chapter ten

xxx.

Lorelai managed to find a room away for herself -- no young girls were in it, no exes, and certainly no Rory Gilmores to haunt her conversations. Her peace was short lived however; Lorelai had no more than settled into the

"Lorelai," said Emily, surprised.

She sighed. Lorelai was no mood to snub her mother this morning, not after all that had gone on the past few days, and certainly not at her daughter's wedding. She would be civil, Emily would get the picture, and after the wedding they could go back to not talking.

"Mom."

Emily took this as a bridge mended in their relationship.

"A Sunday wedding," her mother said. "Isn't it beautiful, Lorelai?"

Lorelai sighed, but she couldn't ignore her mother speaking to her at her own daughter's wedding.

"Yeah," she said. Lorelai raised her eyes and let her gaze travel along the extravagance of the room. "It's gorgeous."

"She looks so lovely in that white dress. She wanted something in cream -- she said it went with her complexion better -- but I told her that she was marrying in white, and that was it. She capitulated." Emily's smug smile was in place, and Lorelai felt memories of other times it had been worn come washing over her. The look changed swiftly as Emily swept her eyes over Lorelai's face. "You look ill. Is it the baby?"

"Excuse me?"

"Luke told me," her mother said, throwing what could not be classified as an apologetic look over her shoulder at Luke. "He phoned Tuesday morning and told me. I'm not sure whether I should have said anything, but you don't look well."

Luke managed to find the shoes on his feet very absorbing. Lorelai would deal with him later, and he knew that, but for now, the real battle was between Lorelai and her mother. Luke knew that also.

"Mom, just --" Just stop talking. Just rewind the past year. Just give me quiet for now. "It's the baby. Can we forget it, now? I don't want to talk about it."

She and Luke shared a look. In it, there were many things spoken, but the strongest was silence. Lorelai missed something in the heat of the moment though. It had been the wrong time for that look. She had pushed away her mother, had made her angry. She had Luke, her actions said, and Emily had been forced back.

Before, there was concern. Now, there was a defensive wall. Emily Gilmore on the defensive said mean, hurtful things (and sighed a disconcerting lot)

"I can't believe you did it again."

Lorelai whipped her head to face her mother. Luke's hand on her shoulder tightened subtly.

"What do you mean, you can't believe I did it again?"

"I mean what I say, Lorelai, and I always have," Emily said. "I can't believe that you are pregnant again. Was this planned?"

"Nothing was planned, Mom. It was life. Everything. Everything happens."

"Mm," said Emily, lips pursed. "And when everything is happening, you never do think about the family, do you? Not once. It's very inconsiderate of you. Is this why you and Luke were married so hurriedly? Were you pregnant?"

"Emily --" started Luke, but Lorelai cut him off sharply.

"Do I look six months pregnant, Mom?"

"Luke told me last week that you were nine weeks along." A concession, then, from her mother. Lorelai should have accepted it.

"Well, there you go. You shouldn't go screaming at me when you know that you're wrong."

"Wrong? Oh, Lorelai, I am so far from wrong that I'm in Stars Hollow!"

"What is that supposed to even mean?"

"It means that you think that running away to Stars Hollow solves everything. Well, Lorelai, it doesn't. It doesn't solve a three-year-old daughter, and it doesn't solve the talk. Not ever does it solve the talk!"

"Rory's twenty-one! I'm sure the talk is dying down finally."

Speak of the Devil, and he appears. Rory entered the room then like a sprit; alone, so Logan must still have been preparing. Lorelai found it rather ironic that the bride was ready before the groom, but she suspected that Rory had been there much, much longer than Logan.

Why she was wandering the empty reception rooms instead of being attended to by a dozen chattering women, Lorelai wasn't certain, but she imagined that Rory had asked to be by herself for a while before the ceremony.

Luke had seen Rory enter as well, but Emily's back was to the door, and she had not yet realized that her granddaughter had entered.

"A few springs back, my cousin's niece had her first child two years after she was married," Emily stated with a sour look on her face. "Two years, Lorelai, and people still made comments. They compared her to you. I don't want that again."

If Lorelai had been listening closer, she would have realized that there was fear and panic in her mother's voice. Emily Gilmore did not want people to assume that Lorelai had gotten pregnant out of wedlock once more and this time -- this time! -- had decided to marry the father. She did not want Lorelai to go through that, because, as her daughter would later realize, she loved her.

Lorelai heard only the accusation.

"Oh, for God's sake, Mom, I'm not pregnant anymore! Happy?"

Rory inhaled sharply at this, but Lorelai kept her gaze on her mother. Emily turned her head to Rory at that moment, but Lorelai's statement had been too much for her to ignore.

"What do you mean, you're not pregnant anymore?" asked Emily. "One doesn't just stop being pregnant -- not unless one has gone through nine months of pregnancy. You were nowhere near are nine months pregnant. You didn't go and get an abortion, did you, Lorelai? What will the Ella Skomarovsky say when she learns? That woman is insufferable, and I hope you realize the sort of predicament I've been put into if word gets out that you terminated."

Luke stepped forward. "Emily, you're out of line here."

"Mom, shut up." Lorelai's voice rose several octaves. The others in the room turned to look at her. "I didn't terminate the pregnancy, okay? I lost the baby. It was a miscarriage."

The angry lines drawn up around Emily's eyes fell like petals off a rose. Lorelai missed her mother then in a way that she hadn't missed her in years. It occurred to her: She misses me too. Maybe even her mother had been sad, beyond any logic and reason. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to have Luke; she wanted her family whole again.

"Oh, Lorelai."

And Lorelai remembered what it was like to be held by her mother on the front seat of her father's new car. She felt young and confused.

"It's all right, Mom." She crossed the room and stood near her mother. The proximity was intimate, and Lorelai wanted to comfort her mother now more than she had ever wanted to, more than she had ever needed to. Emily Gilmore did not deserve her as a daughter. "The doctor said -- he said it was a chromosomal abnormality."

"What does that mean?"

"It was -- it was just an accident." Lorelai looked down, embarrassed and ashamed. "It was my accident."

"No," Luke said, and he was standing there next to her, and Lorelai felt the heat of both her mother and husband bringing her to life and away from the terrible numbness that had engulfed her since Thursday. "It means that something went wrong before you got pregnant; it could have been me, it could have been you. It doesn't matter, Lorelai."

"Maybe I'm too old for another baby," Lorelai said softly. "Maybe that's what it means."

"Oh, for God's sake, Lorelai," interjected her mother, "you have Gilmore genes. Your Aunt Mathilda had her first child at almost forty-three years old, and do you think any of them are any less the better for it? Granted, your cousin Beatrice is a little slow, but with a mother like Tildy, who wouldn't be?"

Lorelai let out a short burst of laughter. With her mother's strange comfort and her own acceptance of it, the small circle which they had made disbanded, and Lorelai was left standing next to Luke while her mother moved a few steps back. Still together but separated. Ties of their own curious brand of love and respect bound the three of them.

"How old is Beatrice?" she asked, dipping her head into Luke's shoulder.

"Fifteen this August, and she's got the most hideous hair-do."

There was nothing to say after that, but the short silence was comfortable enough. What broke it was most surprising.

"Grandma?" Rory spoke for the first time since entering the room. "Can I ... can I be alone with Mom?"

Luke instinctively stepped back and relinquished Lorelai to her daughter, but Emily turned to Rory and raised a sculptured brow.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and Lorelai heard the real question behind that. Will you be okay? Her mother and her daughter had grown so close these past six months -- closer than Lorelai had ever thought she'd be with her mother, and much more close than she and Rory had been during that same time period.

What a bittersweet thing to know.

"Yeah, Grandma. I'm fine. I just -- " and Rory looked around the room as if searching for the words. Lorelai followed her gaze, hoping for some insight into what it was she was looking for. Just as she had in the past year, she came up clueless as to what was going on in her daughter's head. "I want to talk to Mom alone."

A deafening din made them all startle then, and Emily craned her head so that she could peer out the window. She sighed; it was beginning to rain.

"I told you the thirteenth, but you would be superstitious," she said sadly.

Luke leading the way, the two filed out of the room and left those with true Gilmore blood alone in it. Lorelai cast an appraising look upon her daughter. Emily had been right, of course. Rory looked spectacular in the dress that she was wearing. She was reminded very suddenly of when her daughter had been quite young and had insisted upon wearing only white. It seemed so long ago now that she'd scrubbed the stains out of little tops and dresses.

And she was getting married that day. Even now, with only twenty after before the ceremony, Lorelai could barely believe that her baby girl was not only marrying someone but was leaving the country in two months' time. When had the tiny literati grown into this graceful woman standing before her?

There were no words and speeches to be said for this moment; there was only truth, and the truth was that Lorelai loved her daughter fiercely, no matter where she went in life, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Rory had made the first move by seeking her out. Lorelai made the second.

"Hey."

"Mom." And Rory wasn't facing her, but she lent out a hand to be held. For the first time in six months, Lorelai clasped her daughter's hand in her own and wondered if anything in the world felt more right. Rory drew in a slow, ragged breath. "Mommy, I'm pregnant."

"Well," Lorelai said, and she thought, maybe they should have gone with off-white.

finis