A/N: I just realized I never did finish this story, and for those who have been following it, my apologies. I wanted it to be longer, but I will not have the time to fully explore all of the events leading to Rachel's marriage to Jesse and her subsequent Tony Award. So, I have decided instead to add a final chapter that I think gives the story closure. I hope you enjoy it, and best wishes to all of you. Reviews, as always, are welcome.

From behind, the mother and daughter sitting on the beach couldn't be distinguished. Each had the same petite build, with long dark hair in ponytails, and dressed in matching black one-piece swimsuits.

Rachel Berry smiled at that thought, and looked over at her daughter, Maddie. Even from the front, Maddie St James was almost a clone of her mother—the same nose, eyes and complexion, even a similar temperament. Jesse liked to joke about how people always assumed he was her stepfather. Rachel never knew if it bothered him or not; of course, the fact that their younger son Oliver looked exactly like him (except for the brown eyes) balanced it out, and made for interesting discussions with friends who had children with more blended looks.

"I missed eating real food, Mom," Maddie said. "Thanks for making my favorite." She had always loved Rachel's crab cakes, and constantly complained about the poor food they served at college in Vermont. That riled Rachel and Jesse. He liked to gripe that for the amount of money they had to shell out, the students should be eating like royalty.

It was a late afternoon, and still early June in the Hamptons, with a cool offshore breeze. Rachel loved that about the beach cottage they rented every year. Even at the height of the season, their stretch of beach managed to have relatively few visitors. Jesse often grumbled it was because of the jellyfish their spot seemed to attract. "They like you," she teased him. "I like you. So I can't really complain."

"Glad you liked them," she said. Before the children were born, they had spent a weekend on the Delaware shore, in a beach timeshare owned by mutual friends. Rachel tried crab cakes for the first time there, and left determined to learn the recipe. They were now a summer family tradition.

She watched a sad, fleeting look pass over Maddie's face.

"I'm sorry about Joe," she said.

Maddie sighed. "Thanks, Mom. I guess it's still a bit raw."

"Your dad's offer still stands, you know." She grinned, and was relieved to see Maddie laugh.

"I told him thanks, but the bastard wasn't worth going to prison for." Then Maddie shook her head. "He's such an emotional child. It's embarrassing to think I saw anything in him."

"You admired his talent," Rachel said, wrapping her arms around her knees. A sailboat passed the little point east of their part of the beach. "I can understand that." Like mother, like daughter, she thought. In high school Maddie had always gone for the talented, artsy types. But at least then she hadn't fallen hopelessly in love with any of them, and the breakups, for the most part, had been amicable. Probably because they admired her vocal chops as much as she admired their talent, Rachel thought.

"He thinks he's the new Neil Young," Maddie said with a snort. "Even my admiration didn't go that far."

Rachel suspected the attraction had been more than just artistic; both she and Jesse had seen Joe's picture, but she didn't bring that up. Maddie already seemed to be processing the reality of it well enough, and that's what was important.

It felt strange to remember breakups through her children. After all, she had been happily married for twenty-three years. The freshness of the pain was what surprised her—Rachel had expected some scar tissue to have developed. In the case of Brody, that was true—he was more of a scar she could rub instead of an open wound. But when it came to Finn…Oh Lord…the welling up of the old sadness… and the desolation she felt when he died…

She must have looked stricken because Maddie put her hand on her shoulder.

"Mom?" she asked gently. "Are you okay?" Rachel nodded. "I'll be fine, Mom. It's not like what happened to Oliver and Dani."

Oh, Dani. Rachel couldn't think about that girl and her son without crying, and not just because she had publically humiliated Oliver by loudly dumping him in the high school cafeteria, but also because it hurt to realize her son had richly deserved it.

Seventeen-year old Oliver St James had it all: tall and athletic, the star first baseman for the school's baseball team, and a scholar as well, especially in mathematics. Rachel had adored how his love of baseball had reignited Jesse's childhood passion for the game; the two of them attended every Yankees game they could. They were watching the Yankees play the Kansas City Royals in the city as she was sitting with Maddie on the beach. But there was a price to pay. Rachel and Jesse couldn't believe how crazy the girls at his school were for their son. They called at odd hours, and showed up unannounced at their home, dressed in outrageously revealing outfits, asking for him. Oliver, at first, seemed sweetly unaffected by the attention—he even asked his parents to run interference for him from them. But, in his sophomore year, the jock culture and the surging hormones resulted in him dating a few of them, and soon he had a reputation as a ladies' man. Jesse once remarked, in a mixture of dismay and awe, that Oliver got more action than he ever did with the members of Vocal Adrenaline.

Rachel didn't like the fact her son rarely talked about any of them, and they didn't seem to be a positive influence: she once overheard him on the phone with a team mate, complaining that the girls he seemed to attract were all interchangeable. She also didn't like what it was doing to his sense of decency. One night she and Jesse came home and found a pretty blonde sitting on their doorstep, crying because Oliver had made plans with her, then forgotten and gone to a party with someone else. Jesse was furious. He demanded Oliver honor his commitment and make it up to the poor girl. To his credit, Oliver was embarrassed and contrite, and even managed to patch it up with the girl enough for them to have been an item for a few weeks.

But then Dani happened.

She was a transfer from Southern California: tall, dark and lean, a pole vaulter hoping for a track and field scholarship to Stanford so she could study molecular biology. Dani could clear twelve-feet-six easily, and on the way to thirteen when she leaped ahead of the swarm of girls vying for Oliver's attention. "She has better abs than I do!" he marveled to his parents. She and Jesse loved the girl as well: intelligent and polite, and, unlike many of the typical girls Oliver seemed to date, comfortable in his parent's company. She also brought out the best in Oliver. With her he seemed kinder, more tender and solicitous.

Dani and Oliver soon became inseparable; at least, that was what Rachel and Jesse had thought. But the jock culture of the school, with its ruthless emphasis on competition, became Oliver and Dani's undoing. Several cheerleaders, all of whom had dated Oliver at one time or another—probably the inspiration for Oliver's "interchangeable" remark, Rachel thought bitterly—decided not to take Dani's favored status lying down. They carefully conspired with a cheerleader who hadn't been with Oliver before, a seemingly shy but gorgeous and ridiculously lean and fit blonde who had become infatuated with him too, and hatched a plan to lure him away from Dani. What bothered Rachel the most was that they succeeded—Oliver broke down and slept with the girl, and then the cheerleaders triggered the trap. In the cafeteria, one of them told Dani what had happened. Shocked, but refusing to believe it, Dani confronted Oliver when he showed up a few minutes later, and, when he admitted it, loudly dumped him in front of the entire crowd.

As she sat on the sand with Maddie, Rachel smiled in pained satisfaction, remembering how Oliver's reaction to Dani's loss confounded everyone's expectations.

He surprised his parents by openly admitting what he had done to deserve what he got. He surprised the cheerleaders by not wanting anything to do with them, or any other girls, for that matter. He didn't grovel, but did ask Dani's best friend to deliver an honest apology, then waited two weeks in agony before trying to speak to her. She listened to what he had to say, but made it very clear that he had betrayed her, and that was something her self-respect forbade her to forgive. He surprised Jesse and Rachel by accepting what Dani said with an almost zen calm.

But they could see a change in him. He spent more time studying. His voice became softer. He added long-distance running to his regimen, even rising at dawn on the weekend to make time for it. Dani noticed the change as well. When they saw each other in the halls, or out on the track during workouts, he acknowledged her with a faint nod of acceptance and respect, which she returned. Oliver also attended her track meets when he could, going to great lengths not to make his presence known, but that plan failed when one of her team mates saw him in the stands, trying to blend in with the crowd. That same team mate approached Oliver and let him know he was busted, but also said Dani seemed to appreciate his support

"Do monks ever play baseball?" Oliver asked his father once. Jesse said he didn't know, and when he told Rachel that night she giggled in relief, because her son seemed happier than he had ever been.

"I'm going into the city to see Dani tomorrow," Maddie said, then laughed. "She kind of texted me out of the blue a couple days ago and asked how Oliver was."

"I'm glad." Rachel looked dreamily out at the water. Maybe there was hope for them after all.

Maddie wore her hurt more than Oliver did, and Rachel could see residual sadness in her eyes. She thought for a moment, remembering something, then smiled and said,

"I loved someone before your father." She had never told her children about her love affair with Finn before. True, they had seen the picture hanging on the wall of her and Finn in the finale at Nationals (Jesse had insisted it be displayed, which touched her deeply), but all she or Jesse ever said was that Finn had been the co-captain of the team with her.

"What?" Maddie asked, curiosity all over her face. "When?"

"In high school, and into college. We almost got married. Twice."

"Why didn't you ever tell-" Maddie cut herself off when she saw the pain in her mother's face, then added, gently now: "What happened?"

"He died."

"Oh, Mom." Maddie pulled closer and put her arm around her mother. "It was the boy in the picture with you, wasn't it? Uncle Kurt's stepbrother, Finn…?"

"Hudson. Finn Hudson." How strange it felt to say his full name.

Her children knew Rachel had been a surrogate mother for Kurt and Blaine's daughter, Lily. And, of course, they also knew Lily was not their half-sister—the fertilized egg had been implanted.

"Yeah. Oliver and I guessed there was more to that co-captain story."

Rachel tried to smile, remembering how they made love in the hotel that night after that performance, and how the world seemed within their grasp, then.

"Your father was there that day too, you know. He was coaching our cross-town rivals." She giggled. "He lost his job when we took the title."

"Did he and Finn know each other?"

"Oh yes. But they weren't friends."

"So they were rivals!" Maddie crowed. "Over you! Tell me more!"

Rachel blushed, and looked back out to sea.

"They were very alike in some ways. Your father always says Finn had superb taste in women." Maddie laughed. "Both had tremendous talent. But, unlike your father, Finn was crippled with self-doubt over it. But he never doubted me. And when I left for New York, he stayed in Lima trying to come to terms with his dreams. He finally found the answer in teaching music." She was crying now, because it still hurt to think about it, all these years later. "But we never stopped loving each other. I found out, years after his death, that he had planned on coming to New York for graduate school, to be with me."

Rachel wiped the tears away.

"The most important thing Finn and your dad had in common was, they took the deepest joy in making music with me. I've never felt happier in my life than when I was making art with them. That's why, when your dad and I reconnected, he was the only human being left on this planet that could heal my broken heart."

"He adores you, Mom." Maddie said. "All our friends are jealous of Oliver and me for having parents so devoted to each other. It's ridiculous."

Rachel smiled again.

"One Christmas, when we were still in high school, Finn gave me a present. It was a star, named after him."

"After him?" Maddie snorted.

"I had a similar reaction. But he said he couldn't name it after me because a star with that name already existed, only here on earth."

"Oh my God," Maddie took in a breath.

Rachel chuckled. "Yeah. I sometime wonder what I did to deserve the love I have been blessed to receive." Then she continued," Finn said if I was ever sad or lonely, all I had to do was look up in the sky and he would be there, watching over me."

"Jesus, Mom, you're making me cry, now."

Rachel gently wiped tears from her daughter's eyes, as she had done so often before.

"I have to think Finn is still watching over me, and my family as well. So I want to show you where that star is—it'll be out tonight—so you can look for it when you feel sad or lonely, too."

Maddie hugged her mother, and allowed herself to sob over her loss, because she knew her mom would make her feel better, and so would Finn Hudson, up there, somewhere.

Rachel hugged her daughter closely, and gazed out to sea again. She felt a great relief, telling Maddie about Finn, and looked forward to telling Oliver as well. And she marveled at how prescient Finn's gift had been.

And then it struck her. When Finn had told her about the star, she had looked it up. It was twenty-five light years from Earth. That meant the light from the star they would see tonight had started travelling towards Earth around the time Finn had told her he loved her for the very first time.

That made it their light. And from now on, it would always be their light. Forever.

Rachel stirred on the blanket.

"I was going to cook tonight, but Oliver and your dad are eating dinner in the city after the game. How does Chinese takeout sound instead?"

And her daughter, who now knew she was the beneficiary of the love of someone she had never met, clapped her hands in delight.

"You read my mind, Mom," she said.