The Good One

by Erin Kaye Hashet

COMPLETE. Maybe the world really is overrated. But it doesn't matter. For Luke, this is where the world begins and ends, though he'd never admit it. LL.

6. Dreams In Reality

Disclaimer: They're not mine, but I wish I had a Luke to be mine.

Author's Notes: I was trying to figure out whether or not the Gilmores have another bedroom. I don't think they've ever shown another one, but let's say they do, for the purposes of this chapter.

Once again, if anything sounds familiar, it's because it's from my story "The Daddy On the Bus."

Chapter 6

Dreams In Reality

I know nothing stays the same

But if you're willing to play the game

It's coming around again

And I believe in love

But what else can I do

I'm so in love with you

Lorelai came into the kitchen where Luke was eating breakfast. Her face was pale. "Luke," she said, "we need to talk."

They'd been married for a month, and Luke had moved into Lorelai's house right after their honeymoon, in Europe. It had been wonderful to get away from everything, to have each other completely to themselves. But it was a million times more wonderful to be back in Stars Hollow, and to wake up to her every morning. It felt more like home than anything in his life ever had.

Luke looked up. "Talk about what?" He frowned. "Is something wrong?"

"No!" Lorelai laughed once, quickly, nervously. "No, no, nothing's wrong. It's nothing bad. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression it was something bad. Whoa, what am I talking about? It's not just not bad, it's good. Like, really, incredibly, life-changingly good. Well, I mean…at least I hope so. It's just…surprising, that's all. Oh," she said, seeing the look on Luke's face, "I thought I'd be able to come up with a better way to tell you, but this just took me by surprise and…" Without another word, she shoved something in front of Luke's face.

Luke blinked, trying to take in what lay in front of him. "This…" he stared. "This is one of those little pregnancy test things."

"Yes, it is."

"And…it's pink."

"Yes, it is."

"What is pink? I mean, what—what does pink mean? Does it mean you're…" He looked at her. Lorelai was beaming. "You're—you're pregnant!" he gasped.

Lorelai nodded. "Well, I have to go to a doctor to confirm it, but…"

"You're…you're having a baby," he stammered.

"It would seem that way."

He just stood there gaping, trying to take it all in.

"Luke," she said, "say something."

He made another attempt. "I'm…" he tried. "You're…" He looked into her eyes and finally smiled. "We're…we're having a baby!" He ran over and hugged her.

Lorelai laughed once and hugged him back. "I—I just can't believe this," she said. "So fast! We haven't even had time to get used to being married."

"Oh, wow," he murmured, so many emotions zinging through him that he felt dizzy.

"Are you okay with this, Luke?" She was looking at him anxiously. "I know you said you would consider having kids, but…I didn't think this would happen so fast."

Luke had never been good with babies, but having a baby with Lorelai would be different. He loved her so much that he knew he would love any child of hers. He had thought, though, that if they had a baby, they'd have more time to plan for it.

"Of course I'm okay with this," he said. "It's just…wow." He ran his fingers through his hair. "It was just not what I expected you to say."

"Oh, I know," said Lorelai, and then turned to walk away. Then she turned around and yelled, "Luke, we're having a baby!" She ran over to him and hugged him again.

(asterisk)

Luke had never felt so much at once. He was excited, thrilled, disbelieving, and terrified. He was having a baby with the woman he loved—but how would he do it? It would be up to him to raise a kid, and how the hell would he do that? How the hell had Lorelai done it? It was the scariest task that had ever been held before him. Would he really be any good at it? But then he thought: I'm going to be a daddy. They would be parents together. They would have a child who would call him Daddy and Lorelai Mommy.

He took her to the doctor, and the two of them sat there together, holding hands as they waited for the doctor to come speak to them.

Lorelai's eyes were wide and her breathing was loud. "So…" she said, "is this it? Am I really pregnant?"

The doctor smiled. "Yes," he said. "Our tests show that you are four weeks along. Congratulations."

And it was official. They sat there staring at him until finally Lorelai said, "Luke…" and they turned and hugged each other.

"Four weeks!" Lorelai said. "God, Luke! I got pregnant on our wedding night!"

Luke's face turned red. "Lorelai…" he said under his breath.

"But, Mrs. Danes?" said the doctor.

Lorelai startled a little at that. Luke knew she still wasn't used to thinking of herself as Mrs. Danes.

"We have determined," he said, "that you are carrying two fetuses."

Lorelai blinked. "What?"

"You are pregnant with twins."

They sat there mute for a full ten seconds. "Twins," Luke said faintly, re-adjusting to the idea of Lorelai's pregnancy all over again.

Lorelai looked pale. "I don't believe it," she whispered, sounding more stunned than anything else.

"We're having twins!" Luke turned to his wife and hugged her again. Lorelai managed to smile, but she appeared no less stunned.

Later she said to him, "This is freaky! This is just like in my dream!"

"What dream?"

"Didn't I tell you? Years ago I had a dream that we were married and I was pregnant with your twins."

"Oh…yeah, I think you did."

"Does this mean I'm psychic? Are all my dreams going to come true eventually? Because once I had a dream that Taylor was flying on this gigantic bird and got stuck on top of the gazebo. Is that going to happen?"

"Well, that would be entertaining, but…"

"Oh, my God!" she yelled suddenly. "I dreamed once that Rory died!"

"Rory is not going to die, and you are not psychic."

"How do you know?"

"I know. And I also know that we," he took her hands, "are having twins."

She smiled and hugged him again. "Oh, God, Luke, we're having twins."

(asterisk)

Rory was living at home that summer while she interned at a TV station in Hartford. She shrieked and hugged them both when Luke and Lorelai told her. "I can't believe this!" she exclaimed. "I'm going to have two siblings…and I'm almost twenty-one! God, I'm old enough to be their mother! I'm older than you were when you had me!"

"Don't remind me," Lorelai groaned.

Lorelai's parents were predictably thrilled. "You know, I always had a hard time imagining this moment," Lorelai said to Luke after they'd told Richard and Emily. "When they'd be happy that I was pregnant. I think my brain just has a hard time combining parents, pregnant, and happy in the same sentence."

Luke laughed. "But seriously," he said, "we need to discuss what your parents were talking about."

"How we're going to adjust to all this." Lorelai nodded. "Well, the guest room can become the nursery."

"All right," said Luke gently. "But I was thinking about money. Are we going to be able to afford this?"

Lorelai winced. "It'll be tight," she said. "But…the inn has been doing great lately, and it will probably only get better. And you said the diner's been doing good business lately, and you're Taylor's landlord. Plus, you can always rent out your old apartment if it comes to that."

Luke bit his lip and looked down. "That," he said, "will only be a last resort. Only if we really, really need the money."

He still owned the building where the diner was, and therefore his old apartment. But he hated the idea of renting it out to someone unconnected to the history behind it, someone who would take all of his father's things off the walls and re-paint and change everything. Luke himself had changed his life by marrying Lorelai, but even amid good changes, there were some things he always wanted to keep constant.

"Okay," said Lorelai, her voice understanding.

"What about when we're at work?" Luke said. "Who's going to be watching the kids then? Are we going to hire someone?"

"I guess we're going to have to," said Lorelai unhappily. "That'll get expensive, but I don't see any other option. And of course we'll have to buy all the baby supplies."

"And what about your food cravings?" he said. "Knowing you, that could get expensive, too. And you can't be drinking coffee like you do all the time. They'll be born with two heads."

He expected Lorelai to argue with him, but instead she was just looking at him with a little smile on her face. "What?" he said.

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "It's just…weird to have someone be there for me while I'm pregnant. This is so different from when I was pregnant with Rory, and…it's just weird to be sharing this with someone."

"Good weird?" he asked.

"Oh, are we really going to go through this again?" she asked him before she kissed him.

(asterisk)

Babies almost always had bad timing. Their children were no exceptions.

It was February and it was snowing when the phone rang in the diner, which was busy at the moment. He picked it up. "Hello?"

"Luke! My water broke!"

When Luke had imagined that moment, he'd thought that he'd be thrilled and would immediately drop whatever he was doing to drive Lorelai to the hospital. Instead, he found himself saying, "Now?"

"Yes, now! Get your ass down here and drive me to the hospital!"

It began to sink in as Luke hung up. The next time he'd come to the diner, he would be the father of twins. He was going to be a daddy.

"Caesar!" he yelled into the kitchen. "Finish taking orders and then lock up. My wife's having our babies!"

The snow was falling heavily, and while he was afraid of not making it to the hospital in time, he was even more afraid of getting into an accident, so he drove as slowly as possible. But they did get there in time, in fact in enough time for Rory to make it to the hospital from Yale.

He stood there next to Lorelai, losing feeling in his hand as she squeezed it with all her strength, saying gently, "Come on, Lorelai. You're doing great."

And then it was over, and they had, first, a baby girl, and then a baby boy.

There had been times in the past when Luke had thought he had been happy. All of those moments were sorrow compared to what he felt right then. Happy did not even begin to describe what he felt as he sat there with his daughter on one arm and his son on the other. They were indescribably tiny and beautiful. Luke was just sitting there with tears streaming down his face, looking at his two dark-haired, blue-eyed babies. He couldn't even speak.

They'd decided on the girl's name awhile ago: Mia Elizabeth. Deciding on a boy's name had been harder. "Maybe we should name him after somebody, too," Lorelai had said.

"Well, his name won't be William," Luke had replied. "If my dad were alive right now, he'd be telling me not to name my kid after him."

"What about for a middle name?"

Luke considered. "Well, maybe…"

They'd searched through baby name books trying to find a good first name, but could never decide on anything. Along the way, though, Lorelai had looked up her own name. "Hey," she'd said, "did you know that your name means 'light?'"

"No, I didn't."

"And did you know that my name means 'romantic siren'?"

Luke had smiled. "As a matter of fact, I did."

"And my father's name means 'powerful, rich, ruler.' Geez, Juliet was wrong."

Now, Lorelai was saying to him, as the doctor checked her blood pressure, "Okay, we cannot put this off forever, because right now we've got Mia Elizabeth and our son whose middle name is William. What is his first name?"

Luke was silent.

Lorelai turned to the doctor. "Hey," she said, "what's your first name?"

The doctor looked surprised. "John," he said.

"Well, John," said Lorelai, "you seem like a nice man. You didn't give me ice chips that served no purpose, you didn't lie to me and tell me it wouldn't hurt like hell, and you told me my babies were beautiful even though I'm sure they look exactly like every other baby you've ever delivered. So, that's his name. John William."

But they'd come up with the middle name first, so they ended up calling him Will.

If it wasn't necessary for them to have food and clothes, Luke would have stopped going to work. All he wanted to do was to stay home with his beautiful little babies. He felt so much that he thought he would burst.

As they got older, Luke could see their developing personalities. Mia was very much her mother's daughter. She laughed at a very early age, never cried when meeting new people, and delighted in everything. Lorelai said she was a much more outgoing baby than Rory had been. Will was more like Luke. He was quieter than his twin sister, and more sensitive. And like his father, he liked routine. He noticed when one of his parents was home later than usual, or if Luke was wearing a different hat.

Rory was accepted as an intern at a major TV station in New York that summer, but she turned it down for her old internship in Hartford. "But this is a big opportunity for you, honey," Lorelai said, sounding concerned. "Are you sure you want to pass it up?"

"I'm sure," Rory said, although she sounded disappointed. "My internship last summer was great, anyway. And if I'm in New York all summer, I'll miss seeing Mia and Will when they're babies. I know that would be something I'd regret when I'm older. Especially since I don't get to see them while I'm at school."

When Lorelai went back to work, they came up with a solution to who would take care of the babies. They'd pay Tobin and drop Mia and Will off at Sookie's house, along with Davey, who by then was almost three.

That September, when Rory went back to Yale for her senior year, Sookie found out that she was pregnant again.

And the next thing Luke knew, it was May and Rory was graduating from Yale. He couldn't believe it. How had the years gone by so fast? It seemed like she had just started high school. And now here she was, his little girl, all grown up and soon to be out of college, with a job lined up at the New York TV station whose internship she had rejected the summer before.

They had a big graduation party planned for her, but just before it, Sookie had complications with her pregnancy that confined her to bed to prevent her baby from being born too early. She had been planning on catering the party, but although that was now out of the question, she insisted from her bed that she knew where to get all the best food, and wrote out a list of where they could get it. Luke and Lorelai split the list up and decided to take care of it themselves.

Then, the night before the graduation, they both picked up a phone extension and called Sookie, who said, "Did you get the salad?"

"Check," said Luke.

"The dip?"

"Check," said Lorelai.

"The crab puffs, vegetables, and rolls?"

"Check, check, and…" Luke glanced at Lorelai.

"Check," she confirmed.

"The little cakes from that bakery in New York?"

There was a long silence.

"Didn't you take care of that?" Lorelai asked him.

"I thought you took care of that!"

"No!" wailed Sookie on the phone. "Rory loves those cakes! And the only place I know of that has a remotely good enough recipe is in New York!"

There was a silence while they all contemplated this. Finally, Luke said, "I could go get them."

"What?" said Sookie and Lorelai at the same time.

"Luke," said Lorelai, "did you hear Sookie say it's in New York?"

"I did," he said. "It's fine. I'll just call in the order now, and tomorrow I'll run to New York and get them."

"But tomorrow's the graduation!"

"I'll leave first thing and I'll be back with plenty of time."

"But your truck's in the shop, Luke! And I need to take the Jeep down to New Haven to meet my parents!"

"So I'll just take the earliest bus."

Lorelai looked at him. "Luke," she said, "it's just cake. It's not a big deal. You don't have to do this."

But over the course of the conversation it had become important to him.

"Yes," he said. "I really do."

But as the bus crawled back to New Haven, he wondered what he was doing there. When he'd decided to go, he'd been thinking of a time when his father had driven back to New York after visiting friends to pick up a wedge of cheese he'd forgotten there. But going to New York to get the cakes, he thought, had just been plain stupid. Rory wouldn't really care whether or not there was cake at her graduation party, but she would care whether or not he was at the ceremony.

The old woman sitting next to him asked him what brought him to New Haven, and he told her, "My daughter's graduation." He didn't even think about it. He'd been calling Rory his daughter since he and Lorelai had gotten married. But the next thing he knew, the woman was telling him about how her ex-husband hadn't been at her daughter's college graduation. Her daughter, she said, was divorced now, too, and she was afraid that her little grandson wouldn't know his father.

"When she was growing up, I was so scared that my daughter would think that her father didn't love her," the woman said. "I don't think your daughter has to worry about that."

Luke smiled at her and thanked her. The woman, of course, assumed that he was Rory's biological father. But even so, her words made him feel better. He was still smiling when the bus got to New Haven, with plenty of time to spare.

Lorelai and Mia were waiting for him when he got off the bus. Mia clapped her little one-year-old hands together and exclaimed, "Daddy!"

Luke leaned in and kissed them both. "Where's Will?"

"My parents took him for a little walk," she said. "Come on, let's go."

The ceremony was long and boring, but it was worth it to see Rory walk across the stage to graduate summa cum laude. Luke was glad to see that Christopher and his wife and daughter had come, but he had to bite his tongue to keep himself civil when he talked to him. Even though he did seem like a nice guy, Luke didn't like him and never would.

At the graduation party, Rory exclaimed, "Mom! Luke! Where did you get these cakes? They're amazing! They taste exactly like Sookie's!"

Luke and Lorelai just smiled at each other. They'd never tell.

(asterisk)

A few weeks later, Sookie and Jackson's baby was born. By being a boy, Jeremy narrowly escaped being named Colgate like Jackson wanted.

Rory and Ethan broke up shortly after graduation. It was a mutual thing, according to Rory. Their lives were just going in different directions. He was going back home, to Oregon, while she was going off to New York.

Before Luke knew it, two years had passed. That year, Luke received a phone call from Jess.

"I'm getting married," he said.

"You're what?"

"I'm getting married, Luke."

Luke blinked, and a smile slowly started to spread across his face. "Well," he said. "Congratulations!"

"We're having the wedding in Stars Hollow," Jess said. "It'll just be a small wedding, so we figure it'll be easier this way. I mean, you're there, my mother's there…"

"What about Leanne's family?"

"She doesn't really have any." Jess's tone grew serious. "She was a foster child. As soon as she turned eighteen, she was on her own."

Luke started. "Oh—"

"I know I didn't exactly have the Norman Rockwell childhood," Jess said, "but…meeting her kind of put some things in perspective for me. I didn't really have it that bad, you know? But we had a lot of the same…issues with intimacy, commitment, you know, and, well, we helped each other get over them…partly by committing to each other."

Luke laughed. "Well, good for you."

"The wedding will also be a chance for us to say goodbye," Jess said, his voice taking on a note of sadness. "Leanne has a job lined up in Tampa. We'll be moving there soon."

Luke was quiet for a minute, thinking about this.

"We'll be up to visit," Jess added quickly. "Quite a bit. And I'll give you our phone number as soon as I know it, and—"

"Jess."

Jess said, "Yeah?" like he was expecting Luke to say something more. But although neither of them said it, what they were feeling hung like a fog between them, suspended over the miles of telephone lines, and it didn't even need to be acknowledged.

And that spring, Luke stood and watched his now twenty-four-year-old nephew marry the woman he loved. He didn't doubt that Jess was madly in love with Leanne, either. Leanne was a petite, dark-haired woman who was talkative and full of energy, but had a bit of a rough edge to her. He could tell by the way Jess looked at her that he was crazy about her. It was the same way Luke had often found himself looking at Lorelai early in their relationship. Luke felt the lump in his throat growing as he stood there watching Jess stand at the altar. Jess had found happiness and had become the person he'd been meant to be.

Next to him, Liz, who had tears in her eyes, squeezed his arm. "Look at that," she said softly. "He's here because of you, you know."

Luke blushed. "Oh, I don't…"

"Seriously," Liz said. "Where do you think he'd be if he'd been with me during those years you took him in?" She looked up at Luke and smiled. "Now he has a wife and he has a future because of you, Luke."

After the wedding everyone was dancing in the town square, just as they had for Liz's wedding five years earlier. Luke looked at Lorelai and remembered how he had almost asked her to go to that wedding. He wondered what would have happened if he had asked.

"Let's dance," he said to her softly.

Lorelai looked at him in surprise. "You dance?"

"Sometimes I dance," he said. "Come on."

The two of them began to dance together, a sweet, slow waltz. Luke looked directly into her bright blue eyes and felt as though his heart would burst. "You're beautiful," he told her quietly.

"So are you," she murmured. He loved her so much.

(asterisk)

Not long after that, Rory began working for CNN, and the next year, the same year that Leanne gave birth to a baby girl, Elsa, Rory was transferred to Atlanta to work for CNN's International News. She was thrilled about it. "I can't believe this," she said excitedly. "Christiane Amanpour worked there, too! This is huge!"

Luke and Lorelai were both happy for her, and gave her their congratulations. But privately, after Rory left, Lorelai cried in Luke's arms.

"I can't believe this," she sobbed. "I mean, part of me is thrilled, because she's dreamed of this for so long and now it's happening, but…God, Luke, Atlanta? And that'll just be her home base…she'll be traveling all over the world, Luke! It'll be so dangerous! And I've gotten used to her being just a car ride away!"

"Shhh…" Luke soothed, patting her hair. He knew exactly how she felt. He ached inside, thinking of Rory being so far away from them, seeing such danger. But while it was a difficult thing to deal with, he also felt a strange sense of calm. He was nervous for Rory, but although he couldn't even explain it, he had faith in her. "Rory will be okay," he said to Lorelai. "She will. She'll be great at what she does. And she'll be home for the holidays."

The twins were four by then, and going to preschool. Mia had just started ballet class at Miss Patty's. She couldn't stop talking about it. "Ooh! Today at ballet class we did plies and Jenny from preschool was there and Miss Patty said she met this man and he was famous back in eighteen sixty nine!"

Will, as he had been as a baby, was much quieter. Luke and Lorelai were reading to the twins every night, and it wasn't long before they figured out that Will could read on his own. Now he spent a lot of time flipping through the pages of his books while listening intently to the music that Mia was busy dancing crazily around the room to.

Over the next year, they'd watch CNN, often seeing something with Rory's name on it. She wasn't ever in front of the camera herself, but she wrote and produced pieces on many international crises. "The one good thing about all this," said Lorelai, "is that I now have absolutely no excuse for not knowing what's going on in the world. Rory's giving me a reason to be able to say in conversation, "So what are your thoughts on the recent developments in the Middle East?"

Rory sent postcards from the places she visited, always sounding enthusiastic and exuberant. But when she called home, her tone was much more serious. She'd seen impoverished villages and buildings that had been bombed. One time, she called home in tears. "I just watched a little boy die," she sobbed. "There was gunfire and someone shot him and I saw the whole thing!"

Luke felt his heart breaking. Rory had been a very lucky child. She'd grown up loved and protected in a very sheltered environment, without ever experiencing much serious pain. Lorelai had been there to protect her, and when she hadn't, there'd been Luke, or anyone else in Stars Hollow, there to yank her out of the way of speeding cars. But out there in the real world, speeding cars ran wild, and now she had to learn to deal with them.

Luke looked at his little daughter and son and shuddered. They were so young now, and so happy most of the time, but someday they would have to deal with the real world on their own. Luke knew, and Lorelai felt the same way, that he would do anything to protect them, and would prevent them from experiencing pain to the best of his ability. But he realized then that as much as he wanted to protect them from the evils of the world, he couldn't deny to them that those evils existed.

(asterisk)

Rory came home for Christmas in 2011, and everyone was thrilled. Mia was jumping up and down and Will was beaming with excitement at seeing his big sister again. Lorelai and Luke were beside themselves at seeing her again, and Rory was grinning from ear to ear. She seemed a million times happier than she ever had on the phone.

When she got a moment alone with her mother and stepfather, Rory said, "Well, I have a couple of pieces of news."

"A couple? You work for CNN. I'd hope you'd have more than that," said Lorelai.

Rory smiled. "Personal news, I mean."

"Oh? Good or bad?"

"Good. Very good." Rory stopped and took a deep breath. "Well, first of all, I met someone."

"What?!" exclaimed Luke, just as Lorelai said, "When? Why did I not know about this?"

"I wanted to wait until I was sure," said Rory. "And…well, I'm pretty sure now."

"Who is he?" Lorelai demanded, obviously still in shock.

"His name is Gabriel Callahan."

"How did you meet him? Where is he from?"

"I met him in Atlanta," she said. "When I was there, before I started doing some major traveling, I was part of this book discussion group, and I met him there. He's a lawyer, and he went to law school in Georgia, but he's actually originally from Hartford."

"Hartford."

"Yes. He went to Boston College, he was an English major there."

"And…how long have you been together?" Lorelai asked, crossing her arms.

"Almost a year," Rory answered, looking very uncomfortable.

"Well, Rory, that's great," said Luke a bit too enthusiastically, trying to ease the tension. "Are we going to get to meet him?"

"Actually, that brings me to my other piece of news," said Rory, smiling nervously. "Gabriel and I both really miss home, so…we think we're going to look for jobs here in Connecticut and move back here."

"Really?" said Luke just as Lorelai said sharply, "You're what?!"

"Mom!"

"You're just moving back here, just like that? What about CNN?"
"I don't think that's going to be my thing, after all," Rory said quietly. "Like I said, I miss home. And…I don't know, TV was never my thing. What I would really love is to get into print journalism, I think."

Lorelai was standing there with a disbelieving look on her face. "So that's it," she said. "You're giving up, just like that? Just because you had some rough times? Because you got a little homesick?"

"I'm not giving up, Mom! I just don't want this anymore!"

"But you've always wanted this!" Lorelai cried. "Ever since you were young. You always wanted to travel and see the world! When you were five and people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, you said, 'I want to be a traveler who goes all over the world!'"

"Well, it turns out the world is overrated," Rory retorted. "I'd prefer to be back home. And so would Gabriel."

"Gabriel," Lorelai repeated, aghast. "So is that what this is about? You're throwing away your career because of some guy?"

"No!" cried Rory.

Lorelai's eyes widened. "Are you pregnant?"

"No, of course not!" Rory blew a frustrated breath of air out of her cheeks. "But someday I might be. And when I do have kids, I don't want to be off in a foxhole while they're having their first steps."

Lorelai shook her head. "I can't believe this. I never for a minute thought that you would give up your lifelong dreams over a guy."

Rory stood up, tears in her eyes. "I'm happy about this, Mom. I don't know why you aren't, too." Then she turned and ran upstairs.

Luke looked at Lorelai in bewilderment. "What the hell was that about, Lorelai? I thought you'd be thrilled to have her close to home."

"I am, Luke," she said, a bit more calmly. "But…I just can't believe she'd walk away from an opportunity like this. She's got an Ivy League degree, an incredible job, she gets to travel and see the world…all the things I never got to do. And she's giving it all up over a guy. That's something I would do. Or would have done years ago."

"She's not you, Lorelai," Luke said quietly. "She knows what she wants. And she wants home."

"But she's always wanted to see the world! Ever since she was old enough to have dreams, Luke."

"But sometimes dreams change," he said gently. "You didn't always want to own your own inn. I didn't always want to run a diner. Hell, I didn't always want to be married with kids! And now…now I wouldn't change anything in my life for the world."

Lorelai was silent, contemplating this.

"You two aren't going to be mad each other all through Christmas, are you?" he said. "She's going to be living here, and she may very well end up marrying this guy. It would probably be better to make up sooner."

Lorelai sighed and was quiet for a long time. "I'll be upstairs," she said finally, and turned and went to look for Rory.

(asterisk)

A couple of months later, Rory and Gabriel had both found jobs: hers writing for the Hartford Courant, his as a public defender. That was when Luke and Lorelai first met him. "Talked to my parents, and apparently Mr. Callahan is from some rich Hartford family," Lorelai told Luke before they met him. "But apparently he's like the black sheep or something because he didn't go into his father's law firm and bucked tradition. I like this kid already."

Both Luke and Lorelai liked him even more after meeting him. Gabriel was tall and handsome, with light brown hair, green eyes, and a warm, genuine smile. He was polite and had a both good sense of humor and a friendly, easy way of speaking. He was a few years older than Rory, and against his family's wishes, he'd joined a law firm in Atlanta instead of his father's in Hartford. That increased Lorelai's approval of him tenfold. But recently, he'd realized that he would rather do something that contributed to society than defend corporate greed, so he'd decided to start defending people who couldn't afford lawyers. He'd also opted to move closer to home. Although he didn't always get along with his family, he missed them and wanted to be closer to them. That increased Luke's approval of him tenfold.

More importantly, Gabriel really seemed to be in love with Rory, and she seemed to feel the same way. Apparently, they had a lot in common, too. Over dinner, they got into an impassioned argument over James Joyce, and Lorelai threw Luke a look that said Yep, match made in heaven.

Barely a month later, they were engaged, and later that year, Luke stood there with tears in his eyes as Rory walked down the aisle. This was it. His daughter had really grown up into a beautiful, talented young woman. As they stood there, she and Gabriel looked as if they had found the great happiness of their lives, the way he and Lorelai had.

The reception was in the town square in Stars Hollow, and all the townies were crying themselves, remembering Rory as a child and lamenting the years gone by. Mia and Will, who had been the flower girl and ring bearer respectively, were having the times of their lives. Mia was dancing around crazily, the way she often did at home, and showing off the dance she'd learned at Miss Patty's.

Rory and Gabriel shared their first dance, and then, Rory danced not only with her father, but with her mother and stepfather as well. Luke felt the tears welling up in his eyes all over again as they shared a dance. When it was over, he kissed her cheek and said, "I'm so proud of you."

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Rory and Gabriel bought a house in Stars Hollow, which was wonderful. It made up for all the lost time while she'd been working for CNN. They came over for dinner quite frequently, which Luke and Lorelai were savoring. Mia and Will were thrilled as well that they got to see their big sister so much more. Currently, Rory was both writing for the Courant and working on a book that discussed in detail some of the injustices she'd seen in foreign countries.

The twins were in first grade now. Both of them were excellent students whom their teachers had nothing bad to say about. Mia was still taking those dance lessons, and was still her happy-go-lucky self, breezing through life and finding something new to enjoy every day.

Will was different. Like Lorelai said Rory had at his age, he was constantly reading. He'd also started taking piano lessons, finally putting the piano in the living room to use. He was surprisingly a natural at it. "Where did he get that from?" Lorelai said to Luke one day in astonishment. "Neither of us has any musical talent. Is it some kind of recessive gene that we both passed on to him?"

But Will was also coming home from school crying some days, which had his parents very concerned. He wouldn't tell them what was wrong, no matter how much they asked, until finally Luke took him out to Johnson's for an ice cream. "It's gym class," Will sniffled. "I can't throw, I can't catch…I can't do anything, and everybody laughs at me!"

Luke was surprised. "Oh, Will," he said sympathetically, reaching over to ruffle his son's hair. "Don't worry about that. They don't know anything." He thought for a moment. "Why don't we play catch when we get back home? Get you some practice."

"No, thanks," mumbled Will.

"Why not?" Luke asked. "You're not going to get better at it if you don't work at it! You need to practice it."

"I don't want to practice it, Dad!" Will's voice rose as he spoke, and Luke was taken back by his intensity.

"Okay," he answered quickly.

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Rory and Gabriel were over at Luke and Lorelai's house for dinner one night, as they were quite frequently, when Rory said, "We have an announcement to make."

Luke and Lorelai glanced at each other. "A married couple with an announcement," Lorelai said, her tone full of hopeful anticipation. "That can only mean one thing…right?"

Rory nodded, smiling hugely. "I'm pregnant," she said.

Lorelai's jaw dropped before she yelled, "Congratulations!" and hugged Rory, then Luke. Happy but stunned, Luke hugged her back. "Oh, my God, Luke, we're going to be grandparents! I'm only forty-four and I'm going to be a grandmother!"

"Grandparents," Luke murmured, still stunned. He couldn't believe it. He'd only recently begun to experience fatherhood, and now he'd be a grandfather, too.

"And you two!" Lorelai said to Will and Mia. "You two are going to be an aunt and an uncle!"

Mia said, "What?" just as Will protested, "But uncles are old!"

After they'd toasted with ginger ale, Lorelai asked, "So, have you thought about names? Because I recommend waiting until you're done with the Demerol, lest we end up with another Lorelai who we have to think up a nickname for."

"Well," said Gabriel, "we're thinking about naming the baby after a character from literature."

"I still like Brett Ashley," said Rory.

"No! Please! I told you, I hate Hemingway!" Gabriel protested. "How about Emma?"

"Flaubert or Austen?"

"Either one, really."

"Well, one's a meddling busybody and one cheats on her husband and commits suicide, so I'd say Emma's a no."

"What about Anna? As in Karenina?"

"Okay, good rule of thumb: let's not name our baby after anyone who killed herself!"

"How about Jane? Or Dominique?"

"Hmmm…well, assuming we're talking Bronte and Rand, those are possibilities."
"These are all girl's names," Lorelai interrupted. "How do you know it's a girl?"

Rory patted her stomach and smiled absently. "I just know," she said.

Sure enough, months later, after Gabriel called Luke and Lorelai excitedly and told them that Rory was in labor and they should get down to the hospital as soon as possible, and the two of them, along with Mia and Will, had sat outside the room for hours, the new father emerged beaming to tell them to come see baby Caddy.

"Oh, my God," Lorelai whispered. For once, she was speechless as she held her first grandchild with a huge smile on her face.

Luke felt indescribable as he held his baby granddaughter. He felt incredible love for her, the same love he had for his children without the anxiety that came along with it. "She's beautiful," he said, all choked up.

"Her name is Caddy?" Lorelai asked.

"Candace Lorelai, to be exact," Rory said, smiling. "We finally decided on a name."

"And what novel did that come out of?"

"Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury," said Gabriel promptly.

Lorelai's expression was blank. "Refresh me. I think I dropped out of high school before I got to read that book."

"Well," said Rory, "Caddy Compson is a girl who grows up in a very wealthy family in the 1920s, and she's very beautiful and very caring. Her youngest brother is retarded, and she's the only one who can understand him. But she has a rebellious spirit, and she ends up getting pregnant before she's married. Her family casts her out and won't even let her see her daughter, but she never stops caring for them."

Lorelai wrinkled her forehead. "So you named your daughter after a 1920s slut?"

"No," said Rory. "I named her after a woman who loved her family even under the worst of circumstances, and who made the best out of what she had for her daughter's sake."

Lorelai smiled and closed her eyes, seeming touched but deep in thought. "Well," she said, "when you put it that way, I don't think you could have come up with a better name."

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"Daddy, what are you making?"

It was a couple of weeks before Lorelai's forty-fifth birthday. Luke glanced up from his table in the corner of the basement to see Mia standing at the top of the basement steps.

"Okay, come down here and I'll tell you, but it's a secret," Luke said, motioning for her to come toward him. Mia ran eagerly down, and just as she did, Will appeared at the top of the stairs.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Okay, you come down here, too," said Luke, and his son joined them. "All right," Luke continued, "you two have to promise you won't say anything, but I'm making your mom a clock for her birthday."

"Really?" said Mia.

"How are you doing that?" asked Will.

"Well, I'm just taking an old clock and putting it into a new frame," he said. "And I'm carving the frame with these designs that I hope your mom will like."

"Cool!" said Mia.

"But," Luke said seriously, "like I said, you two may not spoil the surprise for your mom, and," he pointed at them for emphasis, "you may not go anywhere near this table. Understood?" The twins nodded.

"Good," he said, and went back to work.

The day before Lorelai's birthday, Luke made dinner, and when it was done, he yelled, "Okay, dinner's ready, come eat!"

Lorelai came down from her room, and Mia came out of her bedroom, which had been Rory's, but Will was nowhere to be found.

"Will!" Luke called again. "Hey, Will, it's dinnertime!" Still no answer.

Lorelai frowned. "Where is he?"

"I thought he was in the basement using the computer," said Luke. He opened the basement door and called, "Will?" Hearing no answer, he walked down the steps. "Will?" He checked the computer area where Will had been playing games. He was nowhere.

"Will?" Luke ran up the basement steps and searched the rest of the house, then ran upstairs and checked Will's bedroom, along with the bathrooms and his and Lorelai's bedroom. "Will?"

He ran back downstairs. Lorelai's face looked pale. "Is he out in the yard?" she asked. Luke ran outside, beginning to panic, and yelled, "Will! Will, answer me!" No one did.

Becoming shaky of breath, Luke saw Babette standing on her porch and yelled, "Babette! Have you seen Will?"

Babette frowned and shook her head. "No, can't say I have. Why? Has he gone missing?"

Luke didn't bother to answer. He just ran back into the house and blurted to Lorelai, "He's not there. Babette hasn't seen him."

Lorelai grabbed a chair and looked as if she was going to faint. "Oh, my God," she said.

"Don't panic," said Luke, doing his best to keep his voice calm. "This is Stars Hollow. He can't have gone far. Someone is bound to have seen him." Lorelai was starting to hyperventilate. "Here. I'll go out and look for him, you call everyone we know and see if they've seen him."

It was dark out, and his panic was rising by the minute. Luke could not remember ever being so scared in his life. "Will!" he screamed as he went around looking. "Will!" He wasn't at the diner. He wasn't at Doose's. He wasn't in the town square. He wasn't in any of the stores, most of which were closed by then, anyway.

Luke stopped and tried his best to catch his breath. Had Will drowned or been hit by a car? Had he been kidnapped? Luke had always thought that kidnapping could never happen in Stars Hollow. God, I've been stupid. I've sheltered my kids too much, he thought angrily as his body started shaking with fear.

"Will!" he yelled again. He ran to the lake, over to the bridge where so many important things seemed to happen.

And there, in the same place Jess had been years ago after the car accident, was his little boy, staring into the water with a tearstained face.

Luke stopped. "Will," he said, his voice breaking.

Will looked up, new tears in his eyes. "I broke the clock, Dad. I'm sorry."

Luke blinked.

"I was in the basement trying to practice throwing a ball and catching it and it just hit the table by accident. I'm sorry," he sobbed.

So many emotions hit Luke at once—relief, guilt, anger at himself—but above all, he felt an incredible burst of love. Without a word, he picked Will up and kissed his forehead. Then he carried him all the way home.

A white-faced Lorelai met them at the door. "Will!" she cried, running over to give him a kiss. "Are you all right? Is he all right?" she asked Luke franticly.

"He's fine," Luke assured her. "He needs to get to bed."

Luke carried him up the stairs to his bedroom, turned down the bed, and gently laid him down on it. He kissed his son again. "I love you, Will," he said.

"I love you, too," Will murmured.

Still dazed by everything, Luke went downstairs. Lorelai was on the phone, calling back everyone she'd called asking about Will. "Patty! Hi, thanks for all your help, but we've found Will, Luke just came in with him…yes, he's all right…"

Luke wandered over to the window and stared outside, at the town that had been his since he was born. He remembered what Rory had said just before she'd moved back: "It turns out the world is overrated."

He wondered whether she was right. Maybe the world really was overrated. But it didn't matter. To Luke, this was where the world began and ended, and he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

To be continued…

A/N: Sorry, I just had to throw in a BC reference! (I'll be a junior there in the fall.) And, by the way, read The Sound and the Fury if you haven't already. It's very confusing, but once you figure it out, it's an awesome book. And I really do see a lot of parallels between Caddy and Lorelai.

Lots of interesting things happened while I was writing this chapter. I finally won expert Minesweeper, for one thing. (I'm obsessed with that game. According to my roommate I even talk about it in my sleep.) And a good deal of this chapter was written on the commuter rail from Lowell to Boston.

Seven is a lucky number. There'll be seven Harry Potter books. There will hopefully be seven seasons of Gilmore Girls. And there will be seven chapters of "The Good One." So the next chapter will be the last. Stay tuned, and thank you all for reading.

Lyrics by Carly Simon