"Excuse me," the mother of the bride approached Celeste just outside the Dragonfly, where they had erected a large white party tent to accommodate the large wedding party. People were enjoying the buffee, some already dancing and enjoying the country band.
"Yes, how can I help you?" she replied.
"I just saw that little girl," she began pointing her finger one of wedding guest's daughter, dressed in pink, who couldn't be more than five years old. "...swipe her finger across the cake's icing," she complained.
"Do you know which ones are her parents?" Celeste asked, almost beginning to ponder why she hadn't addressed the issue herself.
"Beats me," the mother of the bride, who is she recalled correctly was named Dorothy, shrugged.
"I'll look into it," she replied, and headed over to the girl in question. The trouble was that the little girl, with her dark hair, reminded her of an awful lot of Evie, and she had to admit that the whole incident had a certain 'cute' factor. If this had happened five years ago she probably would've walked right over to the girl and dragged her to her parents and scolded her. But now as she watched her blow soap bubbles with another girl, a few years older than her, out on the grass, the sun already setting in the distance, she really didn't want to take that approach.
"Hey, what's your name?" she asked, as she crouched down by the little girl.
"Ava," she replied, hesitantly.
"My name is Celeste, I'm here to make sure this is a special day for Laura and Jonathan, over there," she began, gesturing towards the bride and groom. "Can we make a deal?"
"Okay," she replied, her fingers rolling the hem of her dress, clearly feeling a little guilty.
"Can you promise me that you won't taste that big cake again? Laura will be very sad if someone ruins her cake - it's her special day, she's waited for this a long time," Celeste said, referring to the wedding cake.
"I'm sorry, just wanted to know what it tasted like, my mom didn't know," she replied, her voice on the verge of tears, apologetically. It was obvious that she'd know the deed was forbidden but she'd just been unable to fight the temptation.
"It'll be fine, I'll go get a sugar flower to hide it. And I'll get you one also, okay?" she calmed her, recalling having seen a few extra decorations in the kitchen.
The girl nodded in agreement.
"I'll be right back," Celeste added, as she rose and straightened her modest knee-length grey sheath dress.
She was halfway to the kitchen as she felt her phone buzz, and she was once again pleasantly reminded of the benefits of having a dress with pockets. Logan had called twice, and then there was a text.
"Rory's at Columbia Presbyterian. She's been having contractions, they're trying to get them to stop. It's just waiting at this point. No need to rush over, she just wanted you to know," Logan had written.
She hastily tried calling back, but got a busy signal, clearly Logan was letting others know as well.
"Everything alright?" Michel asked, noticing her worried look. They'd agreed to keep things to English in public at least. Strangely enough, him knowing her identify had actually broken some kind of ice between them - making him want to put in the extra effort to be nice to her, almost as if trying to make up for scaring her.
"Oh, it's Rory, she's at the hospital. I'm a little worried," she replied. "Could you do me a quick favor? I just need five minutes," she asked, hoping to get a small break to try calling Logan again.
She told him what to do with the sugar flowers, Michel rolling his eyes slightly at the promise she'd made to the girl, but complied nonetheless.
"Logan!" she reacted as she finally heard him pick up, and stepped into the staff lounge to speak.
"Hey," Logan replied.
"How is she? How are the girls?" she inquired, feeling guilty for not being there herself.
"They are administering the drugs now, hopefully they'll work. They ought to prepare the babies lungs in case they are born early," he explained briefly.
"She's what 33-34 weeks?" she tried to recall. Celeste had had Evie a little early too, but she'd been nearly 35 weeks by then.
"33," he sighed, worriedly.
"Tell her I'm thinking about her, I wish I could come…," she began.
"I will, and it's fine, it's not like I can do a lot here either. I'll have her call you tomorrow, she's pretty tired today," Logan replied, not having the energy to go into the whole sequence of events the day had withheld.
Celeste took a deep breath, and glanced at the time, a few more hours until the wedding was through and then she still had another one the following day. Knowing Lorelai was probably wanting to go see Rory as well, she clearly couldn't just bail on any one of them. She'd wanted this, and it was essential to her move as well - even if it wasn't her dream job as such, it did give her purpose at this point in time. She needed to trust that the doctors knew what they were doing, just like they'd known with her. She couldn't deny that those memories were painful to her as well - everything she'd gone through with Evie - she definitely didn't wish upon Rory, but above all she just hoped the babies would be okay. She pushed the thoughts aside, and glanced a brief look into the mirror, making sure her make-up hadn't smeared and went on with her job.
Celeste was a little puzzled to learn from the text on her phone from Jess as she finished work, that Jess and Evie were still at the firehouse, despite the time being way past Evie's bedtime.
Already from across the street she could see the lights on on the third floor. She pushed the small pedestrian gate, leading to the back yard from the left of the building, open, and walked to the back of the house and pushed the kitchen door open. Having an unlocked door, even if it was in a back yard like this, was still strange to her. She could hear drilling sound from upstairs, and climbed the stairs towards the light and noise, pondering where Evie was.
"Oh, hey," Jess smirked, with a screw between his lips and drill in his hand, happy to see Celeste back, standing mid way up a ladder. He was finishing adding the last drywall panel to what appeared to be the wall separating the two third floor bedrooms from the stairway, as he'd suggested earlier.
"Where's Evie?" she asked.
Jess nodded towards the darker back corner of the room towards Evie's stroller. Evie slept peacefully, pink baby earmuffs on her ears, her favourite blanket in her arms, without a care in the world.
Celeste didn't know whether to laugh at his resourcefulness or cry at dragging Evie there at this time of night into the room that was clearly a little dusty - but she seemed perfectly fine and the back corner wasn't very dusty either on closer look. But as she relaxed a little, seeing that Evie was indeed sleeping very peacefully, and finally had a chance to look a little closer at what Jess had completed in a day.
Jess drilled another screw into the wall.
"Wow, I didn't expect you to get this much done," she commented.
"It helped that TJ actually knows a thing or two about woodwork. Saved me a lot of time not having to bother renting any of the equipment. Did a quick trip to Home Depot, got the materials. Luke helped out for a few hours. If you can choose paints by tomorrow, then I can do another store run with Evie and maybe even get to plastering, painting and installing the doors this weekend. Liz said she could watch her in the afternoon," he explained, clearly having a plan in motion for the weekend.
"And then we have bedrooms," she sighed. Somehow she'd expected this to be slow and painful, yet for Jess this seemed to be like a piece of cake.
It was only then she recalled Rory's situation, that had clouded her entire evening since she'd found out.
"Rory is at the hospital, still in one piece as far as I know. Hopefully they'll keep her that way," she shared the news.
Jess climbed down the ladder now, having finished the wall. It clearly needed still some love, plastering the screw heads and connections, but still - it was beginning to take shape.
"I'd hug you, but I'm a little dirty," he said apologetically, seeing her clearly worried. He had some saw and drywall dust on him along with sweat, but that look kind of worked for her.
"I'll be alright, it just hurts knowing that she might need me and I couldn't be there," she sighed, not bothering with his dustyness and wrapped her arms around his chest nonetheless, knowing she'd need to wear another dress tomorrow anyways.
"You'll see her soon enough," he assured, kissing her hair that smelled of patchouli and irises. Sure he too was concerned, but he had a much better sense of knowing when he could and when he couldn't help things. He rather sympathized with Logan at that moment, recalling well what it had been like to just stand by unable to do anything to help his wife.
"Now how about we go back to Luke's, he suggested as their embrace broke, and continued to switch off the large projector and placed the drill battery to recharge. He soon carried Evie's small travel stroller, with Evie strapped within it, down the stairs without so much as a blink of an eye, Celeste taking care of switching off all the lights behind them.
With each time they were there, the place was feeling a little bit more like home - and Celeste couldn't deny that despite being far from her friends, the combination of things she felt here really felt right.
The prenatal ward was really not meant for spouses staying over, and besides Logan had Finny to think about. Rory had worried about Finny herself, the boy having been a little frightened as he'd seen her going through one of the contractions, but it hadn't really taken her a lot to convince Logan to go home - she was stabile for now, only really having a contraction every few hours by now, clearly the meds doing their work. But Logan felt conflicted nonetheless, wanting to be at two places at once.
Sure, they had Maya, and even Finn had stayed around their place to help out, but surely the boy needed at least one of his parents around. He wouldn't catch him awake once he arrived, that he knew, but at least in the morning they could have breakfast together and then go see Rory.
Logan arrived in the darkness of the night, thankfully finding a parking spot in front of their house, his entire body tired from a full day of tension. Yet, he felt a strange adrenaline rush still, and he was unsure if he could actually go to sleep after all of this.
The house was quiet, and he felt a little out of place, having not really had a lot time to get used to the place. He climbed the stairs to the kitchen, realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch he'd had with Finn at their penthouse before heading for the office. The kitchen was also still largely in boxes, Maya only really having filled the fridge with their grocery delivery planned for that evening, thankfully after the power had returned. Things like that really weren't in Maya's job description, and he made a mental note to thank her tomorrow for going above and beyond when they'd needed her.
Logan found a quiche, goat cheese with tomato, by the looks of it from the fridge, and decided to have a slice. Finding a knife was another story. He went through the drawers, most of them empty, and looked into a few boxes, finally finding a steak knife that would just have to do and dug into the pie. Seeing the box of alcohol they'd had moved from the penthouse, he briefly considered having a scotch - it would certainly help him calm down, but he reconsidered. In this situation with so many people depending on him, he wasn't expendable, he couldn't just pull the plug and sleep it off. He needed to stay alert, not knowing when he might be needed - and he probably was going to have to be like that for years to come. For a split second he missed his bachelor life, but he knew better than to dwell on it. He knew that that life wouldn't have made him as happy he was with the life he had, despite the exhaustion, responsibilities and coming sleepless nights.
He swallowed the last bite of his quiche and placed the rest back in the fridge. Then after a glass of water, lucky to find a glass, he climbed another flight of stairs towards the bedrooms.
The sight he saw was really quite endearing - Finn sleeping on the daybed in Finny's room, some random throw blanket pulled over him, and Gigi on the other daybed in the nursery, door wide open, clearly having brought down her own blanket from upstairs, it's characteristic texture definitely not registering for Logan as something of theirs. Clearly the evening had been interesting.
He went to bed himself, leaving his door slightly ajar as well, somehow it seemed inappropriate to close it fully, with his son right outside, with Finn and Gigi, being closer to Finny than Logan was. What he felt was interesting - it was a sense of family - the kind that he had never felt in this capacity. He felt support. His eyes fell shut as soon as his head hit the pillow, only for a split second making him wonder who had actually bothered to make his bed.