I hope I used the word redemption right in the title. Don't think I've mentioned it in this story, but I'm not a native speaker of English, so if you see a weird choice of words somewhere or a grammatical construction that makes no sense, you're more than welcome to point it out - that way preventing the errors from occuring in the future! :)

"Rory?", There's a soft knock on the door, she must have fallen asleep. Jess' book lies next to her in the bed and she quickly hides it under her pillow before she answers and lets her mother know it's okay to come in.

"I brought coffee." Lorelai says and holds a mug out to Rory. She nods and takes the mug and sits up with her back against the wall, leaving some room on the bed for her mother to sit down.
"Thanks."

Lorelai stares down into her coffee, looking a bit tense.
"Paris sends her love. When the wedding got cancelled and since you didn't want to talk to anyone she went back to Hartford again." She says after a while, still staring down at her coffee.

Paris' Nanny was sick, a few days before the wedding she had a stroke. Nanny had always been very important for Paris, she had been more of a parent to her than either of her real parents. Rory was surprised that Paris had planned on leaving Nanny's room at the hospital long enough to attend the wedding, although she was sure the staff were relieved at the thought of a Paris-less night.

"What'd you tell her?" She hadn't really thought about what people thought about the cancelled wedding. Did they know that Jess sent her a letter? They must have told them something before they knew about the letter. "What did you tell everyone?" She adds.
"I just said the wedding's been cancelled."
Rory nods.
"Then I let people make their own assumptions as to why. I mean, they would be anyways so why bother? Of course, Paris being Paris she wasn't satisfied by that explanation but I told her you'd call her when you felt better." Lorelai looks up at Rory and tries to smile, but the smile looks tensed, as does her whole being.

"What did grandma say?"Her grandmother had been thrilled about the wedding, almost more thrilled than Rory, something that probably should have given her a hint about how wrong this wedding had been from the beginning.
"Well, your grandmother still thinks you got a case of cold feet and that I encouraged you to listen to your feet and cancel the wedding."
"I'm so sorry mum." The weight of the guilt comes tumbling down on her again. The relationship between her mother and her grandmother was so fragile and now she had made things worse.
Lorelai shakes her head.
"Don't worry sweetie. I can handle it; after all I've had a lot of training."

Her mother sighs, bites her lips together and turns towards her.
"Listen, Rory." She twitches her hands in front of her, looking nervous. "I keep thinking that if I hadn't…If I had been…nicer…to Jess…Maybe you wouldn't be in this…situation right now, maybe you would have been with Jess all along."
"Mum." Rory throws her arms around her and hugs her. "Don't do that, don't blame yourself. This is not your fault."

Lorelai shakes her head and untangles herself from the hug.
"I just need to get this off my chest, I haven't been able to sleep at all last night I just keep thinking this is all my fault." She holds her hand up as to stop Rory from talking and takes a deep breath. "I know I never really…approved of you and Jess. I thought Jess was just this bad boy phase that you needed to go through, and I keep looking back, thinking that you wouldn't be in this mess right now if only I had at least tried to give Jess a fair chance."

She takes another deep breath and her eyes start filling up with tears.
"Mum, you don't need to…" Rory starts but Lorelai interrupts her, shaking her head again.
"I need to tell you this, I need you to know that this whole thing with Luke and your father made me realize that you can't bargain with love, you can't reason with love. If Jess is the man you love, you should be with him. I know you probably think I hate him, but I don't. It's just…I was so scared when you started dating Jess. He wasn't your first boyfriend, but he was the first boyfriend I felt threatened by. I saw the way you looked at him – the same way I looked at your father about nine months before you were born. You never looked at Dean that way and I wasn't ready. I know the real question should have been whether you were ready or not, but I couldn't think straight, all I saw was this boy trying to steal you away from me. When you were with Dean I always felt included, I felt safe. Dean was safe. But then came this boy, he stole a beer out of my fridge and he was rude and I saw the way you looked at him and I wanted to pick you up, throw you over my shoulder and run in the opposite direction." Lorelai draws her breath and Rory can hear how the breath shudders with emotion.

"Mum, you know Jess and I never…" Rory starts, but once again her mother shakes her head and interrupts her.
"I'm not talking about sex, or at least not only about sex. You and Jess, you had this…connection or whatever…this bond between you, you could talk for hours about things that I knew nothing about. When you were with Dean, it was you and me, teasing Dean cause he hadn't seen all of our favorite movies or because he didn't know about our little quirks and things, but with you and Jess, it wasn't you and me and this boy you were dating, it was you and the boy you were dating and me standing on the side. And I know it had to happen sooner or later, I mean I knew that sooner or later 'watching a movie with my mother' wouldn't be your idea of a perfect date, but it happened too soon. I wasn't ready to step down. I wasn't ready for a boy to replace me as your best friend. I still wanted to be the one you came to when you needed to talk, I still wanted to be the one who always understood you; that knew what you were thinking."

"You still are my best friend, you'll always be." By now Rory's eyes have filled up with tears as well.
"I was just so jealous. You didn't talk to me about Jess. I don't blame you, I judged him after spending five minutes with him. But I didn't know what you were thinking, you didn't come to me to talk."

Rory leans over towards her mother and hugs her. For a long time they sit like that, quiet hugging each other. No further words are needed.

"I think you should go see him, talk to him. Tell him how you feel." Lorelai says when they are done hugging.
Rory shakes her head.
"He told me not to come, he wrote that in his letter."
"But he doesn't know that you love him." Lorelai sounds insisting.
"He knows I didn't get married." She shrugs her shoulders. "Even though Luke was yelling at him for sending me the letter, I think that information got through."
"Yeah." Her mother sighs. "You know Luke called him back and apologized, right? Don't think he told him that much about the wedding not happening though." She hesitates, but continues after another sigh. "Are you really sure you don't want him to know?"

"He knows the wedding's off, if he has changed his mind about moving on he'll call, but it has to be his decision, he's the one that has moved on." Rory firmly states, trying to end that discussion, but her mother won't give up.
"So you're really not going to tell him how you feel?"
"He asked me not to come. If he has moved on, if he's happy, it wouldn't be right for me to come running after him to tell him I changed my mind." She pauses and shakes her head before she adds: "Not after how I treated him last time we met."

"Last time you met? At Truncheon?" Lorelai sounds surprised, Rory never told her what happened when she went to see Jess. She knows she went there for the opening, but she never told her what happened when all the other guests had left. Maybe her mother was right, maybe she never felt comfortable talking to her mother about Jess. She decides to let her know what happened at Truncheon that night, no more hiding things away.

"We kissed. I went alone to see him in Philadelphia and we kissed…then I told him I couldn't cheat on Logan." She takes a deep breath. "We kissed and then I told him I was in love with Logan."
"Oh, sweetie." Her mother looks sad.
"I was just so mad at Logan at the time, this was right after the…misunderstanding at Honor's wedding. I thought I couldn't trust what I was feeling, I thought it was just old feelings, memories of what had been, so I told him I loved Logan, and I didn't lie, I really loved, love, Logan, it's just…"
"You love Jess more" Lorelai says without knowing she drawn the exact same conclusion Logan himself had drawn earlier.

At first Rory doesn't answer and then she throws her arms about and says:
"It was never right. I loved – love – Logan, but there were so many things that weren't right. The way he proposed like that, in front of all those people. I couldn't possibly say no and embarrass him in front of them. I would have liked to have the time to think, if he knew me he should have known that. He should have known I would have liked to have time to think before making a life-changing decision."

Her mother doesn't say anything, she simply nods, as if she knows that these are things that Rory's been thinking about and now needs to get off her chest.
"And I know he didn't ask me to turn down that job for him, but I did, and now I might have missed out on my chance to be a real reporter. It's not Logan's fault, and I don't blame him, I was the one who turned down the job because I wanted to get married instead. Although, deep inside, I didn't want to get married, I just didn't know it, and I didn't want to let him down, let grandma down, let everyone down, and postpone the wedding for God knows how long for a job. I mean, I was about to marry the heir of the Huntzberger Publishing Group, no need to worry about getting a job as a reporter then." She says the last sentences with such sarcasm it's impossible to miss it.

"It sounds like Jess' letter wasn't the only reason you cancelled this wedding. Sounds more like maybe Jess' letter was simply the last nail in the coffin." Her mother says, trying to sound comforting and consoling.
Rory nods.
"Yeah. Maybe it was."

Lorelai sighs and looks at Rory with an indecisive look on her face. She takes a deep breath and starts talking quickly, as if she's afraid she might change her mind.
"I have to confess, even now, I'm sitting here, dying to see that letter he wrote, but I'm afraid to ask, because it's from Jess and I'm scared you won't wanna show it to me."

Rory reaches out and opens the drawer in her bedside table and picks up the letter.
"No more hiding things away." She says as she hands the letter to her mother.