The book gets a fair amount of press, at least relatively speaking, and the sales look good, which means he can continue to look forward to weird emails from strangers for the next whenever. The Chrises keep bugging him to send out more of his shorter pieces to journals and contests and things like that, and Jess eventually gives in and sends some stuff out. One of the older ones gets picked up by The New Yorker, which looking back was the point of no return, as far as Jess' gmail account goes.
Matthew starts printing out the funnier ones at the shop, which eventually turns into an ongoing decoupage project involving an old rocking chair that he picked up at a yard sale. Whenever they have parties, Matt will hang a red rope around it and put up a sign that says "Untitled (The Mariano Ego), Mixed Media," and someone will inevitably try to buy it.
"What happens if I get a stalker?" Jess asks.
"You wish your writing was good enough for stalkers," Girl Chris says, perched on the edge of the reception desk. Jess shoves her off with an elbow and she yelps, tumbling down to her feet. "Hey!"
"Whoops," Jess says.
"I think Christine's point is that it's unlikely," Matthew says delicately. "She was in no way making light of that horrific crime, of course, or implying that it would be good for your book sales."
Chris mumbles something under breath, glaring at Jess.
"Is that why you wear that ugly earring all the time?" Jess asks. "Is it like a two-way radio so you can jump in to cover her ass whenever she says something dumb?"
"My earring isn't ugly," Matt exclaims, at the same time that Chris goes, "your face is dumb."
"Yeah, always a pleasure, guys," Jess says.
Truthfully it's not that big of a deal; ninety percent of Jess' job is writing emails back and forth to random people, so it's not like it takes him that long to skim and delete them as they come in. He makes a few contacts anyway, mostly bloggers and journalists reaching out after the New Yorker piece, has a few interesting conversations with other writers, and carries on a hilariously nonsensical discussion with a seventeen-year-old in Nevada about Annie Proulx. The only time he gets truly weirded out is when one of the emails references Willa, at which point Jess immediately logs onto his Facebook in a fit of paranoia and locks down all his settings.
"It's probably nothing," April tells him, having appointed herself the official Mariano-Danes family cyber security officer. (She is also, apparently, handling all of the diner's social media accounts for Luke. Jess would like to know why the diner needs social media accounts, but all he gets is an eye-roll, whenever he asks.) "It mentions you have a daughter in your author bio, and she didn't mention Willa by name or anything. Everything she says in the message is actually pretty generic."
"Generic, maybe, but a little familiar, don't you think?" Jess asks, grimacing. There's a rather detailed description of why the family in the novel is a parallel to Jess' parents' relationship. None of the details are right - she apparently thinks Jimmy is dead - which makes him feel a little better, but that's still pretty fucked up.
"She's probably just a nut," April says reasonably, clicking around rapidly on Jess' laptop. After a second, she tilts the screen back to show him a Facebook profile. "See? I found her in like two seconds, so she's not a catfish. Just your garden variety weirdo, that's all."
Like hell Jess is going to admit that he doesn't know what the fuck a catfish is. "Great."
"She tried to friend you, though. I'm blocking her for you now," April says, frowning at the screen. The light reflects strangely off her glasses, making her look a lot older than she actually is. "You've got over a hundred friend requests, Jess! When was the last time you actually got on here?"
Jess shrugs. "I'll go through them later."
"Have you thought at all about your online presence?" April asks critically. "It'd probably help the book if you at least had your own page, or something."
Jess sighs loudly, adding an annoyed groan at the end.
"Fine, fine," April grumbles. "I don't have time to do it, anyway. Grump."
Willa's been slacking lately on the going-to-sleep-on-time front, so Jess ends up going through the requests that night as she winds herself down with a coloring book (which by Willa's definition means ripping the pages out and tearing them into interesting shapes - she hasn't discovered the destructive capabilities of crayons yet, which Jess can only thank the higher powers for). She's getting big enough that Jess has to start thinking about getting her a real bed instead of the ominous-looking cage contraption that Lorelai and Luke had bought him for Willa's second birthday, but she loves the thing so damn much he's already dreading the process of getting her used to something else. He thinks it's the bars; she likes to grab onto them and shake herself dizzy. Well, Jess figures, at least she's having fun with it.
The best way to get her to settle down, Jess has found, is to just hang out in her general proximity until she gets bored and falls asleep. If he leaves her alone, she gets scared and starts crying, and if he tries to rock her or cuddle her or, God forbid, put on the TV or some music, she gets even more wound up and ends up staying up all night. The happy medium is an armchair Jess dragged into the bedroom where he can sit and work, close enough to shame her into sleep with his mere presence, but far enough away that she can't beam him with one of her toys.
Jess has heard tales of her going straight to sleep like a perfect angel who doesn't even know what the word fussy means, but he has his suspicions about that. Lorelai and Luke always give him detailed accounts of all the ridiculous shit they had to do to get her to go to sleep (usually delivered in rant-form from Luke, while Lorelai inhales a gallon of coffee and stares blankly into the middle distance) so Jess is pretty sure his mother is just full of shit, as usual.
Most of the friend requests are people Jess actually knows somehow, so he zips through the list fairly quickly. He declines anyone whose name he doesn't recognize right off the bat, and a few of them he declines just on principle, because Jesus Christ, why the fuck would Dean Forester's ex-wife want to be Facebook friends with him? Jess vaguely remembers being in a math class with her once, but any way he slices it, that's just asking for trouble. He's very careful about what he clicks on that one.
Taylor Doose, he declines too, and a few other names from high school he can't match faces to. There's one name that he stares at for ages before it clicks - that old hippie guy that used to run that vegetable stand in the town square. Jess laughs out loud and accepts that one. He used to sell Jess pot sometimes, after all, and he never once let on to anyone about it. No better reason to keep in touch than that.
He's hovering indecisively over Shane Crowley's name when another request pops up in real-time, and Jess doesn't even recognize the name at first. Angelo Bautista - definitely not a Stars Hollow name, and Jess' first instinct is that it's someone he went to school with in New York, but then he remembers, and his breath freezes solid in his chest. Mari's maiden name is Bautista.
His vision goes kind of spotty for a second, and he realizes that he's gripping his laptop too tightly and quickly sets it down on the floor. He looks over at Willa, who is in that nice stage of sleepy friendliness, humming something to herself and laying on her side. She smiles at Jess, reaching out one of her hands idly in his general direction, and Jess has to violently quash the urge to snatch her up into his arms.
It's fine, it's nothing, Jess thinks, smiling back at his daughter and taking deep, even breaths. He's her biological parent, he's aced every single CPS visit, shown up for every single court date, dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's. And Mari signed away her parental rights. The family's got no reason to - even if they did, they couldn't. They probably just want to...keep in touch. That's - okay, that'd be -
Jess picks up the laptop and clicks on the name. Angelo is Mari's brother, which Jess remembers now: she'd mentioned him a couple times, and the first poetry collection they'd published for her was dedicated to him. She'd always talked about him as if he were a little kid; his profile says he's twenty-one, which is older than Jess had always imagined him to be. He's in school, at a nursing college in Nashua, and Jess clicks through the unlocked pictures on the page with a painful lump in his throat. Most of them are of one girl in particular, a pretty blonde who's always making stupid faces for the camera. A girlfriend, maybe, or a wife? Jess clicks on one of them sitting together at a lunch table in what's obviously a high school; arms around each other, grinning, they look nice. Wholesome.
He's got Willa's smile, Jess thinks, and snaps the laptop shut sharply. Jesus, he thinks. Jesus.
Jess calls his lawyer the next day, who spends about twenty minutes reassuring him that yes, it is extremely unlikely that any of Mari's extended family would ever successfully challenge Jess' custody, especially considering that both of her parents are dead. And, she adds, if they wanted to try anyway, they probably wouldn't friend him on Facebook first.
"I mean, I know that," Jess says, "on a logical level, I know that. I swear to God I know that."
"It's okay," Jess' lawyer says, who is a fifty-eight mother of three. That's probably the main reason Jess hired her - he thought it'd make him look more dependable, or something. "It must be nervewracking. But it wouldn't affect your standing, legally, if you decided to communicate with him. That decision is entirely up to you."
Jess breathes out slowly, rubbing his forehead. "Right. Okay."
"Now if Mari or her husband contact you, that you should definitely tell me about," she continues. "They haven't, have they? Since we last spoke?"
"Fuck no, are you kidding," Jess says, and hears her laugh in surprise. She's probably gonna bill him for this conversation, but whatever. He's a little past caring about that sort of thing.
He doesn't tell anyone for a few days, and spends a lot of time staring at the Facebook icon on his phone, turning the idea over and over in his head. He'd honestly never even considered the possibility before, that Mari might have family who might have opinions on how it all went down, who might want to be involved somehow. Stupid of him, maybe, but Mari never talked about her family much, and her silence had a certain weight to it - the weight of bad things that happened, and Jess never pushed. He knows her parents are dead, and he knows it was rough, and that's about all he knows, really. He's fairly certain she's only got the one brother, but he could be wrong. Hell, as far as he knows, Willa could have an entire squadron of aunts and uncles and cousins and who knows who else out there. They had to have left people behind in the Philippines, right? He's got no clue. He never even asked. Jess stares at the icon some more and feels like a fucking idiot.
Not exactly a new feeling, since he became a father. He's still not used to it.
He finally caves and tells Chris - Boy Chris - a few days in, still torn on what to do about the request and fed up with himself already. Chris storms around Jess' office for a good ten minutes, muttering in angry outrage, before he seems to run out of steam and just collapses in a chair, looking defeated.
"He's twenty-one? Still in college?"
Jess shrugs. He's got Angelo's profile up on his work computer, so he's not logged into his own account. No risk of accidentally clicking the wrong button and blowing his wad too early. "Nursing school."
"The kid wants to be a nurse? Shit." Chris shakes his head. "He's probably a freak, then."
"What? What does that even mean?"
"Everyone knows nurses are freaks," Chris says matter-of-factly, as if this is just an unwavering fact about the world. The sky is blue, apples are red, nurses are freaks. Whatever. "Did he send you a message?"
"I don't think so."
"Well," Chris says, shaking his head, "I dunno, man. It's a direct line to Mari, is the thing."
Yeah. "I'm aware," Jess says.
"She dedicated her book to him, so it's not like they were already on the outs before. They had to have been mad close. Even if he's on your side about it all, that's not just gonna go away."
"There are no sides," Jess says. "It wasn't even a fight. She showed me a paternity test, and the next thing I know, we're drawing up custody papers and arranging court dates. Her husband was the one who got all pissed off, but - you know, that was whatever - "
"She wanted you both out of the way ASAP, sounds like," Chris says. He sounds quietly furious, with more emotion than he usually allows to surface. He's all bluster, really, when you get down to it, most of his dramatics are him just playing the game, giving people what they expect, or sometimes the opposite of it, depending on what he wants out of them. The only times Jess has ever seen him genuinely emotional have been when Willa was involved somehow. "Doesn't mean her brother agreed with her. Might be that he wants to get to know her, might be that he's genuine. Or might be that he thinks you're a homewrecker, and he wants to kick your ass in a dark alleyway somewhere for taking advantage of his big sister."
"He looks like a scrawny guy, I could probably take him," Jess says dully.
"You're kind of scrawny too, man."
"I am scrappy," Jess says, indignant. Chris rolls his eyes and raises his palms in the air in an exaggerated gesture of defeat. "It was more complicated than that, Chris. From her point of view and mine."
"I know that, but from the outside, it doesn't look that way," Chris says. He pauses for a second, visibly hesitating. "It looks bad no matter what angle you're coming from. Either she's the bad guy or you are, and Jess, man, you're my friend. So it's gotta be her. You know what I mean?"
Jess rolls his head around on his shoulders, trying to loosen the cords of tension in his neck. "Yeah."
"You taking care of Willa makes it look a little bit worse, on her end. The way it all went down, too - putting Rick's name on the certificate, then signing over her rights the second she got caught, moving out of the fucking country right after - come on - "
"Just," Jess interrupts, holding up a hand, "let's - not. Can we just not?"
"I don't get how you're not pissed off about it," Chris says, but his tone softens, the anger leeching away.
"I told you, it's complicated."
"Being in love with her doesn't make it complicated when she fucks you over, it just makes it suck a lot more."
"I wasn't in - " Jess breaks off, physically biting his tongue to keep the words in. "That's not what I meant. I said it's complicated, that's what I meant. Okay? It wasn't easy for her, to give Willa up. She didn't have much of a choice, not if she wanted to keep Rick around. He gave her an ultimatum."
"So she chose her husband over her daughter and that makes it better?"
"I don't want to get into this. I don't!" Jess gestures at Chris sharply, who backs off again, his expression as dark as a storm cloud. "She's Willa's mother, okay? She gave birth to my daughter. I can't hate her, alright? I can't."
Chris leans forward, tipping his head into his hands for a brief second. When he face emerges again, the anger is gone. He just looks sad. "Okay, man. I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
The silence is heavy, and Jess hits a key on the computer to get rid of the screensaver. Angelo and his girlfriend are still there, mugging happily for the camera.
"I would've killed to have my dad get in touch with me when I was a kid," Jess says idly.
"Yeah, but that was your dad," Chris says. "And he turned out to be a bastard."
"Yeah," Jess says, still staring at the photograph. "I always did have rotten luck."
When Jess was twelve, his dad called him on his first day of school, a five-minute conversation that carried Jess through for the next six years of radio silence. Liz just loved to bitch about it, resentful of how much attention and optimism Jess reserved for Jimmy, to the point where the briefest mention of even the concept of fatherhood could start a fight. Jess thinks about what it might feel like, if Willa ever starts idolizing Mari, and thinks he might understand his mother just a little bit better, now. He's getting there, anyway.
He accepts Angelo's friend request, and brings Willa into his bedroom to sleep that night, just because. His kid is not a teddy bear, but if she were, she'd make a killing at it. She doesn't even hit him in her sleep. Much.
About a week passes before he works up enough spine to check Facebook again, and there's a message from Angelo. Jess opens it and reads it three times before he actually processes what it is - a clumsy, but earnest, overture. The kid actually says "no pressure" at least four times, and signs off with "Best Regards." Jess has to laugh at it.
The thing is, Jess knew from the very beginning that Mari wouldn't stay away forever. She'd leave Rick, maybe, or he'd forgive her for cheating, or Willa would grow up and want to meet her, or something. The only thing Liz ever did by trying to keep Jess away from his father was to make him want it more, and the disappointment when the fantasy shattered at his feet nearly killed him. Jess thought about that a lot, in the beginning, about his parents, about Luke and Anna and April, and decided he wasn't going to do that - if nothing else, he can keep Willa from repeating his shitty mistakes. The shitty mistakes she'll make will be new ones, of her own making, and hopefully Jess will be in a better position to help her handle them than Liz ever was for him.
And the other thing he knows is, you can't keep secrets from a kid. You lie to them once about something big, and it's all over. Jess doesn't plan to lie to Willa ever, not even about the small stuff, but especially not something as monumental as her mother, or her mother's family. And - if he didn't clear the way, then...that's a sort of lie, isn't it? Or it's close enough to one that Willa wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
He wants a lot of things for his daughter and he hopes for a lot of things for himself, in relation to her, but the one thing he knows he can make happen is trust, and that's just not gonna happen if he puts his own bullshit first. Jess doesn't think there will ever be a better reason to get over himself than that. So he messages Angelo back.
He replies right away, and Jess doesn't want to think about the kid waiting around all week for a reply, so he doesn't. They talk for about twenty minutes, and Jess sends him some pictures, and Angelo uses a lot of emojis. His girlfriend's name is Caroline and they met in high school, she's studying biology and it's really cool that Jess knows someone who works at the New York Hall of Science! Angelo is going into nursing because you get more one-on-one time with patients, which is his favorite part, and he thinks Willa is really, really beautiful, direct quote. He's very sorry that it took him this long to get in touch, but he didn't know if Jess wanted him to, and he couldn't figure out a way to contact him, anyway, not until he saw that article in the New Yorker, which was really good, by the way! Caroline really liked it, too. He hasn't spoken to his sister in about eight months or so. They had a big fight - not about this, something else - and Angelo thought it'd be best if they didn't speak for awhile. He's wanted to get in touch since he found out about Willa, but he was just...nervous.
I would really like to meet her but I understand totally if you don't want me to, it's up to you, Angelo writes. Not right away obviously, but I want to be around? Like to be part of her life somehow? Even if she doesn't know I'm her uncle, I don't care about that really, I just want to get to know her. But not if it makes you uncomfortable! 100% your decision.
Jess lets that one sit for a few minutes, glancing over at the ever-present mountain of mess in the living room, the clearest sign that Willa has Been Here recently. She's napping now, exhausted from a morning of chaos, and Jess is definitely, definitely not going to go in there and watch her sleep like an overprotective weirdo when he's done with this. Definitely not.
He doesn't regret finding out that Jimmy was a bastard, is the last thing he knows. It sucked, but he'd rather know the truth, in the end. You can't move forward until you know what's behind you.
Let's see how it goes, Jess sends back. Angelo responds with a smiley face.