Thanks to all for the comments on the last chapter. I apologize for the longer than usual delay. I am moving in 2-3 months and so my life has been hectic. I have been out of town for a few days, hence the delay in posting the story. Riska - no worries, I have no aspirations for a Pulitzer. However, I would like to make partner in my law firm…, so legal writing is the only type of work that I have any interest in "publishing!" I hope you all will enjoy the new chapter and thanks again for the reviews!
CHAPTER EIGHT
"It has been four days now, Richard, and we've seen no signs of irregular activity from your wife. All of her scans and tests come back positive. There's no reason for her to stay here in the ICU. She's in stable condition. I want to move her to a more private room."
Richard stood in the doorway to Emily's room, looking over his friend's shoulder at his wife. "Joshua, I want you to be honest with me."
"I am, Richard. There is nothing wrong with your wife." He stepped away from Emily, moving towards his friend.
"I don't know what I'll do without her, if …"
Joshua reached out his hand, touching Richard's shoulder. "I know how much she means to you."
Richard looked directly at him. Joshua was one of the few friends that he still had from college. They had been fraternity brothers at Yale. He somehow felt not quite as old when he was around Joshua. He could still see the young man that he had roomed with and the crazy stunts that they had pulled on rival fraternities. "Ever since that day," he sighed, "I haven't been able to picture my life without her."
Joshua smiled. He knew exactly what Richard was referring to. He had been next to him when Emily walked into the room. They were standing in a group with a few other people talking about the pranks they had pulled when they were undergraduates. Joshua had looked over at his friend, who was suddenly quite silent. James McWharton was telling a story about stealing the prized mascot from some Delta Theta Phi boys. Yet Richard was not paying attention to a word James had said. Joshua followed Richard's gaze straight to Emily. She had just walked in the door with a friend and something her friend said had caused her to laugh. The way that she shook her head and smiled intrigued even Joshua. Though he was more than happily engaged to his own Maria, he understood why his friend was awestruck by the redhead across the room.
"For weeks, Richard, you didn't shut up. You had been talking about her hair and her eyes and her smile. I thought you were a fool. You were engaged to the greatest girl. Pennilyn was a catch for any man. I couldn't understand why you would end your engagement for some girl that wouldn't talk to you except through her roommate or a closed door." Richard laughed along with Joshua. "Then I saw her walk into that fraternity party and I figured it out."
"The blue dress," Richard commented. He could still see her in his mind. It was not really that spectacular of a dress, if it had been worn by anyone else. Yet on Emily it fit her body as if it had been made for her and only her. The way that her hair hung at her shoulders gave her an air of refined confidence. And the smile on her face completed the look. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. It was in that moment that everything became clear and he knew exactly what he wanted. He never again doubted ending his relationship with Pennilyn. He just knew then and there that he would somehow win Emily back and marry her one day.
"I knew right then that this woman was going to become a big part of all of our lives," Joshua commented with a smile. "And she did indeed."
"She's been a part of my life for over forty years. I don't think I know who I am without her. I just … I wish I'd had the chance to tell her so many things."
"She isn't gone, Richard. You just have to give her time. Your Emily is in there somewhere and I'm sure that she's trying as hard as she can to come back to you."
"I hope so."
Joshua eyed his friend. "Are you going to be all right? I have to finish my rounds, but I could come back afterwards. Maybe we can go down to the cafeteria and get some dinner."
"No, no, I'll be fine. I'm just going to sit here with her for a while."
Joshua nodded. "Let me know if you need anything."
"I will." Richard took his seat next to his wife. The heart rate on her monitor was still the same, monotonous pattern as before. Richard called out after his friend, "Hey … Thanks." He smiled weakly, grateful that Joshua had stopped by.
Joshua smiled. "I've grown pretty fond of her myself." He left the room, making a mental note to stop by his office and call Maria.
"Spring in New Haven … I'd forgotten how much I love this place," Sweetie sighed, happily walking along the row of trees lining Yale University. It was a perfect day. "The smell of the trees, the sound of the wind, the birds chirping, the feeling of spring in the air…"
"It is quite nice this time of the year after the snow has finally melted," Emily agreed. The sun was out, but there was a slight breeze in the air. Not enough to make you shiver, but light enough that Melinda's long hair blew in the wind.
Melinda closed her eyes for a moment, picturing a shiny white scene in her mind. "Snow…" she smiled. "I miss that, too."
"You've missed everything we've seen or heard this morning," Emily reminded her.
"I guess you just don't realize how much you take the little things for granted when you're alive." They stopped walking as they approached an area of landscaping. "Well…?" Sweetie held out her arms, expecting Emily to figure out where they were.
"Well what …? It's a bench, Sweetie …"
"Emily! This place … come on!"
Emily looked around. A smile soon appeared on her lips. "Richard and I were just here a few months ago for Parents Weekend. We passed by the trashcan on our way back to the car. It's not here… but the bench is …"
"Of course it's here. They didn't remove the bench until 2000. And the trashcan won't be there until a year or two after that."
As they stood by the bench, a young man and woman appeared in their line of sight. They could tell that the couple was arguing as they approached. It was quite clear that it was she and Richard arguing. The two of them walked passed Emily and Sweetie. Emily watched herself animatedly roll her eyes at her future husband and take a seat on the bench, turning her body away from him as he tried to reason with her.
"I loved arguing with him," Emily commented. "He always made me feel like such an intelligent woman." Emily smiled, watching the younger versions of herself and Richard.
"You are a spineless jellyfish, Richard Gilmore!" She crossed her arms over her chest.
"What?" He looked at her incredulously. "You're being ridiculous. I can't talk to you when you're like this." He would repeat that line many times in the next forty years.
She refused to look at him. "You can't commit to anything, Richard! I've been trying to figure out your holiday plans for a month now and yet you give me no indications of where you are going to be! My mother likes routines and schedules, Richard. I'd like to see you sometime during the next month … yet I have to know when that will be. I cannot just go off and meet some man for lunch."
"I'm not just some man, Emily. Why can't you just tell your mother that you're meeting me?"
Emily sighed. "If I tell my mother that I am dating someone, she will have the entire wedding planned before I've even gone on the first date."
"Well, we're far past our first date by now. So just tell her that you're going to meet friends, then."
"My mother can smell a lie before you even think of lying to her," she countered. "And you're trying to change the subject." She was not going to let him off the hook; she wanted a solid answer. "Why can't you just give me a timeframe?"
Richard sighed, frustrated by her persistence. "I don't know my plans, Emily. I've told you that already."
Emily groaned, looking down at her watch. "I have to leave in five minutes, Richard. Melinda and Gwendolyn are coming to pick me so that we can go back to school. I should go wait for them." She didn't move, but remained seated.
"I won't give you a definite answer … That makes me a spineless jellyfish?" he asked.
"Yes." She spoke no further, refusing to explain herself.
"I've told you this before. I don't know what my plans for the holidays entail."
Emily groaned, about to get up and walk away from him. She was tired of hearing the same response over and over again. Richard looked over at her. Her posture was rather rigid, a sign that she was not happy with him. When she was angry, she always sat up straight and turned slightly away from him so that he couldn't see her face clearly. Richard knew that he couldn't just let her leave like this. He had hoped to have some quiet, peaceful time before she left. Yet she had spent the whole weekend arguing with him about holiday plans and he could never find the perfect moment, as he'd hoped. She really could be quite an infuriating woman.
Richard reached into his coat pocket, grasping its contents in his hand. "Here!" he stated, rather annoyed as he flung the small black box into her lap.
Emily looked down, picking the box up. She popped it open and before Richard could say a word she had snapped it shut again, showing no emotion whatsoever. "Fine." Even her voice conveyed no emotion.
Richard could only stare at her incredulously as she reached down and picked up her bag, keeping the box in her hand the whole time as she started to walk away from him.
He called out to her and she turned back around, still no emotion on her face. "You do know what that is, right?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm quite aware of it."
"Oh." He didn't know what to say now. Were they engaged? It wasn't really clear.
"I'm going to go tell Melinda and Gwendolyn to return to Smith without me. You can drive me back in the morning." With those words, she walked off, leaving him to smile happily to himself as he waited for her to return.
Just as she had said, Emily returned a bit later. Richard was sitting on the bench, lost in his own thoughts. He looked up as Emily held the box out to him. "Ask me properly," she stated. Richard took the ring box from her hand. "I'd like to have a better story than this to tell my mother. Hopie will find it cute. Mother and Father won't."
Richard looked at her in silence. She was smiling her beautiful smile that always melted his heart. When she did that, he couldn't deny her anything. He took the ring box from her and reaching out to take her hand, he knelt down before her. "Well, this isn't exactly where or how I had imagined this happening, but …." Richard smiled up at her, squeezing her hand before he began. "From the first moment that I saw you, I wanted you in my life. I may have ruined a perfectly good blouse, but I had no other choice or you would never have even noticed me." Emily smiled, remembering how annoyed she had been to have coffee spilled on her by some stranger. "I know that it hasn't always been easy between us," he admitted. "And I know that I've hurt you and disappointed you sometimes. Yet I also know that you make me a better man."
He didn't break their gaze as he looked up at her smiling face. "You make me believe that I can do anything as long as I have you by my side. My entire future was planned out before I ever met you. I thought that was what I wanted and that it would make me happy. I now see how blind and foolish I was. You came along and changed my whole life. You're the one, Emily. Good and bad, thick and thin, you're the one that I want there with me for the rest of my life."
She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her free hand. "Can I say something?" she asked. Richard nodded. "While we're being open with each other, I have to say that my life was pretty empty before you came along. I always thought that I'd find a suitable man and get married and live the type of life that my parents have. I know they love each other, but I don't think they've ever been in love with each other. So, to have met someone that I truly love and can't picture my life without … well, it's not what I expected for my life." Emily touched his cheek with her free hand. "I would love nothing more than to marry you, Richard Gilmore."
Richard smiled up at her. "I haven't officially asked you yet…"
"Oh, ok," she giggled, nervously waiting for him to formally ask her. It wasn't often that she was so open and heartfelt. With Richard, she somehow didn't feel the need to always express her love. It was as if the two of them were already so connected that words did not always need to be spoken to know what the other was feeling.
He opened the box, taking the ring out. "Will you marry me, Emily?"
Emily smiled, looking down at Richard as he knelt before her. "Of course I will."
Richard pushed himself up, pulling her into his arms. He kissed her passionately, his lips moving to her neck before she pushed him back. She was not one to cry, but she couldn't help the tears that clouded her eyes. "This is why you wouldn't make any plans with me?"
"I wanted to take you home to meet my parents, but I couldn't tell you that until after we were engaged." She rested her forehead against his chin.
"You gave me no indications that you were planning this…"
"That's the point of a surprise," he stated, pulling back to kiss her nose.
"The ring …" she hinted, looking down at the box in his hand.
"I'm sorry, dear," he laughed, grasping her hand in his as he slid the ring onto her finger, brining her hand up as he brushed his lips over it.
"It's perfect," she smiled.
"You're perfect." Richard pulled her back into his arms, not letting go of her.
The two of them remained in their embrace as Emily and Sweetie watched their exchange. "I never told my mother the whole story of our engagement," Emily commented, looking over at Sweetie as the young couple before them disappeared. "She would have been horrified."
Sweetie laughed. "Your mother was unique."
"That's not quite the word I would use." She reached up, pushing her hair behind her ear as the wind blew across the campus.
"She was a product of her generation. All she wanted was for you to find a good man to marry. And you did, so all was well."
Emily nodded. "She did love Richard." Both of her parents had loved Richard. They had been crazy about him from the moment she introduced them. Too bad his parents never felt the same way about her, though she always thought that Charles was fonder of her than he'd ever let on.
"You're not her, Emily." She looked over at Sweetie. "You're not your mother, Emily. You're not like her." Sweetie knew that being like her mother was Emily's biggest fear. It had taken Richard a few years to even convince her to start a family. She didn't want to raise children that would hate being around her, but all she had was the example of her own childhood. Yet in the end, she made the same mistakes as her mother.
Emily sighed. "I tried to marry my daughter off to the first man that came along. I pushed her away and kept pushing until she wasn't there to push anymore. I criticize everything she does, never telling her how proud I am of the life that she's built. She hates being around me. Do you know that I don't even remember the last time that I told my daughter that I love her? And I definitely don't remember the last time she spoke those words to me." Emily closed her eyes, shaking her head in defeat. "I'm exactly like my mother."
"All you have ever wanted is what is best for Lorelai. Maybe you weren't always right, but your heart was always in the right place. And she doesn't hate you. She does not always understand why you act the way that you do, but she doesn't hate you, Emily."
Emily looked down at her hands. There was a slight breeze in the air and she ran her hand across the Goosebumps that had formed on her arm. "Did I ever tell you that I was jealous of you and Paul? Sweetie looked at her with a funny expression. "I know he was a son and not a daughter, but he adored you. When you died, he fell apart. He spent weeks walking around like he'd lost his heart and soul. Even now, he's still not the same. He looks as if he's about to cry every time that he sees me at the club or around Hartford. Sometimes I go out of my way to avoid him because I can't bear to see that look in his eyes, as if he's hoping that being around me will somehow make him feel closer to you." She looked out at the perfectly manicured trees, subconsciously twisting her wedding band. "I think if I died right now Lorelai wouldn't even cry at my funeral. She would be there for her father and Rory, but she would be just fine without me. Her life would go on as it always does. She wouldn't even notice if I weren't around anymore."
Sweetie shook her head. "You have no idea how wrong you are, Emily. No idea at all."
"It's here somewhere," Rory said, lifting a few books off her grandfather's desk.
"Well, we haven't found it yet."
Rory looked up at her in frustration. "I know it's here, Mom. He keeps all his Yale stuff here."
They looked around Richard's office. It wasn't a big office, but it was decent enough for a man who taught one economics class a semester in addition to having his own business to run.
"It is not here, Rory." Lorelai looked between some books on a shelf, flipping through Richard's files.
"Yes, it is! Just keep looking."
"How am I supposed to look for something when I don't know what it looks like?" She turned, looking over at Rory, who was now going through the drawers of Richard's desk.
"I told you, Mom. Blue notebook. It says Yale on the front. It's thin."
Lorelai bent down, opening a cabinet.
"Lorelai, what in the world are you doing in here?" Emily asked. She bent down to kneel in front of her daughter. Lorelai was seated in Emily's closet underneath the bottom row of clothing. Her pants were pushed to the side so that the little girl had room to hide. She had thought that her hiding place was a good spot. No one was supposed to find her in here. She remained silent, hoping that her mother might forget about her. Yet, she didn't.
"Lorelai …"
She reluctantly pushed the clothes to the side, revealing herself to her mother. There was a frown on Lorelai's face and she quickly crossed her arms in defiance.
"I don't wanna see Gran."
Emily looked at her daughter, wishing that she had a camera to capture how adorable she looked sitting there beneath the rows of clothes with such a deep frown on her face. "Why not?" she asked, trying to coax an answer out of her.
"She said I look like a gypsy."
"Lorelai, do you know what a gypsy is?" Emily asked. Her daughter was only five years old.
"No, but it didn't sound nice." She looked up at her mother, her big eyes full of tears. "I don't wanna see her."
In that moment, Emily was willing to do anything to keep those tears from falling. "Okay," she soothed, reaching for her child. She pulled Lorelai into her lap. "If you don't want to see Gran, then you don't have to."
"Won't Daddy make me say good-bye to her?" The little still girl looked as if she were about to cry.
"Not if Daddy doesn't find us..." Lorelai smiled, looking up at her mother. "Stand up," Emily instructed her. Lorelai pushed herself up and Emily managed to get to her feet. "Come on." She held out her hand to the little girl.
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see." They walked out of the closet and Emily put her finger over her lips. Lorelai did the same, smiling as if she were doing something forbidden. They snuck down the back stairs to the basement. Lorelai looked in amazement at all the stuff as her mother held her hand, helping her down the steep staircase. She had never been in this room before. It was really big and she stood in the middle of the room, looking around.
Emily walked to a shelf and came back to her daughter with a box in her hands. "Have you ever played Monopoly?" Lorelai shook her head. "Well, I suppose that now is a good time to learn."
They sat down on the floor, spilling the contents of the game in front of them.
"Mom? Mom! Did you find it?"
Lorelai looked at her daughter. "Huh?" She blinked a few times. "No, no, I didn't find it. False alarm."
Rory stopped looking through Richard's papers. "Are you OK, Mom?"
Lorelai pushed herself off the floor, leaning against the bookcase. "I've been having these flashbacks about my Mom. Stuff that I didn't remembered before. I mean, it all happened but I somehow forgot about it."
"Like what?" Rory asked.
"Like the time when my grandmother came to visit and my mother hid out with me in the basement and played Monopoly with me until Gran left."
"That doesn't sound like Grandma."
"No, it doesn't," she agreed. "I didn't realize how much I'd forgotten about her."
"What do you mean?" Rory wanted her mother to talk it out, to figure it out on her own.
"I don't know. I guess I somehow forgot that there used to be some good times, too. It wasn't always bad. I didn't always hate her."
"You don't hate, Grandma."
"No," she agreed. "I just had to convince myself that I did to justify leaving. I forgot all about the good times that we had."