Glimpses

Chapter 68

November 20th, 2016

"Hey!" Rory said, raising the steps of her mother's house having been waiting for her to arrive from her honeymoon at The Bahamas. "Where's Luke?" she asked, before her mother had had a chance to inquire why she was so anxiously waiting there, clearly looking a little nervous.

"Oh, hey!" Lorelai replied, looking a little sunburned, and hugged her daughter. "Oh he just saw Kirk rushing out of there with an apron on him so he couldn't help himself and went to check it out, make sure he still owned the place, you know... He slept like a baby on the plane so he's wide awake anyways," she explained with a shrug. "What brings you by?" she asked, not missing a beat. The plan had been to meet up in a couple of days in Hartford initially, so she really hadn't been expecting Rory.

"Can we talk inside?" Rory suggested, hesitantly.

Lorelai could already expect something ominous and didn't hide it. Either way she unlocked the door and let Rory inside, who'd already realized ten minutes ago how sitting on a cold stair step had not been her brightest idea.

"So?" Lorelai asked, as they got into the kitchen.

"I don't want you to panic. I don't want you to... I don't know... just I can't handle your sad eyes right now," Rory began, fretting saying what she needed to say already.

Lorelai looked anxious too now.

"I lost the baby," Rory spit out with a sigh, needing to clear her voice and keep her head clear. "But it's good...," she began to add. It was supposed to come out as something about how it was not meant to be and how this made thing so much easier, but before she knew it her mother wrapped her in her embrace.

"Oh, honey...," Lorelai said, rubbing her shoulder.

Rory wasn't crying, she'd already done that and would do some more. But for now she'd been determined to focus on the positive even if it meant lying to herself.

"Are you okay? What happened?" Lorelai asked.

"It was a missed miscarriage, it happened a couple of days ago. Dad came to be at the hospital with me, he helped me a lot," Rory explained, failing to mention the major blood loss. No good would've come of it and she'd even talk to her dad about downplaying the whole thing for Lorelai which he had surprisingly actually agreed on.

"Oh, wow...," Lorelai reacted, not knowing what to say. "And how are you feeling?" she had to ask. Frankly Rory was so tired of answering that question already - all the doctors, nurses, her dad, Paris... even Emily's maid at the house who'd noticed her blodshot eyes - they'd all been asking her that, but she didn't really know what to say to it.

"I just need to accept it, you know," Rory replied and that was certainly something she believed in. There were a lot of reasons why it was good this happened - she didn't have anything to tell Logan, she didn't have to mess up his life. She didn't need to figure out how she was going to support her baby all by herself. She could maybe even explore this thing, this new friendship... or maybe something more that was developing between her and Jess. She'd even confessed to Jess she'd had some medical emergency, adding something vague like 'female stuff', but that had actually made him want to chat with her even more - similarly asking her if she was feeling better and distracting her with his literary banter, as if knowing that was exactly what she needed.

"I guess," Lorelai chimed, holding her hand. Rory couldn't help but to hear some relief in her tone too - whether she was imagining or not she couldn't be sure.

Rory was actually a little surprised her mother hadn't been offended, or at least didn't mention it, that she hadn't called her.

"I'm going to get past this," Rory said, assuring herself more than anything.