Disclaimer: Theirs. Really not mine.
Added this AN: For the haters... I did say in Chapter 1, right off the bat, it's hate-able. I hated it as I wrote it. OK? OK. Onward.
CHAPTER SIX
Emily secretly blamed the DNA of Trix for Lorelai. It gave her a small dark pleasure to chalk up one more grievance against her late mother-in-law. She had congratulated herself that her genes had created Rory. The biological weirdness of that theory didn't bother her. She had her happy little dream that Rory was the Lorelai she ought have had, and not even an arrest had changed her mind.
Then Emily announced casually that she had hired a certain notorious divorce attorney to make clear to everyone she was the wronged party.
Sweet Rory, who could go so far, if she'd only listen to reason and do the sensible thing, and not be her mother… Dear Rory, who could be shown off without shame (and Emily didn't question the morality of the theft of a yacht)… Wonderful Rory, full of potential and courtesy and gratitude for the benefits of wealth…
Rory showed she was, in fact, a Lorelai.
"I don't believe you!" screeched Rory, and stood so quickly that her hair flew and her chair fell. "Why are you doing this to Grandpa? He's right!"
"Rory! You're making a scene!" scolded Emily primly, although they were at a Starbuck's, and therefore not somewhere frequented by Emily's acquaintances.
"I'm making a scene?" yelped Rory, blue eyes flashing with a fire that reminded Emily of Lorelai. "You're punishing Mom and Grandpa! You promised! You promised! The only reason I still speak to you is because… Because… Oh, I don't know why!" Rory flung her hands up and out. "But I won't. Keep speaking to you. Do you have any idea what this is doing to the rest of us? Mom's so upset she gave up coffee!"
"Well, that's certainly sensible."
Rory's mouth dropped open. Her eyes rounded. At last she wheezed, "My mom. No coffee. Is Armageddon. Not the movie, either, I mean end-of-the-world four-horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse kind of Armageddon. Mom's… And Grandpa… And… Oh my God, I can't talk to you, you're impossible!"
With that, Rory lifted her hands, dropped them, grabbed her bag, and bolted.
"Rory Gilmore, you get back here!" called Emily.
The gesture she received in response was not polite.
Emily's cheeks scorched hot.
She walked to her car, mouth twisting down, and heard a strange dull echo in her head of her daughter's voice a few months ago: I don't know where to be.
She sat. She put the keys in the ignition. She automatically patted her hair and saw to it her seatbelt didn't wrinkle her blouse.
She shook.
She didn't know how to be. Other than this Emily she had crafted into a lethal weapon for decades, for use in the cause of the Gilmore wealth and reputation, prestige, noblesse oblige, and self-defense against all the other finely honed battleaxes of society, from Trix to Shira Huntzberger.
She had lost Lorelai decades ago. Now, she was losing Richard and Rory. It was unbearable.
She drove, unthinking, to Stars Hollow.
She stalked grandly into the lobby of the inn, brushed past the startled Frenchman stammering, "Mrs. Gilmore, a pleasure, but I do not think…" and into her daughter's office.
"Not now, Michel," said Lorelai, without turning.
"I am not Michel."
"I just got off the phone with my daughter," Lorelai stated, and spun in her chair. Her blouse was a lovely pink, her suit a discreet gray with lavender pin stripes. Emily sniffed. It was very last year. Or year before. Nor did it do wonders for Lorelai's pallor, which was showing through her cosmetics. "Back off, Mother. I mean it. If Rory wants to have a relationship with you, fine. What's between you and Dad, that's your business. What's between us, that's ours. She's Switzerland, got it?"
"I said nothing of the kind to Rory!"
"You expected her to approve of what you're doing to her grandfather," snapped Lorelai haughtily, her fingers curling tight around a pen with a fluffy purple feather on its end. "You don't get it, do you? Breaking a promise once, okay, if you're sorry, if you stop, but you don't, Mother! You don't stop! Even I stop! Dad stops! You, you…" Lorelai flung away the pen, got to her feet, loomed over Emily somehow. "You and Christopher, big promises, big broken promises! I broke rules, I screwed up, I've broken promises to come home by curfew, but you, Mom? You broke your word to stay out of my love life! You broke your promise to Dad! I mean, okay, fine, break your promise to me, that's business as usual, but you… Oh my God, Mom, you have no idea…"
Lorelai stopped short, startling Emily by her silence.
"I have no idea of what, pray?" drawled Emily in her best Voice of Authority.
"It doesn't matter," sighed her daughter, pushing fingers into her temples against what Emily imagined to be a headache. "Just go, okay? Stop contaminating yourself with the great failure that is your daughter."
A master of contempt, Emily gasped at realizing she had taught Lorelai that contempt.
The Frenchman, reliably polite, appeared at her elbow. "This way, Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Gilmore has a very busy schedule, I'm sure you don't understand what it is to own and operate your own business."
Emily was on the porch before Michel's silky little don't registered.
She huffed, as much to truly catch her breath as to express her pain.
"There are ways things are done, and I will not do them any other way," she told the air.
A rough male voice startled her.
"Yeah. I say that, too."
She glowered down at the greasy diner man. "What are you doing here?"
"Trying to get up the guts to walk in. You?" countered her daughter's blessedly ex-boyfriend.
"Being thrown out."
"I haven't gotten that far yet," said Luke Danes far too calmly. "Heard about your divorce. Sucks."
He meant that about as much as he would have meant a love song in her honor. Emily rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm certain you feel my pain. As it happens, I'll do very well."
She waltzed past him, only to hear the crunch of his steps behind her, and at her car, she spun, spat, "What do you want?"
Emily could not read his eyes. They were dark and turned inward. "I used to worry Lorelai'd dump me to make you happy."
Emily had hoped for the same. "And?"
"I knew better. I didn't let myself believe it."
"That makes no sense," sniffed Emily. "Do you mind? I have places to go."
He stepped ostentatiously aside, though he was in fact not in her way to start. His truck followed her, as if he were herding her out of town, a thought so absurd she forced a laugh. Naturally, he turned away, to go toward his pathetic little diner, and Emily sped to Hartford, determined to call her lawyer. There were ways to do things, and she knew them. Belief was, at this point, irrelevant.
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The first note, after the rambling letter of sort-of-kind-of-maybe explanation, was two words, on the back of an order slip.
I'M SORRY.
The second, also on an order slip, had read, I am that guy.
He dropped them off faithfully, once a week, at the Dragonfly Inn. It wasn't that Luke Danes expected Lorelai to come crawling. Or walking. Or, indeed, meandering. Merely, he would have talked to her about this. He had, when Uncle Louie died (but not enough), and about love (in a roundabout, obscure, cryptic fashion), and when Rachel came back (strangely coherent that time). This was what he did. He grunted and grouched until Lorelai teased entire paragraphs out of him (eventually, and yes, he thought to himself, "dirty").
Every week, he put a note or two or three in an envelope with her name on it, stuck it into the inn's mailbox, and scurried home to stew and hope. He'd thought maybe he should avoid federal law violation by leaving the notes on the windshield of Lorelai's jeep, but a good rainstorm could undo quite a bit of effort. If he went to the house, Babette would blab. So he kept tucking them into the mailbox at the inn.
Wondering.
Did she get them?
Did she read them, if she did get them?
What did she think?
Did she care?
Did she use them for toilet paper? Shred them? Compost them? Toss them in the waste with a curse?
After a few weeks, he had graduated from order slips with brief random comments like I can't breathe or Please drink my coffee again, to actual lined notepaper of the kind April used for school.
They worked together companionably, father and improbable daughter, during lulls. That suited Luke well. It took him time to form words when his inner Other-Luke wanted to have a say. He could cook or count change while trying out sentences in his head.
One such note had reflected, ruefully, I can multi-task if I want to.
He had a feeling Lorelai was not being told anything she didn't know, or perhaps wasn't being told anything she wanted to know, but he persisted. It was something he hated, yet it was painfully therapeutic. Or, possibly, therapeutically painful.
Jess could make words. Liz could talk. April, who loved science, could chatter all day. Somewhere in the gene pool, the ability for words existed. He had to let his emerge.
He fought it.
Nobody had yet put a surgeon general's warning on the side of Luke Danes: Warning: The contents may explode under pressure, causing unintended injury.
No one gave him a user's manual to himself that talked him through the troubleshooting process. In order to uninstall default Grump mode, reattach this wire to this switch, and restart.
Nobody labeled Lorelai Gilmore, either, of course. Danger: More fragile than appears, prone to self-destruct.
Life would be easier if people came with labels the way foods and computers and cleaning solvents did.
He wrote that in the latest note to Lorelai. It was mid-September, and whenever he saw a leaf shading to crimson, he thought of her lips. Yellow reminded him of the goofy characters on her t-shirts. Orange meant a juice she never drank enough of, in his opinion.
"Oooh, a yard sale!" squealed April, examining a flyer with bright interest. As quickly as she blinked, she shoved the flyer away, and said, "Never mind."
"It's okay, April," sighed Luke, and put his head in his hands. "I know Lorelai's selling her stuff. People keep leaving the flyers here." He steadied himself. "Why the interest?"
"Well, Mom gets stuff at yard sales and sells it for a lot more at the store and…"
The idea of Anna Nardini scavenging Lorelai Gilmore's life for profit turned Luke's stomach.
"I thought maybe they'd have books or science stuff, I got a really great chemistry kit, totally unused, for a dollar, once. I'm sorry, Luke. I didn't… I forgot… I mean, I didn't really know her, but…"
No, April had not. She'd been upset that her father was upset, and confused as to why he remained upset, and finally given up on understanding that "weird love stuff". On the other hand, Anna took the news of the break-up with a sort of smug serenity that reminded him of Taylor Doose.
And still, he couldn't let himself hate Anna, because they shared the bubbling miracle of April.
His sister had said wisely, to his fury, "Karma, bro. She's got teeth."
"I'll shut up now," said April in a tiny voice.
Luke's inner Other-Luke prodded him. "It's okay. I didn't let myself think of her that way for a lot of years, and then I blew it, I had my chances to ask her out and I didn't. I let my head get in the way."
"Of what?" asked April with curiosity. Luke marveled. Neither he nor Anna were particularly inquisitive people.
"Sounds stupid. My heart. So when things happened…"
"I heard about it," announced April, pretending to do her homework. Luke knew for a fact she'd completed it. She pushed her glasses up her nose. "People talk a lot. And, um, they were… I mean… I don't… It's not my business, Mom said not to ask, I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, she would've been your stepmother," said Luke, proud that he could say the word stepmother without choking. "We made some mistakes. Didn't talk enough about what was going on in our heads. I told her to give me time, give me space, and finally…"
"Time and space are infinite," April filled in for him, taking his words in her literal way, and yet hitting the nail on the head in a metaphysical sense as well.
"They felt like it," he agreed. "And we can go to the yard sale. There might be movies or something."
His daughter viewed him with skepticism, of a peculiar adolescent variety. "Mom will be at that yard sale."
Luke hid the flinch, but not the curling of his hands into fists. "Right. Good point. I'll, uh, make you a salad."
He rushed into the kitchen of his diner.
The yard sale news was bad. A garage of junk, he'd called it, but it was precious junk to Lorelai. Proof of her past, and her freedom from expectations other than her own. Ugly lamps. Mooing clocks. Clothing she'd learned to sew herself. Silly cartoon characters on plates and cups. Some of those might survive the transition to Lorelai's new home, but somehow, Luke doubted enough of them would.
What about the chuppah?!
His pressured contents came near exploding. He would go buy everything, and store it for her!
Yeah, great idea, and how'd you react to the boat?
But I'm saving her… Oh.
Yeah.
Crap.
That debate resolved in favor of restraint, Luke finished making the salad, deposited it in front of April, and worked on his note.
He wrote hastily, almost angrily, I know why it's not home. Don't sell the quacking clock.
He stuck the note into his pocket.
That deep inner self pointed out that it (okay, he) had a lot more to say.
He gritted his teeth. There'd be customers for supper soon, and Kirk. He set aside the pen.
A moment later, breathing as if he'd run up flights of stairs, he grabbed the pen, yanked the paper from his jeans pocket and slashed across it with ink.
I miss you. I know you're not eating enough. I'm that guy. The one who got stuck and stayed stuck and you said I wasn't that guy and I'm not the same time I am. Jess would laugh at how I write. Please don't sell the stupid clock.
The bells of the diner door jingled in the way that told him Kirk had arrived.
He wrote, in a panic of honesty, I didn't want you near April because you'd say things. You'd want to listen to things. I would have to feel and talk about being the guy nobody wants to be a father and Rachel and Nicole cheating and all of it. It was easier to be angry. I know I was the lucky guy. Don't sell the cups with the weird pink cat, either.
"I heard you, Kirk," he lied, and that time, the note stayed in his pocket until the time came to put it where Lorelai might see it, read it, realize that she'd loved a real Luke. He'd simply not allowed that Luke to be the one in charge.
AN: These chapters are read and checked for authentic "guy-ness" by my husband.
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