Chapter Six
The Saturday Evening Post

Dear Wally,
I was sad today. I cried before, during and after and most of the tears weren't for James, as I know he's in a better place than here right now. They were because of them. I was there, by an oak tree near the back, crying as the minister delivered a prayer that spoke of my eldest brother James like he was a hometown hero. And he was…at least for me he was. Anna found me shortly afterwards, thanking me for coming and telling me to keep in touch with her. I don't know what I would've done if it had been you. I am so scared for her, Wally, so scared. I need to correct myself and tell you again that I cried. For James, For Anna. And I cried because of them. They will never know that they're going to be grandparents. I left quietly and walked back to where Rand had his new car waiting for me and cried a bit more. As much as I'm going to miss James and all of his ways and his smile and the man that he would've become, the father he might have been, I'm thankful that it wasn't you. And as much as I probably hurt them and they hurt me, I don't regret marrying you. You are possibly the best thing that's ever happened to me. Hurry back, my love. I need to see you, to touch your face and to know you're alive and well. I love you.
Yours Always,
Elisabeth

The drive to Stars Hollow, the infamous small town that he felt like he already knew from Rory's stories and Elisabeth's letters, was amazingly quiet and short. He had felt like it would take them longer to get there given Rory's aggravated status every time he had seen her come back to Yale from a weekend at home. Considering the fact that it was almost midnight, traffic on the expressway was extremely scarce and that her annoyed tone had something to do with the actual town than with traffic, which probably had something to do with it. Rory pointed the direction to turn as they arrived on Main Street and already figuring to park next to the only business with their lights still on, Logan pulled up behind the old model Jeep and shut his engine off.

Looking into the diner through the blinds, he could see two figures conversing as Rory shimmied around in the passenger seat and got his attention back with the wave of her hand. Her lips started to move but the sound wasn't registering in his mind as his eyes drifted up and down the sidewalk, wondering what it would've been like back in 1917. Would the diner still be there or the bookstore that caught his eye? Logan had no doubt that Rory had a bookshelf named after her in the shop. He could see her spending all day cooped up in a corner and losing herself in the adventures of Hugo or Dumas. He could even see himself doing that, if he had spent his years growing up in a town like this. A town where, he had a strange feeling, everyone knew everyone; their secrets, their life story, even their middle names.

"Yo, Huntzberger, you listening?" Rory snapped her fingers in front of his face to get his attention back from the past and into the present.

"Yeah, sorry, is that the place?" Logan pointed to the diner just to make sure.

"Yea, that's the place. Look, I know it's midnight and you really don't want to go to history class but since this is Luke and there is history involved, I'm going to give you a short recap," Rory informed him, slipping out of the seatbelt she had over her shoulder still and facing him again. "Luke grew up here, moved away, then moved back when his dad got sick. The diner used to be a hardware store, hence the Williams Hardware sign in front of the diner. Luke didn't like it, well, he liked it, but didn't want to run a hardware store, so he changed it to a diner and the best coffee in the world was born. My mom and Luke have known each other since then. He's more a father to me than my real father is. He took care of me when I had chicken pox for two weeks and my mom was swamped at the Independence Inn, which burnt down a couple of years ago, he helped me move into Yale, he showed up at my high school graduation. Luke, after years of pinning for my mother and secretly wishing that she could be his, finally put his heart on the line and asked her out. She said yes, end of that story."

"That's short?"

"Shorter than the version my mother would tell you. But one more thing before we go in," Rory said as they both slipped out of the tiny import and walked up towards the entrance.

"Yea, Ace."

"Luke acts like my dad because he was practically my dad."

"You just mentioned that, Ace."

"I know, so if he goes all stiff and doesn't acknowledge you that's because he still thinks I'm ten and a princess and that no guy, however cute and charming and rich he may be, isn't good enough for me, it's because he's my father figure."

"You think I'm cute and charming?" A smug appeared on his upper lip and turned into a triumphant smile very fast.

"You're pushing it Huntzberger."

"Ace, I got it. Can we go in now? I'm getting a little cold," he told her, feeling a shiver crawl up his spine as the cool wind continued to get cooler. He saw a shiver run up her spine as well as she shook her shoulder to get rid of it. He smirked as she rolled her eyes at him, probably contemplating why on earth she brought him in the first place, and followed her as she ascended the concrete steps up to her favorite eatery in the entire world.

A chime on the door beckoned his attention even before he saw her mother seated at a table in the center of the diner. It was a kind of stereotypical Americana – the kind that you only find in feel-good novellas about finding your true love around the corner or down the street from you or the kind that you seen drawn on the cover of an early edition of the Saturday Evening Post. It was the kind of Americana that Elisabeth wrote of: her favorite bakery being a place that was once called Trevor's that, by her letters, used to sit right next to the local library back in 1917. Now, the local library was a bar and Trevor's turned into the kitchen part of the bar. The new library, as Rory pointed out during their tour of the town, was right next to the smallish looking high school that Logan had always wished he had gone to instead of Andover Academy.

The soft touch of Rory's hand on his sent his thoughts from the Americana comparisons to the table that was filled with every kind of pie that he could possibly imagine on it. But in a Gilmore's world, probably not every kind of pie was there. His eyes were pulled from the abundance of pie to the abundance of whipped cream and coffee being brought to the table by a man with more than enough experience with the Gilmore's to know what to bring and how much of it to stock in the back.

This was probably Luke, Logan assumed correctly as the guy with a backwards baseball cap on sent a grunt and nod his way and continued on his mission to get the girls all they wanted before sitting down for probably the first time all day since he opened at six a.m. like Rory had told him before during the drive there. Three cans of whipped cream along with two gigantic mugs of coffee were set in front of the girls. As Rory sat down across from the woman she was calling Jasmine at the moment, he presumed that this was her mother, the infamous Lorelai Gilmore who he had heard numerous stories about from both Hartford Society and Rory. Of course, he enjoyed Rory's more; they sparked with that first-hand experience, with life. If he was sure of anything at this moment in time, it was that he knew Rory would make a great journalist; there were things that set her apart from the greats. Her stories were full of life, spark, experience and just a bit of fantasy; something that readers love to read about.

Slipping off his jacket and finally pulling out a chair to sit down in, he gently smiled at the dark haired beauty, noticing her brilliant blue eyes that Rory had inherited. They were electrifying. No wonder that this Luke, who was coming back to the table with a beer for him and asking Logan what he wanted to drink for the second time in a row, would do anything for these girls. If it wasn't their eyes that got you and twisted you up inside, making you want to do anything for them, it was their way with words. Logan had echoed the coffee plea and turned back to the Gilmore girls to his right, trying to decipher the mass of underlying tones in their conversation about fried ice cream and romantic entanglements.

"Okay, so about this winning the lottery thing, tell me about it," the elder Lorelai asked her daughter, shaking up one of the whipped cream cans as Luke joined them at the table with another mug of coffee; the mug significantly smaller than the girls'.

"Winning the lottery? Since when do I gamble?" Rory asked back.

"Since apparently tonight when you leave with your hybrid from Hartford and two hours later you're driving a Porsche with one of America's hunkiest bachelors and he is hunky. I'm just so glad that you're giving me the Porsche. My Jeep is getting a bit rusty anyway."

Logan smiled at the notion, nearly spitting up his coffee back into the mug at the mention of her taking his Porsche. Logan could do without his family, the newspaper business, even the condo in Aspen that he loved to escape to every so often, but the Porsche? He couldn't do without that. He loved his car, it was a guy thing he guessed.

"I didn't win the lottery Mom. The Porsche is Logan's and no, you cannot keep him or the car," Rory advised her mother, taking another can of whipped cream and shaking it like her mother did the other one. Spraying half the can over the entire chocolate pie that was definitely going to be inhaled by the both of them, Logan considered himself very lucky to even be here to witness the event.

Rory had talked of eating a whole pie by herself and Logan was witness to the Frosted Flake crisis of 8 a.m. yesterday when Rory practically threw Yale's biggest hissy fit since Finn and his love for apple tarts, but he never thought he would be lucky enough to see it for himself.

Taking another drink of his coffee and as the girls' talked of whipped cream and winning the lottery more, Logan looked around the diner, imagining it as a hardware store as Rory said it used to be and wondering if it was a hardware store in 1917 as well. But his thoughts were cut short as Lorelai Gilmore's shrieking voice put a halt to it all.

"Here we go," Rory mumbled under her breath and turned to Logan. "I'm sorry."

"You're the rich one!" Lorelai exclaimed with an "a-ha" type moment. "The one that stole my daughter away and made her jump off a seven-story scaffold thing," she paused again so she could soak in the taken aback facial expression permanently plastered on Logan's face and then added, "In a dress!"

After the initial shock of Rory's mother yelling at him, Logan took a deep breath and answered her confidently. "Yes," he said, remembering the fateful day when Rory dared to jump with him, "although, I didn't force her to do it, she wanted too. Right Ace?"

"Right and it was a very pretty dress," Rory echoed Logan's statement and added on to it so they could move the conversation from the LDB event to Elisabeth and what they were really there for. Although, he would have to talk to her about how her mother actually knew about the LDB event.

"Well, at least it was a pretty dress. What color was it again?" Lorelai asked, another bite of strawberry pie in her mouth and a sip of coffee to follow.

"Blue."

"Just blue?"

"No, not just blue. It was a blue that made you think of Babette's blueberry pie on the 4th of July with the fresh blueberries on top. But it wasn't that deep, actually."

"That is a good blue," Lorelai said, her mouth now watering from the imagery, "especially when compared to pie."

Luke and Logan looked between each other, not sure whether to take their conversation about the color blue seriously or not.

"There's a difference in blues?" Luke finally spoke up, wanting to get insight into the politics of blue according to the Gilmore Girls.

"Of course there's a difference in blues, Luke," Lorelai said to him. "Like, the blue that Logan has on is a deep blue while the blue that Rory has on is more of a Superman blue," Lorelai let him in on the secret of blues and whipped her gaze back to the two in front of her. "Hey, you match."

"Superman blue?" Luke, again, asked.

"Mom, I don't need him any more confused, so let's drop the blue convo and talk about why I wanted pie, coffee and Luke still awake at this time of night which I am totally grateful for. Thank you Luke."

"That sounds good to me," Logan echoed, waiting for Luke's stare on him to dwindle down and turn to Rory.

"Right so here's what we have," Rory paused to drag out the piece of paper she had printed out over at Logan's and set it in front of Luke to read over. He had to know something, Rory was sure of it. He had grown up in this small town and knew everything about everything…well, mostly. He still didn't know the whole story about Kirk, but then again, who did and who would want to. And although he wasn't a Miss Patty or Babette just yet, he knew what was what.

They all watched as Luke intently skimmed over the paper and read it aloud to himself one more time. She prayed that something would come out of his mouth that will help them. In all the years of attending Stars Hallow schools, she remembered the name being mentioned more than once, but for the life of her couldn't recall why it was brought up or when. Rory found it funny how she could remember the first act of Macbeth by heart and forget something that she had probably learned in the first grade from Mrs. Thurman.

"Come on Luke, anything?" Impatient should have been her middle name for as fast as she was taping her nails against the table, waiting on her possible future step-father to tell them something. Anything would be good right about now. Even if it was a tall tale about Elisabeth being Paul Bunyan's long lost sister would do, she just wanted to hear something and Rory was betting that Logan wanted to hear something too. A story along the lines about Elisabeth being a townie who led a quiet life up until the letters ended was a story she was looking for, but right now, she would take anything.

"How many times have you read that?" Lorelai asked, breaking Luke's concentration and eating on another slice of pie with double the whipped cream that she had had on her fried ice cream at dinner with Emily.

"Six."

"And nothing? Not even a manly Luke grunt or an 'aha' moment like I just had when I realized that the hunky Yale Male that Rory won in the lottery was one in the same with Logan Huntzberger, the one who…"

"Lorelai," Luke sent a small glare and scowl her way.

"Was that a glare? Rory, I got my first official boyfriend Luke glare," Lorelai clutched her daughter's hand across the table and squeed like a fan girl over the moment.

"I am so proud," Rory fulfilled her mother's wanting of any kind of response and turned back to Luke just as quick, inching her chair closer to Logan's then she noticed. "Are you sure there isn't anything there Luke? I mean other than a bunch of jibberish about Wally's crew and military jargon?"

"You just said jargon," Lorelai giggled into the multiple personality conversation.

"I know," Rory replied back with a stellar smile on her lips.

"So professional."

Rory looked back to Luke the instant she saw the paper slip from his hands. Luke leaned back in his chair and let out a deep breath. That was a sign that she didn't want to get. It was a sign that he was tired and although willing to help her out, didn't know anything. "Elisabeth is a very popular name, Rory," he breathed out, drinking on his beer as she mimicked him with her coffee.

"I know, but shouldn't there be something…something to tell us who she was before she married Wally," she reasoned.

"What year were the letters from?"

"Mostly 1917," Logan answered for her. "There are some from the 1950s though."

Luke slowly raised his gaze back up to the girl who had relied on him for everything since she turned ten and gave her what she suspected he would give her: nothing. He didn't know of any other Elisabeth except for his aunt. Of course there was Elizabeth Staiton and Elizabeth Johnson, but those were two of the girls in Miss Patty's dance class who loved to come in the diner and show his customers what they had learned that day every chance they got. But they were both eleven and he seriously doubted that they got married to a seaman in 1917 and wrote these letters. "I'm sorry, Ror, but I don't know anything," Luke took a deep breath and continued, "Maybe if we knew Wally's last name it would help."

"Luke, you're supposed to know something."

"I don't know everything, Rory."

"Yes you do. You're Luke!"

"Like I said, it would help if we knew Wally's last name."

"That's a problem," Rory pointed out, pulling out a letter that Logan had stuck in his jacket pocket just in case and placing it in front of Luke for him to look at with the paper. "All the letters are addressed just like this."

Luke stared down at the letter. It was a simple envelope, smelling of the salty ocean and discolored in every spot. Luke's hope for Wally's last name was quickly squished as Elisabeth only addressed the letter to Lieutenant Commander W.K. Well, at least they got another letter, but it still didn't help him identify an Elisabeth who lived in Stars Hallow over forty years ago.

Staring at the expression of Luke's face, Rory let out an exasperated sigh. Defeated; at a dead end. That was literally how she felt after letting her head slip down to rest on the table.

"Look, it's late," Lorelai stated and started out, "Maybe you guys should just stay the night and see if anyone else around this one horse town knows anything in the morning." Noting the frustrated look on her daughter's face and the exhausted one on her boyfriends', Lorelai knew this was probably the best place. Plus, it was nearly one o'clock in the morning and although the expressway was probably free of all obstacles including other cars, Lorelai would feel better if they stayed here.

Frustration was an overrated word. Especially for the way that Logan and Rory were looking at this particular moment in time. They loved the letters and the mystery of the letters, but it was getting to the both of them. Lorelai knew this, after all, she was Lorelai.

"No, we should probably just get back to Yale," Rory started to object.

"But how can you pass up the chance to piss Michel and Taylor off…in the same day? Plus, you walking around with him, the stereotypical Yale Male that everyone and their sister will be fawning over, is just too good to pass up," Lorelai emphasized for her daughter to weight the options in her mind. "Babette and Miss Patty are going to have a hay day with gossip."

"Miss Patty?" Rory jumped at her name. "Is she here?"

"Don't know, but you could see for yourself in the morning…"

"Mean," Rory crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair, glaring back at Lorelai.

"Let me make it easy for you Ace," Logan adjusted himself in the diner chair next to Rory and draped his arm around the back of hers, "we'll stay."

"You want to stay?"

"It seems like a good idea. I mean, you were probably planning on coming back tomorrow and doing the reporter thing anyway, weren't you?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. And it's not like I'm wanting to rush back or anything just to see Finn passed out most likely in my room and in a dress," Logan admitted, flashing her a smirk that he had since reserved just for her.

"Then it's settled!" Lorelai exclaimed as Luke pushed his way through the mess that was on the table and started to clean it up. "You and Logan will go back to the house and me and Luke can stay and have some fun with the pie."

"Okay, that's our cue," Rory latched onto Logan's arm and pulled him up with her and took her jacket with her in one swift movement towards the door.

It was one thing when her mother started using big words – that, she could handle easily. Rory and big words were a good combination. But any sentence involving Luke and implied sex, that was a different story; One that she didn't want to have especially in front of Logan.

"Oh, you're no fun," Lorelai pulled out a pout on her daughter as Rory just rolled her eyes at the notion.

"Luke, thanks," Rory buttoned up her coat tight and headed over to the counter to where Luke was finally cleaning up the mess of the day.

"For what Rory?"

"For the coffee, pie, keeping my mom here while I go and try to redeem first impressions of her from Logan and for your help."

"Anytime kid," Luke slipped in a wink between his gruff smile and she smiled back, glad that he was there.

Turning back to see Logan waiting patiently at the door and her mother gearing up for another round of twenty questions, Rory knew she had to get out of the diner quickly; for Logan's own good and her own. Strolling up to his side and offering him a sympathetic smile just in case her mother started on the twenty questions that she knew by heart, she was about to say something when she cut her off again.

"Okay, so since you're going back to our house, I have to go over rules…"

"I know the rules Mom, I'll tell Logan on the way there, even Babette will remind him when we get there."

"I have to Rory, you know I have to," Lorelai reasoned as Logan shifted in his stance and reached for the knob on the door.

"I know you have to. What time is it?" she wondered aloud and all three of them looked at their watches simultaneously, wanting to answer her.

As Lorelai said the correct time, Rory found it easier to read off of Logan's outstretched hand. Almost one, Rory read off of his gold Rolex watch and smiled a thank you his way. Yes, it was late and this mystery of Elisabeth and Wally was definitely wearing on her. She needed sleep, needed an induced sugar coma while humming along to an underappreciated movie, and needed to do so in something other than her skirt that she had been in since seven o'clock yesterday.

Taking another deep breath, Rory pushed on Logan's shoulder to move him forward, definitely ready to go. Rory saw as Luke waved his hand from the counter and the diner chime sounded in her ears.

"Wait, my rules," Lorelai started to pout and Rory stayed back just so she could make her mother happy for a moment. "Okay, now since I'm your mother and I never have the opportunity to do this, I have to: rule number one, well, you know rule number one. Two, Willy Wonka shall be watched three times before you even think about putting The Princess Bride in. Three, no discussion of Elisabeth or Wally is allowed. Got it?"

"Isn't that the reason we…" Logan trailed off as Rory shook her head at him, telling him not to go on.

"Good boy, now, shall I go on?" Lorelai asked, moving closer to Rory's side and causing Logan to move more towards the exit.

"No, you shouldn't because if we want to watch Willy Wonka three times than we need to get home so I can pop the popcorn, fish out the chocolate that you've hidden from Luke and pull out the candy corn that I've been craving since dinner tonight."

"Okay, just don't eat my ho-hos," Lorelai warned, expecting Rory to retort with the Gilmore 'dirty' but got it from Logan instead. Her eyes widened towards Rory as the word rolled off his tongue.

"You've been hanging around me too much," Rory commented as she pushed him out of the diner. "And we need to go."

"But, but it's early," Lorelai started to whine, latching onto her daughter's arm as she made her fourth or so attempt to leave with Logan."Two words: Willy Wonka."

"Still too early. It's Friday night, the night is young…well, middle aged anyway and you have more than enough time to…"

"To what? Listen to you embarrass Luke by telling riddled sex jokes?"

"No," Luke paused as all three looked towards him behind the counter, "no we don't."

"See, Luke agrees," Rory pointed out.

"But, what about my twenty questions?"

"Considered them banned," she told her and leaned forward for a kiss on the cheek, "Night Mom."

"Night babe, Willy Wonka is in my bedroom!" Lorelai yelled to Rory as she watched Logan play the gentleman card, holding the door to his car as she slid in. On any other occasion, if her daughter would bring a rich playboy home to meet Mommy and Luke, she would whip out the twenty questions and interrogate him about his intentions and she wouldn't fall for the gentleman card. But this time, it was working.

Author's Notes: I was going to continue the last part but my inspiration and muse left me at the moment. So that will have to wait until the next chapter. Sorry this took so so so long everybody, but at least it's up now. Enjoy, oh, and I'm working on the next chapter of Crush (over Illusive & BWR), so if it's not up within the next weekend, come and hound me. I need to write. Enjoy. Hope it was worth the wait.