Chapter 2

It was the incredibly piercing pair of brown eyes that caught sight of him first, followed by an involuntary wobble of her legs that caused her to fall on her cute cloth diaper-padded bottom with a soft thump the next moment.

"Daddy!" Evie exclaimed, holding up her arms to be picked up, as Jess stepped into the foyer.

"Hey, Evie!" he said, his heart melting already. "Hi!" Jess called out a little louder towards the kitchen, hearing cooking sounds coming from there, as he placed his laptop satchel against the bottom of the staircase, took off his vintage double-buttoned wool coat and toed off his snowy boots.

"Come here, you," Jess said, as he picked Evie up accompanied by her giggles, and opened the roll-up safety gate and carried her through the living room to the kitchen while Evie buried her face into his neck, hugging him as with strength unimaginable for a one-year-old. He never could forget her grip, not since the first time she'd squeezed his finger right after she was born, as if assuring Jess that things were going to be okay when he'd needed it the most.

"Did you have fun with mommy today? Did you go to the park?" he asked and gently booped her nose.

Evie nodded in response, her little pigtails waving in the process.

"Hey," Celeste said, adding, "I almost didn't hear you come in," she added over the sound of the stir fry in front of her, kissing him in greeting, their three kisses, two on the cheeks and one on the lips having receded into just the one, as time had passed.

"Food looks good. I'm starving," he sighed, pretending to playfully take a bite of Evie. The toddler let her head fall back with laughter, making Jess ensure his grip on her.

"How was work?" Celeste asked, while Jess played around with Evie in his lap. He looked great with her and the way Evie almost always picked his attention over Celeste's if there was a choice, unless she was crying, was evident, but she didn't mind - feeling a little drained and over touched after a long day as it was.

"Okay I guess," he said, biting into a snap pea, while making a funny face to Evie. "I might have to go speak to Logan during the weekend," he noted casually, after he swallowed a bite.

"What about?" Celeste inquired. While she had her stocks, podcasts, reading and drawing to give her something meaningful to do during the day besides caring for Evie, it lacked a lot of the social factors that she missed from the time she'd worked at Truncheon, even if it had just been part time. And while she loved being at home with Evie, having chosen the path on purpose, it just felt a little lonely sometimes.

"The Iron Circle wants to merge and Noah has his mind set on it. I mean... I get it - the image works for us, it would be broadening our niche. And it might keep him around. But.. you know, it would mean trusting him enough to run with it," Jess explained, while Celeste began to plate their food, making sure to separate the vegetables from each other for Evie, knowing she wouldn't eat them otherwise.

"Wow, look what colorful and yummy veggies we're having!" Jess exclaimed to Evie, before he placed her into her high chair.

Celeste brought the bowls to the table, managing to carry all three at once.

"But if Noah wasn't in the picture, would you consider it then? I mean you can't have it lean on just one person," Celeste pitched in, going back to get the forks.

"He has the experience, and he's definitely passionate about it. He understands that world better than me, for sure. But if he wasn't around, for me I can just see how it'd be more work for me. We've grown so much this year already, I really just want to catch up on the stuff that I'm already doing," he said.

"Last year," Celeste corrected her.

"Right," he replied, the change of the year having almost slipped his consciousness.

"And yeah, you've been working way too hard," she commented, pointing out the obvious. Frankly she missed him - sure he came home for dinner but after playing with Evie until she went to bed, he pretty much disappeared into the study to work again. There was still that love and understanding that had brought them together, but with life getting in the way, 'their time' was there only in small doses these days, and every once in a while she wondered if things would be different if he didn't work that much. She'd been like that herself, and in the world she'd come from, there were far too many people who did that but that usually ended badly, one way or another, and she couldn't help but to worry for him, for the two of them.

"I know," Jess sighed. He felt guilty for the work, but the felt the burden of responsibility, and there hadn't been many times in his life that people had trusted him as much as they did now - and with having been a disappointment to everyone around him and himself all of his teens and early twenties - he didn't want to become that person again.

"Maybe we should get a PI or something," Celeste suggested after a few minutes, as Jess had just taken a big bite of chicken. She knew that the underlying cause Jess had so many doubts concerning Noah was still the fact that he'd claimed to know where he knew Celeste from, assuming he had linked her to Odette. But Noah had assured he wasn't planning on doing anything with the information. So far it really seemed that he'd meant it - for an entire year he'd never brought it up again, and of course Celeste had pretty much stayed out of the office for an entire year as well. But still, it felt like a strange power-play.

Jess raised his eyebrows at Celeste, finishing chewing before replying.

"To do what exactly?" he asked, turning his head to see how Evie was eating.

"I've been thinking about this and so far I have thought of three ways getting a PI, perhaps the same one I used a while back, to check up on things. First - a simple background check on him, maybe he'll figure out what it is he knows exactly without us having to ask; second - to find out if there is even a market for information on me? Do they care? And third - what would he do if someone offered him money for information about me," Celeste explained. It was years and years of reading crime fiction that she had to lean on here, almost entirely lacking real-life experience with things like these, the only experience being the way Odette's brother Henri had found her former address through hacking into Dynasty Makers' client databases. She wasn't even sure she wanted to go such distances for what could be all innocent, but with little to occupy her mind with while looking after Evie all day, she had gotten a little carried away sensing the looming tension that still revolved around Noah.

"Sounds like a Sue Grafton novel," Jess replied with a light chuckle.

"Yeah, but it would be a way to test him," Celeste insisted.

"He did tell me that he might take the Iron Circle to HPG and have a try on it on his own if I didn't care for it," he added, trying not to encourage her. Noah had met with him to pitch his ideas that morning, and he really did see the opportunity in it.

"So he's jumping ship," she exhaled, taking another bite.

Jess knew she was right of course. He knew that by letting him walk he would have a lot less opportunity to keep an eye on him but the things she was suggesting seemed like overkill. The whole thing was annoying more than anything - just knowing he knew something and could potentially do something. Could it be any more vague?

"Fine, if you really want you can have him checked out. Discreetly," Jess relented. "But I think trying to trick him into giving up the information would be just plain obvious on who ordered it, so that would ruin the whole professional aspect of this. You can ask about the possibility of finding out if there is a market for information on Odette, but I'd be careful with that too - I think asking about things like that can be the trigger to form a market," he replied.

Celeste felt embarrassed for not having thought of the latter. Knowing how the yellow press functioned had once been her stock-in-trades, but clearly the years had had their effect, her post-Evie brain struggling to keep up with everything.

"I'll ask," Celeste replied. At the very least this could give them some information on what kind of person he was privately, whether he had contacts with the yellow press or Odette's family, because if all he knew was indeed that the faces matched, there wasn't much to worry about.

"And I'll talk to Logan about what he thinks about the merger," he noted, turning to Evie instead, adding, "Evie, don't forget your snap peas."


Logan had just put Finny to bed, returning upstairs to see what Rory was up to. It wasn't much of a surprise to find her at her study, sitting at her desk, just the swing-arm lamp and the laptop screen illuminating her.

"You've got a game plan set already, I see," Logan commented, having seen her observe the Trello board she used to track her progress and to-do lists these days, as he leaned against her desk, facing her. He'd been at meetings all day, having had little chance to check how she'd been dealing with the news and reorganizing her career plans.

"I told Lisa," Rory replied. "She didn't sound too excited when I told her, but it seems she's willing to give me a chance at least," she pointed out, feeling simultaneously relieved and guilty.

"You told her already?" Logan asked somewhat surprisedly.

"I just have a few months here to get things done, I couldn't trail her along thinking I'd definitely be around in the fall," Rory replied, sounding a little like her life would be over by then. "And yeah, you don't need to remind me that it's early," she added, sensing what Logan was thinking. Losing one pregnancy at 8 weeks had been hard enough, and she knew chances with twins were even higher, but this was something Dr. Thompson, her therapist, had actually really helped her with. She knew there was very little the mother could do to stop that from happening again if it did happen and she had her inner mantras for the rest.

"Okay," he said as he nodded. He was a little amazed, how well she was handling the uncertainty at this point - maybe it was that it hadn't fully even hit her yet.

"She's going to get some of her students to help me out with increasing the sample size locally as methodology practice, but I'll have to go to Chilton for a few days at the end of next week to use them as a control," Rory explained, having already contacted Headmaster Charleston, who had agreed to help out.

"Staying in Stars Hollow?" he asked.

"Probably," she replied.

"Good," Logan commented, adding, "your mom will be happy to see you." While he liked that Rory had gained some more independence, every once in a while he could see that Rory missed Lorelai too. Perhaps it was good they had a chance to hang out just the two of them for a few days.

"But without Finny?" she replied sceptically, squinting her nose. She'd never been away from him overnight before. And as even getting Finny into his own room had been a challenge, she wasn't too excited of the prospect.

"We'll be fine, we'll go see Evie or something, make it exciting for him," Logan suggested.

"I guess," she replied with a sigh.

The next moment two new e-mails arrived, one of them a simple news alert, the other the reply she'd been waiting for. She read the e-mail hastily, Logan observing her.

"Something more important there than your dear husband?" Logan chuckled, raising to stand behind her, his hands massaging her shoulders.

"Sorry, just something I was waiting for," Rory said, continuing to read. Logan's thumbs continued to draw circles on the side of her neck, making her hum at the senation gratefully.

"And apparently, I won't just be going to Hartford, but I'm going to have to go to Portland too," she exhaled, as she finished reading the e-mail from Mike Jenkins, whose class she'd visited to speak to the students about journalism when she'd been staying there two years ago.

"As in Maine?" he asked, confusedly, looking at her face over her shoulder

"The very same," Rory sighed.

"Huh," Logan reacted. Maine was a whole other can of worms, which was going to take him a while longer to process. There was their own complicated history, which had taken it's first steps towards normality in Maine, and then there was Owen - his half-brother, who didn't know of their connection. There was nothing resolved about Maine.

"But now, my dear husband, you have my undivided attention," Rory said, as she rose and pushed her laptop cover closed, turning to face him, wrapping her arms around his neck, keeping him in the moment for now.