Credit goes to ASP for the characters, and for all the people that leave me reviews and tell me I should keep going.

This will be the last full length chapter a short epilogue will be up sometime this week.

R/R :)

I woke up the next morning, my throat dry and scratchy. I looked around to find my Dad making coffee and Le-Le sitting at the kitchen table. The only sounds were the distant bubbling of the coffee pot, and the fiberized sugar crunching around in Le-Le's mouth. Not a word. Last night the extent of our interaction had been a half mumble of "Are you hungry?" With both me and Le-Le responding with an absent shake of the head, and a half hearted 'good night' on Le-Le's behalf. We had all just sat in varying places in the apartment, brooding and praying for the storm cloud called Rory to break up, and float somewhere else. Le-Le had sat on her bed, with a book she wasn't reading, I had sat on the couch, my eyes on the TV that wasn't on. My Dad had wondered aimlessly looking over at Le-Le often, probably thinking the same thing that I was. What had happened up there? There were so many words you could fit in a half an hour. But for now, Dad and I didn't know what any of them were.

"Addy?" I shook myself awake, half-choking on my orange juice.

"Yeah?" I croaked, my voice feeling rusty from misuse.

"It's Wednesday so I'm going to meet my editor in New York, can you take Le-Le to her dance class?" It, of course, wasn't a question. It was a statement he made every Wednesday morning. Which meant while Dad was sitting in his editors office, with his demon-like boss glaring at him and correcting his grammar, a journalism degree from Yale loftily above his head I got to sprint out of my class like a mad fiend, almost always nearly knocking over some rich kid who shouts something assinine and snobby at me, speed walk to the apartment, grab Le-Le, drag her by her purple dance bag back to the bus stop, and then attempt to successfully fill two hours wondering around the neighbourhood of her dance studio where the only good entertainment was fifteen year old girls in spandex, and a corporate music shop that plays pop hits and where the employees always think I'm shoplifting. But none of that mattered, so I said the same response, I always gave.

"Sure."

I left early, just to escape the silence that kept ringing in my ears. To escape that dry, awkward kitchen table void that our family had never suffered from. We always had something to say. On any normal Wednesday, Dad would be bent over his review with a pen trying to catch last minute mistakes, while Le-Le peered under his arm annoying him by saying things like:

"Should there be a coma there?"

He would pretend to push her away, and would eventually end up giving up his last minute grammar efforts, and we would make fun of his boss, or turn on the radio, or talk about books, or annoying rich kids. We never were dry, and we were never boring, and never before had I been able to hear the 'snap, crackle, pop' of my cereal because my family didn't have a word to say to each other. Or maybe we had too many words to say to each other. Either way, nothing was being said.

I was on my way down the stairs, attempting to throw on my backpack, and straighten my tie, when I felt my Dad behind me.

"Addy, I'm worried about her."

I nodded sympathetically, hell I was too.

"This afternoon could you try to talk to her? She doesn't want to talk to me." I could tell this was silently ripping him up inside. Le-Le talked about everything with my Dad, but this was her first big step in growing up, one of those catastrophic moments that could change everything, and she wouldn't talk to him.

I understood why. Rory and Jess were connected, they were our parents, despite the fact that they openly loathed each other, they would forever be bound to each other by us. Right now I don't think Le-Le wanted to talk to someone with that connection.

I nodded. It had of course been on my agenda too. This morbid curiosity had been eating at me all night, it had morphed into a sort of jealousy in which Rory had actually spoken to Le-Le, had actually taken a half an hour, to speak to her. All I had gotten was a shocked stare, and my name uttered in fear and surprise.

I tried not to think about it, which of course meant in crazy logic that's all I thought about, Rory followed me around at Chilton that day, she walked around in my head. Pacing back and forth, her footsteps sounding strangely like her saying my name, over and over again. Nothing could get rid of her. Not skipping fourth period and smoking down the street with some half-acquaintances rich kids that were convinced they could be bad. Not walking by her graduation picture with the words 'fuck you' on my breath.

She was still with me, when I arrived a little breathless to our apartment.

"Le-Le we got four minutes let's go!" I panted pushing open the door.

My words echoed through the apartment. Usually Le-Le was waiting downstairs with Luke, her dance bag in hand, a smile, ready to go.

Today her dance bag was peeking out defectively from under her bed. Le-Le herself was lying on the couch starring up at the ceiling.

"I don't want to go today." She said, her voice a little far away.

Somehow this put things in perspective for me. Rory had left us. She had changed our lives forever. She had left us with that hollow feeling on mothers day, that hollow eyed look whenever Le-Le had a mother-daughter event at school, whether we were admitting it or not, she had taken a chunk of all of us with her. But I refused, adamantly refused in the way only a big brother could, that she would take my sisters passion.

"Damnit Le-Le get up." I stood over her, trying my best to give her the fierce big brother stare that would snap her back to where she belonged. Which was happy, enthusiastic, and strong.

She didn't. Instead she looked at me and said.

"I made her cry Addy." Hearing her say that, in a voice racked with guilt made me want to cry. But a more rational place in my mind reasoned that I had shed enough tears for that woman, and perhaps she should shed a few tears for us.

"Come on, lets get out of here."

I took her to the genetic hang out for Mariano's, the bridge. Her feet didn't reach the water, as she swung them. Mine just skimmed the water, enough to get my horridly ugly Chilton dress shoes wet.

"What did you say to her?" I had to know, I needed to know.

"I just wanted her to know who I was. What I liked, what I didn't. So I told her. All stupid things I guess. I told her I liked ballet, and Cats, and Manchester United, the clash, Harry Potter, the bell jar, and hanging out with my family. You know just in case she wondered, 'what might my daughter be doing, and what does she like half a world away'."

Those words made me wonder, what do parents that abandon their children think of them? Did she imagine us the way we were? Me, an innocent little six year old, whose greatest love was swings and pie? My sister, practically a baby, who ran around, who loved to hug? Or did she try to imagine us the way we could be. What we might like, and what we could be doing. Or perhaps did she not think of us at all.

"I told her I was happy without her. I just wanted to show her that maybe she had made a mistake not wanting to be my Mom, but I didn't care because I had Dad, and you, and I didn't need her." She started to cry, big tears rolling down her cheeks, and falling into the water, and she leaned her elbows on her knees, looking at her own reflection.

"She barely said anything. She just looked at me, and at first she smiled. Then she cried. As I was about to leave she said, she missed me. That she thought about us, and that she wanted to come back at see us." I wished in my heart that I could have heard her say those words. But then I wondered what my reaction would be. Would I give in? Let her come in and out of my life on her schedule not mine? Let myself become a pawn for her? Always waiting for her.

"But I told her not to bother, that I had my family, that I had Dad, and you, Luke, Grandma, and Nana, and that she wasn't apart of it."

My breath caught in my chest, because what she said was true, because she was right, I didn't need her, Le-Le didn't need her. She was apart of us, and she always would be, but we didn't need her.

She wrapped her arms around me, and cried into my chest.

"Do you think Dad's mad at me?" She sniffed.

I smiled a little bit, shook my head. "No he's proud of you." Just like I was.

There it was, all out in the open. We were going to be alright.