Chapter 26

May 5th, 2017, Stars Hollow, CT

Rory was watching her mother sit and consume the fresh off the printer's copy of Rory's book - 'Gilmore Girls'. Its cover showed a watercolor painting of the gazebo turned into a carouselle - life's wheel that just kept on turning, various characters, none of them drawn out to specifics, shown with various levels of transparency - as they slided and in and out of people's lives. She'd thought of the concept herself and was proud of it. The book itself wasn't terribly long - just 150 pages or so, it having taken a lot of trimming from the original 300. It's font was something Rory didn't particularily agree on - Utopia and in a little larger size than she would've originally liked. All because this was so not supposed to be an entirely serious read and according to the publicist Rory had been working with that was supposed to attract a readership ready for something fresh yet homey, but still light to take on during the weekend or evenings. And in a way they had been right too - it contained a fair amount of quirkiness, humour and pop-culture references, which supposedly set her book part from the rest.

Rory had probably never seen her mother read anything this intensely. But it was almost like she was scanning through it, inspecting it. But there were few people who's opinion she counted on as much as hers.

She wasn't sure what her mother was thinking, to be honest. She knew it was a lot that she'd trusted her to write it in the first place. And it had been Lorelai's own request that she'd never wanted to read it before now. She'd offered the final version to her six weeks ago - but she was like her daughter, wanting to feel, see and smell the book in her hands. She'd sounded so sure, she'd love it.

Rory wished she'd had more time. But her schedule had been pushed since because of her rapidly approaching due date - this way she was still able to do a couple of book readings in the coming weeks. And in that sense she wasn't even sure if she was happy with the book herself - she'd read it from cover to cover dozens of times, but she was getting tunnel vision by now, not really being able to view it from anyone else's perspective. It had happened to her before with some of her longer journalistic pieces too, that was when a fresh pair of eyes came in handy - but there really weren't any that she trusted around. Paris was having some publicity drama with her company a certain celebrity having not loved some of their policies - nothing major but enough to not give her much breathing space. Lane would just praise whatever she wrote, her grandmother would hardly think it was proper to be writing about their family like that at all, and there was no Logan anymore. Jess... well she hadn't wanted to include Jess ever sense she'd sensed he might still be interested in her, even if he hadn't specifically done or said anything - there was just something in the way he'd looked at her during her mom's wedding, that had made her just stayed clear, having too much on her mind already.

"So?" Rory asked, eagerly and hopefully, seeing her mother put down the book, having finished it. Lorelai had fingers between a couple of sections of the book, as if bookmarks.

Lorelai opened her mouth and then closed it again. Then opened it again to say something, but shut it yet again. It was not something that happened a lot.

"What?" Rory frowned, becoming suddenly afraid of her words. And for good reason.

"I just have no words," Lorelai exclaimed, looking a little pale in her face.

"Good astonished or bad astonished?" Rory inquired, still a little hopeful.

"Good? In what scenario could this be considered good!? I mean - had it been written by someone else about someone else then maybe? But for you to analyze me, pinpoint my every flaw like that?" Lorelai stood up and rambled, raising her voice. Rory would never thought her mother would react quite this badly.

"And my own flaws too. There are plenty there, probably more. It was supposed to be realistic - it's non-fiction! I couldn't just lie, could I?" Rory defended herself, feeling like her comfortable seated position with her legs spread out on the couch, hardly any position feeling comfortable in her state for a long time, was not entirely enabling her to sound convincing.

"You make me sound like this teenager who never grew up!?" Lorelai reflected.

It really hadn't been the brightest idea perhaps to show the woman who had birthed her the mirror, and up close.

Rory recalled the two of them making jokes about that one time, it was why she hadn't felt the need to held back in her word. And her editor had loved it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," Rory replied, recalling specifically how her editor had suggested not ironing out the characters but embracing their faults, perhaps even at times embellishing them a little. Rory could already feel her throat swelling up and panic rise - this was no first printout or first draft that her mother was holding but the finished product. There were 5000 of them, and another 5000 to be printed after the first week's results were out.

Rory had truly believed the book had been good - witty. Certainly less brutal than her mother comparing her grandmother to Stalin that one time. But this was her, somewhat skewed viewpoint of it. She really didn't know what to think anymore.

By then Lorelai had gone to cite specific extracts from the book, reading them out word for word, while all Rory could hear and feel by now was her thumping heart and the feeling of tears swelled up her eyes. She hadn't even been able to get this right. She had been so sure she had. The only thing she literally had considered wrong with this entire process had been the speed of which she'd needed to get it out. She didn't have time to wait until Christmas, like most author choose to do.

But as her mother indeed read it - she could indeed see how it could be hurtful. The way she'd shaped her according to herself, expected her to make similar choices, how her way was always right and how even in one place she'd included a bit about how deep down her mother and grandmother had a lot in common. Was it her pregnancy-brain? Was it all that she'd been going through? Or was it truly proof, once and for all, that she wasn't cut out for this? Was she this incapable of learning from past mistakes?

Everyone had told her to take the book to Jess, but after the first few chapters she hadn't, on top of the reasons mentioned earlier also because she had wanted to postpone telling Jess about the pregnancy, not wanting him to be yet another person questioning her about the paternity question or seeing this as some type of a chance for him. She didn't want to deal with that side of him.

"I just don't know who you are anymore? You never used to be like this! You never lied to me! You never disrespected me like this!" Lorelai exclaimed, jumping into another kind of accusations entirely catching Rory by surprise.

By lying she was referring to the series of lies Rory had continued to tell her mother since her wedding about the baby and the baby's father. First she'd claimed not to know who the person was, then around the time when Lorelai had begun requesting Rory to tell the father - and not do what Anna did to Luke, she'd switched over to what was technically true that she had in fact known all along who the father was and had now told him. She'd lied about the father's connection to her, his location, his intentions - how he wanted no part of it, then switching over to how 'they'd decided' on something or other. She'd lied straight to her face as Lorelai had gone down a long list of some more, some less likely suspects. Of course she had suspected Logan too, in fact he was probably very high on the culprit list for Lorelai. Rory was pretty sure it was the secrecy that led her to think that. But when the baby was concerned, her mind was made up - and not telling her mother was a part of protecting her child and Logan from all the things that could go wrong.

Lorelai continued to ramble, saying among other things how much she'd helped her since she'd moved back to Connecticut, how much she'd put her own life on hold because of her in the past and how clearly she'd made some big mistakes along the line raising her. It was the biggest fight they'd ever had, and harshest words she'd ever heard from her mother's mouth. She knew her mother could sometimes say things she didn't really mean, but right now being at a low point after signing those papers with Logan as she was - Rory just shut off, feeling like she was getting stabbed right to the heart.

A week earlier she'd told her mother she was going to see a therapist, that she needed someone to work things out with. Lorelai hadn't taken that terribly well either, and Rory could even understand how her mother didn't have exactly the best experiences with therapists, but honestly - she'd already then felt like she'd mocked her.

She couldn't afford going, not without someone else's help. She had asked for financial help from Cristopher with the baby, but not for herself, figuring she still had a few more months before the due date and was expecting to wait out her first payment on the book and deal with that part herself, still having some pride in her. But right now - all she felt like doing with the book was throwing them all out. Burnign them. Hiding any shred of evidence she'd ever attempted this in the first place. She felt incredibly embarrassed, worse that after what Mitchum had said that one time. The most important person in her life hated it and hated her for writing it. And within a week that book was going to hit the stores. Then everyone they knew would be talking about it, all these things her mother kept listing, and still was, while Rory was in her own mind, shut down from the outside world, would be out there for good. She felt like a failure yet again.

She wasn't just shocked by her mother's words, her judgment, but also the way she just seemed to be unloading onto her insecurities - like she was doing it on purpose. By this time in her rambling she'd already mentioned 'Didi' the code word for Logan a couple of times, as the prime suspect for the baby's daddy, and how he was to blame for all of this - how he'd never been a good influence on her and how he led her to believe she could do things like this - referring to the book in question. So what, if Jess had probably had even more role in encouraging her to write this - that her mother had never really recognized. But then again - Jess had seen no more than the first three chapters.

Lorelai went on to talk about Rory taking Christopher's money, how she was taking the comfortable and convenient route, while Rory should've figured things out with the baby's dad - how she'd thought she'd raised her better than that. Lorelai even told her how she'd screwed up big time - how she'd screwd up and kept looking for easy exits.

Rory felt the baby kick, jolting her out of her haze. Lorelai was still going strong - her earlier shortage of words having exchanged for something very different.

Unable to hear any more of this, Rory just got up and grabbed her purse from her room and walked out the door the next moment, making her exit in her grandfather's old car. She drove to Hartford and had she not needed to pee, she would've just called her editor right there in the parking lot of the Gilmore mansion.

But after she'd relieved some pressure, had a glass of water, her legs already beginning to cramp up a little like they often did these days, she tried to calm down and think practically.

"Hey, this is Rory," she said, calling her editor. Her voice was shaky the entire time during the call, as she hesitatingly asked if there was any way to keep the book off the shelves, run another round of edits or pull it altogether. She hated making that call. She'd heard people joke about authors like she'd become.

Since she'd already signed all the papers, the money had already been spent, what she got in return was some laughter and a question - 'Are you out of your mind?'

She might've well been.

But that was what one got going at this alone, without any connections. She hadn't had her choice of editors, it was just the one publishing house, a small one in NYC that had wanted her. She'd had no leverage, even the contract hadn't been that great. But she'd been grasping at straws.

Rory was visibly shaking once she got off the phone. Her entire plan was falling apart, and, god, how she just wished she could call Logan right now. Not even ask for favors or money… while she certainly could've used both right now, but just to hear him. A few supportive words - someone to tell her 'it was going to be okay'.

Rory felt utterly stuck. The most important figure in her life for so long, her mother, hated her. And sure, they'd had fights - but this was the worst by far. Her mother was about to hate for a long time once the book was out and people read it.

She never wanted her grandmother to read the book, if it really was so shameful, so Rory did the only other thing she could think of.

"Dad?" Rory began after she'd dialed his number, breaking down to a million little pieces right then. Nothing was working out like it was supposed to. And she was running out of people to turn to. "I didn't know who else to call," Rory sobbed.


October 18th, 2022, Cambridge, MA

"So that's when you moved in with your dad?" Logan asked.

"I did…," Rory replied with a sigh. "He bought up almost every single copy of the book, paid the settlement for breaking my contract, and... helped me pay for my therapy," Rory added.

"Was it really that bad? Or was it your mother just being a drama queen?" Logan asked, trying to put a lighter spin on this. Telling this hadn't been easy for Rory, he could tell.

"It was a little of both I guess. And sure - she apologized, and I did. I hoped that pulling it off the market would fix things but ever since every time I see her I see how she looks at me - how she's so disappointed. I had already written those things - it's like that can't be erased," Rory explained.

"Disappointed? You wrote a book! For having a child alone and creating this whole new life for yourself? Is she blind?!" Logan exclaimed with a snort, clearly feeling a little defensive towards Rory already. Lorelai had never been his favorite person in the world but for her having made things even worse for Rory, which he'd believed to be impossible, made him, quite frankly, hate the woman.

"Things between my dad and her hadn't been that great for years so I guess she took that too as an insult at the time. Also there's the paternity issue. At times she's been convinced it had to have been you, even if she doesn't really know how the timeline adds up, at times she'd had all these other theories. I think this really is what started this whole thing - that she didn't trust me and that she considered it as the biggest insult that I would want to keep it to myself," Rory explained.

"Even more so, I am surprised you didn't tell her, or haven't told her yet," Logan said, innocently.

"A lot of time has passed. These days we barely talk, we exchange polite messages at holidays and put up a nice act while Em is around. But we never touch these subjects. Not the book, you, me living in Boston or taking dad's money… The money probably upset her too, since while she could offer me a roof over my head and some kind of a job, she never really accepted people just taking the 'easy' route, you know?" Rory explained, using air quotes - not something she did often.

"I don't get her…," Logan replied, honestly.

"I think she just… doesn't understand how I can be so different from her. How all the things she would've done in my situation, and trust me - I heard every scenario a thousand times while I worked with her at the Inn for a while there, she would've done so many things differently," Rory added. "Sure all that came with 'everything will be alright' and 'we'll manage' as I expected and so on, but I felt like she kept forgetting it wasn't her baby but my baby," Rory explained.

"And now I guess, I too resent her - for just being the way she was - for smothering me, for not doing me any good when I was alreayd in bad shape, but also for sinking my book. Despite her words, it might have been alright. She was just so subjective about it. She could probably read into a number of things more than actually stood on paper and others would've been able to comprehend. I had to act fast so I killed it without thinking it through. And now… I am pretty sure no publicist would ever sign me even if I were to revisit the idea of writing anything like that again - not that I would," Rory continued to explain.

"You still have it? Some copies?" Logan asked.

"Somewhere in the attic, buried under my pregnancy pillow and some old boxes possibly," Rory replied, chuckling lightly, having no intention of showing it to him any time soon. But she had to admit, having shared the drama with Logan, lightened the way she saw the whole thing up considerably. How did he do it?