Castle pushed the door to his apartment closed quietly with his shoulder blades and breathed consciously for the first time since he left the hospital. His eyes traced the leg of the coffee table in the next room, but all he could see hovering before his eyes was a slackened jaw tightening and a pair of terrified eyes.
"It's about your mother."
Without giving it any conscious thought, Castle carried himself to the window. He stared through the streaks of rain drops at the sun falling behind the New York skyline like sleepy eyes succumbing to rest. His mind staggered with the scene he'd prepared just a few hours ago when this rain was still fresh. He knew exactly how he wanted the confrontation to go. How it should have gone.
He would have sat her down, maybe kneeled at her feet to lay a palm on her knee, gently explaining with cautious ease how he only wanted to help, he had only her best interests in mind when he first opened the file. She would get upset. She would probably cry. But just like Castle's words got her through her mother's death ten years ago, his words now would get her through it again. And just as she had when she found out Sorenson was going to make it through the surgery, she would have pushed relieved breath through pursed lips. She might have even smiled. And if he was very, very lucky, she might have forgiven him.
But it was just a story. Everything in his mind always was. His fiction used to benefit him – monetary compensation for his best-sellers, national acclaim, no wait for a table or service at restaurants, and a long list of women who sported his hand when wearing low-neck dresses. This time, his fiction had brought him nothing but a feeling in the pit of his stomach like he'd swallowed a heavy dose of hydrofluoric acid.
But now that feeling was gone. Now he just felt sick. Sick, tired, and apprehensive.
"How did it go?"
Castle felt his mother's hand on his shoulder. He turned around to face her, and she thought it strange to see her son look older than she did. "Not well."
"Here, let's sit," she said, steering him over to the couch by the coffee table. It was empty now, but his mind saw dozens of photographs and reports scattered about the surface. He watched them curiously, filled his lungs, and exhaled his story.
"My... my mother?"
Castle felt his heart creeping up his throat, the memory of her warning hitting him full force: you touch my mom's case, and you and I are done. "I – it's not what you think –"
"Castle." The words rattled from the back of her throat, fear flickering across her golden brown eyes. "I told you not to touch it, I thought I made myself very clear –"
Her voice was rising to volumes he'd never heard from her before. When she first told him about her mother, she was quiet. Meek. Silently broken. Even a few days ago when he asked to look into it with her, she was just as quiet but with such a sharp undertone of anger and hurt, he didn't press it. But she had never gotten this loud before. All he could think about was that Kate Beckett makes good on her promises. All he could think about was never seeing her again. And he panicked.
"It's nothing like that," he interrupted. "I just wanted to say... that I'm sorry I brought it up the other day, and I'm sorry I suggested we look into it. It was stupid and insensitive of me, and... I'm sorry."
For a moment, her face remained taut and harsh. Then suddenly, she did something he never would have predicted. She laughed.
"Don't scare me like that," she said, breathing out what must have been very anxiously held breath. She still looked tense, not altogether relieved, but no longer vicious. "Is that why you pulled me out here, all serious and melancholy? Is that all?"
Castle blushed. "I guess it sounds petty when you say it like that."
Martha's posture stiffened. "You didn't tell her?" Castle shook his head.
"I couldn't. I've never seen that kind of hatred in her eyes." Hatred for him.
"Richard," Martha began, and suddenly Castle was seven years old, caught in the act of jumping the neighbor's fence and trampling the flowerbeds. "You're being selfish."
"I know," he sighed. "I'm going to tell her. I am." He looked up at the bookshelf, where he proudly displayed the first and so far only print of his new Heat Wave sleeve. "I'm just not ready to let go yet."
If I change
Am I denying what was said?
If I remain the same
Am I creating greater problems instead?