Disclaimer: Wash, rinse, repeat: Theirs.

AN: I posted two chapters today b/c my addled brain posted them out of order. Sorry. Hopefully, there's a Chapter 3 with Lorelai and RIchard now... *Headdesk*

CHAPTER FOUR

Emily remained chatting on the phone as she walked to the front door to answer the bell. "Oh, you know men, they need their special little vacations to themselves," she tittered. "I'm merely grateful his taste doesn't run to Las Vegas. Yes, I know. We'll have to get our revenge with a spa month. Yes, I know. I've an appointment, Bitsy, I must run." She kissed air near the mouthpiece of the phone. She set down the phone with a grimace of disgust. "That woman is almost as brainless as she is annoying."

She opened her front door.

She said, "You are not the landscape designer."

Luke Danes said gruffly, "Yeah, I know."

"And hello to you too, do come in," she sniped as he prowled into her immaculate foyer with the air of a hunted rabbit. "What on earth…"

"Have you heard anything? Is Lorelai okay? I can't find her. Rory won't tell me. I saw this video, of Lane's wedding, and Lorelai was a mess. Why didn't she tell me?!"

Emily's eyebrows rose higher with every word. Finally, she announced, "Even I knew there was a problem. If you couldn't see it, then perhaps you didn't want to see it. After all, it's oh-so-impossible to have a child and live one's life simultaneously."

His replying glower was quite eloquent.

"You told her to stay away. She did. When, precisely, Mr. Danes, was my daughter able to tell you anything? Now, as to how Lorelai is, how would I know? I'm only her mother," groused Emily, pacing to the drink cart. "Do you want anything?"

His mouth curled down. "No."

Pouring herself a sherry, Emily stated calmly, "Richard is not in contact with me, and neither is Lorelai. The situation is unchanged in that regard."

"Rory?" he asked hopefully.

Emily exhaled hard, and set down her drink without tasting it. She kept her back turned to the greasy diner man and his ragged flannel. He had no right to see her pain. "We have dinner every Friday."

She left out that Rory came, said hello, ate, said good-bye, and left. On the best evenings, Rory discussed weather.

"Oh," said Luke in a small, broken voice. When she looked, his head hung low, his elbows on his knees, his hands loose and limp. "She only talked to me once."

"Hurrah," drawled Emily, and sat where, a few weeks earlier, she had harangued her daughter.

"I just… I was…"

"You were an idiot," said Emily crisply, "who wanted a simpler life. You succeeded. Why precisely are you here?"

"Rory won't talk to me. I had this. To give to Lorelai." He drew a folded envelope from inside his pocket. He set it on the coffee table. "Could you ask Rory to give it to Lorelai for me?"

Luke Danes, crawling to her, begging a favor, should have elated Emily. Instead, she stifled a yawn. "A check for her inn? An apology note?"

"No. Yeah…" He drifted off, haggard enough to almost elicit sympathy from Emily. "I didn't think. But I think a lot. All the time now."

"Does it hurt?" inquired Emily too sweetly.

Luke Danes ignored her. She began to regret abandoning the sherry.

"I forgot she's Lorelai, and…"

"Finish a sentence, I do have a landscape designer on my schedule," snapped Emily.

"But now there's no baby so there's no reason she'd let me near her again. I didn't think she wouldn't still be there."

Emily rolled her eyes. The man was more logical when stinking of beer. "You make no sense."

"Yeah, I'm learning that," said Luke with sudden clarity. He stood quickly. "Will you ask Rory to give that to Lorelai? I can't fix this. I know that. But I want her to know." He shrugged, red-faced, and coughed, "Having a kid with her would've been amazing."

Something caught Emily's attention in a new way. "You refer to the child in the past tense. Why?"

Luke stared at her. He swore under his breath. "Oh. Uh. Rory didn't tell you."

Emily stalked him, one click of her heels at a time. "What. Did. Rory. Not. Tell. Me."

"She miscarried. She told Rory it was a sign that she wasn't meant… We weren't meant…" Luke's jaw clamped visibly. "Just have Rory get that to Lorelai."

Hand at her throat, Emily nodded, mute. She let Luke Danes see himself out.

Her legs wobbled.

Nobody told her.

Nobody.

She called the landscape designer. Her koi pond could wait.

She called Richard and left yet another voice-mail. "Richard. This is Emily. Why? Why didn't anyone tell me? Is Lorelai all right? Did the doctors say why it happened?"

She was halfway through the number of rings to reach Lorelai's voice-mail when her brain and ears communicated, and she flushed cold with shame.

She returned to Richard's voice-mail. "I don't mean to say it was something Lorelai did, I know, you know I know it can happen no matter how you… Richard, please, just tell me Lorelai is all right. Medically all right. I know she's not all right otherwise, Rory won't even mention her to me, please, Richard, she's my daughter!"

Yet when she reached Lorelai's voice-mail what poured out of her was not a heartfelt plea. It was a cool, "Lorelai, this is your mother, call me, please."

She studied the phone.

She hurled it into the couch. Lest she make a disturbance that the dreadful maid could gossip about.

She sank weakly to the cushion near the phone's final resting place. She pressed her hands to her mouth. How often had she hoped, only to feel that terrible cramping? How often had she screamed into her pillow at night? How many vitamins and diets had she tried? How many doctors had she seen? Lorelai was her miracle, her miracle, and her punishment. Why did she have Lorelai, not a child who loved dolls and dresses and all Emily dreamt of sharing with a daughter? Why? Why did it have to be difficult?

Why did she think like this?

She glanced around. The sound of the vacuum reassured her. She clutched a pillow to her, cradling it.

Eventually, the sound of the vacuum ended. Startled into composure, Emily patted the pillow into place, set the phone on the table, and examined the envelope contaminating her living room.

She picked it up. She walked into her office. She slid it into another envelope, and wrote her granddaughter's name on it. It fixed nothing, but perhaps it might show she was not a monster. And right that moment, Emily needed to believe she was not a monster.

GG GG GG

When Luke dropped off April, he swore he saw Lorelai.

He blinked, and it was Anna, and she was furious.

"You're ten minutes late!"

"There was a fender-bender," began Luke, and let April finish, "We were stuck until they towed the cars. It's just ten minutes, Mom."

Anna pointed. April rolled her eyes and went into the shop.

"You have a cell phone," snapped Anna.

He nodded. "Yeah. Ten minutes, Anna, it's ten minutes, she was safe."

"How am I supposed to know that? You were meant to spend an afternoon with her, and you cancelled on no notice, and now this! And you wonder why I didn't tell you that she might be yours."

It came together, for Luke. The anger he felt, and a dark-haired blue-eyed beauty demanding something, and he thought he'd throw up right there, on the sidewalk.

Anna yelling at him about his fiancée daring to come talk to her, and his fiancée yelling at him, and fatherhood, all in one blur, became words that he'd have said to Anna, needed to say to Anna, but it was Lorelai who was there when the words came.

It was Anna standing in front of him when the realization came.

Luke claimed he needed time to process things. To think. To decide. The truth was somewhat less flattering. He liked to wallow. His inner Other-Luke did not. That inner nagging self knew years ago that he ought to give up on Rachel, stop pretending that Rachel was ever going to come back for real, and simply get on with his own life. That inner self had told him to ask out Lorelai. That inner self came out more around Lorelai. April, too. Liz. Rory. And for the most part, Luke hated it. Hated that part of himself, hated that it made him soft, hated that it wouldn't leave him alone.

His Other-Luke inner voice pointed out, You sound like Uncle Louie.

"Well?" snarled Anna, all her beauty hard and cold. She sparkled the way diamonds did. He felt a pang. Lorelai was sparkling but soft, like her beloved snow.

"Well," said Luke slowly, "I'll see April day after tomorrow."

"And no excuse to her yet for why you…"

Luke's inner self, the soft part, the one that got him into trouble and pain and heartache, took over. He said quietly, "It's not something you tell a kid." He paused, and added coldly, "Or an ex. You kept me out of twelve years of her life. I can take a few days when I get bad news, all right?"

Anna's nostrils flared. Was this why he blew it with Lorelai? The superficial resemblance to Anna in coloring and love of kitschy odds and ends? He could hate her, because she didn't have his kid?

Stomping to his truck, Luke knew he got it. More fully than he'd known he needed to get it. He couldn't hate Anna. He couldn't express it if he did. They shared a kid. He had to put on a smile and a good face and make nice, and remember the connection between them had been enough to result in a child. Which forced memories of other things, the things that led to children, and those were generally not the worst memories of a relationship. All that Lorelai tried to explain about Rory's dad… Now applied to him.

"Crap," he said to himself.

His inner, other, and probably better self prodded him with a quiet, I knew it. I saw it coming. I wanted to fix it. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to ask for help. But why do that when it's easier to judge how someone else will be by how I'd be.

He'd written that to Lorelai. That much, he'd known and written.

He entered the diner, saw it was empty, and called, "Cesar? Go home."

"Okay."

It was suppertime, and his diner was empty. Not even Kirk. There were no ribbons this time around. The town was Team Lorelai, and that was that.

Luke started to laugh. He was Team Lorelai.

His laugh scared him. He stopped it with a slap of the cleaning rag on a table, as terminal punctuation.

He flipped the sign to "Closed". He shut down the grill. He loaded the dishwasher. He went into the soothing rhythms of cleaning, turning chairs onto the tables. He managed to not be teary-eyed when he saw the shakers and dispensers filled by his daughter. He almost avoided tears at the sight of Lorelai's favorite, now-unused mug. He rubbed his face with a shirt sleeve, and kept going. An early night suited him.

The bells jangled.

Nobody came in after the sign was turned to "Closed".

Only Lorelai.

He spun, heart racing, certain he was wrong even as he hoped he was right.

Lorelai didn't say hello. She dove right in while he was still trying to form the syllables for "What?" and "Huh?".

"I thought about this a long time," she clipped out icily. Thinner than he felt could possibly be healthy, beautiful as ever. "You get one chance to tell me what the hell you meant by who's the lucky guy. Not because we're going to be…" Her hand went from herself to him and back. "Like that again. Because you owe me an explanation. I need an explanation, Luke. How the hell could you say that to me? Am I really that big a slut? Am I that bad, you think I'd do that to you? Am I? I knew my mother thought that way, but you, Luke? You? Everyone told me, you're great, you love me, and I believed it, and I made you this great guy in my head and then you said…" Her voice and body wobbled alike. "You said who's the lucky guy. I was, I am, broken into pieces and I can't get glued back together again! I was trying so hard, and I took vitamins, and then all I could think…" Lorelai slumped to a table, shuddering as if she had a terrible fever. "All I could think was that you'd just yell at me and tell me you told me so and you'd be right, I didn't, I should've, I… Just tell me why you said that, and I'll go away, I promise!"

He pulled off his flannel shirt and wrapped it around her and sat her down, his fear for her overriding all else. "I said it because I'm a jackass and I couldn't hurt Anna so I hurt you, and that's so stupid it makes me sick," he said swiftly, hoping she'd look at him, see his truth. "And I got so wrapped up in myself." He gulped as her eyes met his, like blue diamond drills. "I got in my head. I'd been away from you so much. And Nicole cheated. And Anna did. And… And you forgave me for April but I don't forgive anyone else, and I wrote that to you, never mind."

"So that's all it was?" whispered Lorelai brokenly, eyes filling with tears. "I was a convenient target?"

Luke hated himself. No, he loathed himself, more than he knew possible, but he was honest about it. "Yeah."

She dipped her chin, her shoulders rounding, then squaring. "I didn't ask the town to…"

"I know."

"My mother… She said some things. She'd promised my dad she'd… She broke her promises. He's not sure they can make it work again."

Luke leapt into the abyss, jumped gladly forward, fear and all. "And us?"

She laid her hand along his cheek. "Oh Luke. That letter, it did explain a lot, even if Rory did read it first and then try to edit it so I couldn't be upset."

Luke groaned. "Ah geez." A moment later, he said in shock, "Wait, your mother gave it to her?"

Lorelai shrugged. "Yeah, don't ask me, I never understand my mother." Her hand fell from his cheek. She took off the flannel he'd wrapped like a shawl around her, and laid it on the table, neatly smoothing it with one thin hand. "The point is… I don't know, Luke. You broke more than my heart. This broke us. My dad, he said it better than I can. How do you love someone if they're not who you thought? And I don't know. But I know the Luke Danes I thought? He'd never say that. He'd never do that. But he did, so maybe… Maybe the Luke I loved was imaginary all along. I don't know. And I don't know if I want to find out. It's…"

"Easier to cut me off and walk away," concluded Luke bitterly. "Dammit, Lorelai, I want to try!"

"I know," replied Lorelai, and pushed away from him, rose unsteadily. "The thing is, will you still want to keep trying if it gets confusing or difficult again?"

His fear silenced him. So did his conscience. Confusing-difficult usually meant change. Change equaled bad. Thus, no change equaled good. And here he was. Unchanged. Right down to his inability to speak when only speech would do.

Lorelai sighed. She reached into her purse and set a small box on the table. "The town'll come back to the diner. I won't. It's not a good idea. For either of us. Once the house sells…"

He barked an outraged, "Selling the house?! Leaving!"

"Not leaving," said Lorelai slowly, with a flush rising over her cheeks, "I'm selling the house. It's for a family. Not me and a dog."

He had a hundred possible answers, and his inner self wanted to kick him when he uttered the words, "I gave up Twickham House for you!"

"You didn't ask me about Twickham House!"

She had a point. He hated her for that.

She went on, relentless, and he knew why. He let things fester. Lorelai burned them out. Both methods hurt like eighteen kinds of hell, and left scars. It was a depressing realization.

"When the house sells, if you decide the compensation check wasn't enough, you can…"

He croaked, "Lorelai."

"…my dad's lawyer."

The silence between them hurt. It was strange, to have his ears hurt from silence.

"You said, in that letter," began Lorelai, then halted, shaking her head. She started for the door.

"What?" blurted Luke, feeling much more lost than he'd expected. Closure was a coffin lid being sealed. That was why he avoided it.

"You never forgave me for things that happened years ago. Why?"

Her question was so heartfelt and baffled that Luke knew he'd punch any guy who did this to her, only he couldn't punch himself. Not in the nose, at least.

He sank to a chair he hadn't yet flipped atop a table. "My uncle, Louie. Dad. It's what we do. No apologies are ever enough for us."

"But why?"

Fumbling for verbal communication was even worse than writing letters, Luke discovered. What came out was a strangled, "I make myself misunderstood."

She uttered a low slow breath that was not quite a curse. As she opened the diner door, she asked abruptly, "What did Nicole have? That you'd marry her but nobody else?"

Luke said heavily, "She did things a way I understood," and realized he'd trotted out the same crap he'd handed Jess about how abnormal people irked him.

He exhaled hard, and gave Lorelai the truth.

"She left me alone."

"You married her because she left you alone," repeated Lorelai, and in that moment, he saw it. She really had no idea who he was.

Then again, neither did he. Beyond angry-grumpy-somehow-nice-guy, and that didn't make much sense anymore, either. When she was helping him apartment-hunt, she'd been eager to play a couple. He told himself it was Lorelai playing a game, but what if it was flirting? Why did he think she'd tell a married man she wanted him, in a bell tower in the middle of the night? What kind of person did he think Lorelai was?

And what did those thoughts make him?

The bells didn't even make a noise, so softly did Lorelai slip out the door.

Long ago, she'd told him he wasn't Uncle Louie.

He didn't think she could tell him that now.

He picked up the little box. He knew what was in it, and killed himself looking into it anyway. The ring. The ring he'd given her, to represent a promise he'd then broken.

He went to the phone. He made a call to one person who might understand best about screwing up beyond redemption. "Liz? Hey. No, it's not a… Liz!" He drew a breath, found calm enough to say words he thought impossible even that morning. "Liz, I just saw Lorelai and I think I'm Uncle Louie."

He'd disregarded his sister as a flake, a loser, a leech for years. An unforgivable train wreck. He'd never been more grateful to have her as a sister than when she said, "Don't move, I'll be there in, like, five minutes. Without TJ."

GG GG GG