Chapter Eighteen

Rory looked down at the manila envelope in her hands. 'Served?' she asked herself. She hadn't done anything illegal, though she didn't think criminals were served; they were arrested. Serving usually involved compelling someone to appear in court. Who would need her in court?

Realising that the only way she would get answers to her question was to open it, Rory slipped her finger under the envelope flap and slid it along, tearing it open. She pulled out the papers enclosed within and began to read through them. When she got to the words, to the answer to her questions, Rory dropped the papers, scattering them to the wind. She momentarily thought about chasing after them, they may be important and contain information that she would need, but she was far too stunned to move a single muscle.

Rory had been served with custody papers. Somehow, Logan had discovered her deepest, darkest secret and was coming after her for it. He was asking for a paternity test on Ricky to confirm whether or not he was Logan's son and then, if it was true, he was seeking custody. And not just any custody. The papers that were drifting away from Rory on the breeze were for full custody, claiming that Rory's penchant for lying, among other things that Rory couldn't believe Logan would ever accuse her of, made her an unfit mother.

'Logan wants to take Ricky away from me? He doesn't even know Ricky! How can he possibly think that he can raise my son?' Overwhelmed by emotion, Rory felt herself crouching down towards the pavement and wrapping her arms tightly around herself. Of all the scenarios she had played out in her mind of what could happen if her secret got out, this wasn't even among her worst cases. She could never have imagined this. This was sole crushing and life destroying.

Rory could feel the people walking by her, staring questioningly at her, wondering what was going on with her. None of them stopped to ask, of course. This was New York. People in essentially the fetal position were not a regular occurrence but they also weren't the strangest thing that you could possibly encounter in the city.

Rory almost felt like laying down on the sidewalk, she was that miserable and out of sorts. Some small voice in the back of her mind, however, stopped her from doing that. Instead, she stood back up and walked the few meters back to her buildings front stoop. The stairs were a little less dirty and disgusting than the street. Plus, it was a little less pathetic to sit on your front stoop than to sit in the middle of the sidewalk.

She plopped down on the cool concrete and dropped her head into her hands. She wanted to try and figure out her next steps, what she was going to do about all of this, but her brain wasn't functioning well enough to do anything like that. Instead, she needed to wallow in the moment, to allow the enormity of the news and the scale of her emotions about it to really overwhelm her. Her mother had once taught her about the importance of wallowing and feeling your emotions. It wasn't healthy to bottle everything up.

So, Rory sat there for what felt like an eternity but was probably more accurately only 10 minutes. When it had at last sunk in and become real to Rory, she could finally begin to process the next steps. How would she tackle this? What did she need to do? Did she need to get a lawyer? Could Logan really take her son from her?

As the questions rattled around in her head, one emotion bubbled up to the surface more than any other. Rage. Absolute, unadulterated rage. Rage at Logan who, behind her back and without talking to her about anything, decided that he wanted to be a part of Ricky's life. No, not a part of it, his whole life. How dare he!

Fueled by the anger that coursed through her veins, Rory stood from the stoop, marched to the edge of the street, and hailed a cab.

Rory was still riding the high of her righteous anger as the cab pulled up to the sleek brownstone. She'd never been to Logan's place before, but it was exactly what she'd pictured when she'd thought of it. Immaculate front garden and entryway, a little pretentious, and obviously a clear indication of his wealth. The sight of it just further fueled her outrage.

After paying the cabbie, which involved Rory more or less throwing her bills at the poor man, she stomped up the front staircase and began banging on the large wooden door. She glimpsed a doorbell out of the corner of her eye, but her anger made pounding on the door feel like the more appropriate way of alerting Logan to her presence. It took several minutes, a period of time in which Rory momentarily contemplated whether ringing the bell would have been the better more efficient choice. Finally, a rather annoyed Logan opened the door.

"What?" he snapped as he pulled the door open. Rory hadn't been expecting such an abrupt motion and proceeded to knock her hand against Logan's chest, which she didn't feel completely guilty about. It also seemed that Logan hadn't been expecting to find that Rory was the person annoyingly and incessantly banging was her. He paled slightly and rubbed the back of his neck a little awkwardly.

"Sorry," he muttered at the same time that Rory muttered it as well. The pair stood awkwardly in the doorway for a few seconds before she remembered why she was there in the first place.

"I came here to talk to you about this!" Rory suddenly exclaimed, shoving what remained of the papers she had been served with into Logan's chest. He stumbled back a little, a combination of surprise and the force that Rory used. "How could you Logan! You don't even know him, and you want to take him away from me! Why? What have I ever done to you? This is just cruel!"

"How could I? How could you? I don't know him because you kept him from me for ten years! That's what is cruel!" Logan shouted back. He looked around his neighbourhood, at the people walking down the street and glancing at the pair of them, and then pulled Rory into the brownstone by her wrist. She really didn't want to go with him, something about having the quick escape of turning on her heel felt comforting, but she also didn't protest it.

"I wanted to tell you. I'd even prepared a whole speech but when I went to find you, I found your fiancée too. You'd moved on so quickly; we'd only broken up a few months before and there you were already preparing to marry someone. I didn't want to pull you away from that, and I knew I could raise Ricky on my own with my mom's support, so I chose not to tell you. It was my decision to make and now that I see how you react to knowing you have a son, I wholeheartedly believe I made the right decision. You want to take Ricky away from me because I'm 'a bad mother?' because I didn't tell you about him? What makes you think you can raise a child anyway?"

"I think I could be just as good a parent as you are. And I wouldn't lie to a child or keep a thing as big as his father from him. Plus, you had sole custody of him for ten years, without my say in the matter. At least I'm giving you the chance to plead your case," Logan retorted.

Rory stood in front of him, open-mouthed. His argument was so illogical and immature she couldn't believe it. Was he really saying that it was essentially his turn to have Ricky, like he was a toy, or a car, or a timeshare? She could see that there would be no reasoning with Logan and arguing with him would only make her feel worse, like banging her head against a wall. Instead of wasting another second of her time, Rory turned on her heel and stormed out of the house. She vowed silently that Logan would not get sole custody of her son, not if she had anything to say about it.

Rory's feet carried her down the well-manicured streets without her mind really having to do too much work. Like other times she had become distressed, she followed her instincts and ended up at the train station, buying a ticket to visit her mother. With her mental faculties returning, she also quickly texted her babysitter asking her to pick up Ricky and take of him for the evening. It had happened before that a story had suddenly called her away for a day or two and she had found an amazing woman who was willing to take of Ricky on a moment's notice.

With her son taken care of, Rory sat back and enjoyed the trip. She smiled at herself a little as she tried to count the number of times, she'd sat on this train over the past three months and, for a brief flash of a moment, wondered if she shouldn't just move back to Stars Hallow. Then she could easily turn to her mother whenever her life was falling apart. But, as she realised all the other things, she would have to change in order to make that a reality, she quickly let that thought go. Her life was in New York, and Stars Hallow was not that far by train.

Rory got off the train and thought that maybe she really should have texted her mother. It was just a little past noon and Rory was sure her mother would still be at work at the Dragon Fly. She could stop in there and hope that Lorelai wasn't too busy, but her mom was notorious for doing more work at the inn than she needed too. Alternatively, as it was fairly close to lunch, there was a significant possibility that her mom was at Luke's. Deciding that she, too was hungry, Rory headed to Luke's to look for her mom. If she couldn't find Lorelai there, she would still get some food and then make her way over to the Dragon Fly.

Rory hailed a cab from the train station and made her way over to the diner. As the car drove along the wooded roads, Rory's mind returned to earlier that day. She began to dwell once again on the anger-inducing events that had led her to retreat back home. The anger that she had managed to quell with help of the calming sounds and motions of the train bubbled up once more and she felt it building in her chest, restricting her lungs and making her breathe harsh and shallow.

By the time Rory pulled up in front of Luke's diner, she was once again incensed, her teeth clenched tightly together, and her hands balled in firm fists. The cab driver gave her a strange look but didn't say anything, obviously worried that Rory would lash out at him. Instead, he quickly pulled away as soon as Rory had closed the door behind her. Rory, barely registering the car, marched up the small steps to the diner and flung open the door.

She'd really expected to find her mother sitting there, enjoying lunch with her fiancé as she did on several occasions. However, Rory found an almost empty diner. There were only a few people at two tables in the back, nursing coffees and having a low discussion. Rory's abrupt entry quickly drew their attention to the door, and she began to feel a little silly and sheepish. She gave them what she hoped was an apologetic nod and then hurried over to the counter. Her anger, which seemed to be extremely volatile, had evaporated at the awkwardness in the room and all Rory wanted in that moment was to disappear behind a menu.

She quickly grabbed one and, despite knowing exactly what was contained within the plasticly pages, buried her head in it. She wasn't exactly disappearing, but much as she had as a kid, she figured if she couldn't see the thing that was distressing her, in this case the stares of the other patrons, they couldn't see her. Rory felt like she'd sat there for several long minutes, at least ten, and the paranoia that the people were still staring at her mounted.

"Hey Rory! Long time!" a jovial, easily recognizable voice spoke from the other side of the counter. Rory looked up into the cheerful face of Jess Mariano and it was like a dam broke. The anger, the embarrassment, the stress of the story, the paranoia, all came flooding out of her in the form of big, wet tears that rapidly cascaded down her face.