Chapter 20

Rory's anger towards Logan acted as a fuel. Where before she had been hesitant about the story, about exposing the fraud Logan had committed and the lies he'd told in order to start up his business and the shady actions he'd taken to keep it prospering, now Rory felt nothing but assured. After the initial shock and concern about the subpoena she'd been served had worn off, Rory's anger at Logan turned to a driving force and the words of her story flowed out of her like a rushing river.

Her anger also spurred her on to continue to dig. She had one source, sure, but there had to be more. Others who knew what Logan had done and would be willing to speak to her; others who had suspicions and had heard rumours. She would take whatever she could find to add detail and credibility to the words she'd elegantly crafted onto the page. It was the easiest story, despite the early setbacks, that Rory had written in a while.

Her writing was also aided by the fact that she'd been in Stars Hallow for about three weeks at that point. She didn't have to worry about going in to work each day, commuting through the busy New York streets for about an hour every day. She didn't have to worry about making sure that Ricky was getting to school, getting his homework done, and eating three times a day. All she had to worry about was writing; her mother and Luke took care of the rest.

"Will you at least come out of your cave for Christmas?" Lorelai asked the evening after Rory had come back from Lane's house. The younger Gilmore had said her hellos, kissed her son and made sure he was happy and thriving, and then immediately gone into her writing cave. Her discussion with Lane, and it's fortification of her determination to not let Logan get her son, had spurred on her writing juices and she'd quickly produced another couple of pages. She'd have to edit it all down eventually, but at that moment, all Rory worried about was getting everything down.

Rory looked up from her laptop at her mom and then took in her surroundings. Her room, the bedroom she'd had as a child, had at some point become pitch black. The sun set early in December, but despite that, Rory knew it was quite late.

"What time is it?"

"It's almost midnight. Merry Christmas," Lorelai responded, giving her daughter a slightly disappointed look. Rory had missed all of Christmas Eve. Ricky had probably gone to bed hours ago and she'd missed setting out cookies or reading the Night Before Christmas. Her heart broke a little.

"Sorry I've been so unreachable these past few weeks," Rory spoke. She stood slowly, her muscles protesting the change, and stretched her tight body out. Lorelai's look turned from disappointment to compassion. She held out a mug of still steaming coffee and then turned back into the kitchen.

Rory, her muscles still sore from hours of inactivity, shuffled after her mother. She gladly took the seat at the beat up kitchen table and sipped the coffee her mother had set there.

"Are you doing okay?" Lorelai asked. She seemed a little hesitant, like she wasn't sure what Rory would say. The younger Gilmore girl, for her part, wasn't really sure of the answer herself.

"I think I'm approaching okay," she responded after several quite moments in which the mother-daughter duo sipped their coffee. "Writing this story has helped. And being here, in Stars Hallow, has been a real comfort."

"You know you can always come home, whenever you need to escape your apparently crazy life," Lorelai spoke. Rory smiled at her mother and sipped her coffee; she was so tired she could have swallowed it all in only a few gulps, but it was far too hot to do more than sip.

"I know that you love when I visit, but I can't do it every time I have a problem. I have a job and Ricky has school. These past few months have been a little crazy and I hope after Christmas is over that life will return to normal for a little while at least."

Lorelai opened her mouth to say something but, in a slightly uncharacteristic move, she quickly closed it again without speaking. Rory was pretty sure she could guess what her mother had decided against saying; it was the same thing she'd been saying for close to a decade. 'Why don't you just move back to Stars Hallow.' At that point in Rory's life, the idea sounded really good, but she still couldn't justify leaving her life in New York; there were too many things that she couldn't just drop or change. But a girl could dream.

"I'm almost done with my story," Rory said, changing the subject. "It turned out really good. Righteous anger is a great motivator."

"Have you thought about what will happen when you release this story?" Lorelai asked, her eyes peaking over the top of her coffee cup. Rory gave her mother a look. She'd changed the subject because she wanted to avoid difficult topics, and her mother had forged right ahead into one.

"Hopefully it will result in Logan getting what he deserves. He's been lying to people and those people have the right to know," Rory responded.

"But, with you and him being in the middle of a court battle, it could come back to bite you. Maybe people will think you only wrote it because you are mad at him or are trying to get back at him."

Rory pushed back her chair. She knew her mother was only looking out for her best interest, making sure that she didn't end up shooting herself in the foot with the story. But, in that moment, Rory couldn't handle it.

"I should finish my story. That way I can spend the rest of the holiday with Ricky." Rory then walked back into her room and shut the door.

"I still think you should have gone with the chiffon," Emily Gilmore spoke as she skewered a green bean and put it into her mouth. It was Christmas Day and Rory, Ricky, Lorelai, and Luke were sitting in the Gilmore's dining room in Hartford.

"Mom! I told you. This is a lowkey wedding. Nothing fancy. Nothing expensive. Nothing froufrou. We want simple, like us." Lorelai responded. She was busy pushing some sort of unidentifiable sauce around on her plate.

"Well. At least Sookie has come up with a decent menu. No burgers," Emily shot Luke a pointed look. He had been in Rory's life for essentially its entirety. He'd been dating her mother on and off for like fifteen years, and yet still Emily wasn't sure he was the right fit for Lorelai. Luckily, she had taken recently to making these small jabs and not outright saying what she thought.

"I don't know, burgers might be nice," Richard mused. Since having a heart attack several years prior, Emily had been much more stringent on the food she allowed her husband to eat and Rory suspected he was getting tired off all the white meat, fish, and vegetables. "Or a nice juicy steak," Richard continued. Rory smiled affectionately at her grandfather, but Emily only gave him a withering look.

"Richard, this is our daughter's wedding. She will not be serving burgers to her guests!"

Richard shrugged unperturbedly and went back to his turkey. Rory stifled a chuckle at her grandparents' behaviour. There were times when coming to the Gilmore's was more like preparing for battle than anything else, but there were also times when her grandparents, with their banter and relationship, were Rory's favourite people.

"Well, Mom, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that we've nailed down most of the details of our wedding," Lorelai spoke, obviously trying to change the subject. Rory shot her mother a look and Lorelai, a little reluctantly, added. "We couldn't have done a lot of this without you, Mom. Thank you." Rory quickly looked at her grandmother and saw the elder Gilmore attempting to suppress a satisfied smile. That made Rory feel great about everything she had done. If her life was a mess, at least her mother and her grandmother were on reasonably good terms. At least something was going right.