THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

April's birthday party brings an unexpected twist that changes Luke's and Lorelai's lives forever. Late sixth season.

Disclaimer: None of these people are mine; never will be, unfortunately.

Chapter Thirteen: Prepping

Luke drove back to Stars Hollow, thinking of his visit with April. She had seemed in better spirits, chattering almost at her usual pace about the other patients in the hospital and the gleanings of medical information she had picked up from eavesdropping on the staff as they talked about the happenings on the floor.

But they also had a few serious moments. April had tried calling a couple of her friends that afternoon and was disappointed with the results. "They seemed uncomfortable, Dad," she complained. "They acted like they didn't know what to say to me." She frowned. "I guess it's because of Mom."

Luke was startled at her matter-of-fact tone but tried not to show it. "Yeah, I would guess that's true," he said, trying to sound casual.

"But why?"

Luke struggled for an answer. Desperately he thought back to the time when his own mother had died and he had the same questions about his friends' behavior, and suddenly seized upon something his father had told him. "Well, I would guess that kids your age haven't had a lot of experience with people they know—you know—dying," he said, stumbling over his words. "So they're not sure how to act or what to say. It must be pretty frightening to see someone's mother there one day and—just gone the next. They must wonder if the same thing could happen to their mothers," he added gently.

April's eyes were zoned in on his like laser beams. "I guess that could be true," she mused. "So what do I do?"

"Well. . . I think you just have to be yourself, as much as you can. Don't hide what you're feeling if it comes up. Let them know that you're sad, but that your life is going forward despite what happened and that you're still you." He smiled sadly. "There's no easy way to face this. But just be yourself and you won't go wrong."

April thought about this for a minute and then sighed. "I guess that's what I should do. A couple of them said they'd come to see me over the weekend, if their parents can bring them. So maybe when they see me, it'll get easier," she mused. She thought for a minute more, frowning at her hands which were clutching and unclutching in her lap. She looked back up at Luke. "Thanks, Dad," she said softly and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Luke accepted the embrace, trying to keep his eyes from filling. "You're welcome, kid," he said gruffly. "Anytime."

Luke was thinking about this encounter when he entered the diner. He spoke briefly to Caesar and was beginning to clean up when his cell phone rang. "Hello," he said shortly. "Luke! Where are you?"

"Lorelai?" He was bewildered at her excited tone.

"Yes, yes, it's me! Where are you?"

"I'm at the diner," he answered automatically. "Lorelai, what's wrong? What's going on?"

"Stay there!" she commanded. "Rory and I will be there in a little while. I have something to show you!"

"Lorelai, what the. . ." But she had hung up.

Luke shook his head and continued to help with cleanup while he waited for her, wondering what her excitement was all about.

About a half-hour later, he saw her Jeep come to a screeching halt right outside the diner, with Rory's Prius close behind. The two women leaped from their cars and hurried inside, chattering happily.

He was waiting for them, hands on hips. "Lorelai, what the hell is this about? And don't drive so fast, you'll get a ticket," he added.

Lorelai ran up to him and gave him a great smacking kiss on the lips. "Hi, Burger Boy! Do we have news for you!"

She pulled him to a table where Rory was already seated, grinning madly. "I take it the thing with your parents went okay," he said, trying to calm her down. He noticed she had a large manila envelope which she smacked down on the table next to her.

"Yeah, it went okay—all the objections that I had suspected but nothing serious," she said quickly. "But something else happened!"

She settled down, folded her hands and shot a mischievous grin at Rory. "Okay, I didn't have a chance to tell you this before, but while you were away on April's school trip, there were mysterious happenings in Stars Hollow," she began, dropping her voice to a dramatic pitch.

"Uh huh."

"Odd characters were seen skulking down the avenues of our fair town. It turned out they were one Emily and Richard Gilmore, prowling our streets." She paused for dramatic effect. "Accompanied by a real estate agent."

Luke was watching her face, enjoying the changes in expression, when the last phrase hit him. His eyes widened. "A—a real estate agent?" he asked in a panicked tone.

"Don't worry, it's not that. That's what I thought, too." Luke grunted with relief and Lorelai continued. "No, ladies and gentlemen, not what you suspected but something even more strange and amazing." She paused again, her eyes dancing and enunciated her next sentence carefully. "They were shopping for a house for us, to give us as a wedding present."

Luke stared at her as the words chased in circles in his head. "Whaaaa?" His mouth dropped open.

"Yep. That's what they want to do." She repeated Richard's speech about the money that would come to them and how her parents wanted them to enjoy some of it now instead of later. "And this is how they want to get us started on our future inheritance."

By this time, Luke's mind was racing. Considering the source of the generosity now before him, he immediately began to smell a gigantic elephant trap in the works. "Lorelai, I don't know," he began hesitantly. "Your parents? Won't that just obligate us to them horribly?"

She grew serious. "I thought that too, but for some reason, I really think they're sincere about this," she explained. "They were just—different when they talked about it. I can usually sense my mother's schemes a mile away, and I just didn't feel it this time." She appealed to her daughter. "Didn't it feel different to you?"

Rory nodded. "I'm not as well-versed in picking up on their tricks as Mom is—although I got a good dose of it when I was living there—but they really did seem sincere."

"But why?" Luke said, baffled.

"Well, I think it's just what they said—they've got more money than they'll need in this lifetime—or several lifetimes, for that matter—and they figure they might as well put it to use." She grinned. "And I think their hope for future grandchildren comes into play here, too. The Gilmore-Danes scions can't be raised in something so shoddy as a three-bedroom house." She watched Luke carefully, adding, "When I told them about April and said we were thinking of looking for something bigger, I guess this just seemed like the right time to say something about it."

Luke was still baffled. "Well—we can think about it, I guess. And I'll want to talk to them about it, too," he warned.

"That's fine. But, Luke, that's not the whole surprise." She grabbed the envelope and opened it, pulling out the photograph contained within. "They looked at a lot of available properties and picked out the one they thought we'd like the best." She giggled. "You'll never guess," and presented the photograph to him with a flourish.

Luke stared at it and truly thought he was losing his mind. "The Twickham house?" he said with astonishment. "Your parents want to buy us the Twickham house?"

Lorelai hugged herself with excitement. "It's fate!" she cried dramatically. "It's a sign! I am destined to live in that house one way or another!" She calmed down a little to peer at his shocked face. "Isn't that wild, though? My parents, of all people, choosing the very same house that you almost bought last year?"

Luke shook his head. "Unbelievable." He stared at the photograph for a minute. "But, hey, I thought Kirk bought the house when I decided not to."

Lorelai shook her head. "Apparently the only reason he wanted it was because you wanted it. As soon as you lost interest, so did he."

Luke shook his head again and blew out a big breath. "Wow," he said succinctly.

"Yeah—wow. Quite a day, huh?" his fiancee replied, hugging his arm.

Their level of excitement required the appearance of celebratory coffee and pie, of course. The trio sat and talked long after Caesar had left and the conversation continued after they had closed the diner and returned home. Rory finally excused herself to go to her room while Luke and Lorelai climbed the stairs to the bedroom. They talked for a while there, too, and agreed that they would just sit on the elder Gilmores' offer for a while and think about it while they focused on other things during the busy week ahead. They lay in each other's arms for a long time, too excited and nervous for sleep to come until they finally drifted off in exhaustion.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The next few days were some of the busiest ever seen in the Gilmore household.

Luke awoke early the next day and slipped out to go to the diner to open, bringing a last load of clothes and necessities back to the house with him. He rousted the girls from bed and left them grumpily eating the breakfast he fixed while he left for a quick trip to Hartford and a short visit with April.

When he returned mid-morning, he found Lorelai and Rory busily going through Rory's room, dividing the remaining belongings there into piles to either be moved upstairs to the small bedroom or for storage in the attic or at Luke's apartment. He had left the boxes he had brought earlier on the front porch and now brought them upstairs to unpack, again struggling with the lack of space in the storage areas of the master bedroom. Soon Lorelai and Rory were trotting up and down the stairs to move things into her new room after shoving the sewing paraphernalia into a corner. Paul Anka was everywhere, seemingly unable to decide where the most excitement would be, until he finally gave up and settled on the couch for a snooze.

Their industry was stopped temporarily with a visit from Lorelai's next-door neighbor Babette who had been avidly watching the activity from her window all morning. Unable to contain her curiosity, she finally came over to inquire as to what the heck was going on. Lorelai explained while Luke fumed in the background at this new manifestation of the townspeople's inherent nosiness. When Babette had the story straight, she offered any assistance they might need throughout the weekend and trotted with satisfaction back to her own house, headed for the phone and the start of the daily news cycle.

"It's okay, hon," Lorelai cheered her fiancée. "This way it'll be all over town in an hour and you won't have eight thousand questions getting thrown in your face for the next two weeks."

"I suppose," he said gloomily.

Lorelai smiled. "Just remember that they care about you. That's why they're so interested."

He grunted a reply and went back to moving boxes upstairs.

After stopping for a sandwich at lunch, they continued their labors throughout the afternoon. Around four, after several trips to the diner to lug boxes and bags upstairs, they agreed that that they had accomplished about as much as they could at that point and dropped with exhaustion on the couch. "I'm not trying to influence your decision or anything," Rory stated, fanning herself with a stray magazine, "but the amount of room in the Twickham House is starting to look pretty good right about now."

"Amen to that," her mother murmured.

Luke gazed ahead of him, slipping into thought. "You were in there," he interrupted Lorelai and Rory's conversation. "Do you remember the layout? Do you remember the number of rooms? Do you think it'll be big enough—or too big?"

Lorelai gazed at him thoughtfully. "Right now, I honestly don't remember," she said. "There was so much stuff in there when it was the museum, and the only upstairs room I saw was all blacked out with curtains for the audio-visual display." She frowned. "There are five bedrooms, right?"

"I think so, Luke murmured. "Four baths. A huge kitchen."

"You'd like that," Lorelai smiled.

"A big back yard and side yards," Rory remembered.

"Balconies," Lorelai sighed. "So nice in good weather."

"Some buildings behind it, too. An old carriage house and some kind of shed," Luke recalled.

"You could set up a workshop back there," Lorelai suggested.

"Yeah." His eyes wandered to Rory. "I seem to remember a library with a ton of built-in bookshelves," he grinned. "I think I know two young ladies who would be pretty happy with that."

The three smiled at each other in silence for a minute, each lost in thought. But then Luke shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I still don't trust it," he said. "I still have the feeling that they're up to something and I can't figure out what."

"Yeah, maybe," his fiancée murmured.

"Well—you have plenty of time to decide," Rory declared. "But I think it's good to do this, to just let our minds wander over the idea and see how we feel."

Luke nodded. "You're right."

"I think so, too," Lorelai chimed in. "But you know, I think I'd really have to see the place again to be sure. I mean—it's so darn big."

"That's what she said," Rory and Luke murmured in unison. A second later, all three heads jerked up to stare at each other before they collapsed with laughter.

Luke stood up. "Well, as you say, we don't have to decide now. And we better start getting ready if we're going to go in and see April. So up and at 'em, you lazy, crazy ladies."

The next forty minutes were spent cleaning up and dressing ("Three people all needing to use the same shower at once—horrific!" groaned Lorelai) and they set out for Hartford in Lorelai's Jeep.

They arrived in April's room to discover two other girls on the bed with her, all three giggling and chattering at breakneck speed while a woman that Luke recognized to be the mother of one of April's classmates sat in a chair to the side gazing fondly at the three kids. April saw them first and happily called, "Dad! Lorelai!"

The girls turned. "Hagrid!" one of them shrieked and they tumbled off the bed and ran to him.

"'Hagrid?'" Lorelai muttered to Rory, who snickered.

"Hi, Leslie, hi Hope," Luke smiled, a little overwhelmed at their greeting. He nodded to the woman in the chair. "Carol, nice to see you."

"Nice to see you, Luke," she returned with a smile.

"Ladies," Luke said, slipping an arm around Lorelai's shoulders. "I'd like you to meet my fiancée, Lorelai Gilmore, and her daughter, Rory Gilmore." He gestured to the girls. "This is Leslie, and Hope, and Leslie's mom, Carol Von Bergen."

"Hi, girls. Hello, Carol," Lorelai said with a wave.

"Hi," Rory added shyly.

April spotted her standing behind her mother. "Rory! You came to see me!"

"I sure did," Rory smiled, walking to the bed and taking her hand. "I had to come and see what my new housemate is up to."

"Rory's going to be my stepsister," April bragged to her friends. "She goes to Yale. She runs the newspaper there," she added importantly.

As Rory chatted with the girls, Carol walked over to stand with the other adults. "Carol, thank you so much for bringing the girls," Luke said in a low voice. "It means the world to April. She's been so bored and lonely here."

"My pleasure, Luke," Carol replied. She nodded towards his daughter. "How's she doing?"

"Oh—well—as well as can be expected, I guess," Luke shrugged. "She seems more like herself every day, but the hard part is still ahead. Moving into a new house. . . the funeral. . ." He gestured helplessly.

Carol nodded. "She seems like herself, only a little—I don't know—too much so, if you know what I mean. A little manic sometimes, maybe, like she's trying to hold too many feelings at bay."

Luke nodded. "I think that's exactly right."

Carol watched the girls for a moment. "I don't know if you've heard, but the news of the accident hit her class like an earthquake. The kids were really freaked out. They've had some counselors come in the past two days."

"No, I didn't know," Luke said with concern.

"I think it's just that some of them knew Anna from seeing her with April and—well, I guess it's just a shock to see a friend's mother pass away so suddenly."

Luke nodded again. "April and I were talking about exactly the same thing yesterday."

"I think so," she murmured. "You know, her whole class is coming to the funeral."

"No—really?" Luke was a little shocked. "Umm—will that be okay for them, do you think? I mean, nobody's making them go or anything, are they?"

"The kids suggested it themselves. They want to show April that they support her," Carol replied, a little proudly. "Most of the parents think it will be good for them to have this experience. And nobody will be forced to go if they don't want to, of course."

"Okay," Luke said thoughtfully.

Lorelai, who had been silent until then, spoke up. "Carol, we're planning to have a little reception afterwards. Please let the parents know that the kids would be very welcome. They'll be a good distraction for April."

"Oh, I will. That's lovely." Carol replied. "Where will it be, so I can start to get word around?"

"The Dragonfly Inn in Stars Hollow. It's not too far from Luke's diner, if you've ever been there."

"I have," Carol nodded. "Some of us were there for the birthday party last week. Gee, was it just last week?" she wondered, her face wrinkling.

"A lot's happened since then," Luke murmured.

"Anyway, I've heard of the Dragonfly. I'm dying to see it, actually. I've heard it's lovely and that the food is very good."

Luke couldn't help bragging a little. "Lorelai's the co-owner and her partner's the chef. And it's a beautiful place."

"Oh, how nice." Carol looked at Lorelai. "That's really nice of you to arrange that."

"I'm happy to," Lorelai responded. "You know, if a bunch of April's classmates are coming, maybe I'll set up something in the library for them. You know, with some kid-friendly food, so they can get away from the grownups. That might help April, too."

"I'm sure it will." Carol looked delighted. "And, Luke, I want to say that we all think it's really great that you're stepping up to the plate like this for April, giving her a home and all. We're so glad she has you in her life now. Both of you," she added, including Lorelai in her compliment.

"We honestly couldn't do anything else, Carol," Luke said softly. Lorelai nodded in agreement.

Carol smiled warmly and turned to the girls. "Well, girls, now that April's family has arrived, it's time for us to get going, so say good-bye for now."

Luke and Lorelai glanced at each other. "April's family," they mouthed to each other, smiling broadly.

While the girls began the extravagant good-byes typical of their age, Lorelai pulled out her ever-ready pad and pen and scribbled some phone numbers on it. She pulled it out of the pad and offered it to Carol. "Maybe in a week or so, when things have settled down, some of the girls could come and visit April," she suggested. "Luke and I can help with the transporting if needed. Please," she added, "we'd love to have them. April needs to keep in touch with her friends until she can go back to school."

"Why, that would be nice," Carol agreed. "I'm sure the girls would love it. April's such a nice kid—it's good for the other kids to spend time with her."

As Carol was herding the visitors out of the room, Luke smiled his thanks at Lorelai. "Maybe we should have some cards printed up with all our phone numbers on it," he said, half in jest. "They might come in handy."

Rory whirled around and stared at him, the wheels turning in her head. "Oh, now you've done it, Luke," Lorelai joked. "Look at her face. She's got a plan brewing."

Rory wiggled her eyebrows and smiled an evil smile.

April noticed. "What are you guys talking about?"

"We're talking about a way to help your friends keep in touch with you. Plus other important people. I think I'll do a thing on the computer and print up some cards with everybody's phone numbers on it—our home number, Luke and Mom's cells, their work numbers. We can just hand them out to anyone you want," Rory explained.

"Oh, that would be great! Add my cell, too, please."

Luke moved to the bed. "April, did you know that your classmates are planning to come to the funeral?"

A shadow passed over her face. "Yeah, they told me."

"We're having a little reception at my inn afterwards," Lorelai told her. "Would you like it if we set up a room just for you and your friends to visit in? So you won't have to be bored by the grown-up talk."

"Yeah, that would be great," the girl said with more enthusiasm.

"I'll get the cards ready by then, and you can just hand them out," Rory decided.

Pleased with this plan, they grouped around the bed to visit while April ate her dinner, which had just been brought in. The child chattered away about some of the happenings at school her friends had filled her in on, and her father and the Gilmores caught her up on their activities of the day.

"April, tomorrow we're going over to your house to get some of your things," Lorelai mentioned, pulling out her pad and pen again. "Maybe you could give us a list of the things you want brought over first." At the shadow that again fell over April's face, she gently suggested, "It'll all come over eventually, but maybe there are some things that are most important to you."

"Yes, okay," April decided, rallying. "Well, I want my MP3—that's essential—and can I have the little TV in my bedroom? And I guess I need some shorts, because I can't really wear pants right now, and—oh, let me tell you the books I want. . . "