Lorelai, Luke, and Sookie were bustling around the new inn in preparation for the grand opening next month. Well, Lorelai was trying to, but either Luke or Sookie was always coming into the room she was working in to admonish her for not taking it easier. When the dining room chairs arrived, Lorelai did just that, sitting in one in the middle of the empty inn foyer.

Luke came into the foyer carrying a cardboard box filled with vintage-looking books. "Where do you want these?" Luke asked, his head concealed by the box. He peeked around the carton and saw Lorelai, her legs crossed, sitting alone in the middle of the room. He rolled his eyes. "That's not what we meant."

She shrugged. "What? I'm sitting."

Luke sighed and put the box on the floor. "Maybe you weren't listening when Dr. Montel said you're five months pregnant with twins, which for us is considered a high-risk pregnancy. And then he said the part about where you have to stay on bed rest until you go into labor, which will probably be early. Because, I remind you, we're having twins."

"Well technically I'll be having the twins. You just have to take my books to the library and that's all the man power you're required to exert."

Luke sighed, picking up his box. "Stubborn woman," he muttered rounding the corner into the library.

Lorelai smiled and called after him. "You know you love me!" Lorelai's cell phone rang. Her mother was calling. "Hey, Mom. I think if you and Dad wanted to stop by later today to see the progress at the inn, it will be in at least a habitable condition. But we should be on schedule to open next month."

"Lorelai." Emily's voice hitched on the other end of the phone.

Lorelai's heart sank.

A minute later, Luke heard a crash in the other room. He came bounding in to find Lorelai in a heap on the floor. Her cellphone had skidded across the room.

"Lorelai!" he exclaimed, running to her and helping her into a sitting position.

Lorelai was sobbing uncontrollably, totally unaware that she had even fallen off the chair.

Luke's hands were shaking, skimming over Lorelai's arms, feeling for broken bones, lacerations, anything to explain why she was crying so violently. "Lorelai, what's wrong? Are you okay? Are the babies okay? Talk to me!"

Lorelai caught her breath in between hiccupping sobs just long enough. "My dad…he had another heart attack last night…and he didn't make it."

Lorelai crumpled against Luke. He held her tightly, trying to keep the pieces of her world from cracking any more, trying to keep the broken ones glued together so she wouldn't fall apart.


On the day of Richard Gilmore's funeral, the sun was shining, belying the mood of everyone in attendance. But perhaps, in his honor, giving anyone else a perfect day of golf on a rare, warm March day.

Logan drove to Hartford with Rory, who was catatonic, staring out the windshield as though possessed. Well, Logan thought, her grief had indeed possessed her in the few days since receiving that devastating phone call. At work, her first week back. Logan pulled the car to a stop outside of Honor's home, ten minutes away from the funeral.

"Do you want to come in quickly?" Logan asked Rory, his voice barely a whisper so as not to shatter the vacuum like silence of the car.

She gave him no response.

He got out of the car and went to get Lori in her car seat. He threw the diaper bag over his shoulder and ascended the steep front steps to his sister's house. She answered the door almost immediately.

She gave Logan a big hug. "I'm so sorry," she said, not having seen her brother in person since the news of Richard's death rippled through Hartford.

Logan was tight-lipped, grim.

"How's Rory doing?" Honor asked, craning her neck around her brother to see Rory's silhouette in the car, frozen.

Logan shook his head. "She hasn't held Lori in three days. Thank god she's bottle feeding now, otherwise…Thanks for agreeing to watch her, we didn't want her crying during the funeral."

"Of course, it's no problem. Please give my condolences to Emily, I'll probably visit her in a couple days."

"She'll like that," Logan said, transferring Lori and the diaper bag to Honor. He took an extra second to straighten Lori's hat on her head.

Honor smiled, but immediately felt guilty. Grief wreaked havoc with people's emotions and made everything so confusing.

"We'll be back to pick her up later tonight. Don't hesitate to call if you need me, we're close by so…"

Honor nodded. "Give Rory a hug for me."

Logan looked back at his wife, still sitting as she had been five minutes ago. "I will," he said quietly.


They drove in silence, Logan's heart breaking. He was sad about Richard in ways he probably wouldn't fully comprehend for a long time, but he was sadder for seeing how it affected Rory. He wasn't surprised; her and her grandfather were very close, he just hated that it had to be now. When he had a great-grandchild he barely got to know and two more grandchildren on the way.

The service at the chapel was beautiful, though the Gilmores had never been much for religion. Richard and Emily went to church on Christmas Eve and that was about it. But in times of absolute devastation and in times of joy, people turn to custom and ritual, to mark the occasion with a certain amount of solemnity and permanence.

Richard's burial plot was sheltered in the cemetery by a knoll and a cherry blossom tree. Logan and Luke had both volunteered to be pall bearers. Richard's other friends had, too, but they were more advanced in age, and the strength of the relatively younger duo was much welcomed.

The throng of people dressed in black, Emily with sunglasses covering her puffy, now always watering eyes, cast a stark dichotomy against the beauty of the landscape. When it came time for family members to say something, only Rory had volunteered. Emily and Lorelai were in no state to. Truth be told, Rory wasn't really in the mood, either. But she thought she might regret it if she didn't tell her grandfather exactly what he meant to her.

Logan helped her to the podium and then hung back with the rest of the family.

Rory cleared her throat, straightened the crumpled piece of paper on which she had written her speech, and steadied her hands on either side of the stand. "I didn't really know my grandfather until I was sixteen. Circumstances, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with, meant that I didn't really think I had grandparents who cared about me. And from our first meeting, it may have seemed like that was true. I think a lot of people got the feeling when first meeting my grandfather that this tall, imposing, exceedingly intelligent man was far too intimidating to have a heart. But he had one, a big one, and he showed his affection in different, very personal ways. We bonded over books, and learning, and travel. In many ways, it was clear to me that I wasn't as much of an anomaly as most people in my town thought I was in terms of loving school and constantly wanting to learn. When I met my grandfather, we started this conversation about all of these worldly things that we both appreciated, I think surprising each other, two people separated by a generation, by finding so much in common. And we never stopped having that conversation.

"At least once a week one of us would call the other to talk about a book we had read or to suggest a new one. A week and a half ago he had me pick him up a rare copy of book he wanted to read from an antique store near me. I was going to give it to him when I saw him at our Friday night dinner. Unfortunately, he never got to read that book. I think a part of him knew that maybe he wouldn't. But he never stopped going after what he loved.

"When he was tired of working in insurance, he became a college professor of economics. Time was never a boundary to him. A few weeks ago I was having lunch with him and I asked him why, then, did he choose not to have the surgery that might have saved his life. It wasn't a guarantee—he could have died on the table, or made it through the surgery but had a diminished quality of life. He made a decision to live his life on his terms. But what he said in answer to my question will always stay with me: 'Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.' Martin Luther said that, a prolific writer my grandfather and I both enjoyed reading. He knew his life was limited, but that didn't stop him from living it. From enjoying the time he had left with the people he loved—me, and my mom, and his great-granddaughter, and of course, my grandma, the greatest love of his life. So I take that to heart, even in a time of such impossible pain, that life goes on, that it must. We must plant our apple trees, even though it seems as though the world is going to pieces, if we are to have any hope of carrying on. I love you, Grandpa."

Rory folded the speech and put it in her pocket, taking her opportunity now to shovel a little bit of dirt onto Richard's coffin. She also tossed in an apple, a symbolic gesture.

She folded herself into Logan's embrace as everyone else also went to pay their respects and cover the coffin bit by bit with a shovel of dirt. Lorelai and Emily were the last to do so.

The caretakers at the cemetery finished the job. Rory, Emily, and Lorelai stood arm in arm watching them, silently remembering Richard. Logan and Luke watched from a respectful distance. Maybe it was minutes, but it felt like hours of watching the Gilmore girls say goodbye to this giant in their life.