Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls.

Tristan was at the end of his rope. He had tried everything he could think of to get through to Maddie without any results. He fought the urge to bang his head against a wall every day. He had tried to reason with her. Bribing her hadn't worked either, much to his dismay. Rory was at a loss as to what to do. It broke her heart to see the two of them at odds.

Rory was working less since the election was finally over and she was in between assignments. She loved her job, but she wished that she could do more. She was starting to think that maybe she had made a mistake when she decided to work from home. Aiden was a dream to take care of, so was Jake; but she needed a break from it all. She needed something to take her mind off of what was going on around her.

She was cooking dinner when she heard the front door slam. Aiden jumped in his high chair, obviously startled. She waited for the tears that normally followed with baited breath as Tristan could be heard scolding Maddie from the living room. Aiden went back to beating his tray with a wooden spoon then Tristan came into the kitchen looking defeated.

"I don't know what we're going to do with her. I can't get through," he said, running his fingers through his hair.

"Maybe we should let her come to us. Dealing with this is something that she needs to do on her own."

"You didn't have a relative die until you were an adult. How did you get so smart?"

"It runs in the family," she said with a shrug.

He caught on that she was making a reference to Lorelai and her grandmother, two very strong, very independent women. He saw a lot of them in Rory, except that she wasn't pushy like her grandmother and she was more reserved and less indecisive than Lorelai. She was her own person.

"Maybe I should give her what she wants," he said with a sigh.

"I thought that we decided that we weren't going to let her go until Spring Break."

"What if he doesn't make it? She deserves a chance to see him before he passes."

"I agree with you on that front but you can't reward her for bad behavior," she reasoned.

"Do you think that I should try reasoning with her again?"

"More like make a deal with her," she offered.

"That might work," he said with a quirked eyebrow.

He left the room in search of his daughter. Rory may not have had to deal with the death of a loved one at an early age but she knew Maddie almost as well as Tristan did. Maddie was not in the living room nor was she in her bedroom. He walked back up the hallway to the boy's room thinking that maybe she had found some reason to go in there. Maddie never went into the boy's room unless she was told to.

Tristan found her sitting in the rocking chair with Jake curled up in her lap. She was rocking him gently to calm the tears that were running down his cheeks. He entered the room, a look of concern etched across his face.

"He shut his fingers in the toy chest," she explained, not looking up.

Tristan put on a movie and got Jake to sit on his bed once it had started. He motioned towards the door wordlessly and Maddie sighed before getting up to follow him. Once they were in his and Rory's office he shut the door behind them.

"Sit down," he said as he crossed the room.

"What have I done wrong now?" she asked surly.

"You haven't done anything wrong. I want to talk to you about the way you've been acting."

"What about it?" she asked, her lips forming a hard line.

"I know how you feel Mads. You feel like no one is listening to you and you think that acting out is going to get my attention. Well, it has so you can stop. Grandma Dugray told me that I would know what it was like to raise a child who turned out to be exactly like me one day and she was right."

"You acted out when you were my age?"

"I was sent to Military School when I was seventeen. That's how I met your mom."

"How did you meet her?"

"Your granddad was a teacher at the School. Your mom came in one day to drop something off and I ran into her, literally. I didn't think much of her at first, she was shy and didn't say much and I was still hung up on someone else. She couldn't even look me in the eye as she picked her things up. I didn't see her again for three months. I was getting ready to go Charlotte to work for your great grandfather for the summer and there she was waiting for her dad on the front steps of the school. I paid more attention to her that time. She had this beautiful copper red hair that fell in her eyes. Her eyes were the color of sea glass, just like yours. She smiled shyly when I greeted her. I didn't get to say much else to her because your granddad was making his way towards us and I knew that he didn't think much of me."

"When did you see her again?"

"Her family came to Charlotte over Fourth of July. I was working at the dock when she came in on a boat of her friends. She remembered me from school and asked me how I was and everything snowballed from there. We dated secretly for the rest of the summer and into the fall. Her younger sister caught her sneaking in one night and told their parents. She wouldn't tell them anything so her dad told her that if she wanted to keep seeing me that I needed to be at dinner that Friday night. Her dad was not happy to see me, let me tell you. Olivia took a liking to me instantly because they only had the girls. It took Sam a lot longer to warm up to me since he knew the kind of person I was. Rachel changed me for the better and by the time I graduated we were talking about getting married. Her cancer was back by then, but she hadn't told me. Sam didn't want us getting married, but Rachel was stubborn, that's where you get it from."

"I thought I got my stubbornness from you," she said with a smirk.

"I am not stubborn, I'm ignorant, there's a difference," he said giving her a stern look.

"Grandpa Sam didn't want you and mom to get married?"

"Not at first. Rachel got sicker and we knew that she wouldn't have much time. She was refusing to go to the hospital because she knew that if she did her only chance of having a child would be gone. She didn't want to go through chemo or radiation. She didn't want to put unwanted stress on the rest of us. So I made a deal with her. I told her that if she went to the hospital and attempted to get better that we could get married. We were married that weekend, and Sam was livid. Olivia talked us into moving in with them so that she could take care of Rachel while she recovered from her bone marrow transplant. She was doing so well and then she got pregnant with you a year and a half later. I could tell something wasn't right immediately. She wasn't sleeping, she wasn't eating; she almost lost you twice, yet she refused to get treatment. There wasn't anything that her doctor could do anyway since she was pregnant with you. She was gone less than three months after you were born. She felt that she had gotten everything she wanted out of life and she couldn't fight anymore."

"Who was the girl who you still had feelings for when you first met her?"

"It was Rory. I told you that we went to school together, didn't I?"

"Uh huh," she said with a nod.

"I am so thankful that she didn't take me seriously back then. If she had, I wouldn't have you," he said with a tender smile.

"I'm sorry for giving and mom so much trouble," she said quietly.

"See? You aren't like me at all, I never would have apologized back then," he said opening his arms.

Maddie walked around the table and sat in his lap with her head resting on his shoulder.

"I'll make a deal with you. If you can get half of your work caught up by Christmas you can go down to North Carolina for Spring Break."

"What if Gramps gets worse before then?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," he promised.

"It's a deal," she agreed.

He lost track of time and before he knew it Rory was standing at the door to tell them that dinner was ready. Rory smiled endearingly at them before walking back down the hall. She was glad that they had been able to work things out. Hopefully the worst was behind them and they could work on moving on.