author's note: Thank you to everybody who has reviewed -- you guys are AWESOME. We have one more chapter after this, and then I'm finished. :-) Woo!

chapter nine

xxviii.

Luke wanted her to stay home from the wedding; barring that, he wanted Sookie, who had been unable to attend, to join them. Lorelai was against any change of their original plans.

"I'm fine, Luke," she told him, hand on his arm early Sunday. "I've rested. It's been three days. There's not much more that I can do. And we can't make Sookie come -- she's supposed to attend her cousin's shower. I wouldn't want to take her away."

"Sookie would want to be here for you."

"No, Sookie would want to take half a bakery with us to the wedding, and then she would commandeer the kitchen," Lorelai said. "I'm fine with out her -- you're fine without her."

Luke adjusted his tie once more in the mirror and grimaced at himself, both because of the outfit and because of Lorelai's attitude.

"I'm worried about you."

"I know -- but you shouldn't. If I can't get on by myself today and act as happy as possible, I will never be happy, Luke." Lorelai stopped his fidgeting with one hand and fixed his tie with the other. "I need to pretend to laugh, because it's the only way I can laugh without thinking."

Lorelai questioned if she would ever get there again; it seemed unlikely that she would find a place in herself where laughter could slip easily from her lips. However, she knew that for today at least she must try -- if not for Luke, then most certainly for her daughter.

How very noble and altruistic her bull sounded, she thought.

xxix.

Lorelai had to hand it to the Huntzbergers -- not even she could have served food and alcohol before a wedding and avoided looking a little bit trashy. Somehow, in the mess and confusion of relations and early comers, the air of impeccable and untouchable money hung heavy. God, what she wouldn't do for a little bit of the class that a few million dollars managed to bring .

She'd probably wear more rhinestone shirts, just because she could get away with it. The thought almost brought a smile to her face.

"Hi," a little girl said (and Lorelai with shock amended her assessment; it a young girl, not a little girl, and when had she become old?). She stuck out her hand. "Groom. You?"

"Bride."

"Ah, another of the Gilmores' gaggle of family and friends whom the bride doesn't seem to know."

Lorelai made an act of laughing, and many people bought it. The girl offered to her what Luke had not been able to offer earlier -- a distraction. If she pretended here that everything was okay, then it would be practice for later in the day.

"I haven't seen most of these people outside of a function since I was fifteen," she said, casting her eyes about the room as if searching for a familiar face. "I'm not even sure if I'm seeing my family or yours. I could just be recalling some guest at a dinner party that my mother hosted. Across the room, it's hard to see a resemblance to Great-aunt Agnes."

"Tell me about it," and the girl sighed. "I've been regulated to a boarding school for most of three years. The only people I'm certain that I'm related to are the ones that really scare me. Even then, I pretend like I don't see them when they motion."

"I've got an aunt like that. She's a hugger whose aura lingers long after the embrace has ended."

"Sadly enough, I know exactly whom you're speaking of. She cornered me in the kitchen, pinched my cheeks, and told me that I made a stunning bride."

"See, now, if she hadn't been drunk, it could have been any number of people. But it's two in the afternoon, so of course it was Aunt Totsy."

"By the way, my name's Imp."

"Imp?"

"It's short for Impatience. My brother thinks he's a lot wittier than he really is. Classic case of a childhood nickname gone bad."

This had to be the other sister mentioned in the wedding announcement. For someone named Patience, she looked surprisingly normal. Lorelai suspected any real trauma was probably buried deep in her subconscious, and there had to be trauma. Growing up a Huntzberger sounded vicious from what little she had garnered from the last year's conversations with Rory.

"Aren't you, like, twelve?"

"Fifteen, but it's almost the same, isn't it?"

The tall blonde woman who had been standing next to Mr. and Mrs. Huntzberger staggered past them then, nodding at the girl Patience with an larger-than-life wink. Lorelai placed a name to a face: Honor.

"I'm sorry if this is a little rude, but is your sister drunk?"

The girl gave a rather scathing look as preface to her reply. Lorelai admired it for reasons that would not have disappointed Emily Gilmore.

"She thinks my brother stole the wind out of her sails by marrying," she explained. "She was engaged in May, and her wedding's schedule for this coming June. Now, because Logan's got it in his head to go study Latin in Rome or something, he just has to get married. Plus, the girl makes my parents just hop."

"I thought it was international business," Lorelai said, ignoring the comment about Rory.

"Close enough," said Patience, grabbing a drink off of a tray as it passed her. She raised her brows at Lorelai. "Do you mind? Living through it is enough to make me wish for class A drugs. Retelling the family plotlines are enough to drive one to drink. And it is a wedding."

"Go ahead," Lorelai said. "But you're going to need a lot more to forget your genetic pool."

Patience laughed. "I keep praying that I'm gay, just for the fun. Sadly, I drive stick."

"God bless you for trying."

Honor returned then, making an exaggerated come-hither motion with her hand about two yards past Patience's back. Lorelai watched her for several minutes, mildly interested to see if she would continue standing there, even after it was apparent that Patience hadn't seen her.

She did.

"I think you're being paged," Lorelai said.

The girl looked over and sighed. "Honor wants me ,which means that Mom's got a bone to pick." She handed Lorelai her glass. "I never did catch your name."

Impishly, Lorelai replied, "Mrs. Danes."

The girl disappeared in the mulling crowd, and Lorelai, dumping the drink on the tray of a passing server, made her way over to a table out of the way so that she could catch her breath and perhaps watch the people as they scurried about. Being part of the rush was not in her plan.

"Hey."

Lorelai looked up and saw, to her great surprise, Christopher. He was dressed impeccably, but she saw fatigue around his eyes and in the way his hair needed more than a comb run through it; he needed the entire Nivea for Men product line.

"You're here," she said.

Christopher was all apologies and hands as he sat down next to her, eyes filled with an emotion that she couldn't quite place (was too tired herself to place).

"I didn't think I was going to make it," he said ruefully. "Gigi and I were in New Zealand until ten this morning."

"I heard. You had business there?"

"Cousins, actually. My mother is thinking of moving there to be closer to her sister."

The way he said it and the queer, contorted look of his face, as if he were holding something back, tipped Lorelai off. At first, she wasn't certain as to what she knew, but then -- then she realized.

"You're thinking of going also."

Christopher seemed to be searching for an excuse in his answer (wherefore, Lorelai knew not).

"I want Gigi to know her grandmother," he said. "Sherry's parents are dead, and it isn't as if she isn't already in another country. It's just as easy to fly to New Zealand as it is to fly to Connecticut."

The comment lay heavy in the air for several moments. Lorelai knew that he had thought about it, could see the anxiety in his shoulders and the hands clenched in his lap. He didn't want to leave Rory, but he wanted to do best by Gigi.

"Unless," Lorelaid said, "she's watched Lost and is therefore terrified of going anywhere near Sydney International. But if that's the case, Gigi's much better off without her flighty mother."

Christopher caught on to her mood. Hell, Lorelai thought that it was highly probably that he taught her the tactic. Chris had always been one to avoid his feelings, even more so than Emily had taught to Lorelai.

"You watch Lost, don't you?"

"I'm just saying -- don't expect a lot of visits. New Zealand had better have e-mail."

"Think they might have put it in last month."

"Just in time."

Lorelai reflected in the silence following that it was really too bad that at least one of them wasn't cheerful. It had always been that if one were down, the other could always bring them up. Smiles between them were short and force today, and Lorelai suspected that it had as much to do with whatever was happening in their lives outside of the church as within.

"So ... Rory."

This was the elephant that they had been stepping around all throughout their conversation.

"Yeah," Lorelai said. "Rory. Boy. Married."

"She looks good."

"I haven't seen her."

Chris echoed her earlier words with a strange look on his face.

"I heard."

Lorelai looked down at her gloves and thought of the wedding party and its last minute preparations going about somewhere in a back room of the church. Maybe she should have stopped by and said something to her daughter -- and maybe her daughter should have sought her out as well.

"She doesn't want to talk to me, Chris."

"That's not what she said," he told her. "She's sitting in her room, surrounded by a dozen or more shrieking girls who scare the devil out of me, and she looks forlorn."

"Forlorn? Christopher, did you get a dictionary for your birthday?"

"Maybe it's that I've been spending more time with Rory. She's rubbed off on me. The girl has some good qualities."

Lorelai sighed. "I know. She's great, and she's wonderful, and she's getting married today. It's so strange just sitting here and thinking about that. But, Chris, she didn't call me; she didn't write to my. My mother wrote to me about the wedding. I'm going to respect that."

"I think you're making a mistake."

Lorelai couldn't answer.