Disclaimer: Never mine.
AN: The road to LL doth not run smooth, nor short, nor simple. You'll all hate me more before we're done. It's okay. I hated me, too. The angst factor in this thing is sky-high. The good news is, sweetness will occur, too. There is, however, a reason the word bittersweet puts "bitter" before "sweet". And yes, I feel bad for Emily. I had to pretend she wasn't acted by the amazing Kelly Bishop before I could do this fic.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emily knew it was her daughter's home because only Lorelai would put weather vanes on the ground, where any rational person would plant some sort of flowers as a break between the house and lawn. There were three vanes to either side of the door, in a bed of crushed white limestone hemmed by scarlet-painted brick. All the vanes seemed to be appropriately antique, but it was difficult to know from the street.
There was a rooster, of course, as there should be. The rest were, to her increasing horror, a rabbit, a horse, a whale, a smiling crescent moon, and a winged pig.
Colorful pinwheels in orange and black lined the reddish-hued walkway. Between the weather vanes rested little pumpkins, painted with goofy faces. On the door hung a wreath of autumn foliage, surrounding a sign that read Trick or Treat!
Halloween had never made sense to Emily. Even as a child, she'd not comprehended the point of asking strangers for candy.
She pulled into the driveway, cut the engine, and took steadying breaths. She was glad to see Rory's car. There'd be a witness, a buffer, a hope that she could convince Lorelai to stop this absurd vendetta. She had never raised Lorelai to be vindictive.
She heard music, as she approached the front door. She heard laughing female voices. Frowning, she pushed the button that was, presumably, a doorbell, and heard a tasteful chime.
Her daughter flung open the door, money in hand, and then said, white-faced, "You're not the pizza guy."
"I'm aware. May I?" said Emily, and pushed past Lorelai, into a living room of sorts. "Your doorbell is not annoying."
"The other one scared Paul Anka."
On the couch, Rory sat with that Asian friend of hers, sorting candy between bowls. The goal appeared to be the equal distribution of kinds of tacky, sugary junk.
"I should go," said the Asian girl. "Um. Can I…?"
"Take some, I always overbuy," said Lorelai carelessly, hair in a ponytail, wearing a black t-shirt with a glow-in-the-dark ghost on it. The one Rory wore said Happy Halloween! Without a word to Emily, she began filling a purse with handfuls of candies and treats, hugged the Asian girl (named Lane, Emily at last recalled), and helped her friend to her feet.
Emily blinked, shocked. "You're pregnant!"
"Yeah," said Lane ruefully. "I know. I'm so saving the crunchy bars for myself, I've been craving them all week." She smiled warmly at Rory and Lorelai, her expression chilling as she nodded to Emily.
"Wait, Lane, you're…"
Lane flashed a look at Rory. "I'll walk, it's a good day for that. Good for me and all that fun healthy stuff."
She was gone in another instant.
With company gone, Lorelai exploded, as Emily expected.
"Get out, Mom! I'm going to have a happy Halloween, and I don't need the wicked witch showing up to ruin it!"
"Mom," whispered Rory.
"Your father is continuing with the divorce."
As she'd hoped, that caused Lorelai's eyes to fill with tears. "Don't blame that on me!"
"He took your side!"
"There aren't any sides!" yelled Lorelai, and the dog scurried out of the room at high speed. "I was pregnant and you actually said… You said…" Red-cheeked, Lorelai whirled away, arms folded tight across her stomach. "You said Luke was right to ask if it was his. You and Dad, that's your thing. You saying that to me? That's… No. I'm not doing this. You're leaving."
"You cannot ignore me forever."
"Tell you what, Mother," snarled Lorelai, tears turning her mascara into a mess. "I'll ignore you until you admit you were wrong. Up to you."
To buy a moment, Emily commented, "You use inferior cosmetics, no decent mascara should run that easily."
"Oh my God," whispered Lorelai, "you make Joan Crawford look cuddly."
"I resent that."
"Grandma," offered Rory, "I think maybe you should go. You didn't call ahead, and Mom and I have plans."
It took Emily a moment to realize she'd been dismissed.
She stayed. "I'll have the house in Hartford."
"Good, Castle of Doom, suits you," muttered Lorelai.
"Of course, I can't touch the investment in the Dragonfly."
Something left her daughter then, and the room felt abruptly cold. Lorelai's horror tripled. "You were going to ask for a share of my inn?"
Emily went very still. She knew Lorelai well enough to realize that her daughter had been completely unaware of the deal offered by Richard. That Richard saw it as protecting Lorelai. From her own mother.
It was unconscionable. On whose part, she was no longer sure.
She gathered herself, said, "Rory will have the house in Hartford, in due time."
"Okay, great," enthused Rory with far too much energy, and physically stepped between Emily and Lorelai. "Thanks, Grandma, that's nice of you to stop by and tell me!"
"Lorelai Victoria Gilmore," rapped out Emily.
Raccoon-masked by smeared eye make-up, Lorelai rasped to Emily, "You didn't even say you were sorry I lost the baby."
It was a terrible moment among the three, as Rory gasped in comprehension, and Lorelai sank to the couch, and Emily froze, body and mind alike.
After some minutes, Emily admitted, "It did not occur to me, given the circumstances."
Rory hovered between the two a moment, then went to Lorelai. "I think you'd better leave, Grandma."
"I don't stay where I'm not welcome," shrugged Emily, covering her hurt. "Enjoy your plans. I'll see myself out."
She slammed the front door. It felt good.
A shaggy-haired kid on a motorbike stopped behind her Mercedes. He hefted a big square-shaped item and headed for the door.
Emily started her car. She considered. Then, with a tight-lipped smile, she backed into the motorbike, drove forward, reversed again, and maneuvered around it.
"Hey!" the kid yelled, racing over to the scene. "Hey, what the…"
Emily flipped a business card out of her purse, to the ground. "My attorney. Perhaps you can buy soap and a razor with the compensation money."
She drove away, her own mascara unmarred despite a steady flow of tears. She only wanted everything the way it should be. Why did everyone hate her for that?
GG GG GG
It being Halloween, Luke knew not to expect the usual crowd at the diner. The town had returned to its old habits, slowly, but it was Halloween. He was the only place in town offering celery sticks and raw almonds. Not even Kirk came around on Halloween.
The bells over the door jingled. New England's foliage season was over, which eliminated tourists, and Mrs. Kim was off praying for the souls of the heathens in town. That meant Luke had to turn around to see who it was.
He ducked instinctively.
Richard Gilmore was a large man, and he could loom. "Ah, Luke," said Richard, smiling far too broadly. "A cup of coffee, please, decaf, however, and a snack of some sort?"
Luke mutely held out the plate of celery sticks and raw almonds.
"Excellent, my cardiologist would approve."
Luke deposited a mug of decaf in front of Richard. He wiped his hands nervously. "Anything else?"
"What would you do to a man who hurt your daughter?"
Luke knew very well what he'd do. It was why he'd ducked.
"Yes, exactly," approved Richard, and patted the table. "Come, sit down, you've time."
Luke swallowed and sat down opposite Richard. He tried folding his arms, decided that was too defensive, and dropped them. Then his hands had nothing to do. He finally picked up a celery stick and picked it into its individual fibers.
"I contemplated this meeting for months. I considered my options. Ruin you financially, destroy your character, all the usual." Richard sipped the coffee. "Ah. Excellent, for decaf. Now, as I was saying, I thought about this. I finally decided to thank you."
The celery stick's pulpy remnants went flying from Luke's hands, and landed on the next table. "Huh?" he squawked.
"Not for hurting Lorelai. No, I'd still like to snap your neck for that." With no smile at all, Richard studied him, and drawled nastily, "Who's the lucky guy. Indeed."
Luke gave up, hung his head and admitted, "Yeah, I'm going to hell for that."
"But your actions helped me see something. That I'd indulged Emily at Lorelai's expense. That it had cost me nothing in comfort, and that I'd allowed my comfort to override my conscience. Not very long ago, I was taught not to take my wife for granted. This, with you and Lorelai, taught me she took my compliance for granted. It's all very messy and emotional." He popped an almond into his mouth, crunched, and nodded. "Quite good."
"Uh," said Luke, afraid that there'd be a mafia-movie moment, involving the words ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom or similar. "Yeah. Uh. Emily, she said it's my fault."
"I don't doubt it."
A group of children ran by, outside, yelling and laughing.
Luke twisted to watch them, his chest aching. He'd missed April's trick-or-treat years. He'd missed the chance to have a child with Lorelai, to take around and coach on the etiquette of begging treats. He'd seen Rory stop by in her costumes for a few years, but she'd given up early, as befit her dignity, and her loyalty to Lane. Her best friend couldn't go, so Rory didn't.
He jerked his attention back to his only diner patron, to see Richard looking equally wistful.
The question came without his usual filters interfering. "How old was she? When she had to stop?"
"Seven. She was seven when she could no longer attend Halloween events. She never did go from one house to another, in a costume, holding a plastic pumpkin, saying trick-or-treat all in a breath," replied Richard sorrowfully. "There were parties, of course. Never that. Never the freedom and excitement. When did you stop?"
"Twelve," said Luke, "but I went around with my kid sister a couple more years. Liz never looked before she crossed the street."
"I've an entirely inappropriate question to ask you."
Luke shrugged. He began destroying another stick of celery. "Shoot."
"If you could go back in time, one year, would you do it differently?"
"I wouldn't go back," said Luke promptly, startling Richard into a scowl. "Time travel doesn't work that way. If you go back and change what you screwed up, then you have no reason to go back, so the event never happens, so you never go back to fix it, and it happens anyway."
Richard blinked several times, rubbing a thumb along the mug. "Good Lord."
Reddening, Luke scratched his neck. "Ah. Uh. Science fiction. It's, y'know. There's actual science in some of it. The thing is, Mr. Gilmore, I think it's like my sister and her addiction. Till you hit rock bottom, you don't realize how far you've gone from where you thought you'd be. Or who you'd be. I needed to hit rock bottom." He swallowed around a lump in his throat. "I wish I hadn't hurt anyone, especially Lorelai. It's…" His hands shaped something in the air. "It's like you said. Comfort. Conscience. I got into this comfort zone twenty years ago and I… Geez, I dunno."
"And your conscience did its best but you were very good at ignoring it?" suggested his one-time prospective father-in-law, a little too silkily for Luke's liking.
"Yeah," he admitted bluntly. He watched with a pang as a mother with two small kids ushered them along the sidewalk, hurrying them to the children's party at Miss Patty's.
"What have you done about it?"
"I'm trying," answered Luke unhappily, and shook his head. He knew how pathetic that sounded.
"As am I. And I can say, with confidence, that if you continue to try, you have much better odds than I of recovering happiness."
Luke's breath hitched. "What…"
Richard rose. "I was given to understand you write to Lorelai about these issues."
Luke nodded, dry-mouthed. "Yeah."
Richard tossed down a five-dollar bill. "You can rebuild trust, and love, if both parties are willing to forgive, and to re-learn each other. You have to re-win each other. If it is one-sided?"
"It falls apart," said Luke, and handed back the money. "On me."
Richard folded the bill into his wallet. "Quite generous of you. If I may offer advice?"
Luke nodded mutely, breaking into a cold sweat of hope.
"The first gesture of trust will have to come from you."
Luke swallowed hard. "Thanks," he managed to say.
Richard nodded, and went into the night, smiling at some children passing by in a cluster, followed by a woman calling, "Slow down!"
Luke sank to the nearest chair. It was November in a matter of hours, his darkest month.
Then again, what better time to let Lorelai see he was doing his best to shed habits of a lifetime, to let that not-Uncle-Louie Luke be him? Entirely, not just in some inner mental closet?
GG GG GG
AN: There really are weather vanes likes those I described. My uncle has the flying pig on his barn, in fact.