Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews, they are GREAT! Okay, I know this chapter is really short, but I am putting Chapter 5 up at the same time. So please, please read and review. Thanks and I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 4

Lorelai stopped the jeep in the driveway and got out. She stood for a minute and looked at their house. It really was their house. It belonged to her and Rory and it always would. She remembered the day they moved in. She had been so excited, but Rory didn't want any part of it. The Independence Inn had been the only home she had ever known and at 10 years old, she was really afraid to leave it.

When they first moved in Rory would follow her around, from room to room. She was used to the one room of the potting shed and didn't want to be left alone, so Lorelai made up a game where they would go to opposite ends of the house and stay there for 5 minutes, then run and see who could make it to the living room sofa first. Eventually she got used to the different rooms in the house, but it took longer to get her to sleep in her own room by herself. She slept with Lorelai for the first while and then Lorelai would stay with her in her room until she fell asleep, but even then if she woke up in the middle of the night, she would sneak upstairs and Lorelai would wake up in the morning and find Rory fast asleep beside her.

Lorelai entered the house with a smile on her face and all these memories circulating in her mind. She sat down on the couch, in silence and continued her trip down memory lane. Eventually she squatted down in front of her CD collection and began looking at the titles. She picked out 5 CDs and placed them in the player. Each one held special memories of a time in their lives. She turned on the stereo and went into the kitchen.

She got some writing paper and a pen and sat at the table. Most of the time she stared out into space but every once in a while she would write something on the paper in front of her and sometimes she would cross it out violently and sometimes she would even take the whole piece of paper and scrunch it up in a ball and throw it across the room. Periodically she would stand up and walk around the house and then sit down and begin all over. Once she walked into Rory's room, picked up Colonel Clucker and clutched him to her body tightly. She sat on Rory's bed and began to cry. Tears streamed steadily down her face and onto Colonel Clucker as she wondered why it was all so hard, why things had turned out the way they had. She longed for the relationship she had had with Rory while she was growing up, but she knew that that relationship was gone forever.

Rory was an adult now and Lorelai had to let her be an adult. It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do, to let Rory go out into the world and face all it had to offer. It truly was a cruel world and now look at what had happened, it had beaten her down. She sat there for a long time, crying and not crying, wondering and thinking and remembering and trying to put her thoughts into words she could write down on paper. It took her all night but finally as the sky was getting light she folded up one sheet of paper, slipped it into an envelope and sealed it.