Chapter 4

"Rory, how could you have let this happen? You're still in school, how could you be pregnant? You aren't married, you still have a lot of your life in front of you." Rory watched in horror as her mother stood in front of her, stern-faced, voice raised. She looked down at her stomach, enlarged in a particularly round way, then directly in front of her own to her mother's, which looked identical to her own.

"I don't understand why you're upset all of a sudden. I told you when I first found out," Rory said, heartbroken. Her mother had been so supportive, what had happened?

"Well now I see that it's actually true, it actually happened, and I guess it's just sinking in that you're actually pregnant. And with Logan's baby of all people. You can do so much better than that. I'm surprised he didn't leave you when he found out."

"He wouldn't do that. He loves me. I love him too."

"Really? I'm not so sure."

"I am," Rory said, the confidence in her voice surprising even herself.

"Well, it's good somebody is. What are you going to do now? Quit school early? Drop out? Go to all your classes with a baby carrier?"

"I don't know Mom. What would you like me to do?"

"I'd like for you to turn back time to the day you met that idiotic buffoon and kill him on the spot. Or at least spit at him or something that would keep him from ever wanting to see you again."

"Well, it's a shame, but I've forgotten to bring my time turner. I left it back in the third Harry Potter book, and I just can't get it out. It's stuck. So do you have another suggestion?"

Lorelai said something, but Rory couldn't make it out. All that she could hear was an annoying, high-pitched tone in the background, and her mother's living room faded to the wall next to the bed in the apartment she shared with Paris. She let out a long breath, turned off her alarm clock, and quickly pulled back her sheet to reveal that her stomach hadn't enlarged overnight.

As she got out of bed though, she found her head filled with a few unsettled thoughts that disturbing dreams often brought. Why didn't she yell when I told her? Is she disappointed in me for getting pregnant? Can I do better than Logan? Is he right for me? Why didn't he leave when I told him? Does he really love me? Do I really love him? And what on earth am I going to do about school?

She couldn't answer any of these decisively at the moment, and she had to know the answers. Some, she knew where she might be able to get the answers, but didn't know that she could work up the nerve to ask. The harder ones she would have to work out for herself, and she didn't quite know how she was going to do that.

Rory showered and got dressed quickly. She picked up her cell phone and looked at the display, eight thirty. She had twenty minutes to spare before she'd have to leave for her first class. She dialed her mom's cell phone number, thinking that she might already be at the inn. She answered after a few rings.

"Hi babe. What's up?" her mom's voice answered, assured of who it was by her caller ID.

"Hi Mom," Rory said. Her heart beat faster than normal, she was slightly nervous and unsure about how to ask what she wanted to ask.

"Yesterday…" she trailed off.

"The day that will go down in history," Lorelai replied, apparently aware of exactly what part of the day Rory was referring to.

"When I told you…" Rory trailed off again, hesitant.

"Yea?"

"Were you… are you… mad? Because you didn't act like it, but if you are, I want to know." Rory's words began to come more and more quickly, until she was basically ranting, full speed ahead. "Yell at me or something, because I don't want for you to be mad at me and me to not know about it. You deserve to be mad at me for this, this is bad. Really bad. So yell at me, please, or something, because otherwise you're going to drive me crazy."

There was a pause, then Lorelai asked, "Are you done?"
"Yea, I think so."

"Rant over?"

"Yes."

"I want you to get it all out before I answer you."

"It's out. Go."

"Okay, hon, I'm not mad. I'm not thrilled, obviously, but I'm not mad. I'm not sure this was the right time for you to get pregnant, but I know you agree with me, and wouldn't have gotten pregnant on purpose. Besides, if you really are pregnant, there isn't anything that can be done about it now. What's done is done, and I don't think there's any point in holding a grudge against you for that. If I were my mother, yes, by all means, I'd hold a grudge. But I'm not. I'm not going to fight with you over this, especially because, at this point, there's not really anything to fight about."

There was a pause while Rory took in everything her mother had just said. Then she spoke again, slowly this time, "I don't want you to be disappointed in me."

"I'm not," Lorelai said, almost sincerely. At this point, she wouldn't have said anything else. What else could she have said?

Rory seemed to sense this half-lie. "Yes you are."

"Maybe a little," Lorelai said, unable to lie to her daughter again. "But you're old enough to make your own decisions, and I know you're more disappointed with yourself than I could ever be. And I'm confident that you'll handle this situation as well as it could possibly be handled. I trust you, babe. And your kid is going to be so lucky to have you for a mom."

"Yea," Rory agreed, after a pause. "I've learned from you."

Rory drove home after having dropped Logan off at his apartment. It was a Friday evening, all of her classes were done for the weekend, and she was glad to be going home. She had just been to the all-important doctor's appointment, and the news she had received hadn't surprised her, but had verified her suspicions.

She was on auto-pilot, her mind somewhere far away from her body. She knew she was driving home, but at this point that required very little thought. She was pregnant. She was going to be a mother. She felt the tears stinging the corners of her eyes, but then she had a different thought. She was driving. She couldn't let the tears blur her vision. She vowed not to think too much about anything until she was home.

It was at this point that she realized that she wasn't driving back to her apartment, but she was driving home, to her real home, not to the one shared with Paris, but the one shared with her mother. Her mother had an event at the inn this evening, she realized, she'd have the place to herself until late that night.

She pulled in to her driveway as if in a dream, let herself in, went to her room, closed the door, and lay facedown with her face on top of her pillow. She cried. She let the tears fall and be soaked up with her pillow, the pillow that had played sponge to her tears so many times before. She wasn't even sure what she was crying about, she just knew that it was what she wanted to do. The thoughts that told her what she was crying about came slowly, one at a time. I'm pregnant. She cried. I'm going to be a mother. She smiled for a moment, unsure whether these were happy or upsetting thoughts. I'm home from Yale without laundry for the first time I can remember since I started college. She wasn't sure whether she was upset that she hadn't brought her laundry, or upset that she hadn't been home before without the ulterior motive to wash her clothes, but the tears kept coming. Happy tears, sad tears, tears that she couldn't identify, they all fell. They fell for nearly an hour before she found herself all cried out.

She lay on her back on her bed for a few long moments until she was sure she was calm, and then she went into the downstairs bathroom and splashed cool water on her face. It had always had a calming effect on her, and she was left with no more desire to cry. Now it was time to think.

She went back into her room and sat on her bed. Did she love Logan? She closed her eyes and pictured his face, thought of every kind thing he'd done for her, everything she'd done for him. She thought of how confident she'd been of this in her dream. She considered that a dream was a reflection of her subconscious mind, and realized that if she'd been so secure with the notion in her dream, it was probably true. She thought a little more, brought everything together, and realized that the answer was yes. She loved Logan. She thought of every dumb thing he'd done, every con to his character, and found that they didn't nearly measure up to the pro-side of her unofficial mental list. I'm making pro-con lists without even realizing it. Wow, that practice really is engrained in my subconscious mind.

This answered another of her previous questions. She didn't think she needed to do better than Logan. She loved Logan, and she couldn't see this changing. He was the man for her, and knowing this, she felt a little more secure in the thought of having his child. She also knew he hadn't left her when she told him the news, as he might have done in another situation, because he loved her. This was good to know. With each realization, Rory felt herself calming down.

The only thing left to address was the question of her finishing college. She knew she couldn't drop out. That was all she felt she needed to know at the moment. The rest could be worked out at a later time. She thought that she would try to stay in class for as long as she could and then talk to her professors about taking work home with her. She was sure she could stay caught up with the rest of her classes and pass them with flying colors while pregnant.

Rory was aware of the sound of the front door opening. She opened the door to her room and went to meet her mother at the door. "Hi Mom," she said.

"Hi Rory," she said, with a look of vague surprise on her face that she didn't bother to voice. "You had your doctor's appointment today, didn't you? What's the verdict?"

"I was right," she said. "I'm really pregnant."

Rather than replying, Lorelai opened her arms invitingly, and Rory obligingly stepped in, and stood there, embraced in her mother's arms in the same fashion she had often been when she had been much younger. Rory expected herself to cry again in the maternal contact that often caused her emotions to open up, but she didn't. She didn't have anything to cry about anymore.