Chapter Three

16 years later...

Lily Hope Gilmore was the complete opposite of what her mother had intended her to be. She smoked, she drank, she stayed out late and disobeyed her maternal authority at every turn. It was like the sins against her own mother had come back to haunt her in the most insidious possible way: through her daughter.

Lily was everything that Rory had understood Lorelai to be at the same age. And while on her worst nights she truly thought of this novel development as karma, in her more rational hours she knew it was simply genetics, as Lily had inherited her father's temperament. The fact that Logan's and Lorelai's personalities were so similar was merely an inexplicable twist of fate. Other than that, Lily's similarities with Lorelai ended with the former inheriting the latter's luxurious dark mane of hair, which Rory had always envied growing up. As a mother, she wanted her children to have a life better than hers had been, and was glad that her daughter had turned out (in her opinion) tenfold more beautiful than she had ever been.

Lily's life also was easier than hers in a lot of aspects, which is why, Rory assumed, it was so easy for her to go downhill. Her father supplied her with all the money and more that a small Eastern European country would ever need, for one; second of all, Lily was so naturally talented that she hadn't had to work for anything. Her excellent grades came as effortlessly as the attention of boys. Lily was the embodiment of the rich girl stereotype who didn't know strife so she invented some in her life to make it appear meaningful in Rory's opinion.

On her rare visits with her father, Lily came home happier than ever. Lily and Logan got along effortlessly, while Rory and Lily could barely go a day without arguing. It was sad, and not to mention unfair, that Rory had raised their child alone and she got no thanks from her child, while the absentee father got all the kid's admiration and love. Rory loved her child more than she loved life itself, and so she persevered, hoping this was just a bad teenage phase and they would one day go back to getting along as well as they had before Lily hit puberty and all hell broke loose. During the former's childhood, their relationship had been better than even hers had been with Lorelai.

At 46, she was still trying to figure out life and quite frankly, it felt pathetic and like the journey through hell would never end. And while there was a plethora of choices she regretted making, there was one seemingly bad choice she would never want to go back on, and that was having Rory. She had been drifting aimlessly like a leaf in the wind before Lily came along and gave her life meaning again. Motherhood was the single best thing to ever happen to her.

After Lily's birth – though not without tremendous effort on her part – her life fell together. She became the head of the New Hope Gazette, a daily newspaper that was considerably more reputable than its Stars Hollow counterpart. Utilizing everything she had ever learned at Yale, she worked for long, long hours every day to make it a newspaper worth buying. Eventually, sales began to skyrocket and she could finally move out of the two-room apartment (the only one she had been originally able to rent) into a family house.

Logan always insisted that she move into one of his family's many estates and manors, but Rory had declined each and every time. She wanted to be a working woman who forged her own destiny, and not a trophy wife (or even worse, lover) whose fate depended on a man. If she didn't become a multimillionaire, she did not care: she wanted to see how much she was worth alone, without any external help.

Then came the big break, after many years of ceaseless work in journalism: an offer at Condé Nast. That was possibly the first and worst mistake she had made in Lily's upbringing, and it was all the worse because she had made it knowingly: she accepted the offer, along with the possibility of jeopardizing her relationship with her daughter in favor of her work. After moving to the Big Apple, Rory consecrated much of her time to ascending the social echelon. She had foolishly thought herself capable of somehow juggling both motherhood and work life, and in retrospect, that seemed like a gross overestimation of her powers.

The fulfillment of her lifelong dream marked the beginning of her problems with Lily. Lily hated feeling like she came second after her mother's work life, and acted so outrageously that within months, each nanny so far had resigned. Lily also blamed her for the bullying that had initially ensued at her new school, Constance Billard, and – instead of reconciling with her mother once that issue was resolved – went on to purposefully defying her mother's authority to get back at all her real or perceived slights.

Lily became the stereotype of the overly self-righteous daughter who lacked any sense of gratitude for all the riches bestowed upon her by her parents, much like her father and his friends had been at that age. Rory wondered briefly whether that meant that she had become the stereotypical Upper East Side working parent who provided their own child with all the money but none of the love the child required for healthy growth. She quickly stifled the thought, but it lingered in the back of her mind for weeks, until she finally resolved herself to swallowing her pride and made the call she had been both desperately waiting for and dreading ever since she had left her mother's house: she called Lorelai (who presumably only answered the phone because she didn't recognize the number.)

"Hello?" her mother's inquisitorial tone confirmed Rory's aforementioned suspicions. "Who's this?"

Rory smirked slightly, but not without a bitter taste in her mouth. "It's me, Mom," Lorelai's barely audible gasp was heard on the other line. Quickly, before her mother could hang up, Rory said in the most heartbreaking tone she could muster, "I need your help."

Weeks later, Lily was on a train to Stars Hollow.

Lily decided to get back at her mother after arrival in the only way she knew how: getting along with her grandmother and becoming the poster child for abstinence (of all kinds.) Or at least, keeping up the pretense.

After Lily's first day there, Lorelai and Rory talked on the phone, as the former had promised to provide the latter with daily updates.

"I don't know, Rory," Lorelai said, and for the first time in years there was no animosity in her voice. Her heart had melted upon seeing the grandchild she had been kept from – through much fault of her own – for almost two decades to date. "She seems fine here. She did the dishes, and then went to read in her room just like you did after every day… she got your old room, by the way. She loves it." There was an excited edge to her voice, as though Lily's arrival had given her hope for a new beginning like it had given Rory back in the day.

"M-hmm," Rory said. "She's got you wrapped around her little finger already, hasn't she, Mom?" The name felt alien on her lips after so many years of not using it, and it stunned the both of them into a momentary silence. Lorelai resumed the conversation, sounding slightly perturbed, and Rory vowed never to utter the word again.

"Yes, she has, actually," Lorelai said snappishly, picking up on the insinuation that this was merely a pretense on Lily's part. "Come on, Rory. Just because she didn't get along with you doesn't mean she won't get along with us."

"Yea, yea," Rory said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'm sure it's all my fault."

"Well, I never said that," Lorelai said, aghast, but it didn't sound sincere. "But she seems to feel that way, yeah."

A vein began throbbing in Rory's forehead. "Uh-huh," she said. She suddenly wanted to wrap this conversation up as soon as possible. She still had some work to do. "Alright, Mom. Tell me if anything happens. If there's any emergency, call me, OK? If she misses me or needs me or just wants to talk to me, tell her she's free to talk to me anytime, alright?"

"Why don't you tell her that yourself, Rory?" Lorelai asked.

"Well –" Rory's mother suddenly felt dry. "She won't pick up the phone." She admitted quietly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear that?"

"She won't pick up the phone!" Rory snapped loudly, her fists clenching on their own accord. She was hating this situation more and more with each second. "There, I said it. I hope you're happy now. She won't pick up the phone and she refuses to speak to me. I hope you can instill some sense into her, I swear –"

"Now, now," Lorelai said. "It's best if you calm down before you say anything you might regret. I'm sure you love that daughter of yours, she is just going through a hard time."

"She is!?"

"Yes, she is, Rory. Or maybe you're just so used to me putting your needs before mine that it became your modus operandi. But a child needs both parents, or at least the full devotion of one if the other one is out of the picture. In your case, both of you are out of the picture. Of course she's having problems; she's all alone in the world and severely lacks guidance. Luckily, Luke and I have more than enough time to take care of her. You just concentrate on your career."

"Mom, it's not that simple –" Rory was about to go into a tirade about how she had to gain financial independence because she was disgusted herself for being someone's lover for so long, and how it felt so good to finally accomplish all her dreams, how her mother seriously couldn't have expected her to give Rory up her adoption or leave her by the wayside or any of the other ridiculous options her mother used to rant to her about, and that she couldn't seriously imply that it would have been better for her to be someone's mistress as long as she remained a mother first – but her mother cut her short before she could even begin.

"Now, it's late, first of all, and second of all, if we had this conversation again I'm afraid we'd just stop speaking," Lorelai said. Rory was too furious to say anything, so her mother continued, "I'm glad you sent her over here, Rory. I'm really glad. Let's promise each other that Lily won't suffer for any of our personal disagreements, OK? She deserves better than that."

Common sense seemed to wash over Rory and she suddenly calmed down. "Of course. I wasn't about to." And she really hadn't been. She had just let her emotions get the better of her. She could hear her mother smiling at the other end of the line. To her, this reunion must have been the fulfillment of repressed yearnings.

"Call me again tomorrow, OK?" Rory said after a short pause, not knowing how to deal with talking to her mother after nearly two decades of absence. It felt perturbing to suddenly be forced to be so close again despite all the unresolved conflicts between the two of them. But Lily deserved better. Maybe she had been a bad mother, despite her best intentions, and she wanted to right that. "Tell Lily I love her."

"M-hmm," Lorelai said, and from her tone Rory already knew she wasn't about to, probably thinking it would do more harm than good. "I'll tell her you love her. Good night."

"Night."

And they hung up.


A/N: Thank you very much for reading! Please let me know your thoughts in a review below!