Chapter 2
Lorelai walked away from the diner, her arms wrapped around herself, trying to ward off the cold from outside, and the cold from inside as well. She felt numb, disbelieving.
A daughter? Luke has a daughter? I have a daughter. He doesn't have a daughter. He has no children, he's single guy. He was single guy. Until he was my guy.
Kids would be okay.
Two months? Her words echoed in her head. She'd never heard that tone in her own voice before.
He lied to me. He's been lying to me for two months. Two months.
Two months since Rory came back. Two months since everything fell back into place. Her daughter home, then her daughter back in school. Renovations complete. Moving forward on the wedding plans. She stopped walking and closed her eyes, squeezing them tight against her thoughts.
She'd been right. She knew it was too easy. She had told Rory it was too easy, and Rory told her she was being ridiculous. Ha. She knew things weren't right and she focused on the dress and she let Luke make her believe that the dress was fine, that everything was fine but that couldn't erase the feeling that everything wasn't fine.
Goddamnit. Why couldn't everything be fine? Why did something always go wrong? Rory comes back, Luke finds out he has a daughter, and he doesn't tell me.
Damn rule of three. Something always goes wrong.
The inn opened, Luke kissed her, and Rory slept with Dean. All on the same night. Her guests, her beloved friends and neighbors, safe and happy in their beautiful inn, Luke ranting and kissing and feeling so damn good. Rory making one of the stupidest decisions of her life.
Skip ahead a year. The inn thriving, back together with Luke and better than ever, and Mitchum fucking Huntzberger convinced Rory to derail her whole life. Her bright, beautiful, rational daughter let one arrogant, controlling man's opinion stop her in her tracks.
Lorelai stopped walking again and looked around her. Where had she been going? She didn't even know. Should she turn back towards town and hide at home? Or turn the other way and go back to the inn?
Home was empty. Home was wallowing. Home was no Rory until dinnertime. Lorelai felt the tug of depression, sadness. Rory back at school, working through her problems. Talking her way into the classes she needed, the internship she wanted, meeting with her therapist. Probably back with Logan. Three out of three for her.
The inn. The inn was full of life. Work, guests, events. Distraction. Sookie.
Sookie had all three as well. The minute she started dating Jackson, things fell into place for her. Love. Work. Family. She had it all. It wasn't easy, but their bumps in the road were mostly minor, and easily fixed.
Why can't she have all three? She really did think she had it this time. Love, work, family. God damn rule of three.
She stood, frozen in indecision.
She wanted to go back to the diner. She wanted to go back and yell at Luke. Shake him and shout WHY? Why didn't you tell me? Sure this is huge, this is shocking, but it's not a bad thing at its core. A child is a good thing, isn't it?
Shit. He had a kid for twelve years and didn't know. That was bad. Twelve years. Who is this awful woman who never told Luke he had a kid? Twelve years that he wouldn't be able to get back. She felt overwhelmed with sadness for him, sympathy for him. And then nearly doubled over as a white flash of fury swept through her. Two months. What was wrong with him? How could he not share something so big?
She started to move again, walking quickly. Trying to stop thinking.
When she felt the crunch of gravel under her feet she paused and looked up. The Dragonfly. She didn't remember consciously deciding to return to work, but here she was. Her inn. Their inn. Their perfect inn. Snow dusting the roof, lights shining against the gray winter day. How close it came to not happening, but Luke stepped in.
Luke. Always there.
Except when he's not. Another wave of anger swept through her. Two months.
She forced herself to start moving again, walking up the steps and through the front door. Looking around the beautiful lobby, hearing the buzz of the maple syrup-ers. Michel talking warmly for once on the phone. Delicious aromas from the kitchen.
Coffee. She never did get a cup of coffee. She entered the bustling kitchen and made her way to the machine. She grabbed a Dragonfly mug and started to pour, noticing her hands were shaking. She rested the carafe on the counter and took a deep breath, willing herself to relax.
Sookie came in from the pantry, arms loaded. "Everything okay?"
Lorelai closed her eyes for a moment. "I'm fine," she said. "Just cold." She finished pouring the coffee, took a sip, and closed her eyes again.
She felt Sookie's hand rest lightly on her back. "Are you sure? Are you still upset about Logan coming by? You look pale, like you saw a ghost."
Lorelai laughed. "A ghost. A ghost from the past is one way of putting it." She looked down at her cup, unable to meet her friend's eyes.
"What are you talking about sweetie?"
Lorelai turned slowly and leaned against the counter. Taking another sip of her coffee, she looked at Sookie's sweet, concerned face. "Luke…" she began. She shook her head firmly. No. This was bigger than Luke. "Sookie? Do you remember the rule of three?"
Sookie smiled. "Of course. Gosh, we haven't talked about that in ages. I haven't even thought about that in ages."
That's because you have all three. "Yeah, we haven't talked about it in ages, and a good thing too, because I just figured out, it's a crock of shit."
Sookie pulled back slightly, looking surprised at Lorelai's language. "Sweetie, what's going on?"
Lorelai looked out the window for a moment, then turned her eyes back to her friend. "What's going on is that I just figured out that a major organizing principle of my life is completely false." She squeezed Sookie's arm. "Sorry, Sook. I know I'm not making any sense. I'm gonna finish this in my office, do a few things, get my thoughts in order. Come talk to me after lunch? When things settle down in here?"
She didn't give Sookie time to answer, just started walking out of the kitchen and towards her office.
Lorelai stared. For a while she just stared at her computer screen, but then shifted her gaze to the wall. The small ping of a dried leaf blown against the window brought her attention there and she stared out the window for a while, just for a change of pace. The Inn was warm, and she had kept her office door open to the comforting sounds of lunchtime, so she no longer felt frozen on the outside. But her brain felt frozen. Unable to keep processing. So she just stared.
A gentle knock on the door tore her gaze from the outside. "Hey Sookie."
"You up for lunch, just the two of us here in your office?"
Lorelai nodded. She didn't feel hungry but maybe talking would unfreeze her brain.
Sookie looked down the hall and gestured. One of the newer waiters came in with a tray. Lorelai moved a few folders to the side of her desk and he put the tray down. He started to move things around but Sookie shooed him away. "I've got it Phil, thanks."
The scent of delicious food hit Lorelai's nose and suddenly she was hungrier than she had thought. Soup, and grilled cheese sandwiches cut into triangles. Golden brown with cheese oozing out. "Oh my God, this looks delicious."
Sookie smiled. "Good. I knew the grilled cheese would work but I was a little unsure about the soup. But it is sweet so I thought I had a shot."
Lorelai dipped the spoon in and took a small taste. "Mm. What is it?"
"Butternut squash."
Lorelai wrinkled her nose at the mention of a vegetable, but took a bigger spoonful. "Really good," she confirmed.
"Try the sage," Sookie encouraged.
Lorelai reached for one of the crisp leaves garnishing the center of the soup. She raised it up in her fingers and looked at it skeptically. "This?"
Sookie smiled. "Yes. You'll like it, it's toasted in brown butter."
"Yum," Lorelai agreed, and took a few more sips of soup, followed by a bite of the sandwich. She closed her eyes as the crisp, buttery outside of the sandwich gave way to the gooey cheese, and she savored the perfect blend. "God, Sookie. You are the queen of comfort food. The queen of all food, really, but this…"
Sookie smiled again, lifting up her own bowl of soup from the tray and tasting some. "It is damn good, if I do say so myself."
They ate for a few minutes in companionable silence, until Sookie tilted her head to the side, looked at Lorelai, and asked, "You doing a little better?"
Lorelai shook her head. "Not really, but this is good."
"What's going on? Why are you talking trash about the rule of three all of a sudden?"
Lorelai was quiet, concentrating on scraping up the last few spoonfuls of soup from the bowl. She pushed the tray a little bit away from her, leaving just room enough for her to put her elbows on her desk and rest her chin. "Luke has a kid."
Sookie frowned in confusion. "A kid? Like a goat?"
Lorelai laughed, she couldn't help herself. "No Sookie, not a goat. A kid, a daughter, dark hair and glasses, about 12 years old."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
Lorelai sighed. "I went back into town, you know, after I filled you in on the crazy request from Logan. I decided to grab a quick cup of coffee, because, well, coffee. And Luke had sounded so concerned about the fact that I wasn't going to make it in today." She stopped for a second, suddenly realizing why he had been so concerned, and snorted. "Anyway, I walk in and the diner is empty, classic mid-morning lull, and there's this girl filling salt and pepper shakers. I asked her who she belonged to, thinking maybe Caesar? And she just says, calm as can be, my dad owns the place. And there's Luke, coming out of the kitchen, looking like a deer caught in the headlights and we go outside and he tells me yes she's my daughter, I just found out."
Sookie was taking this all in with wide eyes. "Just found out? And she's already in the diner filling salt shakers?'
Lorelai sat up a little straighter. "Yes! That's exactly what I said! And he said two months. Two months, Sookie! He just found out, my ass. Two months. For two months he's been lying to me."
"But how? Who? Who kept this from him?"
Lorelai opened her mouth to answer but stopped and waved her hand dismissively. "I don't even know, that's not important."
"Not important?" Sookie echoed in disbelief.
"Ugh, sorry. Of course the details are important. I just – I was in such shock I didn't even have time to ask. I just kind of backed away from him and said we'd talk later. And now all I can think about is that stupid rule of three."
"Why the rule of three?"
"Because. Because, Sookie. Whenever I think I've finally got all three, something goes wrong. I finally get Rory back, after the longest, worst patch we've ever experienced and boom, Luke has a kid. And who cares if he has a kid, I mean of course I care, it's huge. But it's not in the end a terrible thing, but he didn't tell me and now it's a big thing. And all I can think is why? Why does something always go wrong? Why does something always keep me from being happy? And it makes me so angry. Is it fate? Outside forces I can't control? But then I think, is it my fault? Is there something I'm doing that always makes everything get screwed up?"
Sookie looked thoughtful. She reached over and began stacking up their used dishes. "It's just a framework, a game we used to play, to make ourselves feel better about our lives. To, I don't know, analyze things to death, get ready to move on to the next phase, the next challenge. I don't think you should take it so seriously."
"But I have taken it seriously, all these years," Lorelai said. "I know it's just a game, I know we used it as a fun way to talk things through, especially disappointments, but it's… it's meant more to me than that. And I think, even though we don't talk about it as much, and really, I don't think about it as much, I think I just took it for granted that my time was coming." She sighed. "I mean, your time came. You have your three. I know it's been hard, I know it was hard to open the Dragonfly and have a newborn, but it's all there for you. And I think I just assumed I'll get there too. That I'm not that Cosmo girl in her twenties, looking for an apartment in New York City." She laughed. "Not that I ever was, but you know what I mean. I assumed, without really thinking it through, that eventually I would get all three — that once you're older and wiser and have more money, you get all three. And instead, every time it feels like it's within grasp, something goes wrong." Lorelai glanced at Sookie. "And it just keeps happening, big things, with the people I love the most — conflict, and separation, and ugh. I just can't take it. I don't have the energy to weather another storm." She felt the start of tears in her eyes and shook her head impatiently, not wanting to cry at all, let alone in front of anyone. Even Sookie. Lorelai sat up straight and took a deep breath and willed the tears away.
"So now I'm thinking, do I really believe I can have all three? And why not? Why can't I have all three? Or am I forever stuck thinking that really, I only deserve two out of three? Did I just accept that, somewhere along the way? It makes me mad at myself, to think that every time something goes wrong, I just accept it. Rory goes off to Europe with my mom and won't talk to me. Rory listens to some jerk's assessment of her and quits school. Luke storms away from my parents' stupid vow renewal and says he can't be in it and I just let it happen until he waltzes back into my life a month later and kisses me and then we're back together, and then father and son Huntzberger screw up something else. I mean, who am I? Who is this passive person that just lets these awful things happen to her? I feel like I fight so hard against it, but maybe there's something I'm doing? Or that I'm not doing, that could keep them from happening? Did I somehow somewhere just accept that I could never have it all, and let that rule me ever since?"
She stopped talking, staring at the tray. "Oh, God bless you, there's coffee too." She busied herself for a few moments, pouring herself a cup of coffee, adding a little sugar and milk.
Sookie cleared her throat. "Lorelai, you are the strongest person I know. Seriously. You are not causing these things, and you handle them the best you can. People are complicated, family is complicated, love — god, love is complicated, none of us has control over all of it. But there's not some outside force controlling it either. Life is life, and things get thrown at us and we deal as best we can."
Lorelai looked at her friend, and nodded, and was about to start talking again when Sookie raised her hand to stop her. "But I will say this. As to why I've got all three, and you still don't. I mean you do, you do have all three, but there's a lot of turmoil. And that's because there's… a lot of turmoil."
Lorelai looked at her and smiled. "Sookie, that doesn't really make sense."
Sookie chuckled. "I know, give me a minute. I'm not quite as good at the words as you are. Better than Luke, but not as good as you."
Lorelai smiled again.
Sookie took a deep breath. "Look, there's been a lot of turmoil, at the center of your life. From what you've told me, since you were really little. That conflict with your parents did not start when you were fifteen or even when you were thirteen. To have that struggle with your mom, over who you were and what you wanted and the life your parents wanted you to live, that's complicated. My life growing up wasn't that complicated. Yeah I fought with my sisters, and we all competed for attention from our parents, but there was acceptance, and love easily expressed, and enough food to go around and enough money to go around to support each of us in what we wanted to do. Sure they weren't thrilled about the idea of me going to culinary school instead of college, but we dealt with it. We argued, we gave each other the silent treatment, we talked again, and we made plans. It's not perfect, my family or my parents, but it's functional." She paused. "Your family? Not so much. And when you had Rory, when you got pregnant with Rory, that's a lot of turmoil and conflict. The struggle you had with them, the year after she was born, the battle to be able to be a different kind of mother to your baby, even though you were only 16, that wasn't easy. That left scars, for all of you. Leaving the way you did, that was a huge thing. A thing you all are still trying to recover from. And how hard you had to work, to make your life here in Stars Hollow, and what you gave up for Rory, the way you didn't date, or barely dated. The way you were all grown up in so many ways but not in others... it was all very hard, and very complicated."
Lorelai swallowed, feeling tears threaten again at her dear friend being so understanding.
"But you do have all three. You have love. You and Luke are so good together, even if right at the moment all you want to do is strangle him. You love each other. But he's complicated too. Losing his mom when he was still so little, losing his dad when he was barely an adult, dealing with a sister who was an addict and a neglectful mom, that's a lot of turmoil too. So you've got two pretty complicated people who are amazing friends to each other, and who love each other, trying to figure out the relationship thing. That was always going to be a hard, complicated thing. A great thing, but a hard thing. You've had bigger bumps than Jackson and me arguing over me not understanding for five minutes that he wanted to marry me, not just move in with me. Or that obsessing about money and knives was his way of being excited about Davey. And Rory. Gosh, you know she's just the perfect kid, but she's not perfect. You're not perfect, she's not perfect, and you struggle with that. And how to integrate your parents back into your lives, and how to help her navigate life when she's been kind of protected. By you, and by this town, this weird little town that adores her — all of that love and biased affection and support for her. And now even your parents, turning all of their approval and support to her in a way they never could with you. It's complicated. And you've done such an amazing job, everywhere. Love, family, work. This inn, this is you." She put up your hand again as Lorelai opened her mouth to protest. "I know, it's us, we're a team. But you, you were the driving force, you kept us going in ways I never could have. So, you do have all three, and yes, you've hit another rough patch. But you'll deal, you'll come through it, and as Rory gets older and finds her way, and you and Luke continue to battle it out, you'll find your way and things will settle down. And here, our inn. It's going great, it's still a ton of work, but it's already settled down so much and it hasn't even been two years yet, and it will keep getting better. Easier. You do have all three, Lorelai."
Lorelai nodded. She wasn't completely convinced by Sookie's overall assessment, but she made some good points, especially about her family. And Luke's.
"Lorelai? What do you think?"
Lorelai blinked her eyes and focused back on her friend's concerned face. "About?"
"Maybe it would help to talk to someone?"
Lorelai started shaking her head even before Sookie finished her sentence. "No, I'm not ready to talk to Luke yet."
"Well, yeah you are going to need to talk to Luke sometime soon, but that's not what I meant."
"I'm not ready to talk to Luke yet," she said a little more insistently. "How come he always gets to take time to ponder and I don't? I need some time to process this."
Sookie raised her hands up slightly in defense. "You do, honey. You get time to process just like he does. I just meant that you shouldn't take too long before you talk to him. I know you've got a lot on your mind and this has opened up a whole set of questions for you, but you don't wanna go too far down the road without knowing what he's thinking too."
Lorelai stared down at her hands, hearing the wisdom of what Sookie was saying but feeling stubborn. She looked up again. "But what do you mean that's not what you meant?"
"What do you mean what did I mean?"
Lorelai smiled. "I jumped down your throat and said I wasn't ready to talk to Luke, and you said that's not what you meant. What did you mean?"
"I meant a professional somebody."
"You mean a therapist? You think I'm crazy?"
"I think we're all at least a little crazy, and that you aren't exempt."
Lorelai shook her head. "Gilmores don't see therapists."
"Didn't you say Rory has been seeing a therapist?"
"Yeah, but that was a requirement, so she could go back to school."
"But she's going back for another session, right? I thought only one session was required."
Lorelai grimaced. "You pay too close attention to what I say." She found herself staring into space again, thinking about what Sookie had said.
Sookie sighed. "I didn't mean to upset you, I just… It's like we were talking about. Your family is complicated, you've been through some really tough things. Honestly, I think everybody in the world could use a session or two with a therapist, from time to time. Most people just don't get around to it for whatever reason. But you're sort of at a crossroads here, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to at least think about it?"
Lorelai reached out and squeezed Sookie's hand. "I will. I will think about it. You're a good friend, you give good advice."
Sookie sat up straight and put a serious look on her face. "I do. I do give good advice." She shook her finger at Lorelai. "Eat your vegetables, and talk to Luke sooner rather than later."
Lorelai made a face at both suggestions, but then smiled at her friend. "Okay, thank you for talking this through with me. It really helped. I'm gonna check on the syrup folks, and then get home to meet Rory before the carnival."
"Oh, I'm glad she'll be there. Tell her I'll stop by the booth!"
"Will do. I'll pop into the kitchen and say goodbye before I leave. Thank you for lunch too, it was fabulous."
Lorelai got up to hold the door for Sookie as she left with the lunch tray. She sat back down at her desk, wondering if she should stay longer and get some things done, but opted instead to simply clear her desk of loose items, and head off to check in on their guests.
Author's Note: Hello and thank you all so much for the warm welcome back!
This story has been in the works for a long time. I waited until completing a first draft of the whole story before beginning to post, with about half of the chapters much further along than first draft. From here I hope to post about once a week. There will be 24 chapters, give or take a few as I make final revisions toward the end. Many thanks to the lovely and wise DeepFriedCake, who has agreed once again to beta my story! She's been extremely patient and always encouraging as I've worked on this in fits and starts over the past few years, and it's so much fun to finally have a close to completed work to begin sharing with her (and then you all!) more regularly.
As with my last multi-chapter story, I'll stop from time to time to chat here in these end notes, about both process and content. For now, I'll just say that it's a Season 6 Fixer Fic, which you've likely already guessed, and that I hope you're enjoying a more openly angry - and perhaps more introspective - Lorelai as we get underway.
