Brown hair, made up of more frizz than curls, bounced past the diner's windows. For the first time in two hours and forty-seven minutes, Luke relaxed.
Most of the time he felt as clueless about April as he had with Jess. How vigilant was he supposed to be? Was it OK to let her go out by herself at night? Would she begin to resent him if he imposed limits? So far she'd abided by any rule he suggested, and always returned to the diner precisely when she said she would. But that didn't stop him from worrying.
He would have liked to go to somebody for advice, but who could he ask? Liz? Yeah, fat lot of good that would do. Anna? And have her know just how ignorant he was? Maybe he could just randomly approach parents in the diner, the ones with the kids throwing tantrums on the floor or flinging mashed potatoes about, and see what gems of wisdom they might have for him.
The hard truth was that the only person whose advice he wanted – she of the brown curls he now refused to watch for – was no longer an option.
"Hi!" April called out, rushing through the door.
"Hi," he replied. At the sight of his daughter, a smile came naturally to his lips. "How'd your Halloween reconnaissance go?"
"Pretty good." April approached the counter. "It wasn't nearly as weird and quirky as I thought it'd be. Well, I did peek into Miss Patty's for a few minutes. Maybe that's where all of the quirk shows up."
Luke snickered. "Did you say quirk or Kirk?"
"Is there a difference?" April chuckled and cautiously hopped up on a stool, as if she needed to balance herself. "Man, it sure looks dead in here," she commented, looking around the room.
"Yeah, I think the families with kids have herded them home, and the quirky folk are all at Miss Patty's by now." He glanced out at the street. "I'll probably close down pretty soon, if no one else comes in."
"Well, in that case…" April proudly revealed the bags of candy she'd been hiding underneath her jacket. "Ta-da!"
"What'd you do, knock over the Soda Shoppe? Is Taylor Doose going to be barging in here next, ready to throw you in jail?"
"Give me some credit." She pointed at the window between the diner and the candy/ice cream emporium. "Do you think I'd pull something like that right under my father's watchful eye? How stupid do you think I am?"
"I don't think you're stupid at all," Luke said blithely. "Where'd you get the candy?"
"Just luck." She shrugged and looked down, seemingly pulling at the zipper on her jacket. "Happened by a house when they were trying to get rid of their candy at the end of the night. Um, here." She pulled a single PayDay out of her pocket. "Want one?"
Mostly out of habit, Luke started to say no, but the memory of the peanuts, caramel, and nougat was already making his mouth water. "Sure, if you don't mind." He reached eagerly for the bar.
April grinned, watching as he tore off the wrapper. "This is probably my favorite candy bar," she remarked casually, digging another one out of her pocket.
"Really?" Luke stopped chewing for a moment to stare at her. "Mine, too!" he said, smiling again. "How about that?"
"Yeah, how about that," April said quietly, thoughtfully pushing her piece of candy around on the counter. "So, Dad…"
"What do you want?" Luke asked shrewdly.
April's head jerked up. "What do you mean, what do I want?"
Luke shrugged. "Anytime you call me dad, you want something."
"I don't do that!" April insisted. She paused for reflection. "Do I?"
Luke just gave her a knowing look.
"Anyway, all I want is to ask you a question."
"Shoot." He tossed the rest of the miniature candy bar into his mouth.
"Is it true you were married?"
A sliver of peanut went the wrong way down his throat, and he choked. He grabbed a bottle of water and chugged some down. Then he choked and coughed some more, after which he drank even more water. "Who told you that?" he was finally able to demand, his voice hoarse.
"So it is true." April looked at him smugly. "If it wasn't true, that would be the first thing you'd say. Instead, you're trying to discredit whoever told me."
Not for the first time, Luke wondered if April wasn't too smart for her own good. Or at least, too smart for his good. Sighing, he realized she had him caught.
"Technically, it's true, I guess," he allowed.
"Technically?" She frowned at him. "You mean she married you to get a green card or something?"
"No, I mean…" Frazzled, Luke looked around blindly, with no idea how to explain the mess of that relationship to his daughter. "I mean, it wasn't a real marriage."
April looked even more confused. "You guys were just pretending to be married?"
"No, no, of course not. We were married, legally. But we didn't do any of the real married stuff. You know, live together, that kind of thing."
"Then…why did you get married?"
"I don't know," Luke said grimly.
"But you loved her, right?"
Luke paused for one brief moment, debating whether to be brutally truthful or try and save face. "No," he said, coming down on the side of truth.
"Wow." April looked away for a few moments, pondering his admission. "What's her name?"
"Nicole."
"Does she live in Stars Hollow?"
"No." April shot him an exasperated look, and he realized she was running out of patience with his one-word answers. He sighed again. "She lived in Litchfield. Probably still does, as far as I know."
"How did you meet her?"
Luke thought back to that day in the diner. "Um, she was in here, having a cup of coffee. She was waiting to meet with Taylor."
"Why would anybody from Litchfield want to meet with Taylor?"
"She had papers for him to sign, or something like that. Legal stuff."
"Legal stuff?"
"Yeah, you know. Lawyer stuff."
"Wait!" April whooped. "She was a lawyer? You married a lawyer?"
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Luke waved away her amused disbelief.
"Holy cow," April mumbled. "Show me her picture. I need to see physical proof of this person."
"I…uh…" Luke cast his eyes upwards, towards the apartment overhead, and frowned. "I don't think I have any."
"Seriously?" April's mouth dropped open. "You don't have wedding pictures?"
"It wasn't – it wasn't that type of wedding." Luke forced himself to recall details he had long ago relegated to the memory trash heap. "There was one taken, right after the ceremony, but Nicole had that." He shrugged. "I'm sure she's gotten rid of it by now."
April pointed at his shirt pocket. "Cellphone pictures will do."
His hand automatically covered his pocket as he shook his head. "I had a different cellphone then. I'm not even sure it took pictures."
April was struggling to understand. "You dated this woman, married her, but you never even took her picture? Was she that ugly?"
"No! She wasn't ugly!" Luke unexpectedly rose to Nicole's defense, hating the streak of meanness he detected in April's comment. It made her sound like Anna. "She was nice-looking. Pretty, even."
"Describe her," April demanded, willing to settle for a word picture.
"She was…" Luke leveled one of his hands up around his forehead. "Tall. Thin. Too thin, probably. She had sort of brownish…reddish…blondish hair?" He shrugged. "She always dressed a little bit fancier than she needed to."
April stared at Luke for a minute, trying to visualize this tall, thin lawyer with multi-colored hair. "When was this? When did you get married?"
Luke was forced to count back in time. "2003, I guess it was. Summer. Uh, July, towards the end."
"So not ancient history, then. How long were you married?"
"The divorce was final on April 27th, 2004."
"Wow. You don't know exactly when you got married, but you memorized the day the divorce was final?"
Discomforted from the truth of April's blunt comment, Luke rubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, guess so," he said listlessly.
"Here's what I don't understand." April pulled herself a little closer to the counter and spread her hands out over the surface. "Women flirt with you all the time."
"They do not!" Luke immediately objected.
"They do. I see them," April insisted. "And most of the time – all of the time, really – you won't give them the time of day. Now you're telling me that this particular woman, Taylor Doose's lawyer, of all things, comes in one day, and you're apparently interested enough to date her, marry her – but now you act as if she meant nothing to you at all? That doesn't make any sense!"
Luke felt empty and cold. His brain; his body – it was as if he'd been hollowed out from the inside. Slowly he made his way around the counter and sat down on a stool next to April. He spread his hands over the counter, too.
"April, the truth is…" He looked at her briefly, hoping that maybe she'd let him off the hook. "This whole thing with Nicole, none of it paints me in a very good light."
April looked at him appraisingly. "Was it a mistake?"
He nodded emphatically. "Huge."
"Well then, as my parent, don't you want to tell me about your mistakes so I don't grow up and make the same ones over again?"
Luke groaned and rested his head in his hand. "Not fair."
"Hey, I didn't make the rules. All I do is recite them."
He groaned again and wondered how to edit events down, but a moment later decided to just plunge in. "OK, you were right. She came in here and flirted with me."
"Aha!" April crowed.
"And…it was nice. It was nice to have a pretty lady – a smart lady – flirt with me. Maybe see me in a different way than everybody else in town did. I asked her out," he said with another shrug, leaving out the part about Jess goading him to do it.
"OK." April blew out a breath of air and shifted on her seat. "I guess my next question is, did dating her have anything to do with Lorelai?"
He turned to stare at her. "Why in the world would you ask something like that?"
"Because I can count. I've heard people talk about when the Dragonfly opened. I know when that was, and I've also heard that's when you and Lorelai started dating, and now I know that was just a little bit after you got divorced. Plus, you said Nicole was pretty and smart, and that she saw you differently than maybe some other 'pretty and smart' Stars Hollow women did. That sure sounds like Lorelai to me."
"Maybe you should think about going into psychology," Luke groused. "Or detective work."
"I have thought about both," April confirmed, unruffled by his comment. "Did you date Nicole to make Lorelai jealous?"
Again, Luke struggled with how to answer. To some degree, he understood that he was the adult and could put a stop to his daughter's inquisition at any time, but on the other hand, maybe she was right. Maybe he was duty-bound to steer her down a better path.
"Not jealous, no," he finally replied, quietly. "That was too much to even imagine. I guess, in the back of my mind, I wondered if it would at least make her notice. Like I said, to maybe think of me differently. And besides, Nicole was nice, she was fun to date. There were other reasons to date her. I did enjoy her company."
"Enough to marry her, huh?"
Luke went silent again. "We went on a cruise."
"I'm sorry, what?" April frowned at his seeming non sequitur.
"Nicole and I. We went on a cruise. She wanted to." He looked beseechingly at April. "I didn't want to. I tried to find some reason not to go, but I couldn't."
"O-kay," April said slowly. "How does that –?"
"We went on the cruise, and we went insane, and we got married."
"On the cruise? Like on the Love Boat? Did Captain Stubing marry you?"
Another shiver of recognition passed over Luke, but this time it was because April's comment sounded too much like Lorelai. "No Captain Stubing, no Love Boat, but yeah. The captain married us."
"That's legal?"
Luke nodded. "Apparently."
"Why did you –"
"April, you can ask me a thousand times why I did it and I still won't be able to answer you. I don't know. I don't know why I agreed to it. I just don't know why it suddenly seemed like a good idea."
She studied him with that deep, calculating look again. "Were you drunk?"
He smiled tiredly. "If I say yes, will you let it drop?"
April sighed noisily. "Then what happened?"
"We came home, and we already knew that marriage was a terrible idea for us. Nicole started the legal process going to get us divorced, but then we decided to hold up for a while, see if maybe we could make it work after all. So we tried, but it wasn't good for either of us, so we gave up."
"Just like that?"
"Well, I think…" Luke faded off, then cleared his throat before continuing. "I think Nicole got tired of waiting for me to make a real commitment to her, and she…well, she found someone else. And once that happened, I figured there was no coming back after something like that. The smart thing to do seemed to be to sign the papers, get it over with, you know? Let her get on with her life."
April appeared to be dissecting what he said. "She cheated on you?"
Luke thought about a whole range of replies, but finally settled on a simple "She did."
"That's terrible!" April fumed, angry on his behalf.
"It was, and at the time I was really angry, but now, looking back, I'm almost glad she did it. Got us out of the rut we were in."
"No, it was awful of her!" April was still fired up about it. "I can't understand how anybody could do something like that. Well, buh-bye, Nicole." She flounced on her seat. "I'm glad she's not around anymore."
April's fierce loyalty towards him made him smile. "Me too," he agreed, mainly to let her know he appreciated her defense.
"You know what? I promise you I'll never tell Mom about any of this." She bumped her shoulder against his, confirming her pledge.
"Whoa, now, I don't know about that. I don't want you to ever feel like you need to keep secrets from your mom. That sounds like a good way to get both of us in trouble."
"It's not a secret," April disputed. "You didn't tell me not to tell her. It's my choice not to mention it to her. Because, Dad, honestly, this isn't info you'd want a judge in family court to know." She gave him a significant look. "You're right about it not being a shining moment for you."
"Well, when you put it that way…" Luke grimaced, and kicked himself again because he still hadn't retained a lawyer to look into his parental rights. What was he waiting for? In fact, why did it seem like he was always waiting?
"I think I'm going to head upstairs," April decided, hopping off the stool. "Are you going to close up?"
"Yeah, I'll be up in a little bit." He stood up too. "Here, take the candy with you."
"Want another one?" April offered.
Luke shook his head. "Maybe tomorrow." He walked over to lock the door and turn the sign to 'closed.'
April gathered up the bags of goodies and started towards the back of the diner, but stopped after just a few steps. "I guess I have one more question."
"What?" he sighed, preparing for another barrage. He was busy closing the blinds and didn't look over at her.
"Do you have any pictures of Mom?"
His breath caught somewhere in his chest. He understood exactly what she was asking. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I do. We were together when I was trying to get the diner going, and I'm positive there are some pictures from then. Do you want me to find them for you?"
"No, I just wondered." She started to walk away again, but stopped after a few shuffling steps. "Did you love her?" she asked in a very quiet voice.
Luke swallowed hard. "April, I'm sorry…But no, it wasn't love between us."
"That's OK, I get it," she said, but still, she sounded disappointed. She took another half step towards the curtain before another thought made her pause.
"Did you love Lorelai?" she asked directly.
Once again he didn't answer immediately, but for a different reason this time. He didn't have to think this time about what to say. Instead, he took a moment to make sure his voice wasn't going to crack and give away more than what he was willing to admit.
"I did," he forced himself to say lightly. "That's why I know it wasn't love with anyone else."
April considered his statement for a minute before she nodded, accepting his reasoning. "See you upstairs," she said, and ducked through the curtain.
Luke discovered he'd been holding his breath. He blew it out while walking towards the kitchen. The candy bar wrappers tossed on the counter caught his eye, and a sudden suspicion made him snatch them up in his hand. He sprinted through the curtain.
"April! Wait. Hold up!"
She looked down at him from the upstairs hallway, and he waved the wrappers at her. "Where did you get the candy?"
"Dad, come on. You know where I got the candy." She continued towards the apartment door.
Luke took another step closer to the stairs. "But she hates these!"
"Yeah, I know, she told me so." April opened the door, but turned to look down at him one more time. "She bought seven bags of them, though."
"But why – why would she do that?" a bewildered Luke asked.
"Gee, I don't know, Dad. Why do you think she did?" April disappeared into the apartment.
Luke continued to watch the apartment door for a while longer, almost wishing that April would come back and help him figure out the riddle of the candy. Eventually he understood that the chore of working that puzzle out belonged to him alone.
Fingering the wrappers, he went back to his closing duties.
Just once, he wished that something concerning Lorelai would turn out to be easy.
Author's Chat: (I've decided to rename these little messages.) It looks like this particular story idea has caught the imaginations of a lot of you. This is really going to be a pretty simple story, so now I'm worried about disappointing you all! Anyway, here's the convo between Luke and April that we all wanted to hear. The next chapter is nearly halfway done, and the final one is currently nothing more than some disjointed lines in my head. If real life doesn't interfere too much, I hope to have this completed in the next few weeks. I hope you all had a happy Halloween!
