"Heard from your mom lately?" Luke asked.

Lorelai looked up from where she was scraping leftover crumbs into the garbage. "No," she said, handing him the plate. Luke placed it next to the others in the dishwasher and furrowed his brow.

"Nothing at all? Not a text? Carrier Pigeon?"

"Nope. Other than that lovely letter she sent us to cancel dinner till the end of time, we've been in the clear."

Luke hummed and frowned harder. Lorelai paused in her search for after dessert, dessert and stared at him.

"What's with the face?" she asked.

"What face?"

"Your 'I have an opinion Lorelai won't like so I won't tell her', face."

"For Christ's sake, how many faces do I have?"

"Plenty. My current favorite is the 'My son is wondering about the female form and I can't handle it' face. It's a little newer, but it's holding its own."

Luke leaned against the counter. "Your mom hasn't talked to you at all? Seriously? You haven't run into her at therapy?"

"Seriously, Luke, we're home free over here. Stop looking the gift horse in its gross mouth," Lorelai said, walking into his arms.

Luke wrapped his arms around her and Lorelai squeezed back. Mmm. Cozy.

"She's so old," Luke muttered into her hair.

"Shh."

"She's all alone in that big house, you know."

"Shhh."

"What if something happens–ow! Get off my ass!" Luke said, twisting away from her pinching fingers.

"Ugh, stop it, I eat in here," James said. He glared at them as he snatched a bottle of water out of the fridge and went back to his room.

Lorelai straightened up and put her hands on her hips, "Look what you did, Luke. You've traumatized my child. We're gonna have to go to mommy-and-me therapy."

"You're the one who can't keep her hands to herself," Luke replied, rubbing his sore cheek. "I just think–"

"Fine, I got the message. I will swing by the homestead and see if mother dear is still kicking."

"Thank you," Luke replied. "That's all I'm asking. A quick face-to-face to make sure she's not a corpse."

"Here's to hoping."

"Lorelai!"

–––––––––––––––

Lorelai was trying to think of a good enough excuse to not see her mother as she hid in the kitchen with Sookie. It had to be simple, but clever enough that Luke couldn't see through her lie. Lorelai knew her mother was alive and well. In the real world, evil didn't die that easy.

"Do you think the Spring menu is missing anything?" Sookie asked, looking down at the steaming plates on the kitchen island.

"Spring? Spring who? We're a few weeks away from April and I had to ice pick my door handles like they owed me money."

"C'mon now. You've lived in Connecticut your whole life, you should be used to it by now. Try this," she said holding up a spoon to Lorelai's mouth.

"Ooh, that's nice. Is that salmon?"

"It's chicken," Sookie replied. She sighed. "Guess it's time to start over."

"Hey don't do that. What do I know about food? My tastebuds have been ravaged by years of lava hot black coffee. Don't even listen to me."

"If you say so," Sookie picked up the plates. "Have you–hurk!"

Sookie's sentence ended in choked of squawk as she collided with the bar cart parked at the end of the kitchen island. Chicken, plates, and sauce went flying as far as the eye could see, while Sookie smacked onto the floor. Sookie sat up and patted herself down as a few nearby busboys pulled her back to her feet.

"Geez, you think those guys would be used to this by now," Sookie said.

Lorelai pulled a strip of chicken skin off of Sookie chef's coat. "Yeah, darn those crazy kids running over to see if you're alive. Buncha nutcases."

"Speaking of kids, Martha's first Sadie Hawkins dance is coming up. She's being so adorable pretending that she's not going with that little marshmallow, Erin Bakerson. Oh gosh. I remember my first Sadie Hawkins. My date drank so many wine coolers that I had to call his parents to drive me home. Ah, youth." Sookie brushed some lettuce off her apron. "Did they do Sadie Hawkins dances at your fancy pants high school?"

"Before I had Rory, there were a few but they weren't really my thing."

Weren't my thing.

More like, the odds of someone saying yes to her were lower than the center of the Earth. Even Chris was too afraid of his father's reaction to take her to their Sadie Hawkins dance. By sophomore year, Lorelai had gotten herself enough a reputation that no teenage boy wanted anything to do with her beside some necking behind the sports shed. Lorelai knew her place and avoided all and any dances.

Throughout the day, if Lorelai thought of any great excuses to skip out on seeing her mother, she thought of Luke's crushed face when he eventually found out she had lied to him. Yet again, her mother was inserting strife into her Hallmark worthy marriage from the comfort of her mausoleum. The adult thing to do would be to tell Luke that she didn't go and she wasn't going to and that was that. But since Lorelai barely considered herself an adult and the idea of Luke 'disappointed in you' face, made her stomach hurt, she tossed butt in the car and drove home to mommy.

Oy, the things she did to keep that man happy.

She pulled up to the sidewalk in front of her mother's home an hour later. She saw a maintenance man, shoveling the sidewalk. She rolled down her window and waved at him.

"Hola!" she greeted, "Is in?"

The maintenance man gave her a blank stare before answering in completely unaccented English. "Yes." He took his bucket of salt and his snow shovel and walked to the back of the house.

Yikes.

Lorelai rolled her window back up. She had technically done what Luke had asked. She was sure that her mother wasn't a corpse being feasted upon by the maids. She could go and leave her mother to gossip about some poor soul who didn't match her pantyhose to her earrings. She could leave. Nothing was stopping her. She could put the jeep in drive and go back to the Inn with a flick of her wrist. Lorelai looked at her childhood home and rolled her eyes. She turned the car off.

Hopefully, Lorelai was a good looking dog like a Golden Retriever.

She walked up the freshly shoveled drive and rang the bell. For a moment, Lorelai considered playing ding-dong ditch but the maid behind the door was too fast.

"Please, come in Mrs. Danes," said the maid before shutting the door. "Would you like me to take your coat?"

"No thanks, this is just a welfare check."

The maid shot her a confused look before going up the stairs. A few minutes later, Emily walked down.

"Lorelai, how nice of you to stop by."

Lorelai furrowed her brows. Her mother sounded pleasant. Almost as if she wasn't talking down to her at all. She fought not to look around and see if Rodman Serling was lurking about to give a nice monologue about tonight's episode.

"Yeah, Luke asked me to come by and make sure the buzzards hadn't got to you."

"That's nice."

They stared at each other in silence. Emily flicked a piece of imaginary lint off of her shoulder. "Is that all? I don't want to keep you. I know that anything having to do with the Inn is far more important than staring at me."

"That's it?" Lorelai asked.

"What's it?"

"Itchy, Scratchy–beat it," Lorelai said, pointing to the pair of maids lingering near the living entryway. "I need to have a private conversation with your dictator."

The maids scurried away.

"Really, Lorelai all the lip you give me about not knowing their names and you treat them like that. What kind of names are those?"

"Not the point. Why are you acting like this? What's up?" Lorelai said, putting her hands on her hips.

"Acting like what?"

"Like you're happy to see more, for one. You're never happy to see me and even if you are happy to see me, you say something that I've done and or doing is wrong. What's the deal?"

"I was being nice, Lorelai," Emily replied, her tone a touch colder.

"You? Nice? Are you even programmed for that?"

"Why are you being so difficult? Here I am trying to have a conversation with you that doesn't result in you dissolving into hysterics and you refuse to act like an adult and let it happen!"

"I'm not being difficult, I'm being realistic. You're not nice to me. That's not how this works."

"Why? Why can't I be nice to you? Is it a crime?"

"Where's all this coming from? Mind control? Blackmail?"

"Neither," Emily said. She walked down the stairs and stood in front of Lorelai. "Esther told me that it was only fair to try and make an effort in our relationship, with all that you do."

"And by making an effort she meant get replaced by a pod person?"

"No, she meant being nice. We're both adults, Lorelai we can have a simple conversation. People have done it for millennia."

"Yeah, but we're not people. We're Gilmores. Big diff."

Emily rolled her eyes, "You'd rather we continue sniping at each other until the day you toss me in the gutter rather than have a quiet conversation with me? Listen to yourself, for goodness sake."

"Old dog, new trick, ever heard of it?"

"Can't you just let me learn to like you?" Emily asked, pinching her nose bridge between her fingers.

Lorelai's breath caught. "What?"

"Like you," Emily repeated, crossing her arms, "Isn't that what you wanted? For me to like you? I'm trying. Let me try."

"Okay," Lorelai said, swallowing around the lump in her throat. "Thanks for the talk."

"Likewise."

Lorelai didn't run to her car. She walked very, very quickly. Sitting at the red light on the way back to Stars Hollow, it finally hit her. Her mother wanted to like her.

What the fuck?