For the first time since he was a teenager, Luke turned on a radio in an empty house. He found a channel he liked. He hummed along to some of the songs as he got dinner going. He opened a bottle of wine. Some of it went into a sauce he was making, and some he poured into a glass and drank as the late afternoon faded into evening. He wondered why he'd so adamantly insisted he didn't like wine for so much of his life, when in fact it was infinitely pleasurable to drink. When he heard his wife's car pull up outside, he went to meet her at the door.
He latched onto her and pulled her inside. He swayed and swirled her about, in time to the music on the radio.
Lorelai tilted her head back, her eyes crinkled shut in amusement as she chuckled. He loved that he could make her laugh. He loved that fact – and her – so much.
"Are we dancing?" she wanted to know, still cracking up over his unexpected antics.
"You know I don't dance," he reminded her, swirling her around again.
"Oh, that's right. My own sweet compulsive liar." She put one hand against his face, her eyes sparkling. "What has gotten into you?"
"You married me," he answered simply. He heard something sizzling on the stove; something that probably shouldn't be sizzling quite that much. He kissed her swiftly and with regret, then went to investigate the food. "How are things at the Dragonfly?"
"Perfectly fine. We should have stayed away another week." She looked over his shoulder at the pots and pans steaming away. "Smells fantastic, Luke!"
He moved one pan to a different burner and stirred the contents briskly. "Another week away sounds great to me. Let's go back right now."
She laughed again, assuming he was joking. "Sookie and Michel and Caesar might have something to say about that. How'd the diner fare?"
"OK. Jess wanted me to come over, but I said he could just tell me anything he needed to tonight."
Lorelai had been reaching for a tasting spoon, but she stopped. "Wait. Are you saying you didn't go the diner?"
"I told I wasn't going to."
"I know, but that's not really the way you operate!" She looked at him sternly. "Who are you and where's my 'I Have to Do Everything Myself or It's Not Right' husband?"
Luke shrugged. "I think he got left on the plane somewhere."
"I don't know what to make of this new laid-back attitude. You are going back to work eventually, right?"
"Yes, but not a minute before I have to."
"Which is going to be tomorrow morning, correct?"
"Most likely, but let me keep the fantasy going for one more night."
She looked at him with that special Lorelai twinkle in her eye. "Really? After the honeymoon we had, there's still a fantasy left?"
"With you as my wife?" He took her in his arms and spun her around one more time. "There will always be another fantasy."
Then he kissed her and she kissed him, and things began to escalate just a bit, and then they heard a distressed yelp from somewhere behind them. They turned and there was Rory standing by the kitchen door, her fingers spread ineffectively over her eyes.
"This is the way it's always going to be from now on, isn't it?" she bemoaned.
Lorelai ran over to her with outstretched arms. "Daughter! My pride and joy! The best thing I've ever created!" Lorelai hugged her fiercely. "Well, besides the Dragonfly," she amended.
"I love you too, Mom." Rory laid her head against Lorelai's shoulder. "Good trip home?"
"Yes, except that we weren't ready to come back yet." Lorelai winked at her daughter. "Other than to see you, of course."
"There's a backpack full of souvenirs for you someplace," Luke said. "Your mother picked up every kitschy thing she saw. Hope you want a pineapple nightlight."
Rory looked over at him, her expression changing to one of concern. To Luke's surprise, she walked over to him and gave him an unusually affectionate hug. She pulled away slightly and looked at him. "Luke, you're OK?"
"Never better," he said with a shrug, unsure of her motivation. "Other than what your mom said, we would have been happy to stay there in the warmth for a few more days."
Rory's concern shifted towards confusion. "You got to see Jess today, right?"
"No, I didn't really see the point, since he's coming here tonight anyway."
"You didn't see Jess?" she asked, her voice raising.
"No," he repeated.
There was a short rap on the door and Jess walked in.
"You didn't talk to Luke today?" Rory shot at Jess, her voice remaining shrill.
Jess smiled at Lorelai, nodded at his uncle, then came to stand by Rory. "No," he quietly confirmed to her. "Believe me, I tried."
"You're all here now," Luke pointed out. "What do you say we get dinner on the table and then catch up?"
Everyone pitched in and soon they were seated and devouring the meal. Between bites, Lorelai told tales of their trip. She described the zipline tour they took through the Costa Rican rainforest, which she thought she'd love and Luke would hate. Instead, it gave her vertigo, but Luke wanted to go again the second his feet hit the ground. They signed up to take a horseback tour of a pineapple plantation, which Luke thought sounded like a cool thing to do, only to discover that horseback riding was definitely not his preferred method of transportation at all. Lorelai, on the other hand, tried to skip the pineapple tasting at the end of the ride, got cajoled into it by the guide, (So cute! she mouthed to Rory), and became a pineapple junkie for the remainder of the trip. She passed around pictures of those adventures, as well as the other places they'd visited.
They moved into the living room after they ate, bringing along a bottle of wine. Luke thought about how nice this all was. To be here, together. The kids old enough to drink a glass of wine with them and talk about their lives. To be able to share special glances with Lorelai. To pretend not to see the special glances shared between Jess and Rory.
No doubt about it, his life was pretty damn good. He sipped at his wine, perfectly content.
He saw Rory look at Jess, but it wasn't one of those special glances this time. It was more along the lines of a signal.
"So, Luke," she began, sounding resolute. "We – Jess and I – we met someone who knows you the other day."
"Probably not a hard thing to do, here in Stars Hollow," he said lazily, unconcerned.
"This wasn't –" Rory cut herself off, as if she was afraid of saying too much. "Her name's Anna. Anna Nardini."
"Anna?" He was sitting on an ottoman in front of Lorelai's chair, lounging back against her knees, but the name brought him upright. "Anna Nardini? No kidding? Wow, I haven't thought of her in years!"
"Who's Anna?" Lorelai wanted to know.
"Old girlfriend," he informed her. "We dated a long time ago."
Jess leaned forward, his face set. "We actually met her daughter first."
"No way!" Luke was dumbfounded. "Anna – Anna Nardini has a kid?" He shook his head and turned towards Lorelai. "If you're a ten on the motherhood scale, Anna would have been a minus thirteen. She didn't have a maternal bone in her body. Kids were not on her radar at all. Wow, that's a real shocker, to hear she had a kid after all."
Rory shot Jess another one of those signaling kind of looks. "The daughter, April…she's twelve years old, Luke."
Behind him, he heard Lorelai suck in a sharp breath of air. He turned around to look at her again, and her eyes were open wide in what looked like shock. He surveyed the rest of the room, and saw that Jess and Rory were looking at him expectantly.
"Huh," he said, not knowing what other comment to make.
Jess inched to the edge of the couch, staring down at his clasped hands. "Luke, there's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to do it. There's a chance that April's your daughter."
"No," he said, almost laughing. "There's no way. I mean, Anna and I broke up…" He paused, trying to count back through the years. "Maybe…twelve, thirteen years ago?"
"Luke," Lorelai said softly.
"There's no way," he repeated stubbornly. "If she thought I was the dad, why wouldn't she tell me? It's not like she didn't know where to find me."
Shortly after making that statement, he let himself zone out for a while. It was too much to take in. Rory and Jess were talking about April coming to the diner, something about other guys, the trip they took to Woodbridge to confirm April's story with Anna. With her hand protectively on his back, Lorelai asked dozens of questions, letting him know that she was there, always there, supporting him. He leaned back against her, letting her be the one to cut through the disorienting conversation swirling around him. Until he finally thought of a question he did want an answer to.
"Does she look like me?"
All conversation halted and everyone looked at him.
"You heard me. Does she – this kid, April – does she look like me?"
Jess and Rory exchanged another one of those looks, and by now, Luke really hated those looks.
"No," Jess said simply.
"But then, she doesn't look much like her mother, either," Rory put in.
"That's true," Jess agreed.
Mercifully, soon after that, Lorelai was able to bring the evening to an end. She found the souvenirs for Rory and boxed up leftovers and got both of the kids to leave the house. Luke walked out onto the front porch to wave goodbye and then just never walked back in. He stared out into the dark, trying not to think too much. Letting a sort of white noise, like the overwhelming whine of a jet engine, drown out the unsettling thoughts.
Suddenly Lorelai was behind him with a blanket. She wrapped it around his shoulders. "Hey, macho man. We're not in the tropics anymore. It's November in Connecticut. You're going to freeze."
Slowly, he turned around to embrace her.
"Are you OK?" she whispered, hugging him, and all at once he understood Rory's question from earlier in the evening.
"No," he muttered.
Lorelai nodded and led him over to the glider. She sat down beside him and he wrapped the blanket around them both.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she inquired, her soothing tone letting him know it was OK if he didn't want to.
"I don't…I don't even know where to begin."
She nodded again. "Tell me when you met Anna," she suggested.
His mind zoomed to a certain day and the memories came easily then. "It was after my dad died. I was starting to change the store over to the diner, and I needed to clear out some stuff to make that happen. I put up ads in the neighboring towns. Anna was opening her shop at the same time, so she came over to see if she could use anything. She ended up buying a wooden display case and a couple of metal shelving units." He paused, remembering the exchange. "I offered to haul the things over to Woodbridge for her."
"Wow, she must have been very pretty."
"Lorelai –"
"Sorry, sorry. I'll try not to tease. I just mean, it sounds like she made a real impression on you. And that's OK, I understand. We've both had people in our past. It's just the way it is, babe. You know you can talk to me about this."
He sighed, hating that he had to agree. "Yeah, she was pretty. And there was a definite spark between us. I took the cabinets and shelving over to Woodbridge and we started dating probably the next week."
"For how long?"
He winced and squeezed his eyes closed. "For probably longer than you want to know."
"Oh." He felt her go still. "OK, then."
"It wasn't…" He stopped, trying to judge his words. "You know, with us…" He stopped again. "At least for me, about us, there was this feeling. That if we ever started something, it was going to be serious."
She leaned her head against his shoulder. "That we'd be all in."
Despite his current angst, he smiled. "Yes, exactly. All in. But that was never in the cards with Anna. We were involved in only a portion of each other's lives. I was running a new business; she was running a new business. She had no desire to move to Stars Hollow; I certainly wasn't moving to Woodbridge. When we had time to be together, it was fun. If weeks went by and we didn't see each other, it wasn't the end of the world. I always sort of suspected that I wasn't the only one in her life, but I didn't dwell on that much. It wasn't until the end, when she kind of threw the other guy in my face, that I decided I was better off without her."
"Guys," Lorelai corrected, under her breath.
"Yeah, didn't know that, either," Luke said grimly.
"She sounds like a peach."
"She's…Anna." Luke shrugged. "She was never one to sugarcoat anything. You either took her as she was or you left."
"So more Nicole than Rachel?"
"Definitely nothing like Rachel, which might have been part of the reason I was attracted to her at the time."
"What do you think you want to do next?" She hugged his arm. "I'm not trying to push. This is a huge shock for you. I'm just wondering if you've been able to give it any thought yet. Or if you wanted to sit here and devise a strategy."
The feeling from earlier in the evening enveloped him again, the feeling that everything in his life was going so well. Lorelai, his wife, sitting here beside him, giving him warmth and support when he needed it most. Rory and Jess, who cared about him so much that they broke the news in the gentlest way possible. And out there, somewhere in Woodbridge…maybe there was a daughter, too?
He shivered, and Lorelai drew the blanket closer around him.
"I have to say, you're taking this really well," he said. He wanted to praise her, to let her know how much her support meant to him.
"Me?" She chuckled. "Luke, contrary to what my mother believes, there are times when I do know it's not about me at all. And this is definitely one of those times. I've got your back, no matter what."
"But still, it's gotta be a shock, to find out that your new husband has a…a kid."
"No big deal. I mean, I've got a kid."
"Yes, Rory," he said wryly. "Who I've known as long as I've known you."
"Someday, we'll feel the same way about April. That we've always known her."
He scowled; he could feel it on his face. "If she's mine."
Lorelai paused for just a second too long, letting him know that for all of her positive spin, she had anxiety lurking as well. "Do you think she's yours?"
"I wish I knew. Maybe? I mean, I was younger and a lot more stupid then, so it's possible. The relationship was on course to end badly even before I found out about the other guy. Guys. If I'd been smarter I would have been gone long before that part happened." He dropped his forehead down to her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Lorelai. I never saw this coming."
"Of course you didn't. You're not the one who should feel sorry. This ridiculous twelve-year gap is in no way your fault."
He straightened up, hearing a way forward in her words. "I guess that's the first thing. I want to go talk to Anna."
"I've got her number, Rory gave me all the info. If you want to call and set up –"
He felt the scowl again. "I'm not calling her."
"Then how –"
"I'm going to go see her."
"But, Luke –"
"I'm not calling her on the phone and letting her try and explain this away. I'm going to be right there in front of her. I want her to have to say all of it to my face. I want her to squirm and try to find a reason why she kept this from me for all these years. I'm not calling her and giving her advance warning. Tomorrow morning I'm going to be there at the door."
"How are you…" Lorelai shook her head. "It's been a bunch of years, Luke. How are you going to do that, just show up and be in her face?"
"She's still got her store, right? Same place? I know her routine. She likes to get there early, long before her staff does. She likes the quiet before the place opens, so she can get the business stuff out of the way. And tomorrow morning, her business is going to be with me."
"Over a decade later, you think her routine is still the same?"
"Yes. That's why it's a routine." He sighed. "Look, if I'm wrong, then I'll make a new plan. But for right now, this is it. You asked me what I want to do, and this is it."
Lorelai looked at him steadily. "All right," she finally said.
"And…" He hesitated. "There is something I need for you to do."
"Anything. Just say it."
"I need you to come with me."
Her mouth dropped open. "Tomorrow? You want me to come with you while you confront Anna? Oh, no. No, no, no, no!"
"You said you'd do anything."
"Within reason! Luke, there's no way this goes well if I'm there in the way."
"I need you there," he said quietly, looking away.
"Why?"
"Because I'm not as strong or as brave as you make me out to be, that's why."
She swallowed down her protests, studying him. "You can't disillusion me, mister. I know who I married."
"I keep picturing it," he muttered. "Going to Woodbridge. Parking in front of her shop. And then…chickening out. Not being able to face her after all, because…I don't want to, Lorelai. I don't want to have to do this at all. It'd be so much easier to ignore it. Just pretend I don't know. And I can imagine starting the truck back up, turning around, heading back home. But if you're there…" He took her hand. "Then I have to do it. I can't back out. With you there, I have to be brave enough to go up to the door."
They were both quiet for a long minute.
"Well, I did say I had your back," she finally murmured.
"So you'll come?"
"I'll come. For you. To support you. But I do reserve the right to leave if I judge it's going OK and you're no longer in danger of chickening out."
He thought about that. "That sounds fair."
"Also, if it ends up going south, I get to tell you I told you so."
"Once."
"Deal." She held out her hand.
He took it and held it tightly.
"Aren't you freezing?" she asked.
Now that he'd made something of a plan, his emotions and anxiety had settled down to a level that allowed his physical discomfort to poke through. He shivered involuntarily.
"Let's go in." As Lorelai stood up, she lost the blanket from around her arms and she shivered, too. "Come on," she urged, pulling at him.
They walked inside the house and Lorelai kept tugging at him, directing him towards the stairs and away from the messy kitchen. "As far as I'm concerned, this is still the last night of our honeymoon."
"Oh, really?" he questioned, intrigued despite the evening's turmoil.
"Mm-hmm. And I'm going to pretend that it's warm outside, and there's a beach just down the path, and I've got on your favorite bikini."
"The yellow one?"
"The yellow one."
He did have fond memories of those scant triangles of fabric. "Maybe instead of pretending you could really put it on?"
She stopped on the stairs to give him a kiss. "If you promise to keep me warm enough."
He was already feeling plenty warm. "I promise, sweetheart."
They kept each other plenty warm until the apprehension about the unknown fell away. For the few remaining hours of the night, they were able to sink into an exhausted sleep, content in their universe that still held only the two of them.
"Luke! Look!"
"What?" he snapped, not exactly irritably, but on edge.
"It's snowing!"
He forced himself to focus through the Jeep's windshield until he could make out the flakes. "Yeah," he acknowledged indifferently.
"Luke! You know what that means! Good things always happen when it snows!"
"To you, maybe," he muttered.
"To me, and the people around me," she clarified. "Come on, it's a good omen."
He took a breath and glanced over at Lorelai. She had decided she'd be the one to drive this morning, reasoning that he would surely be a dangerously distracted driver. He didn't dispute that. But without the discipline of piloting a vehicle keeping him engaged, anxiety had engulfed him.
He took another breath.
Lorelai reached for his hand. "It's OK, babe. I'm here. We'll get through this."
"I'd feel better if you'd keep both hands on the wheel." But nevertheless, he squeezed her hand back.
He stared out the window until he saw the Woodbridge sign up ahead. "You know, I think about that night sometimes," he murmured.
"Which night? There are so many to choose from," she teased him.
"The night when it snowed, the night when you first told me about you and snow. The night with the reenactors. When that teacher – when Max showed up instead."
"Ah, that night." She turned her head briefly to share a look. "What do you think about?"
"That I was a fool not to tell you right then how I felt about you. We could have saved years of mistakes."
She nodded. "Unless we needed those years of mistakes so that we could be as happy as we are now."
"Well, aren't you just all Zen and one with the universe this morning."
They came to an intersection, where she brought the Jeep to a stop. "Do I turn here?"
"Yeah. And then make a left at the next street. Her store should be about halfway up the block after that."
"Let me know when we're getting close."
Luke felt his heart rate spike. It was weird, seeing Woodbridge again. A disconcerting mix of the familiar and the new. Lorelai turned left and he spotted the store at once.
"There. The lacy-looking sign. Vintage Village."
It was so early she had no trouble parking in front of the store. "Cute," she commented.
He was incapable of making any comment. He wasn't even sure he could nod his head.
"Hey, Luke." She turned to him and took both his hands, waiting until he looked at her. "I'd like to think that we could have made a go of it if we'd gotten together that much earlier, but as for me? Truthfully? I'm not sure I was ready for such a committed relationship. Not then. I think I still had a lot of growing up to do. I needed to make the mistakes I did so that I was able to appreciate the real thing when it came along."
He thought about Rachel's visit, the way the bond had finally dissolved between them. He thought about Nicole and shuddered, but he also remembered the afternoon in his apartment, the day he truly saw Lorelai's face…and knew. He just knew.
"Maybe you're right," he was forced to agree.
"Of course I'm right," she scoffed, as playfully as she could. "And it might turn out that this is the same way. Maybe this is exactly the right time for you and April to begin."
"Maybe," he choked out, feeling sick.
She unlatched her seatbelt and reached for him, drawing him to her in a fierce hug. "You ready to go in?"
"No," he said honestly.
She released him and gave him a ghost of a smile. "That sounds like my cue."
Lorelai got out of the Jeep and came around to his side. She opened his door and took his hand. "Come on, my not-so-brave guy. Let's go intimidate the crap out of your ex-girlfriend."
"I don't want to intimidate her," he argued. He was surprised to see he was standing on the sidewalk.
"I know, I know," Lorelai placated him. "We're just going to show her that she's no longer running things."
They walked to the front of the shop, which gave Luke the oddest feeling of déjà vu. His breath caught in his throat. There she was. Anna. Standing with her back to the window, folding up some sweaters. For a moment he couldn't move. And then, decisively, he stepped to the door and rapped on the glass.
She turned, and he could tell she was ready to tell him to get lost, thinking that the knock was from a pushy customer who wanted in early. Sometimes Anna's sense of customer service was even worse than his. But then she recognized him and went stock-still as well.
Through the window they stared at each other, until the past and the present caught up.
Resigned, she came to the door and opened the locks. "Guess you're back from your trip," she said, holding the door open for them.
It was so unnerving to hear her voice again. That particular sarcastic cadence. That low, almost gruff tone, which was so out of kilter when judged against her appearance.
Luke nodded. "This is Lorelai," he said, making a choice at that moment not to add on my wife.
"Hi," Anna said perfunctorily. But then she turned back and looked at Lorelai with more care. "Wow, your daughter looks just like you."
Lorelai's face lit up, the way it always did when Rory was the subject. "She doesn't, not really," she happily told Anna. "It's mainly the eyes. And our coloring. It makes people think she's a copy of me, but that's not true." She pointed to her head, still smiling. "But up here? Yeah, there's a lot of similarity up here, unfortunately."
Anna actually chuckled. She chuckled. Then she pointed to Lorelai's left hand. "What an unusual ring. Do you mind if I…?" She took a step closer and Lorelai proudly presented her hand for inspection.
"I see antique rings and jewelry all the time, but I've never seen one like that. It's gorgeous."
"Thanks. Luke picked it out."
"That's not true," Luke said tiredly. He'd had to defend himself against that statement countless times since leaving the jeweler's shop where the bespoke ring had been created for them.
Anna glanced at him, somewhat shocked, before she returned to Lorelai. "This is your engagement ring?"
"Yes! I wanted a pink stone, and even though there are pink diamonds – whoa, boy – we could not afford one of those. This is a pink topaz, which is just as pretty, if you ask me. And then there are some small pearls around it, and the two clusters of teeny diamonds on either side. It was exactly what I wanted."
"Very nice."
"And then we had the wedding band made to match, with diamonds and pink topazes."
From gemstones and jewelry, the two women segued easily to Anna's store, the turquoise purse Rory had selected for Lorelai, to the joy of finding just the right thing to suit.
It was then that Luke realized why he'd wanted Lorelai with him. He knew she'd do her Lorelai thing. She'd find something to talk about and the ice would be broken. Things would no longer seem so weird because Lorelai wouldn't let it stay weird, even though she loved weird. She knew how to tame weird and make it seem normal.
Gratitude flared out from him and Lorelai must have felt it, because she walked over beside him. She put her hand on his arm and looked at him with intent.
"I know the two of you have a lot to talk about, so I'm going to get out of your way. I saw a coffee shop at the end of the block, where I'm going to increase my caffeine input for the morning." She squeezed his arm and smiled reassuringly. "Just call me when you're ready to go, or come get me," she told him.
He managed to nod at her, but an answering smile was still beyond him.
"It was nice to meet you, Anna. I'm sure we'll have plenty of other times to talk."
"Yes, we probably will. Nice to meet you, too." She walked Lorelai to the door and locked it behind her.
The store went silent. Anna turned to him resolutely.
"So…Luke."
"Anna," he replied, not knowing what else to say.
"There's really no place to sit out here. Let's go back to my office," she suggested, leading the way.
Her office was half of a storeroom. He immediately recognized something.
"You've still got the shelving."
"I do." She sat down at a desk, motioned at a chair he could take. "The cabinet is still out in the display area, too. It's been painted probably a dozen times since I bought it from you. I think I'm about ready to strip it all off and stain it back to walnut again."
He nodded and then they regarded each other awkwardly.
"Oh, hey – Jess!" Anna threw out, trying to save the conversation. "That kid grew up good, huh?"
"Yeah. He had a really rough patch, but he managed to find a way out of it. I'm proud of him, making it through."
Anna snorted. "I'm not surprised, with the mother he had."
"Liz has calmed down. She's worked through her demons too. She's living in Stars Hollow now. Married a guy, bought a house. They're talking about maybe having a baby." Just thinking about TJ made Luke wrinkle his nose. "Can't say I'm thrilled about her husband, though."
Anna laughed. "That doesn't surprise me at all."
"Yeah, well…"
Silence descended again.
Enough, Luke thought. He leaned forward and put his clenched fists on the edge of her desk. "Is she mine?" he asked roughly.
"Luke…I don't know. I wish I could tell you, but I just don't know. There's a good chance she is."
"A good chance isn't good enough. And why – why did you do it? Why didn't you tell me right away? If she's mine, you've cheated me out of all those years. Why would you do that to me? You hated me that much? Why?"
Anna winced. "No, Luke, I…it wasn't hate. I never hated you. I hated myself right then. I hated how I acted. And I never meant to not tell you."
"What does that even mean?"
She shrugged. "I thought that we'd run into each other and I'd tell you. Somehow that seemed easier than deliberately going to see you and trying to figure out how to tell you. Or even, what to tell you. I mean, what could I say? I'm pregnant, maybe you're the dad? Would that have been any better?"
"Yes! Of course it would have been better! At least then I would have known! I could have been in her life. I could have helped. The way it is, you turned me into some sort of uncaring jerk of a deadbeat dad. You think that's better?"
"You're not a deadbeat, Luke." She looked at him coldly. "And you might not even be a dad."
He stared at her, feeling disgusted. "Does she look like me? Rory and Jess says she doesn't."
Anna's eyes rested on his face. "Um, no, not really. I mean, yeah, dark hair, blue eyes, but not quite your shade."
"Does she look like the other guys?"
"No. Nothing that I can recall, anyway. She's always been sort of her own person." Anna's gaze flicked to the front of her desk. "Do you want to see a picture?"
"Yes," Luke said, and braced himself.
Anna turned a picture frame towards him. "This is her. April. It's her school picture from this year."
He picked up the picture and studied it as if his life depended on it. Her small face was almost hidden behind a massive amount of hair and oversize, dark eyeglass frames. A bulky teal sweater overpowered her thin body. It was hard to get any sort of real impression of her.
"That's some hair," he finally said, and put the picture down.
"Yeah," Anna said, laughing. "She came out of the womb with that hair. It was all anyone could talk about."
He looked at her and he could see the pride on her face. Like Lorelai, when she was talking about Rory.
"Do you remember my Aunt Suze?"
"Sure."
"Well, it's Suze's hair."
"No way."
Anna laughed again. "You probably never saw her real hair. She always straightened it. But yeah, that's where it came from."
He looked at the picture again. "How's your mom?"
"She's OK. Ish. My Uncle Gabe and Suze moved to New Mexico a couple of years ago and Mom just joined them recently. They've got a little family enclave going on out there. She was really starting to feel the winters here. Hopefully the warmth out west will be kinder to her."
He nodded, still studying the picture.
Anna took a deep breath. "I suppose you'd like to meet her."
His answer came swiftly, before he could even think about it. "No."
"We can –" She stopped, then stared at him in disbelief. "What?"
"No. I don't want to meet her."
"Then what's this all about?" Anna demanded, incensed.
"I don't want to meet her until I know for sure. I don't want to go in thinking one thing and then find out it's not true. I don't want to meet her and get involved in her life, and her in mine, and then find out –" He had to stop talking and swallow hard. "I need to know for sure where I stand before I meet her."
Anna frowned. "Are you saying you're willing to take a paternity test?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I want. Can you make that happen?"
"Um, I suppose so." She picked up a pen and twirled it mindlessly. "I can call my doctor's office when they open. They can probably tell me how to go about it."
"Good. That'd be good."
"OK." She was still staring at the pen. "But you don't want to meet her."
"Not until I know for sure." He was suddenly aware of how harsh that sounded. "Maybe you could tell me something about her? For now?"
"Well…to start with, she's amazing."
"Of course she is." He smiled, once again thinking about Lorelai and Rory.
"And she's smart. Like scary smart. Numbers are her native tongue."
"What do you mean?"
"As soon as she saw her first Sesame Street, saw the Count, she just got it. Numbers made sense to her. She'd put her toys into groups and count them. She'd sort out one block, then two blocks, then three…until she ran out of blocks. Other kids would draw the same thing over and over, maybe a house, or their family, or flowers. Not April. She'd write down numbers until she filled up the page. By the end of first grade, they want the kids to be able to count to 100. April could do that on the first day of preschool."
"Wow," Luke said, suitably impressed.
"She's had a math tutor since third grade. I couldn't keep up with her. She needed someone else who spoke that language too, and you know that's not me!"
"You did all right."
Anna scoffed. "Sure. That's why I asked you to look over my books so frequently." She looked at him with more awareness. "You always did OK with the accounts, though. Maybe that's where she gets her affinity for numbers."
Luke laughed. "Trust me, at that age, I was crashing my toy cars together, not counting them."
"Anyway, it wasn't long before she understood addition and subtraction. Multiplication was the next step. She's always been way ahead of the rest of her class. When she discovered science, that spoke to her in the same way. She became obsessed with doing experiments. She's one smart kid, and that's not just her mom bragging about her."
Luke nodded. "Rory's like that, too. She planned on going to Harvard since she was four."
Anna's eyebrows rose. "Did she make it?"
"No." Luke waited a beat, having learned from Lorelai how to effectively land a zinger. "She's a junior at Yale instead."
"Ha! That's great!" Anna chuckled. "Wait until April finds that out. Rory is going to get pestered with questions."
"I don't think Rory will mind." He looked down at his hands, thinking about Rory. "And I guess Rory's the reason I'm cautious here. Lorelai and Rory were part of my world a long time before Lorelai and I started dating. Rory was a great kid. She meant a lot to me, but once her mom and I became a couple, the way I felt about Rory shifted. I guess I started to feel more like a dad to her, and I liked that. But then, there were a couple of rough times when I wasn't sure that Lorelai and I were going to make it, and that got me to thinking about how if I lost Lorelai, I'd lose most of Rory, too. And that – well, it scared me." He looked at Anna, willing to be honest. "I don't want to feel the same way about April. I don't want to start to believe that I have more than a friendship with her and then have that jerked away. If she is a great kid – and I'm sure she is – I don't want to fall down that rabbit hole of pride and family bonding, and then have to cut it off."
Anna was looking at him soberly. "I get it, Luke. I do."
"Once we know, either way, then I'd like to meet her. But I want to know going in, if it's as friend or father." He hesitated. "Can you explain it to her, so it doesn't hurt her feelings? I do want to meet her, just not yet. I don't want her to think I don't care."
"She'll understand. You're being cautious and safe. Those qualities will speak to her. Don't worry, she'll be fine with it." She grinned, sort of to herself. "I mean, she'll be impatient, but she'll also understand where you're coming from."
"Well then, thanks," he said, feeling awkward now that the dreaded meeting was reaching an end. "I guess we've said everything we need to say for the present." He began to stand up and then reminded himself of his main goal of being here. "And you'll let me know about getting the testing done, right?"
"Yeah, as soon as I find out."
"Do you have something I could write on? I'll give you my numbers."
"Oh, sure." She pushed a scratch pad and a pen his way, again with a slight smile. "Although I'm pretty sure I still remember the number to the diner."
"Not sure this is a conversation I'd want to have out in the open in the diner," he muttered. "Here's my cell number and this is the phone at the house."
Anna's eyebrows raised. "House? Don't tell me you finally moved out of your father's old office!"
"Lorelai already had a house so it made sense for us to just live there."
"Oh, right. Of course. That makes sense," Anna said, now seeming to feel the awkwardness too. "Hey, what does Lorelai do?"
"She's an innkeeper. She and a friend of hers own and manage an inn."
"In Stars Hollow?"
Luke nodded, and Anna scooted to the edge of her seat. "Not the Dragonfly?"
"Yeah," he confirmed. "You've heard of it?"
Anna laughed. "For some reason, our clientele overlap. I can't tell you how many customers have told me they were staying at the Dragonfly. I keep meaning to swing by and check it out, ask about leaving some brochures there." She sobered. "Unless – you know – that's just too weird, now."
Luke shrugged. "I don't know why it would be. Lorelai's big on highlighting local stores and services to visitors. I doubt she'd think it was weird."
"Maybe – if I had done that – we could have straightened this all out before April got curious."
"Maybe," he said half-heartedly. Privately, he thought that scenario would have been just as bad. Maybe worse.
"I should go." He stood up decisively this time. "I need to go extricate Lorelai from the coffee shop before her teeth start to vibrate from the excess caffeine."
Anna walked him to the door, but before she unlocked it, she turned to him. "Luke, I am sorry. I don't know if Rory or Jess told you what I said, but I'm so sorry you found out this way. I'm so sorry about all of it."
Hearing Anna apologize for anything was a new experience. "Truthfully, I don't know if they told me or not. I sort of went numb last night while they were explaining everything."
She winced. "I'm sorry about that, too. Obviously, back when I was pregnant, I wasn't looking ahead. I never saw a future where this was all going to hit the fan someday. I was just taking it one step at a time. I was being extremely self-centered, and I recognize that now. I'm sorry that I didn't see it then."
He wanted so much to be mad at her, but to his surprise, the anger had receded. Now he was just sad and feeling hurt about missing so much. Or – maybe he hadn't missed anything. He reminded himself not to jump to conclusions.
"I guess we just go on from here," he suggested, feeling philosophical.
"I'll call you," Anna promised, and opened the door.
"Thanks," he responded, and walked through the falling snow as quickly as he could to get to his wife, the one person who'd lovingly guide him through the conflicted emotions this reunion had unleashed.