She had seen Jess's interview. She had tried to not watch it, to believe that everything would go according to plan, and that he'd follow the speech she'd heard him practicing under his breath for the preceding few days. But there was something against Jess's favor: she knew him.

She could not forget the time he was being interviewed about the World War II film he was shooting, and had somehow ended reciting old Italian recipes from memory that his elderly babysitter had once let him help prepare. Or the time he was supposed to be talking about life as Rory Gilmore's husband, and accidentally found himself giving a semi-graphic account of their sex life to the recording camera. Chris had made some angry phone calls to the house about that one. Luckily, he hadn't felt the need to show up. He was getting better about controlling his temper with Jess.

But she had the sinking inkling that Jess would sit down to talk to a blonde with the best intentions, and something heinous would come out of his mouth instead. So she pretended she was working with the TV on in the background, when in reality she knew she was counting the seconds until he came onscreen, and had no idea what the papers on her lap were about. Jane had come in and snuggled under the mountain of pillows on her parents' big poofy bed, but Tana had fetched the girl, and they toddled off together to play Blue's Clues.

"Oh, you ass," she muttered with her head in her hands as "Rory is not faultless," slipped out of his mouth. He looked a little bewildered that it had been HIM to say the words, but quickly shed it and continued chatting gaily with the girl. "Oh you ASS!"

The time from then until he came home, only a few hours, had been filled with contemplation, the work on her lap taking up space and nothing else. Jess ass, Jess ass, Jess ass, Rory ...alcoholic? Was it true? She had never labeled her fondness for forgetting as such. Was she? How had that happened? No, nothing happened; it wasn't true. Jess was going to be in SO much trouble when he dared show his face. What Jess had done had taken a lot of guts. That bastard! Would having an alcoholic for a mommy be bad for her babies, her jewels?

He'd come home, she'd thrown things out of spite, and she'd made love with him. Why couldn't she make up her mind how to feel about things? Was she an alcoholic? That word sounded so cold...so efficiently labeled. Long after wrestling Riley into bed, pulled Jane out of her hiding place (the dryer) and wrestled HER into bed, and laying down herself, the question haunted her. Lorelai would be so disappointed- Lorelai! Had she seen the interview? If not, she'd more than likely heard about it. She knew about Jess, but not the drinking. Speaking about her mother, what if it was genetic? What if Riley and Jane, and now Baby had the same problems? No. She wouldn't let herself believe that was her deal. She hadn't let a drop of liquor pass through her lips since finding out that she was pregnant. And it hadn't been much of a struggle. Sure, there was the frequent 'dammit, I need a cocktail,' but there was no drive, no overarching need. She relaxed. She relied on it, she did not depend on it. She turned over so she faced her dozing husband, and tried to close her eyes. As soon as she did, the buzzer on the intercom system next to her bed buzzed. Jess cursed.

"I'm fucking breaking that..." he tapered off sleepily in the middle of his sentence. Annoyed, Rory pushed the big blue/green button to allow whomever was at the door to speak. Their house had been the source of much publicity lately, with reporters camping on the lawn, photography helicopters flying overhead, and the phone ringing off the hook. Kathy was defending their caller ID and their lawn (housekeeper: 4, paparazzi: 0) and Tana was trying to keep the children inside (nanny: 6, children: 8).

"What do you want?" she asked curtly, but in a polite tone.

"Rory. This is your father. Get that piece of shit down here now."

"Fucking breaking the noise...zat your dad?" She flicked the lamp by their bed on and sat up, pulling the covers closer to her body so as to protect her baby from the violent undertones of the voice coming over the speaker.

"You mean Jess? Sorry Dad, we're trying to sleep. I'll come let you in, but you gotta leave us alone until the morning." Chris made a lot of strangled noises. None of them were words. Finally, he settled on what to say.

"Sounds good, Rory." Far too chipper to be a good thing, but Rory was ready for bed, and hurried downstairs to let him in so she could return to her own room. As soon as he had hugged her and kissed her stomach, he vaulted for the stairs. He held a baseball bat.

"DAD! NO!" She flew up the stairs behind him, yelling, probably waking up the other four sleeping people in the house. "Jess, he has a bat! JESSY!"

She hit the wall during her efforts to make a quarter turn at top speed from the stairs into the hall leading to her bedroom. Sorry, Baby. Mommy's in a hurry trying to save Daddy from Grandpa.

"Dad! Jess!" She tripped over the Turkish rug that greeted those who entered the master bedroom, and gasped. Jess, shirtless, was sitting up, tired eyes warily fixed on Christopher, who held the makeshift weapon over his head, scowling. Jess looked so frail against the sheets, unarmed, at her father's mercy.

"You...you will pay," he grunted as he continued to gash his teeth. Christopher Hayden was normally a very rational man. The angel on his shoulder was whispering 'you know you're not really going to hit him; it's not you. And Rory loves him. Plus it's illegal and stuff.' But the devil was throttling the angel with it's own halo, and screaming at him to hurt Jess like the punk had hurt Rory.

"Chris, calm down, we'll talk this out like gentlemen." Fear was beginning to show in Jess's eyes. Memories from life as a lonely child, abused by his mother's many boyfriends flooded back to him. Had he ever been hit with a bat? No, not a bat. But a table leg. If he recalled, it had broken his arm.

"Dad, you're crazy. You just stormed into my house, which is in another state, at 12:15, ready to beat my husband. The father of my little fetus." Chris twitched. She made a very convincing argument.

"I love my daughters more than anything else in the world, and Rory is my first. At your wedding you promised to love, and to protect her. Neither of these things you have done. I've been mad at you before, but this is beyond anger. I could kill you now, you know. I could leave you black and blue and bloody. I could leave. I basically have your life, your appearance and thusly your career, in my hands. And I'm liking this feeling."

"Dad, give me the bat," Rory said with an outstretched hand.

"Rory, please leave the room." She had been feeling nothing but fear for Jess up until that point, but now she was pissed.

"Excuse me? This is MY house! You do not tell me which rooms I may be in, and which ones I have to leave. You may not hold Jess's life in your hands. You may not storm in ready to hurt one of us." 10 frustrations leftover from childhood about Christopher's shortcomings, 90 pregnancy hormones, she put her hands on her hips and glared back. Her dad's frown deepened, but he lost some of the anger in his eyes. That gave her the chance she needed to slip around him, and sit down on Jess's blanket-covered lap. He was shaking, remembering childhood terrors. He wasn't all there. Chris looked taken aback to find her in his way.

"You wouldn't hurt the baby, would you?" she asked mockingly, wrapping her bird-like arms around Jess's neck. He shook his head, relaxing his grip. "Get out before I call the police. I don't want to hear from you again for a very long time." The initial surge of anger that had kept him company the entire drive from Boston had dissipated as quickly as it had come. He wished he had more discipline, but most of his emotions were stop-and-go like that. Shaking his head, he muttered something along the lines of 'don't know what I was thinking' and left. The look in Rory's eyes as she defiantly sat in front of Jess haunted him for more than the drive home.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

She planted kisses on his face, trying to unfreeze him.

"Jess, Jess. He's gone." Kathy burst into the room in a bathrobe.

"I heard yelling!"

"Kathy, I think I hear Riley crying down the hall. Can you go help Tana get him back to bed?"

"But what was it?"

"My dick of a father. He's gone now. Crisis averted." She smiled convincingly, until the door closed behind a dubious Kathy.

"Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry. I didn't know he'd do that. It's a whole new level on the Pissed Chris scales." He shook his head violently, trying to clear whatever images played inside it. "Jess, please talk to me. You're blanched. Jess; he's gone. You're okay. I'm okay. The baby is okay."

"He...he was mad," he finally choked out. Rory laughed humorlessly. He fell backwards on the bed, taking her with him. Clutching her to him as if grounding himself, his chest heaved up and down, taking her with it each time.

"You...you're my Maria," he said once he trusted himself enough to talk normally.

"Uh, okay. Whatcha talking about?"

"In West Side Story, when Maria throws herself in front of Tony so the officers can't touch him. You put yourself between him and me."

"...Tony was dead, darling. But you're traumatized. I'll allow the crappy film reference."

"Thank you anyway. I might have been dead if you hadn't deterred him."

"Shush. Chris was mad, but he wouldn't kill you. Maim you a bit, maybe, but you weren't in any serious danger." They fell asleep like that, and he awoke completely normal. Of course he hadn't been scared. Of course he had known Chris wouldn't really swing. Of course he was mad that Rory had put herself in harm's way, had Chris accidentally dropped the bat horizontally and it flew into her stomach. He refused to discuss it beyond that, making jokes and singing along to the Bowie song playing on the radio. But she was still freaked. If she had lost Jess...

"You'll always be my Tony anyway."

"Go to sleep, Maddie."

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

"Tana, I'll hold Janey, and would you please go get a smaller pink jumper?" Eager to oblige the actress, whom she had decided she looked up to in every way from the way her hair looked when she'd just woken up, to the way she mixed a sugary cereal with a health cereal each morning for breakfast, Tana trotted down the Kids-R-Us aisle to where the other pink jumpers lived. A flash went off in her face. "Oh!" A man with very red hair came out from behind one of the shelves, balancing a camera, a notebook, and a shopping basket in his hands.

"Well well well, so you're the new girl. Saw you with the Mrs. and the brat." He smiled apologetically to show that he'd shaker her hand if his was free, but she skittered away from him, eyes wide. "What luck I frickin' tell ya? Shopping for my own brats, and I see you three here. I was going to go for Gilmore, but then I realized that you were HER, the Nanny!"

"I'm not sleeping with him I don't know what you're talking about Rory is amazing!" she blurted out. Chester had been keeping up with American entertainment news far better than her, and the two had been shocked to discover the scandal. Being the innocent young adults that they were, neither had ever assumed Jess might try anything with Tana. 'How unfortunate!' was the extent of their thought process, and Tana thought no less of either of her employers for the story. But she knew enough to deny the question she heard in the man's pseudo-friendly voice.

"A little quick to deny. There are some questions I'd like to ask you, miss..."

"Miss Turner. Elizabeth Turner. That's my name. No, I didn't take it from a movie. It's on my driver's license, but I forgot it."

"Tana, did you get lost?" Rory's playful voice came from down the aisle.

"Everything's fine! No need to venture further! Why don't you take Janey for ice cream?" she said in a high, panicked voice. Rory had given her a paycheck, a roof over her head, excellent meals prepared normally by another employee, and a fantastic job. The least she could do was defend her. If only she knew what that entailed. Rory turned the corner, and her smile fell to a nasty frown.

"Stop bothering her, she has nothing to do with this." The shopping basket clattered to the floor as he frantically snapped photos of Rory with the New Nanny! 'Rory closely watches new recruit' the headlines said the next day. But for the moment, Rory took Tana's elbow.

"You know, I just remembered. Jane has a white jumper, and if we put Jess' good red shirt in the wash with it, it will turn pink."

"So creative! You're brilliant Rory! Jess is yours!" Trying not to giggle at Tana's deer-in-the-headlights manner, she steered her away, the man snapping photos the whole time. He followed them as they paid and got into a cab, waving jovially as it drove off.

"I'm so so sorry, Rory! I was terrified, so I don't know what I said!"

"You didn't say anything, sweetie. Even when you think you're being interrogated, you still couldn't lie."

"I swear, there's nothing between me and Jess!"

"I know, girly. I'm not worried. You can calm down now."

"Uh no, I think I need my inhaler for that." Rory sighed.

"We're heading home now. You're not going to keel over on me, are you?"

"I hope not!" Rory rubbed her back.

"Let's get you ladies home."

"Mommy, can I come visit grandma Lorelai with you?"

"Mommy won't be back until tomorrow morning, dewdrop. Too long for Janey." Jane crossed her arms and pouted, her lower lip almost on her chin. She periodically kicked at the seat in front of them in a mini-tantrum. Tana breathed loudly. The cabbie kept his eyes on the back seat, as if thinking she'd turn into an ordinary person at any moment, and he wouldn't be able to tell people he drove that skanky lass from Jersey Girls around, the one whose husband was a douchebag.

After unloading their purchases pre-Kids-R-Us out of the car, Rory said goodbye to Tana and Jane, climbed into their beloved DeSoto, and headed for New York New York. Lorelai was probably mad...but more than likely wouldn't even reach Christopher levels. This was something she was very thankful about.