Chapter 2: Twelve Years Later

"Order up!" Caesar's call came through the order window as a plate of hamburgers and fries appeared.

"I've got it, Caesar!" the young girl chirped as she took the plate and read the table number on the tab. Kirk's usual, by the window. She skipped over to him and delivered his meal, trying not to giggle at his quirkiness. That was just Kirk's way, her mother always said. The same could be said about the whole of her hometown of Stars Hollow. The sleepy little town just had its way, and they liked it like that, thank you very much.

"Winnifred Lorelai Gilmore! Aren't you supposed to be working the cash register?" a gruff voice reminded her, its owner emerging from the upstairs loft in a backwards baseball cap.

"Sorry, Grandpa Luke! No one was on the ball for Kirk's order!" Winnifred scampered over to him.

Luke allowed himself to smile down at her. "Kirk can sit and cry for a minute until someone gets to him. A little emotion never did him any harm. There's a good girl, Winnie." He ruffled her dark curls and moved on to take over the next order delivery. A customer called out as he passed by:

"Hey, what's the Wifi password here?"

"No Collusion - All caps!" Luke answered back. He meant for this to be in jest. The triggered millennial paid for his food and walked out.

Winnie returned to her post at the cash register. Most girls her age didn't have a job at only 11, but she loved the bustle of the diner - had loved it since she was a baby. And for all his gruff exterior, she had her Grandpa Luke in the palm of her hand. He'd been married to her Grandma since just before she was born, but loved her unconditionally. Her other grandfather, Chris Hayden, lived in Boston. She didn't see him much except when her mother might be passing through up there on business, but he always showed her a great time.

Winnie loved her family fondly. She even had a great-grandma in Hartford - her Pop-Pop had passed away when she was eight. But it made her think - what was her father's side of the family like? Who was her father? Whenever she had asked her mom about this, Rory had always said that her father was a friend she had met in college, and as for his family, not to let that worry her. She herself had not known her dad's side of the family, only meeting her paternal grandparents twice by the time she was 16.

The bell tinkling over the door wrested Winnie from her thoughts, as a dark-haired man took a seat at the window just behind the yellow LUKE's lettering.

"Hey guys - there's a new customer over this way!" Winnie pointed. When no one answered, she shrugged, "I got it!" and left her post at the cash register. Business was slow on Sunday mornings, with most Stars Hollow residents either at church with Reverend Skinner or in synagogue with Rabbi Barans. Whipping out a pencil and pad, Winnie approached the new arrival. "Welcome to Luke's Diner. What'll it be?"

The gentleman raised his head from where he had been writing in a notebook, and Winnie was suddenly struck by the shade of his eyes. His eyes... they're kind of like mine, she thought.

"BLT burger with a side of onion rings, please," the gentleman said, smiling at her kindly. Winnie grinned back.

"Coming right up!" she stuck the tab in the order window for Caesar, then drifted back to the window table, observing as the gentleman resumed his writing. "Whatcha working on?"

"My next book of poems," he explained.

"Oh! My mom's a writer. But she writes columns for the papers, and books on the side. Her latest memoir's on the bestseller list." Winnie liked bragging about her mom's accomplishments.

"Really? What's her name? I might know her," the man smiled. Before Winnie could answer, however, his gaze faltered into something almost curious, as he peered at her. "You know..." he mused. "It's funny... you kind of look like my Uncle Jerry..."

Winnie's face crinkled in confused amusement, but before she could think of a reply, the bell tinkled over the door.

"Hey, sweets!" Rory Gilmore dashed in, pressing a kiss to Winnie's cheek in greeting. "Sorry I'm late; Uncle Jess switched out all the candy in Taylor's dispensers for April Fool's."

"Again?" Winnie laughed. The gentleman stared.

"Rory Gilmore?!"

Rory beheld the stranger for the first time. She froze, her face going deathly pale. "Marty," she whispered the name. "What are you doing here?"

"Just passing through," Marty beamed. He looked happy to see her. Winnie looked between the adults and the clear tension between them, bewildered.

"You two know each other?"

"We met in college," Rory said, her gaze not leaving Marty's face. Marty grinned wider.

"It's good to see you again, Rory."

Something shifted in Rory's expression, and she now looked almost cold. "At least you finally decided to show up. Enjoy getting to know your daughter!" She spat it out in a burst of emotion, then fled from the diner. Behind the now silent eatery, Luke Danes held a coffee cup aloft, his mouth hung open. Winnie and Marty looked at each other in astonishment.

That's my daughter?

That's my dad?

Rory stalked down the sunny sidewalk towards the Stars Hollow Gazette, blinking back tears. She had kept the secret, what she had suspected all along, for so much time, she had not meant for it to come blasting out like that. She didn't even know why she was angry. It wasn't like Marty knew. It wasn't like she had told him.

She had found out she was pregnant days before her Yale graduation. She had not seen Marty again since that night they had made love. Trying to look for him and tell him during those furious last days on campus had been for naught. She only told her two closest friends her secret, waiting in line to walk across the stage. Naturally, Winnie's future Aunt Paris and Uncle Doyle had only been too eager to help.

And then there had been Logan's out-of-the-blue proposal. Rory knew deep in her heart the child she carried wasn't his; they hadn't had sex in months. And did she really want her child to be born with a stepfather, perhaps with Logan being the only father he or she would ever know? Logan was no Luke, or even Christopher, and in Rory's mind, to accept the offer of marriage made her seem... unfaithful, somehow.

She moved up to New York, moved in with Doyle and Paris and rode out her pregnancy in their two-bedroom apartment. The beautiful baby girl had been born late, on a blustery night in January 2008, as Rory's TV displayed a black man and a woman battling for the presidency. Halfway through her first year of med school, Paris had gamely delivered the baby, though an in-home birth had not been what Rory had in mind. Her labor had come fast and hard, and traffic in New York was unforgiving. From what Rory recalled, Doyle had taken one look at Winnie and fainted. Mother and baby moved back to Stars Hollow six months later.

"Rory... RORY!" The call of her name snapped Rory from her thoughts as she reached the door of the Stars Hollow Gazette, for which she was Chief Editor. She also did stints at the Stamford Gazette and the Hartford Courant, writing books by night and on the side. Her memoir, Gilmore Girls, had sailed to the top of the charts.

And there was Marty, slowing out of his run and looking out of breath. "Man, you're really fit..." He blushed when she frowned at him. "You really gonna leave me hanging there like that? Rory, why didn't you tell me?"

"What? That we have a child together? How was I supposed to have that conversation? When I looked for you before and at Graduation, you were gone!"

"I couldn't... stay for the ceremony," Marty was slowly getting his breath back, wincing through the explanation. "But you could have at least... looked me up. Letter, Facebook PM, phone call. Something!"

"You had your own life, Marty," she regarded him sadly. "Your own career. A child would have been such a distraction."

"Never! How can you even say that?" and for the first time, Marty looked offended. "You think I would not honor a commitment like that, especially when Winnie has you as her mother?" He was looking at her really intensely, and Rory was not sure what it meant. She jerked, startled, when Marty suddenly took her hand. "Rory... I just want to talk. I want to provide for Winnie and for you."

"I don't need your help," Rory murmured quietly. "I've been doing fine on my own. My mother did it. So can I."

"Juggling three paper jobs? As amazing as you are, Rory, I doubt it." Marty winced even as he said it, hoping he hadn't insulted her. "Can we at least discuss this as adults? Maybe over dinner?"

Rory regarded him for a moment curiously. She had always been less than trusting about others' good intentions for her daughter, except for a select few: Paris, Doyle, Jess, April. Luke. Her parents. Her grandmother. Grandpa Richard, when he was alive.

"Secret Bar. 17 Plum Street. 7:00 tonight. I'll meet you there," she accepted shortly, still not sure if the decision she had just impulsively made was the right one. Then she turned on her heel and flounced into the Gazette.