Disclaimer: I just really, really like the show!

Rory turns five.

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October 1989

"There are just sixteen kids in the class," Lorelai said, trying to make sixteen sound like not quite so many. "Little kids, too, so they don't eat much."

"I don't think we can do cookies," said the chef, a tall man with a tall hat that covered his bald head. He was turned away from her, slicing apples for pie and she couldn't see his face, so she leveled her gaze with the back of his collar, giving it her best persuasive stare; she'd been warming it up on her way down to the kitchen and she didn't want a good persuasive stare to go to waste.

"Oh, well, it was worth asking…" Lorelai backed toward the door, trying to ignore the churning in her stomach, all that pride she swallowed because she thought it was worth asking.

"Cookies aren't right for a birthday; unless that's what she wants." She froze with her hand on the doorknob as the chef turned around, wiped his hands on a towel and grabbed a notepad and a pen from his desk. "Wouldn't she rather have cupcakes?"

"Cupcakes?"

"Yeah, that's what my daughter wanted to bring in for her class. Does Rory like cupcakes?" He looked up at her, the young maid with the little girl a little younger than his daughter. They lived in the potting shed out back and Mia said not to ask questions, said she would take care of them even when he brought some of his daughter's outgrown clothes in to give to them, just in case.

"Um, Rory loves cupcakes." The chef smiled.

"Good. Cupcakes it is. Chocolate?" Lorelai nodded. "And how about frosting? What's her favorite color?"

"Oh, you know, whatever you have is fine," Lorelai stuttered, unable to meet his eyes.

"She must have a favorite color," he urged her on with his pen, ready to write down the cupcake order. "Pink? Blue?"

"Pink. She likes pink and yellow."

"Ahh, perfect." He scribbled on the notepad, then tore off a sheet and stuck it to the bulletin board. "I'll have two dozen cupcakes ready Wednesday morning. You can pick them up when you take Rory to school."

"That's great, but two dozen's too many, there are only sixteen kids." The chef shook his head and scooped sliced apples off the butcher block and arranged them in a large pie plate.

"Plus the teacher, plus the birthday girl's mom," Lorelai grinned, realizing how long it had been since she'd licked the frosting off the top of a cupcake. "Plus, the birthday girl gets to eat two. I think that's the standard Kindergarten rule."

"I think I read that in the PTA Handbook. How old's your daughter?"

"Caitlin's in second grade now, but I doubt hot pink sprinkles have gone out of style."

"I can say with authority that hot pink sprinkles are still very much en vogue. Thanks." The chef shook his head, it's nothing, as he drizzled cinnamon syrup over the apples in the pie crust. "Really,really, thank you."

On Wednesday morning, Lorelai crept toward her daughter, still sleeping in their bed big enough for two. She had wrapped the gift in the ivory tissue paper that came folded up in her starched uniform when the dry cleaner's dropped it off every week.

"Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday…" she sang softly.

"Mom?" Rory unwound her arms from the soft bear she cuddled and rubbed her eyes.

"Today's the day, Rory Gilmore. You are five years old."

"I know, Mom."

"Well, just in case you'd forgotten, this is for you." Lorelai placed the present on her daughter's tummy.

"Now?"

"Now. Right now, at 4:03 in the morning, precisely, exactly on the moment you turn five. Open it!" Rory sat up in bed and reached for the gift, pulling the delicate tissue away, layer by layer. "Hurry!" Lorelai urged, though she knew that Rory would treat this task with the same reverent concentration as everything else she did. "Seriously, or you'll have to count this toward your sixth birthday," she teased, though she marveled at her daughter's innate patience.

"S…st…" Rory tried to sound out the title of the book.

"Stuart…"

"Stuart…Little. Stuart Little!"

"That's right, Stuart Little, by E.B. White," Lorelai said, slipping the book from Rory's fingers and letting the cover fall forward in her hands. "A story about a very special little mouse for my very special little girl," she read the inscription that she had printed on the title page. Rory craned forward to see for herself. Her face shone in the moonlit room when she beamed at her mother.

"You wrote that!"

"I did, I wrote it just for you. Right at the front, so even though it's not part of the story, it's the beginning of this book. This book is all yours to read over and over again and every time you start at the beginning, you start with this note from your mom."

"I don't think you're supposed to write in books," Rory said gravely.

"It's okay to write notes in the front when the book's a present for someone you love. It's called an inscription. It makes a book one of a kind."

"Okay. I like it, Mom."

"Good. Back to sleep?"

"Will you read me a little, first?"

"We've got a big birthday day ahead of us, we need our beauty sleep."

"Just a little?" Rory held up two fingertips squeezed together. "Please, Mom? It's my present."

"That's a very good point. Just a little. Ready?" Lorelai tucked the covers around them and Rory squeezed her bear under her chin. "Okay. 'When Mrs. Fredrick C. Little's second son arri-'"

"Wait, you didn't start at the beginning." Lorelai smiled down at her daughter and snuggled a little closer as she started over again.

"'A story about a very special little mouse for my very special little girl.' 'When Mrs. Fredrick C. Little's second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.'"

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