swing apart; for a startling second, Lorelai is looking at herself.
"So remind me, Mother. Why did you abandon me?"
"I didn't abandon you. I knew you'd be fine. I knew your grandparents would love you. I thought I'd be back."
"Why did you leave?"
"I needed to get away. You don't know what it was like here, after I had you. What everyone — Chris was leaving. He was your father. I thought if we went away together things would get better, we'd work out."
"You didn't, though, did you?" Rory's voice is cool and level; she's as contained as Emily was when Lorelai broke the news of the pregnancy. As distant as she's been since Lorelai left. "You left me for nothing. You left me behind."
"I'm sorry. I thought I'd be back."
"You could have come back."
"I couldn't. You don't know— I kept thinking I could fix things, I could make leaving you worthwhile, but I couldn't. And Chris kept drifting, kept promising things and not managing—not coping with anything. But he kept promising, and I couldn't stop trying, because it couldn't be for nothing."
"It was. You know, at least you came back. It's nice to know you dredged up the courage to make the attempt, if courage is what this is. Looks more like desperation to me. It's too bad you've failed. Move on. I have."
When Rory tells her this, Lorelai relaxes. That can't have taken more than two minutes, she thinks; Rory will be on time after all.
*
Three hours later, Lorelai is at the airport. She doesn't have anywhere she wants to go. She stares at the blinking red displays and thinks it's over. It's done. She tried.
She tried. Rory doesn't want to have anything to do with her. She tries to remember how she and Chris split up, finally. She can't. She tries to remember the last time she changed something. The last time she made something. She decides the last thing she made was Rory.
She leaves the airport and makes her way back to her parents' house. This is her home, she thinks, still. That hasn't changed. It will. Tomorrow, she decides, she'll look for a house to let.