Rory was just having breakfast, Maya having made her some mild quesadillas for breakfast, which she ate with a kale-pineapple smoothie, instead of her coffee - Logan's and Celeste's orders to which she'd relented. Finny had already finished eating, hardly ever caring much for breakfast, mainly just wanting to go play. As if he wouldn't have enough time for it otherwise. So there he was - rolling around on his push-along car throughout the living room, Rory glancing at him through the gridded glass wall as she ate, while Maya was packing up Finny's diaper bag to head out for the morning. Having a nanny provided her with the luxury to take him out when she felt up for it - which she hoped she would feel more often these days, but for now whatever she felt her body could handle, just had to do. But nevertheless in the back of her mind she still couldn't stop comparing herself to Shira, desparately not wanting to be one of the women who depended on nannies, almost as if fearing that once she got used to it, she wouldn't be able to live without them.

Rory opened her inbox, having not really peeked into it since her defence. After all she really had very little reason now. But as she observed it's content, there was a surprising number of new e-mails from fairly familiar names she hadn't expected. There were some she discared straight away, as she usually did. This time, however, there was one message from one of her old contacts in the New Yorker, and few others from journalists she was remotely familiar with who tended to write human-interest stories or popular science pieces. With curiosity she opened the first one, being quite surprised that her old contact Karen Richmond wanted an interview with her. She opened the other ones, quickly skimming through them to get to the gist. She got this type of requests all the time really - the difference was that these were not from something for Page Six or OK! Magazine. These actually seemed to have a genuine interest in her. It was only as the third e-mail mentioned a press release, she became curious to what the person was talking about.

She used Logan's credentials to log into SourceRise and searched her name, quickly finding the press release sent from under the HPG account. She had no doubt who had written it. She'd recognized Logan's writing anywhere, the way he tended to use some small hints of British English sometimes in written form being a tell-tale sign for her. She glanced at the time, and knowing Logan was already in the air she knew there was no point calling him, instead she simply shot him a text via messenger.

"Press release, really Logan?" it said.

As she waited, one of the twins insisted on letting herself be known, and she stroked the side of her bump in response, hoping the tiny human wouldn't wake the other one.

"You wanted the work you do, the kind that matters, to show. So here - show it," Logan replied matter of factly as if having expected the question, a minute later.

Rory could sense the satisfactory smirk behind that reply.

Rory shot back a raised eyebrow smiley. He had a valid point there, though she would've preferred if he'd discussed it with her first. But then again - it was very likely she would've said 'no' and then there wouldn't even be this discussion.

And he really was right - she wanted there to be something else out there about her that didn't involve her pregnancies, her marriage or one of the dresses she wore. And while she was sure, that none of the journalist could completely look aside her round form, she knew that this was her chance to steer the conversation to much more significant matters.

"New Yorker, Time or Wired?" she texted back, before she had a chance to reconsider. She knew in advance that all of them wanted an exclusive - hence she had decisions to make.


It was safe to say Celeste was nervous. She was a lot more nervous than she'd thought she'd be and somewhere in the back of her mind the words of Dr. Tyler, cautioning her to only continue along this path when she felt ready, as she walked along Bridge street towards Truncheon. Was she ready? She desperately wanted to make things right and somehow move them past the shadow of that horrible Monday morning. Yet she couldn't help but to wonder how much of what had happened, Noah had actually understood. Did he know what her intentions had been?

Jess knew. She'd told her while she'd been sobbing on the floor of her walk-in-wardrobe, fearing he would leave her even for just having had those thoughts. But to her surprise - Jess had actually even sounded more relieved than anything, and as he'd later told her - he'd actually feared a lot worse when Noah had called. He hadn't spelled it out what it had been exactly, but she could imagine.

What she hadn't told Jess was the fact that Noah had once had a thing for her, according to Logan, deep inside hoping it wouldn't need to be said. She just didn't want it to influence the way Jess saw Noah, as it seemed he'd pretty much become his right hand at work. She'd pondered, and even discussed it with Dr. Tyler, that perhaps her inviting Noah over to her place had been the first step of the sabotage her mind had tried to conduct. Therefore, this time, she wasn't taking any chances and decided to keep meeting him at the office instead. She wanted to say that she trusted herself, sure in some way she did, knowing that those thought hadn't been rational and she really felt no longer the need to ruin her existing relationship, but she hated the way her brain had just taken over that day - that she didn't trust, and hoped to never feel again.

"Coming or going?" Noah asked teasingly, as he approached her from behind, a box of donut holes in his hand, seeing Celeste standing in front of Truncheon's front door, gathering herself to actually push the door open.

"Oh, hi. Coming," she replied with a nervous smile.

"We don't have to, you know, there's on rush," Noah said, understandingly, recognizing some nervousness in her.

"It's okay, I'm okay, really," she tried to convince both him and herself.

"Well if you say so," Noah said, holding open the large glass door for her.

"I'll just go say a quick 'hi'," Celeste said, wanting to see Jess for a moment. Even in the short time, it was like he had become her center of gravity of sorts, the person she needed to keep her grounded.

"I'll just grab a quick coffee and meet you in the conference room," Noah suggested, getting a friendly nod in return.

The office had hardly changed in the few months, and she was glad to see some things hardly seemed to change in time. She waved quickly to Bilal, but saw Jenn nowhere in sight. She moved past their desks towards Jess' office

"Hey!" Celeste knocked gently on Jess' glass wall.

"A sight for sore eyes. Literally," he said, rubbing his eyes. He'd been staring at the screen in front of him for too long already. "Did you morning go okay? You got here alright?" he asked, having developed a tendency to check up on her more often while he was at work these days.

"Yeah, I had a nice walk," she replied, adding, "also made a pretty sweet exchange with the stocks today," she replied. She'd let her stocks just sit, only reacting to a few alerts during the last few months, and now she was finally up for actually doing a little research and changing out some that had been in a slow decline. This mornign however, after buying some stocks belonging to a solar energy company she'd gotten an alert how to company has just been scooped up by an even larger successful company, which clearly increased the company's value.

"Ever consider making a career out of that?" Jess said, half seriously.

"Nah, it's the means to an end, I don't particularly enjoy it to be honest, but it beats paying someone else a small fortune to do it for me," Celeste replied.

"Yeah, I know," he replied. He'd heard this before, but now that her new career was a topical question, he couldn't really be blamed for asking.

"What are you working on?" Celeste asked in return, placing her hands on his shoulders, stroking them gently.

"Renewing all of our contracts - some new privacy statement the HPG is insisting we implement," he sighed.

"Ugh, doesn't sound fun," Celeste noted honestly.

"Yeah, it really is not" he grumbled.

She massaged his neck gently, seeing how tense he was. She'd mentioned this before - he didn't seem particularly happy himself doing what he was doing, and frankly she was quite impressed that his stress tolerance was as good as it was. However, she wasn't going to bring it up now - that was a longer discussion. Instead she saw Noah return from the coffee nook with his cup of coffee, thowing a donut hole in his mouth, and heading towards the conference room.

"I should go," she added, kissing him briefly over his shoulder.

He squeezed her hand, that had lingered on her shoulder, assuringly, not really knowing what to say to her. He knew this was a lot more of a challenge for her than it would appear to someone who didn't know her. He just hoped this was the thing that truly helped her.

"Sorry," Celeste said apologetically, having perhaps delayed the beginning of their meeting a few minutes longer than she'd intended, as she opened the glass door, stepping into the conference room, and closed it behind her, settling onto a chair opposite Noah.

"Well the positive things is that due to the time I've had to think about, I have quite a few texts for you to see," he said, pulling out some photos of her work, he'd clearly made when he'd been over, and having placed them onto slides with some appropriate text options for each of the images. "This is not a final selection of anything, just some ideas," he added, flipping through the slides at a slow pace.

She pointed out a few that she liked, that really caught the meaning she was going for. There were a few she didn't quite get or didn't entirely agree with, but at this stage that was only natural. They agreed that she would think the options over, and suggest which ones she wanted changed and which ones worked as such.

"And I was thinking that you should really start a Instagram page with whatever alias you want to go with, post some of these, maybe even explain some issues in more detail - like what does a modern arranged marriage looks like in the Western world or what it's like to have future all planned out for you," Noah suggested.

Celeste raised her eyebrow at him, questioningly - how did he know these things?

"Ah… me and my big mouth again, sorry!" he scolded himself noting her look. "I just sort of figured, with the abrupt divorce and all and all I've heard from Logan and some of my other friends from similar background," he added. He had to admit, that after the topic had come up he'd done his own research, reading everything the media ever published on Odette Aubertin, trying to make sense of the person she'd become after college. He found her facinating, her litter dissappearing acts only adding to the draw frankly. He only wished she'd be more open to share it, thinking it could actually really play in her advantage in this authorship thing if she figured out a way how to use it.

At least he didn't seem to know there really had been no real marriage with Logan. Yet, the statement had been a little too close to comfort as if making her be on her toes a little again, though she realized there was probably little reason.

"Okay, then I guess I just need to think of an alias," she pondered, wanting to move on. The idea really was good, she even couldn't quite believe how she herself hadn't thought of it.

"And then I have a few texts to spare. I think they would work well in the series, but I couldn't quite find an image to match - read them, if you get any ideas maybe you could draw something?" he suggested.

"Alright, I'll think about it," she agreed, pushing her hair behind her ears.

"So you think this'll work?" Noah asked after a while, gesturing between the two of them.

"I got my privacy agreement, I see no problem. Do you?" Celeste asked, trying to overcompensate her nervousness by sounding almost overly confident.

Noah chuckled, adding, "I'll draw up some contract for us then, you can have it checked over if you want."

"Okay," she replied. She did feel like this was giving her some sort of a direction, she just wondered how well she could keep on that path and whether it would bring her the kind of feeling of accomplishment that she was looking for.

"Hey, you don't happen to know of any good classes I could take - drawing or anything like that?" she asked, recalling Noah was fairly well connected in the Brooklyn art scene.

"Hmm...," he thought for a moment. "There's this studio called Zipper, I think the teacher was called Harald Hahn. I've heard he's pretty good, respects people's own style," Noah suggested.

"Thanks," she replied.

"But you know, if your plan is to keep the authorship of the book a secret, use an alias and everything, you really should make sure you don't demonstrate your style much. It'd not be that hard to figure out who the book would be by in that case. Though if it's a completely different technique it'd be another story," Noah added.

He made a good point, making her begin to reconsider the whole course idea.

"Ok, I'll think about it, thanks," she repeated and began to gather up her things from the table. This was a start, and despite an occasional 'off' comment from him, Noah's knowledge of her background actually seemed to be helping her in this - she didn't have to go hiding her reasons for wanting to stay off the radar from him, and this made it much easier.


"Ah…," Logan exclaimed at the sight of Rory as he stepped out from the elevator and stepped into their living room, Rory already waiting anxiously in the doorway from the moment she'd heard someone was heading upstairs. All he had wanted for the past few days was to feel her. It was one thing for him to be protective of her, her and their children, born and unborn, but quite another for him to need her support. Sure, Honor had been around the first two days, but with her it was as if he was still the one needing to support her, while he would need to stay composed.

As Rory wrapped her arms around him, he finally felt like he could let loose and let out a deep exhale of relief. No tears followed or anything quite as dramatic. It was just a relief to be home, relief to stop trying so hard to hold it together, relief that Rory was right there and their family was all there - all of them in good health. Logan had actually tried to make himself cry, just wanting to get the processing over with, hoping to skip some steps of grieving, but no matter how much time he'd spent in his hotel room pondering about it, the tears just hadn't come. Maybe he was too numb by bow - maybe it was truly too late to feel anything.

"I'm sorry, Logan," she whispered to him.

"I love you," he replied, kissing her. Frankly he was through discussing it. With the announcements having sent out the day before, he'd been taking a call after another and he hadn't even bothered to turn on his cell service after getting off the plane, the flight providing a good excuse to dodge at least some of those calls.

As if on cue, Rory's phone rang, and she answered it, Logan heading downstairs to shower after a long flight.

"Grandma, hi!" she greeted. She'd been getting a lot of the overflow of Logan's calls actually, from at least their joint friends, who hadn't settled for a text. They were mostly the same - inquiring into how he was doing and what had happened - Rory knowing that the public story was that she'd died in her sleep - which technically was true. There was no reason to drag out her issues now, those who knew, knew anyways.

"Rory! How are you? How's Logan holding up?" Emily asked with some concern in her tone.

"We're okay," Rory replied briefly.

"Is he around? I'd like to extend my condolences," Emily asked, having failed to reach Logan herself as many others.

"He just got home, he's very tired right now. I could just tell him you called. I think he's just talked out for the day, you know," Rory excused him.

"Oh, alright," Emily replied a little disappointedly, but she wasn't naturally going to push it either.

"Will I see you at the funeral?" she asked, having not seen her grandmother in months.

"Of course," Emily replied. She might not have been bosom buddies with Shira, not now, nor ever, but she was still family, and she wanted to see Rory too.

"Great, Finny would love to see you too," she replied.

"Your not thinking of bringing him to the funeral, are you?" Emily exclaimed.

"Oh no, just the wake later," Rory replied. Finny was too young to understand any of this, and it wasn't like Finny had had much of a relationship with Shira, only having seen her three times during his entire life, perhaps only recalling her latest visit. Lorelai had welcomed the opportunity to skip the funeral in the excuse of babysitting.

"Oh, alright," she relented.

"Hey, grandma?" Rory began, having been meaning to look something up herself, but as she was already speaking to her - it was as good of a chance as ever.

"Yes?" Emily replied.

"How big of a faux pas is it for us to attend a wedding this weekend?" Rory asked, before she would even go discussing it with Logan. Robert was a dear friend and not attending seemed just plain wrong to her. But if it was completely out of the question, she could just skip asking Logan. She'd never really been in a situation like that before.

"Well, as long as you don't steal the happy couples' limelight, make that perfectly clear to them and other guests, and the couple is not Chinese, and Logan himself feels up to it, it shouldn't be an issue," Emily explained.

"Right, no - no Chinese, but there might be a few people there that knew Shira," she added.

"Well, then make an appearance at the ceremony, cut the reception short with apologies," Emily suggested.

"Ok, thanks grandma. I'll see you next weekend," she replied, the latter not really seeming a big problem - her not really feeling up for a long party these days. They then said their goodbyes and hung up.

As Rory headed downstairs to check up on Logan, she found him in Finny's room looking at his son in the dim room, only lit by a lonely night light.

She didn't want to bother him, hence she simply walked towards their bedroom, knowing that Logan must've heard her either way.

He soon followed her, closing the door to Finny's room. He'd just needed a moment. The innocence in Finny somehow enabling him to clear his thoughts like nothing else.

Logan found Rory getting ready for bed, just finishing up brushing her teeth, only really wearing a relaxed sports bra and pyjama shorts to bed, as she tended to get hot in the middle of the night, and found it easier just to throw off a blanket rather than begin taking off clothes. He moved behind her to hug her once more, not getting enough of her, his palms caressing her bump, kissing her shoulder.

"Don't wake them," Rory mumbled with the toothbrush in her mouth.

Logan smiled at her response. Sure, he would've loved to get to feel them, but he knew well that Rory's sleep took priority. He hastily brushed his teeth too and hopped into the shower, landing into their bed with a deep satisfying exhale, his hair still a littel damp.

Rory wasn't asleep, simply observing him, her elbow bent behind her head, propped to the side, her body pillow under her bump.

"I'm okay, really," he assured, stroking her arm, reading the question in her eyes.

"So you still want to go to Robert's wedding?" she asked. The question may have seen insensitive or unimportant to some, but with it taking place already in two days, she was simply being practical. Plus, Robert too had called and asked about him.

"Yeah, of course," Logan replied. "And if you're okay with it, there's a bachelor party the night before," he added.

Rory didn't particularly like the idea of him going off somewhere doing crazy stunts with the guys, but in this situation it really might have been the best outlet for him.

"Sure, just come back in one piece," she replied, kissing him.

He snuggled up to her side, wrapping his arm around her as much as he could with the body pillow and bump between them.

"So, tell me everything about the defence," he began, wanting to focus on her instead. There had been enough inner turmoil and reflection.


"Everything go okay with Erica today?" Jess asked casually as he leaned in over the back of the chair to kiss Celeste on the top of her hair in their dining room, having just gotten home, carrying some hearty takeaway salads. He'd noted that she looked a little more thoughtful and he couldn't help but to feel a little concerned.

"Yeah, it was fine," she replied. "I've been thinking about you actually," she admitted, surprising him.

"Did I do something?" he asked, pausing getting the forks for them to eat their salads.

"No-no," she apologized, adding, "I just realized I haven't really asked how you've been doing, it's all been about me."

"Well right now I'm good, when you're good, I'm good," he sighed, simplifying things naturally. Above all, he didn't want her to worry about him.

"Yeah, but it must've been hard for you," she encouraged him to speak.

"It was," Jess admitted, returning to the table with the salads.

"You can talk to me about it if you want, you know," she suggested, picking up her fork.

"I actually did talk about it," he confessed, after swallowing his first bite.

"You did? To whom?" Celeste inquired, curiously. Jess had never really been the most talkative guy, so this was definitely an interesting development.

"Rory, and well… there's this support group near work that I went to a few times," Jess replied.

"Oh..," Celeste replied, realizing it really must've taken a lot from him to go to one of those places, knowing him.

"It's fine, it helped, sometimes it's just good to remind oneself that there are other people that are going through similar things," he said. "And really, please, don't start feeling guilty about this, okay?" he said, and took another bite.

"It's just…," she began, searching for words. Sure, there was guilt, and she reminded her that it was a disease, not her person, the thinking exercise helping a little. "I just feel like I'm getting all the focus here - I'm searching for what I want to do, who I want to become, essentially spending my days chasing my dreams and trying out new things, and you're just stuck in that glass cubicle of yours and sometimes I guess I just think it's a little unfair to you," she explained.

"Nobody's forcing my hand on it," Jess explained. He'd just sort of settled. It was like a background activity for him, but she was righ in a way - it didn't offer him as much as he had once hoped when he'd started this. But with so much going on, his aspirations had hadn't been a priority.

"You know what I mean…," Celeste replied. They'd talked about this before.

"The book provides some balance," he added, after swallowing another bite of his quinoa salad.

"How it going?" she asked, after giving it a moment's thought and eating a few bites herself.

"It's done. Though I don't know, I think I ended it in pretty grim tones. I haven't heard back from what Lauren thinks of this yet, I sent it to her last week. But I think she'll either have me do major rewrites or suggest I do a sequel or something," Jess replied.

"Lauren?" Celeste asked confusedly. Naturally she was glad and a little surprised to hear he'd finished it but from the part she'd read, she knew it was good.

"My editor. Truncheon Philly. She worked on all of my previous books as well, except the Subsect of course," he explained. The Subsect had been his first experiment, or so he liked to call it. It different greatly from anything else he ever wrote and it's immaturity shone through it so badly he hardly ever even wanted to mention it. It had it's positives, sure, and thanks to it he'd had the courage to keep at it - dumb rooky courage - as Lauren had put it.

"How come you've never told me about her?" Celeste inquirer, putting down her fork for a moment.

"I guess it's just never come up, I haven't really had any reason to," he added. He hadn't published anything of his own during the time that they'd been together, and he'd only really been in contact with Lauren about work related things.

"So what's she like?" she asked.

"She's bright, I think the brightest when it comes to this sort of books, I only wish I could've brought her along to our office from Philadelphia, but she wouldn't budge," Jess explained.

"Uh-uh," Celeste acknowledged, holding her tongue as she felt like asking whether she was pretty. She was in no position to feel anything like that - not after what she'd almost done, but still she kept imagining what the women her husband spoke about some of his most intimate inner thoughts to, knowing too well, how detailed his books got sometimes, was like.

"Do I sense some jealousy in your voice there?" Jess smirked, trying to figure out what was going through her mind.

Celeste didn't reply, just smiled softly, not wanting to admit it.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was thinking about asking you to tag along when I go to see her when she gets back to me, she prefers to talk in person," he explained.

"To Philly?" Celeteste asked.

"Yeah, just you and me, what do you think?" he suggested, knowing too well that Philadelphia held some special memories for them as well.