Disclaimer: Repeating myself. Not mine.
To GUEST reviewer who pointed out the creepy factor... Yes, I would have filed a TRO, but in Stars Hollow, it is magically understood that Luke is incapable of being a stalker, or being bad or abusive.
AN: Posting Chapters Ten & Eleven today, as the latter flows immediately from the other in this fic's timeline.
CHAPTER TEN
"I'm awful," mourned Lorelai Gilmore. "I keep talking about this whole day with Luke coming up, and you've got so much worse going on."
"Now, now," said Richard, and Emily knew without seeing him that he'd be irritated, but not yet out of patience. "It does me good to have company in misery. I'm glad you will have a day with Luke. You may find answers, resolution, that wonderful being they call closure."
"You think?" came a small uncertain reply from Lorelai.
Emily fumed. Here she sat, hiding, from her own husband and daughter. Estranged husband, yes, and estranged daughter, but the humiliation of needing to hide scorched as hotly as estrangement. The one tiny comfort was that the location meant she could pretend her presence was accidental. Richard remained predictable. He preferred a quiet little lunch at a downtown Hartford restaurant with booths, colored glass panels providing visual privacy between the adjacent booths. She knew for a fact he would claim a business lunch and then come to that particular location to settle in for a quiet hour with a crossword puzzle. Several wives of men who knew Richard had been sure to tell her he did that. Her retaliation was, of course, to inform them of where their men were on so-called business lunches.
Information was power. Emily refused to be helpless. Thus, if she must have an insipid tea with a bland salad, to obtain that power, then she would do so. She had been to the restaurant before, for quiet one-on-one chats with some of her peers. Its proximity to business and culture alike gave her ample excuse. She could claim a meeting with a lawyer, an accountant, about a charity event, and was finishing her lunch. She had her planner with her, open, and a pen ready, the perfect picture of self-contained, busy oblivion.
Of course, it helped that she knew this lunch would occur, and when, by overhearing (not at all eavesdropping) on Rory's end of a conversation with Lorelai at the previous Friday night dinner. Rory had been checking her schedule, to see if she could attend this lunch. It gave Emily some sour satisfaction to know that Richard couldn't take both girls entirely away from her, naturally, but the contact was useful in other ways.
"How are you, Dad? For real, not the stuff you tell Rory. I'm a big girl."
"I feel rather strange discussing my divorce from your mother."
"Oh," said Lorelai in that cowed little voice Emily wanted to slap out of her. For a headstrong girl, Lorelai could be remarkably and infuriatingly timid.
"Lorelai," sighed Richard, "this is not about your character, but my reluctance to upset you."
Emily smirked, awaiting the quip about the horrible inability of the elder Gilmores to care about upsetting her.
"Well, I don't want you to be upset, either, Dad. If you need to talk… I mean, yeah, she's Mom, and I'm freaked out, because if you guys can't last, I don't know if it's even possible, but believe me, I know about wondering how your life goes all…"
Emily assumed some gesture here.
"And you're like, wow, what's solid if that's not."
"I suppose the troubles we had before should have warned me."
"I hear that," replied Lorelai with a sigh.
"Yes, leaving well enough alone works to a point, until nothing is well, or enough, I suppose."
Lorelai's laugh was short, bitter. "Wow. Who knew? I take after you."
Richard's booming laugh was far warmer, more sincere. Emily wanted to grit her teeth. "Yes, you take after me, and you certainly can be like Trix."
"Good or bad? Like silly rabbit, or…"
Another chuckle from Richard had Emily clenching her hand around her salad fork. "You've her way of turning situations sideways when you want."
Lorelai snickered. "Annoying people, you mean."
"I'd rather say that you have some of the same joie de vivre. I recall one incident in my childhood when Trix declared quite loudly in the middle of the Louvre, no less, that she knew art, she knew what she liked, and a particular statue was neither art nor likeable. In that way of hers, you know, very stately and determined and yet with that twinkle in her eye."
Emily remembered. She had received insults galore from Trix, those grand pronouncements accompanied by a smirk that challenged her to respond in kind, risk losing Richard's good graces. How that old bat would enjoy their impending divorce!
"You have your mother's need to own a room."
The silence crashed like breaking china.
Emily bent her head, blinking back tears and a blush of anger. He made her sound like some two-penny diva.
"It fascinated me, that way she had of possessing attention, of keeping it, but I did not realize how she needed it. Or did not care, perhaps. I was always impressed by her determination to succeed, to enact a vision. You have that from your mother, you know, as much as you have it from me."
Emily burned with outrage. Need? He was one to talk, the big baby!
A sniff, and then Emily knew Richard would be dabbing his eyes. "I do not know what you will find during your day with Luke. You may learn he is, in fact, not the man you believed him to be. That you cannot trust again. That your love is broken beyond repair. That the price of regaining the relationship is too high for you to continue to pay."
"How will I know?" cried Lorelai softly. "Without getting hurt again?"
"You have good instincts, and you've done very well following them."
A shaky breath was Lorelai, no doubt about to be emotional in public, without consideration for the spectacle and her dignity and her family's reputation, per usual.
"I can't condone every choice you've made."
"And he ruins the moment," said Lorelai sharply. "I know, I know, I screw up, I get that, how did this end up about my failures?"
"Because you assumed it did!"
Emily twitched. Her fork landed amidst the salad, irretrievable due to the dressing in which it fell with a most un-genteel splat.
"I was going to say," he went on more quietly, "I doubt you would condone all of mine, did you know them. Now, let me drop you at your car, and you can go back to work, and I can go to the reading of Mark Twain. Nothing brings Twain to life quite like a live reading."
"Thanks, Dad. For lunch, and listening."
After she was certain it was safe, Emily called for her check and bustled out of the restaurant. Her emotions were torn between jealousy of her daughter's new relationship with Richard, and outrage that Richard continued to pretend Emily had done something wrong.
Her eyes, however, told her that things were different than they'd been. Perhaps more than Emily realized. The plates not yet cleared from Richard's booth bore no traces of grease, only healthy fresh greens, and fish, eaten voluntarily. Without duress.
Emily shivered as she stepped into the gray November air. Her world had changed, and she did not dare admit that it frightened her.
GG GG GG
Where to spend the dreaded day took up more of Luke's thoughts than he felt it needed to. Once, maybe, he could have locked them into the house for a weekend, but neither house nor weekend was possible. A trip sounded great, but to where? The town square had been more or less given to him in the break-up, with Lorelai only venturing to town meetings, which he rarely attended. The inn was wholly Lorelai's. The weather was bleak, which ruled out impromptu beach time. At last, Luke gave up on finding one place, and started the day at the cemetery.
"Hey," he said to Lorelai, surprised to discover she'd beaten him there, and found his parents' graves as well. Then again, Uncle Louie was buried there. She wasn't completely ignorant of the spot.
"Good morning."
She was openly fragile now, Luke noticed. The energy no longer radiated from her. He said without thinking, "I guess it was just the coffee."
"Oh, I'm the same old me," warned Lorelai, gloved hands cupped around a travel mug. "Less flamboyant, is what my mother would say."
"Why?" asked Luke thoughtlessly.
"My dad said I need attention, and I didn't like that. I didn't like that he's right." She shrugged, sipped from the mug.
"No, I meant… You're not even trying to smile."
"You have a date," observed Lorelai, turning into a damp wind. It snapped pink into her cheeks.
Luke stared cluelessly at her, then understood. He was wearing nice jeans, a pullover she'd bought him back when Rachel came to town, and he'd shaved. He'd even left his ball cap at home, and was wearing a warm coat that didn't look like it had seen combat. "Oh. No. Uh. This. It's. I." He cursed internally, blurted inelegantly, "My old coat zipper broke and this was about the same price as fixing the old coat so I got it."
That was wrong, he found immediately. Once, she'd have sewn in a new zipper for nothing. No, not for nothing. For friendship. For him.
He could see her eyes, and the statement in them, that he didn't give up old things, ever, without fighting, ranting, raving. Except her. No, that wasn't in her eyes. That was his guilt.
He ruefully admitted, "And April hid the old one, she said I looked like a hobo."
Lorelai's mouth curved upward. "Amazing what a daughter can do when all others fail."
He flushed. He felt normal. In a good way. Safe. Comfortable. It freaked him out. "Yeah, well, I think she donated it to an animal shelter or something, she wouldn't tell me. She thought I'd go get it back."
"Smart girl."
That stung a little, and Luke bit down on his reply, took a measured breath.
"So this whole Cyrano thing," stated Lorelai a little unevenly. "I like the notes. I like knowing…" She trailed off, and he heard her unspoken what I should've been told. "I heard you're an uncle, congratulations. Is it true they named the baby…"
"Yeah. Doula." He grimaced in an attempt to smile. "I've held her. She's… Y'know." He held his hands out in cups, to show Lorelai. "Tiny. You were right. About the way babies smell. It's a good kind of bad smell."
Lorelai shook her head. "You haven't changed her diaper yet."
"God, no."
"How's April?"
That ended the awkwardness, by starting anguish. "She's good. Anna, uh, Anna wants to move to New Mexico. Take care of her mom."
"What's your lawyer say?"
Luke reddened. "Ah. I didn't want to, y'know. Make a big fight and court battle. April's a kid, she shouldn't go through that."
"No, she shouldn't, but take it from me, I let Chris use that against me. Don't make it hard for Rory meant make it easy for Chris, and, I guess okay when she's young, but… Okay, let me try again. April's thirteen, not ten, and I think she can handle the idea of you asking for a formal custody and support arrangement." Lorelai abruptly stepped back, turned away slightly, showed him her profile. "Sorry. Not my business. Or situation. I knew this was a bad idea."
Pleased she still rambled, if not as extensively, Luke offered a simple, "Thank you. For the advice. I never got that. About you, and Rory's dad. It looks a lot different now."
Lorelai drank from her travel mug. He smelled a floral tea of some kind, before she twisted the lid to keep the heat from escaping.
Luke waded into the metaphorical deep end. "Anna doesn't like it. I dunno. We had one lunch and it was okay, then ever since, it's like some kind of weird war zone, and I hate it." He repeated, with a thump on his leg by a clenched fist, "I hate it."
Startled, Lorelai looked at him, and it was the expression that meant anyone could ask her for a favor, talk to her, and she'd be kind. Which was, for Luke, all it took.
"I hate it," he snarled and pointed at the grave markers, "because I lived that crap, and I don't care if you're a teenager, you don't treat your kid's other parent like they're some kind of monster just because you're not getting your way! You don't do that!"
Lorelai nodded a little, and suddenly, Luke could talk. It was not a rant, either, which was rather surprising to him. Then again, his inner Other-Luke had a lot to say, and had practiced talking to Liz, to his reflection, to Lorelai by way of notes.
"They did that. My dad did that. Mom was great. We loved her. I think back and now I can't figure out why it was so damn wrong for her to get a college degree if she wanted. We weren't in diapers, she wasn't abandoning us to die in an alley. Dad talked that way, and he was this hero." Luke paused, smiled painfully at Lorelai. "The hero-martyr, you said. Then she died before we had a chance to see her side of things, or maybe she just didn't tell us because she didn't think she should involve a couple of kids in that mess. It doesn't matter. What matters is, she never got her say. We heard Dad talk about it for years, Lorelai, for years, even after she died, and it just… She loved us, then she must have stopped, the end, that's how… And it isn't true. It's the story we were told."
"I'm sorry, Luke," she said softly, and put a gloved hand on his sleeve, very lightly.
"Dad was who we had left, so we hung onto him. That's why this day hurts. I tried so hard to keep him alive." He glanced at her, self-conscious. "You told me once, you needed a good wallow before you could feel better. Thing is, I didn't let myself feel better. I do miss Dad. I hate that missing him means it feels like I can't miss Mom, too. And now I've got a kid whose mother wants me to disappear, and I have no idea what the hell to do."
She offered her travel mug. He sniffed, sipped. It did have a green-floral taste, but not unpleasant. Rich, to his surprise. He glanced at her, and she explained, "My dad found this boutique tea shop, you can buy all sorts of crazy tea blends. There's even one with blueberries."
"It's good." He returned her travel mug, hunched against the cutting cold promised by the wind. "I'm living it all again, only I'm the parent. Scared that if I breathe wrong, it's all over. You never did that to Christopher, I figured you couldn't understand what I was going through. That feeling like you never do anything right."
Lorelai snapped her mouth shut, hard, and blinked rapidly at the sky. "No snow yet," she said blandly.
Luke wondered what he'd said wrong. Then it hit him. When had Lorelai ever felt she could do anything right? Other than Rory? And even that faith was rattled badly by the idiocy of Rory's yacht theft, dropping out.
He said, "I really only didn't tell you because you finally looked like you could breathe again. I meant to give it a couple of days or weeks at most. Then… I dunno. I looked for reasons."
"I didn't call you out. I always used to, I stopped. We had this conversation, I recognize this tree, is the whole day going to be repeating ourselves?"
Luke twitched, startled. She was angry, yes, but also pleading. Not in a cringing-crawling way, but as if she wanted mercy.
"No," he said stonily. "I want to know why you didn't tell me yourself."
AN: "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids" was a tagline to a commercial for those of Lorelai's generation in the US. Why a rabbit wants to eat sugar-coated corn-puffs in allegedly fruit flavors remains, to me, a mystery. Mark Twain House in Hartford is a popular place to visit for the literary set. I hope they have live readings of Twain.
The teas mentioned really exist. The café is based on one in a small town I can't remember the name of, on some road trip, at some point. If you're curious, Lorelai's particular tea blend has essence of mango, cornflower, marigold, and more. (Because I'm drinking some as I write. Nazdrowie, siostra!)