Author's Note: I was going to wait one more day to update, but the free use of caps lock in the reviews convinced me otherwise.

I belatedly added a bit more to the last chapter of Emily drawing parallels between her and her daughter, so if you read on the first day I updated, maybe go back and take a peek at that last argument between Emily and Luke so you can enjoy the changes. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This year I'm thankful for the Gilmore Girls and fanfic because this has been a Rough month on so many different levels and writing fic again (and reviews!) are really helping me not be sad.

Chapter 4

I don't see Emily again until Monday.

I'd like to say that makes it a nice weekend, but it almost sets me a little off balance to not have her eating quietly in the corner, her back so straight the people for two tables around start minding their manners. On the far side of the room, people still shoot the breeze about football and the sewer leak out on Third St, but on Emily's side it's all theatre and literature and the latest cultural event, like that boring crap is just seeping out of her pores and infecting the townspeople.

I want to tell Lorelai about The Emily Phenomenon, but I don't want to get her started on that bit again about catching her mom in a big Have a Heart trap and taking her a safe distance before releasing her. Like Hollywood. Or the North Pole.

Emily comes in the door and instead of taking a table, she strolls right up to the counter and considers me. I keep tallying the morning's receipts and ignore her. If she wants food, she can sit the hell down. If she wants to talk to me, she can rewind about thirty years and start treating her daughter like a human being.

"I came yesterday but you weren't here," she says after a minute.

"Yeah, well, I like to go into the city and shoot some heroin on the weekends. Break some windows, do a little light vandalism." I'm starting to understand how Lorelai became so sarcastic.

"I know very well where you were. Lane told me you were at Yale, building a new bed for Rory's dorm room."

"Kid's got too many books. Room came with shelves, she filled those. I put in more, she filled those. No more walls, so we jacked up the bed, made it into a platform of shelves." I frown at Emily. "Have you been making her read books on wine?"

"Of course not, she's only twenty! It's illegal and everyone knows you can't cultivate a proper palette until you're twenty-six anyway."

"Hmph. She's got a lot of wine books. And not a single bottle of the real stuff." I shrug. "But that's Rory for you." I almost ask why she cares that I wasn't here, but decide I don't want to know.

Emily smiles slightly. "It is just like her." She clears her throat. "If she'd have told us she needed a bed, of course we would have been happy to purchase one. But she didn't, and I wanted to thank you for assisting her. Of course, if we can reimburse you for your time and materials, I'd be pleased to do that as well."

I throw my pen down. "You see, that's the problem with you people. You say things in just the right way so it makes it sound like she belongs to you and only you and I'm some kind of hired goon. Well guess what, Emily? She asked for my help, not yours. You know why? Probably because she knew I'd build her a bed and I wouldn't make her feel like she owed me anything for it." I snatch up my pen again, but rip through the paper when I write the next figure.

"I wasn't saying that at all! I was simply trying to convey my embarrassment that she had to come to you, because as her family, we should have provided for her needs."

The pen is starting to bend in my hand, so I drop it and cross my arms, staring at Emily until it finally clicks in her thick, too-coiffed head what she just said.

Family.

Her shoulders sink a little, and then she draws herself back up, her careful expression not enough to mask the shadow in her eyes. "I apologize, Mr. Danes. It was rude of me to put it that way."

I don't want her apology. I wanted the look on her face when she realized she could name herself family all she wanted, but Rory calls me when she needs shelves, or a flat tire fixed, or when she can't afford the book for her anthropology seminar but she caught Lorelai clipping coupons again last week.

She turns and takes a table across the room. I go back to my receipts.

It's Lane's morning off, and it's forty full minutes before I cool off enough to bring Emily a menu. When I do, she doesn't reach for it, just sits with her hands folded in her lap and her seat not all the way tucked into the table. "I didn't mean to imply Rory wasn't a part of your life," she says, in a softer voice than I've ever heard from her. Even on her most polite day. "I just miss her. She hasn't been coming to Friday night dinners for some time now." She looks down. "Though I suppose you knew that."

Of course I knew that. Lorelai and Rory came in for ice cream the night of the big declaration. Rory's eyes were all red and watery, and even the peanut butter and marshmallow cream glaze I whipped up wasn't enough to put a smile back on her face.

"What do I look like, your therapist? This is a diner. Now order or get out."

She set the menu aside. "Coffee please. And whatever entrée you choose would be fine."

Today, though, she just picks at her food. After an hour and a half, I can't stand it anymore so I go and snatch the plate away from her. "You want to see her, you come in nights. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Don't tell her mother."

Her eyelashes flutter wide. "Rory drives down here twice a week and doesn't visit her mother?"

"She needs a quiet place to study. I guess she had a tree but some jackass took it over. She's got a dorm, but there's Paris." I shrug. "If she studies in the library, she knows everyone so they stop by and talk and she gets nothing done, so she comes here. I keep her flush in coffee and pie and she stays after I close and helps me clean up." I've been trying to teach her some simple stuff, grilled cheese and scrambled eggs, but for all her brains, the kid is crippled in the kitchen.

Emily is listening so intently I start to get a little self-conscious. Guess she was really hungry for news of her granddaughter.

"Well, doesn't she know everyone here in town as well?"

"Sure. I move that table into the storage room for her." I hook a thumb at Rory's favorite, the little white and red one. "It's really a desk anyway. Got it from the thrift store in New Haven." I say it just to watch Emily flinch but get nothing. It's possible she's just never heard of a thrift store. "Says she likes the smell of fresh vegetables, makes her feel smart. With any luck, she'll inhale a nutrient or two by accident."

I frown, realizing how long I've been talking.

"I've got work to do." I stalk off, but I can feel her watching me, and I don't like it when it doesn't feel like she's scheming at me. It makes me uneasy.

#

The bell over the door rings, but it's so subdued I don't know who it us until I look up, and I have to blink twice. My brain recognizes the curve of hip and shiny flounce of hair of a beautiful woman first, and only second labels that picture as my girlfriend. Lorelai looks tired, her shoulders sagging and she glances at a table, sees her mother in the back, and sort of shudders a little before she comes up to the counter instead.

"Hey, can I sit up here and eat with you?"

"Nope." I dump a filter and fresh coffee grounds into the pot and snap the basket into place. "You're going to criticize the way I cut pie—"

"It's skimpy!"

"—and flirt with me until Kirk starts taking notes again and Miss Patty starts looking at us with"—my lip curls—"that look." I pick up the carafe to fill it and gesture toward the room at large. "You're less trouble at a table. Sit at a table."

She lays a hand on the counter and folds the other on top of it, tipping her head with a smile that almost washes all the tired out of her eyes. "Aww, you missed me."

I try to scrape up a scowl but my mouth doesn't want to cooperate. "Why would I miss you when you ditched me two days in a row for Al's Pancake World?"

"He had a two for one special on the chow mein sandwich! Plus, curry fries." She shakes her hair down to block her face in our now familiar signal for saying something she doesn't want her mother to hear. "Hey, you could warn a girl when the Emperor has no clothes. At least light the bat signal or send a text message or something."

"What's a text message?"

She lays her head on the counter and groans softly. "I can't. I'm starving and there's no coffee and the ghost of mothers past is torturing me and I can't explain technology to you until I have at least 1500 calories worth of melted cheese. With nut sprinkles."

"You want the special, then, or you got something in mind?

She peeks up, her blue eyes crafty again. "Special special or special for me?"

"Which answer will get you off my back?"

"The second."

"Then it's the second."

She blows me a kiss. "Perfect. And pie, easy on the skimp."

"You're not going to have any room after the special."

"Oh ye of little faith." She wriggles onto a bar stool, a little of the bounce back in her movements.

I lean my arms on the counter, the back of my hand finding its way to rest against the back of hers. "Everything okay at the Inn?"

"Nothing a bullwhip and a chair wouldn't take care of." She forces a smile.

I nod. "I'll make you something to eat."

The meat's barely on the grill when she comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist.

"You know you're not supposed to be in here."

"I'm not. There's just a big, hungry koala on your back."

"If you get one of your hairs in your lamb chops, you better not come crying to me."

"Lamb chops!" She cranes her neck to see around my shoulders. "You're not making those just for me, are you?"

"Nah, it's the special."

"Was anyone else given the chance to order this special?"

I add a little pepper.

"That's what I thought."

I let out an aggravated sigh. "We can pretend it's just the daily special or we can pretend I'm making it special for you, but you can't have it both ways. Make up your mind."

"I have." She squeezes me a little tighter.

And I shouldn't, but I let her stay there for a while, her head heavy against my shoulder blade while I cook.

"When you're running this place," she asks, "do you ever feel like the numbers are never going to add up, but you're strapped into a roller coaster with no brakes?"

"That's how it starts out. But eventually, you'll build up enough from the good times to buffer the bad." I flip the lamb and start to sauté the carrots. "Once, when I was first starting out, I couldn't afford to pay my meat supplier, so I went out and shot a deer and sold it as beef all month."

She snickers. "How very Davy Crockett of you."

Her hand strokes over my stomach, slow and soothing. The only customer out front is Emily, and I'm not going to put myself out checking on her comfort, so I just stay put.

"Why don't you ever give me business advice?" Lorelai asks.

"Why, you want some?"

"Not yet. Maybe soon."

I frown. That doesn't sound good. "Didn't cutting lunch help?"

"Yeah, but I didn't do it soon enough. Now we're behind." She rubs her cheek against my flannel. "It's not just the Inn, honestly. It feels like Rory's starting to slip away from me. Somehow, after she turned thirteen and didn't go completely crazy, I convinced myself it would never happen. But she doesn't tell me everything anymore. She doesn't come home every weekend."

"She's not slipping away."

"I don't know. Did you see anything, when you were up at the dorms building her new bed?"

"More than I wanted to, believe me."

She shakes me. "Tell me tell me tell me!"

"Hot grill, woman. Careful." I clasp a hand over hers to still her, and so she can't accidentally bump her knuckles against the edge. "Met her boyfriend."

She lets go so she can jump to the side and gape at me. "Logan? Are you kidding? I haven't even met Logan yet. I mean, at least not when he was wearing a shirt and less of Rory's lipstick."

"Even without the lipstick, he looks like a frat boy prick."

Lorelai laughs. "You're so sexy when you swear."

I give her a sideways look. "You're a strange woman."

"You love it."

I nod easily.

Lorelai pokes me in the side, clearly not done with her interrogation. But at least now, she's smiling. "What else, Sherlock?"

"He's the reason she needed a bed. She got the idea for the shelves and asked him to help, so he sent his driver over." I scoff. "But his driver drives. Doesn't know how to build anything. Messed her bed up taking it apart, so they couldn't get it back together and she had to sleep on the floor. She's friends with the driver, I guess, so she didn't want to tell him it didn't work, and she called me instead."

"That's my girl," Lorelai says softly, and I don't know if she's talking about Rory being friends with the driver, or taking after her mother and calling me every time so much as a light bulb needed to be changed. Not that I minded all those years of light bulb changes. I always bought her the cheap kind for a reason.

"Anyway, Logan hung out for a while. He's nice to her. In a slick, cocky way, but you can kinda tell anyway."

"Tell what?" Lorelai asks softly.

"That he knows how special she is. How smart."

She smiles. "You're making me feel a lot better about this kid. Do you actually like him?"

"Like him?" I almost choke. "No. Kid's a spoiled frat boy bozo. But even a bozo is smart enough to see Rory's something else. He catches himself watching her when she's not looking, and gets all twitchy. Saw him do it three times."

"Aww, I like that." She beams. "Maybe I won't call the hitman just yet."

"Don't call off the hitman on my account. I'll go in halfsies with you."

She smiles, but it fades quickly. "It just sucks that I have to find out about my daughter's life by spying on her. I should never have let on how much I hated No Strings Attached Logan. We need to meet him under a flag of truce, but I'm not sure that would help." She pouts. "Everybody hates the meet the parents dinner."

"You know, platform book shelf beds are big, hard to move." I pop a roll in the oven to heat it up. "So I installed some fasteners where we could unhook it apart into pieces. That way it fits nice and snug in the bed of my truck, and Rory can have it for her dorm next year, or an apartment. Whatever she wants."

Lorelai slips her fingers under the hem of my shirt, tickling the bare skin of my hipbone. "Are you trying to distract me with your thoughtfulness? Because it's totally working."

I flip the carrots. "I rigged one of the fasteners to fail. When she calls me to fix it, you and I will be on a date."

She gasps. "When's it going to break? Saturday night? Because you promised me ice skating with you on actual skates this time. It better not break then."

"I'm good but I'm not that good, Mata Hari." I scowl. "It breaks when it breaks, and we'll go up there together. Then, while I'm running to the hardware store for parts, you'll get to hang out with Rory and Logan in their normal stomping grounds."

"Because he'll probably be there when the bed breaks." She grimaces. "Brilliant. Nausea-inducing, but brilliant."

I shut off the stove. "Neutral ground, tools scattered everywhere, mattress leaned up against the wall. I'll bring beer and get him to help me lift somethin', everybody will be off their guard and we won't have to do the stiff, 'pass the butter and what are your plans for the future' thing."

She winds her arms around my neck. "I love you, you brilliant, devious man. Did you know that?"

"I know you're going to make me burn your roll." I peck her on the cheek and turn back to the stove. I rescue the roll, plate her lamb, slide the carrots on next to it, and sprinkle a few breadcrumbs on top. Then I dust off my hands and bend her backwards into a thorough kiss. Her fingers curl into the hair that escapes the bottom edge of my cap, her nails raising goosebumps on the back of my neck and making me wish it were closer to closing time.

I raise her back to standing and give her one more kiss on her now-swollen lips.

She blinks at me. "If your insurance company knew about that, your policy would be in the shredder by morning."

"Don't pretend you came back here for anything else." I hand her plate. "Now go eat your dinner."

"I'm not pretending anything. I got exactly what I came for." She tosses a carrot in her mouth and gives me a saucy smile, then sashays out.

#

Since it's so empty tonight, I end up leaning on the counter while she eats dinner and flirts outrageously with me. I tell her about the log on a leash Kirk brought into the diner, and the cease and desist order Taylor gave me to get me to stop serving ice cream. I'm still a little proud of the paper cut I left on his nose when I threw it back in his face, but Lorelai flames up for a second when she hears Nicole wrote the cease and desist. But I get her laughing again when I tell her about the pipe cleaner model of the Louvre that Paris put together with hot glue, complete with pipe cleaner interpretations of all the most famous paintings. Apparently, the Impressionists look better in pipe cleaner than in person.

Kirk comes in toward the end, but Lorelai and I just talk through the kitchen door while I cook his burger.

We have such a nice time that I forget Emily's still there until Lorelai kisses me goodbye and heads back to the inn for the evening shift.

But before the door even hits the jam behind her, Emily rushes toward the counter, grabbing at Lorelai's mostly empty plate. "She ate a vegetable! I saw it!" She points triumphantly at the last carrot. "I knew it! How did you get her to eat a vegetable?"

"She'll eat 'em if you steam them, then carmelize them in lemon olive oil." I wipe my hands on a towel, quirking my eyebrows. "Come on, you got her to adulthood. You're telling me you didn't know the lemon olive oil trick?"

"Well," she sputters. "I just didn't think you would have lemon infused olive oil at a diner."

"Say it a little louder," I grumble. "You know how bad the markup is on citrus infusions?"

"You have lemon olive oil?" Kirk comes over. "Can you cook my fries in it next time? I think the citrus would be delicious in the crunchy outer coating."

"No, Kirk—" I start, but Emily turns and freezes him with a look.

"Lemon olive oil causes global warming," she snaps. "I'm shocked you would risk such a consequence for the sake of French fries."

"Well, well, I mean I didn't mean to—"

She nods imperiously. "I thought not. Now go sit down and finish your supper."

"Yes, ma'am."

He turns and mopes back to his chair and I watch him go, starting to smile in spite of myself.

Emily collapses onto a counter stool. "When she was eight, her doctor told us she was deficient in vitamins and minerals. I told her she couldn't eat any other food until she finished her vegetables. She went on a hunger strike, fainted at school, and ended up in the hospital on an IV, gobbling Jell-O and chocolate pudding she got from the nurses." She presses her fingers to her temple. "I starved my own daughter into the hospital. What could I do? I gave up. She won't even swallow vitamins, for heaven's sake."

"Because she thinks they taste like chalk. Have you tried the gummy ones?"

She glares. "Of course I tried gummy vitamins. I'm not an imbecile. She wouldn't touch them."

"Did you try dumping them out of the jar, mixing them in with a bag of other gummies, then hot gluing the bag shut?"

She stares at me, something rearranging itself behind her eyes. "No. I hadn't thought of that. Does it work?"

"Sure. Long as you don't mix the shapes wrong." I rip her ticket off my order pad. "You ready to cash out?"

She leans forward. "Can you write down the recipe for those carrots? I want to show my chef how to make them."

I snort. "No."

"Please? It would be good for Lorelai's nutrition, and Rory's, too. Clearly you must care something about that."

I flip the towel back over my shoulder. "It's not going to do you any good because she's not coming back to those guilt trip dinners of yours."

She better not, anyway. I like our new Friday night dinner tradition. The girls play vicious, shouty games of Monopoly at the corner table, sneaking junk food to make it until the diner closes, and then we take turns picking the restaurant. Anyplace but Stars Hollow, those are the rules. Rory took us to fondue, and Lorelai dragged us to a bowling alley where she invented some annoyingly delicious hors d' oeuvres out of cut up candy bars and strategically placed salted popcorn. On my week, I went for sushi. First because I'd never had it before. Second, because watching the faces Lorelai and Rory pulled over raw fish made me laugh harder than I have since I was a kid.

Emily straightens. "I intend to earn my daughter's forgiveness, Mr. Danes. And if I do not, then the carrot recipe will go to waste."

I had my no all queued up, because there's nothing that delights me more than saying that word to Lorelai's mother. But something about the way she said, "earn" kind of sticks in my ears. Besides, I can have some fun with this. I cross my arms. "I'll teach you the recipe. But you have to make it yourself."

"And the chocolate chip pancakes she likes!" She's already heading around the counter.

"Hold up. Nobody gets in the kitchen with their hair uncovered." I pull my spare ballcap out from under the counter. "And no pancakes. With all the ones you screw up that have to be thrown out, it'll mess up my ordering."

"I will not 'screw up' pancakes," Emily snips. "They're just bread, how hard can it be?"

I stare her down. "Diner food is simple. That means there's no fancy sauces or spices to cover up your mistakes. It's all about figuring out a system and being reliable enough to duplicate it. Fast, with no waste because waste is money. You couldn't do it if I had a year to train you."

"Please," she scoffs, her chin coming up. "I could do it in a month."

I laugh. "You'd bankrupt me in a month, and I'd have to pay for a second dumpster for all the food you'd throw away."

"Try me," she says coolly. "I'll pay for anything I spoil."

The spark of competition catches hold of me, and I take a step forward, glowering down at her, but this time she holds her ground. After watching me bark at people all month, she's not so afraid of me anymore. Too bad. I'll have to throw somebody out tomorrow.

"Not with your husband's money, you don't. I can't stand you hoity toity rich people who never have to feel the pinch when you screw up. Real people pay for their own mistakes."

This time she does flinch. Just with her eyelashes, her manicured hands curling into fists at her sides. "If not in money," she says, her voice strained, "then how do I pay?"

"You'll work off your debt. Seven bucks an hour to cover all throwaways and spoilage. Not just cooking. Mopping, organizing the store room, cleaning out the fryer. You think you're good enough to work in my kitchen, then what I say goes."

She snatches my spare ball cap out of my hand and crams it down over her impeccably styled hair. Then she marches into my kitchen without me.