Disclaimer: Blah yada mumbo-jumbo not mine.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lorelai Gilmore slammed into Luke's Diner with such emotion that the door bells swung, and stuck, unable to jingle.

She snarled at the midday crowd, "Get out."

Zach, holding two plates, wearing an apron, said, "Sure," and ambled into the back. A moment after, Luke erupted out of the kitchen, demanding, "What the hell is…"

Lorelai snarled. Her finger jabbed the air in his direction, then her own. "You. Me. Talking. Now. Audience or no audience?"

"You can't just…" began Luke.

Emotion fueled a very loud, very curt, "Shut up!"

"Upstairs," said Luke.

"Like hell I'm going upstairs," spat Lorelai, heat bubbling through her that was entirely unrelated to the May temperatures.

Luke took a breath, yelled, "Zach! Keep working!" and took Lorelai's arm. She yanked it free, hissing like water on a hot griddle. At his nudge, she went outside and followed him to the town square, imagining a hundred gruesome ways for him to suffer.

They hadn't yet reached the gazebo when Luke shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing, coming into my diner, making a scene, telling people what to do!"

"What do I think I'm doing? How many women are you going to have houses with, Luke? Huh?" Voice shrill, Lorelai poked his shoulder hard, and he stumbled back two paces, hands upraised as if he expected to be arrested. "Nicole, me, Anna, who else? Buy a house, renovate a house, expand a house, fix a house!"

"You're insane!"

Lorelai flung her dignity to the warm spring winds. It had long since gone, anyway, as far as she knew. "I'm insane?! You're the one who has the thing for houses he never lives in!"

Luke threw his baseball cap to the ground and ran a hand over his thinning hair. "Look, April's grandma needs her own room and bathroom or Anna's gonna try to overturn the custody thing and I'll do what I want!"

"Yes, you do! All that crap all those years about my parents and Hartford, and you!" Lorelai sob-shouted, hands clenched in fists at her sides. Her body shook with the power of the emotions racing and chasing each other through her. "You do what you want! Poor Luke, he didn't get to plan a wedding he never wanted! Poor Luke, he has to fix up a house, Lorelai's so selfish, Luke never moved in!"

"Lorelai," escaped Luke, in a pained whine not unlike Paul Anka facing a flight of stairs.

"Why?" Lorelai begged. "Why, Luke? Why? Why? If you hated me, if you just wanted horizontal mambo…" She curled up while standing, crying uncontrollably, that desperate nagging need to know eating her alive. "Why? That's all I want to know. Why did you ever let something start with us if you didn't want it? Why didn't you just buy Twickham House ten years ago and have your dream house? I don't understand!"

"Lorelai, calm down, take a breath, you're going to pass out," said Luke urgently, but she ignored him, pushed his hands off hers.

She hiccupped, and stopped rambling. She rubbed her eyes with her forearm, leaving make-up smeared on it. With a sinking sensation in her stomach, she realized she'd again made a scene. Not that no one else did, but Luke hated scenes, unless he made them while on a rant or something similar.

Her mouth forced out sensible words. "I have to go."

She started toward her Forester, stumbling over nonexistent cracks in the sidewalk. Her whole body hurt, but her lungs and stomach throbbed worst of all. Her head spun. She breathed in tiny little wheezes. What she wanted was, more than anything, to have never heard that Luke was building rooms for Anna. That it was for easier custody of April explained it. She knew that in her head. What her heart felt, however, was stabbed. He built rooms for children they would never have together at the Crap Shack. He'd bought Twickham House to fill it with children. But his only child was April, with Anna, and that had to overrule all else. She understood that, she had, she did.

Until the point Luke had said Who's the lucky guy?

Until she heard that Anna's house was getting an in-law suite, on Luke's money. The way her house had been upgraded. Her inn. And that meant… It meant…

Her breath hitched into staccato attempts for air.

Almost a year had gone by since a certain awful day, and for Lorelai, the pain had resurrected itself like a zombie, for no better reason than Jackson's information about Luke's personal life. The one Luke had left her out of to such a degree that she marveled she ever felt it was love, and wondered how pathetic she was that she could think it was That Love.

"Lorelai, stop!"

She blinked, tipped her head. Luke was pale, as if he stood in a cold wind.

"Oh," she said dully. "I said all that out loud."

Ashen under his stubble, Luke nodded.

"Okay then. Well. Show's over, resume your regular program." She scrubbed her other forearm over her face. "The house thing just… I'm sorry. I apologize. Rory's graduating soon and it's making me realize how much has changed, and how much I didn't want it this way, and you're fine with it all, and it's kinda hard to take. Which is my problem. Not your problem. I mean, hey, things change, right?" She drew in air, relieved that she could do so, and felt her heart rate dropping to normal.

"Things change," agreed Luke woodenly.

Lorelai finally managed to open the door, staring hard at the cheerful tropical print seat cover that hid the dull tan upholstery. She had slapped a Proud Yale Mom bumper sticker on the back, and a window decal shaped like a dragonfly, for the inn. She wanted to name it, but nothing worked, other than the vehicle itself. It felt too much like her life.

"This is yours," said Luke of the vehicle.

"Yeah. Jeep died. Gypsy couldn't fix it and nobody could find a new engine."

"It's a good car," said Luke.

The impersonal nature of the conversation made Lorelai flinch. "Yeah. Um. So. I'll just keep staying away because that seems to work. Y'know. Your life. My life. No our life. Got it. Oh my God, this was humiliating."

It took three tries to start the engine, and Lorelai pulled away very carefully, hating herself. She had a daughter graduating from Yale. She had an inn. She had a weird dog. One thing she did not have, and would not have, was Luke Danes. The reason, of course, was her wild emotionality, per usual, and she'd done it again. Where he lived, what he did, wasn't her business. After the last year, she'd hoped she'd accepted that. It was what he wanted. He'd shown that. Over and over.

She pulled over, and let herself cry, yet again.

GG GG GG

His daughter had left home, but not in the usual way. Lorelai had not gone off to university, come home for breaks between terms and on holidays, graduated in full pomp and circumstance, to then and only then truly leave the nest.

Thus, Richard found himself somewhat more confused than average when it came to his daughter's mood. Their lives had changed a great deal, and it was quite a lot to handle, but somehow, Rory's impending graduation was hitting Lorelai in a way that Richard barely grasped.

Eventually, she spoke. "I'm glad the cardiologist said your new medication is doing a good job. No dizzy spells or anything, you promise, right?"

Richard laughed quietly, gently. "Lorelai, I long ago learned I cannot lie to doctors and expect to get away with it. Sooner or later, all those tests tell the truth anyway. No, the new medication and I are getting along quite well, thank you." He paused, studying her profile, her fingernails digging into the steering wheel, and added, "Thank you again. For driving me to and fro on no notice."

"Will the old Mercedes live?"

"Oh yes, it will belch diesel again." Richard grumbled wordlessly to himself. "But not in my care. Car shopping with you inspired me."

Lorelai checked her rear-view mirrors, and merged into the turning lane, the signal clicking softly. "New Mercedes?"

"Oh heavens, no."

"Red Porsche?"

She meant humor. She cut. Brittle broken glass shell bits were poking out of her, in his fancy.

Richard allowed her tone, with a gruff, "As it happens, an Audi. Leg room at my height is a valuable commodity in a sedan. Lorelai."

"Can we not talk about it?"

Wishing he'd tried this thirty years sooner, Richard ventured a tentative, "How bad?"

"If I talk, I cry. Bad driving."

They reached his house. His home, he acknowledged. No weight, no expectation, save of his own creation. He understood Lorelai better, now that he had this freedom from heritage and appearances. He was still Richard Gilmore, and preferred bow ties, martinis, and golf. He was lonely, sometimes, and missed Emily's fussing. Yet to be able to sit about in his robe and slippers to read, if he so chose, outside the bedroom, when he so chose, was somehow far more liberating than he'd have imagined a year earlier.

Richard took a chance, after unsnapping the seat belt. "What did Luke do?"

Lorelai emitted a broken wail that transported Richard to Emily after Lorelai left, to Lorelai a year earlier, to the sheer panic and despair of loss. In her blubbering, he could pick out words like Rory graduate leave alone nobody dog April Anna, before she asked him in shivering grief, "Why can't I be okay with it, too?"

Richard said the first thing that came to mind. It was a Gilmore habit, at the most inopportune moments. "You sound like Emily."

It was merely an observation, spurred by old memories.

His daughter literally appeared to freeze. Then she whipped around to face the windshield, digging blindly in her purse for a packet of tissues. She blew her nose, and dried her face, in lethal silence. After some interminable amount of time, she said simply, "I should get back to work. I'm glad you're doing well, Dad. I'll see you Sunday."

Somehow, Richard found himself on his doorstep, alone.

"Ridiculous!" he said, to see if the universe cared. Judging by the lack of response, it did not.

A long-held rage made its way to the surface, not unlike magma. After all, Lorelai had shamed their family name, destroyed her mother, and if he wanted to be a cad, he could find a way to blame her for his marital woes, too. Oh, he could cut Lorelai to shreds with some well-chosen words, did he so choose, but Richard had better targets.

An hour later, the taxi dropped him outside Luke's Diner.

"Wait," said Richard to the driver.

"Sir, the fare's going to be, y'know, five hundred bucks as it is. We charge five a mile outside Hartford and…"

"Wait," commanded Richard, and flicked a fifty-dollar bill into the man's lap. "Two more for a tip when we reach Hartford."

The man stared at the bill in shock. "Okay, you're the boss."

Richard pushed open the door of Luke's Diner. He knew it was not all Luke Danes. He knew it was himself, and Emily, and the world, and the situation.

He nonetheless did what he hadn't the previous year.

He walked up to the unsuspecting diner owner, and punched him. It was an enraged roundhouse, and it snapped the other man's head to the side.

Stunned, Luke blinked, and felt his face. White-hot inside, Richard boomed, "I should have destroyed you. I do not know, nor do I care, how you have managed to go merrily along with life as if you did not reduce my daughter to the status of an inconvenience. I have no concern whatsoever for your well-being, or your alleged character. Stop making my daughter cry!"

To his considerable surprise, Luke Danes squared off and sniped, "You're one to talk. Get the hell out."

Richard threw his best verbal punch with a thin-lipped smile that had earned him a reputation on three continents. When Richard Gilmore smiled that way, businessmen around the world wished they weren't in the room. "It was never your financial status. It was you. As with Christopher, a perennial adolescent, who, faced with adult responsibilities, found any escape he could, no matter the damage he did."

The use of that name did more than the punch. Veins stood out on the younger man's forehead. "Don't compare me to that…"

"Whyever not? You both left women to raise children alone, you both hurt Lorelai repeatedly, you both abandoned her for other women, you…"

"I know!"

The shout bounced off walls and silenced even those few diners hurrying to finish their meals while they could.

"I know," said Luke more quietly. "Shut up, get the hell out."

"There is no apostrophe," called Richard as Luke turned away from him, making sure all heard. "Williams, no apostrophe, is a surname, or a terrible error in the sign."

Luke's shoulders bunched tight. Richard braced for a blow.

"Upstairs."

"Hardly," retorted Richard.

Luke slapped a baseball cap on his leg. It was a garish color, something to do with a soccer team, he thought.

Luke marched outside, and Richard followed out of curiosity. The punch had taken most of his anger with it. Now he wanted to know the unknowable. The question he had to face: Why do you hurt those you love more than you ever hurt strangers?

Once on the sidewalk, Luke said, "My dad kept the sign for Mom, and to keep business coming in, it was her dad's store first. Then Dad bought it and fixed it up and kept the sign. Her last name was Williams."

"Ah," said Richard in an attempt at civility. "You never mentioned their names."

"You know them. You had a private investigator snoop around my life!"

"I didn't read the file. Emily had it, and I never asked."

Luke's inhalation sounded, to Richard, like a baby's first breath, a startled intake of this alien thing known as air. "My dad's nickname was Bill, but his real name was Lawrence. His brother was Louis."

"How does one get Bill from Lawrence?"

Luke studied his shoes. "Dad hated being called Larry. There was a Bosoxer he kinda looked like a little, named Billy Goodman, he threw right and batted left, same as my dad, so… I guess it stuck." He shrugged, gave Richard a wry, tight look. "Mom's name was Mary Elizabeth, but everyone called her Ellie. Her mom's name was Mary, too. Why am I having this conversation?"

"You are very good at diversion. Not, however, good enough."

"Look, I had my chance, I blew it."

"Ah. And so wrote letters to my daughter, invaded her home, in order to again flee at the first chance, then second and third and twentieth chances as well! You did not blow your chance, as you charmingly phrase it," sneered Richard. "You had no intention of taking the chance. Your choice, Mr. Danes, but not one I can approve. I have never seen Lorelai broken, until you. I have never known she could beg, until you. I have never realized how deeply inadequate she feels, until you. I am a slow learner, I admit, as I could have noticed all this much sooner, but you see, love is a blinding force. I loved Emily too much. You loved Lorelai too little."

Luke lunged. "Don't tell me that!"

Richard grunted as he caught part of a half-hearted punch on the arm. "Why not? Isn't it true?"

Luke breathed out, "What?!"

"Did you ever carve a wedding arch for your wedding to Lorelai?"

Luke's jaw sagged.

"Did you make your daughter part of your life with Lorelai?"

Luke's jaw snapped tight.

"Are you with Anna?"

"God no!"

"Then why couldn't you be with Lorelai?"

"It's complicated!"

Richard surrendered. "Oh stop whining, you sound like Lorelai when she's trying to avoid her mother. Love is simple. It is not easy. Lorelai has a child by someone else, that didn't bother you, so why should it bother her if you are in similar straits?"

"It's different!"

"Oh, balderdash," said Richard, and went to the waiting cab. He slid into the rear, and said, "To Hartford, please."

"You got it."

Richard leaned back. He closed his eyes. If nothing else, he might at least have prompted the diner owner to consider what was lost, and by more than himself.

AN: Billy Goodman was real. Career 591 RBI. Boston Red Sox. Before anyone screams, "But Wiki says the dad's name was William!"… That's because the sign was Luke's dad's, but it reads "Williams". If it were possessive, it would read "William's". And since Luke's family all has to come from elsewhere for Louie's funeral in "Dead Uncles & Vegetables"… I ran with the idea.

BELATED AN, added publication date:"Left for another woman" could be Swim Coach, or (in Richard's perception/anger) Anna. Luke's "I know" refers to the accusations in general, and isn't an admission about other women, but about hurting Lorelai. Richard had quite a rant there. Sorry it wasn't clear.

GG GG GG