Vacation Sunrise

Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Andrew W. Marlowe and ABC television. No infringement is intended.

It was early. Lately, Rick Castle had been waking early in the morning partly because he was used to his early riser wife's habits. Since this was a vacation, she slept much longer. She needed the rest and was trying to catch up from the previous several weeks lack of sleep. With Rick being several years older than his wife, his biological clock was stuck on early rising.

It seemed like the murderers were trying to get theirs in before Detective Kate Beckett went on vacation. Detective Beckett and her team had five murders in less than a two week span. And managed to solve them all before Rick and Kate left for a week's vacation in the Hamptons.

And, of course, the murders didn't happen during the day or at a reasonable hour. No, they had to happen in the dead of night (no pun intended). Kate had been getting up before 5 am every day the two weeks prior to the vacation. With the vacation, though, Kate was able to sleep soundly and much later than she had before.

Rick gently got up out of bed, hoping he would not disturb his sleeping wife. She was laying on her side toward the middle of the bed, her chestnut hair surrounding her face like a halo. Her peaceful face almost looked angelic to Rick. There were times, like now, that he almost had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming this, this extraordinary woman, this fiercely intelligent female, this beautiful lady, Katherine Beckett was his wife.

He pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt to go outside to watch the sunrise. He made one last look at his sleeping wife as he strode to the bedroom door.

Rick carefully went down the stairs to the first floor. Avoiding the sides of the steps that made the most noise. It took some talent to negotiate the stairs for a novice, but since Rick had owned this house for over 15 years, he knew where to step and where not to step.

He reached the end of the stairs and turned to go out the rear door to the porch facing the ocean. He looked at the new flag he put on the flag pole. When he decided to put up a flag, it was primarily to know if the wind was blowing. If it wasn't a bright day or a windy day, the no-see-ums would eat everyone alive. Nighttime was especially bad if there wasn't a breeze.

But, being Rick Castle, he had to have a humorous bent to his flag. It was his sign or signet, two black chess pieces on a field of red. Of course it would be a Rook and a Pawn. What else could there be?

The flag slowly flapped in the breeze. "Good," Rick thought. "Maybe I'll be able to go out and walk on the beach this morning."

This was the last day of their vacation at the beach and Rick had a tradition to walk the beach and take pictures of the sunrise. Rick had started this tradition when his daughter was little. Alexis would spend much of the summer at the house in the Hamptons but they would both return to the city the weekend before the school year started. Leaving early to beat the traffic rush back to the city, they would pack and be on the road before 9 am most years. Another part of the tradition was that they would have breakfast at the beach and have a late lunch in the city.

Rick would at least do his part of the tradition. He would walk the beach and watch the sunrise. He grabbed his camera off his office desk, pocketed an additional set of batteries and set off.

Castle enjoyed photography even though he didn't have much time for it anymore. After Kyra and before Meredith and Alexis, Rick would take his film camera and go on a trek in his car to see what looked interesting. Once Alexis came along, he couldn't just drop everything and run off in any direction to suit his whimsy. However, every time he was involved in a photo shoot, he would talk to the photographer about lighting and composition. What each photographer thought made a good picture and how to avoid making bad ones.

Camera in hand, he walked barefoot down the path to the steps to the beach. As he put his foot on the sand, he marveled at how cool the sand was. Not a drop of rain happened overnight, yet the sand was cool, bordering on cold. Around him were the distinct, little crab tracks that bore witness to the lack of an overnight shower.

"I almost burned the soles of my feet on the sand noontime yesterday and this morning it feels very cool." Rick thought.

Rick's feet sunk a little into the soft sand, the sand pressing between his toes. High tide had not reached this far over the past several days, thus with the bright sun drying the sand it became a soft powder rather than the harder compacted sand that was closer to the water.

Now it was low tide and the expanse of sand to the water lay before him. Rick crossed the soft powder until he reached the harder, recently underwater beach.

He slowly walked toward the sunrise crossing over the band of small shells that had washed up on the beach. For the most part, these shells were not much more than a knuckle length and half as wide. Mostly, they were nondescript shells of shades of brown or grey. Occasionally, there was a scallop or cockle shell that was colorful with the occasional blue or purple. Kate seemed to have an affinity in finding those shells.

Rick continued down the beach looking for sandpipers. Previous years there had been small groups of three or four birds on the shore digging for their first meal of the day. Rick would try to get their silhouette in the picture surrounded by the colors of the sunrise reflected in the sea. Today, apparently the shore birds had slept in. No getting the proverbial early worm or early mollusk for them.

For the past several years, the sunrise was partly cloudy which happened to be Rick's favorite. If it was overcast, there was little light to work with and the sky was a dull grey. No clouds and there were practically no different colors. Even with the wispy cirrus, there was little to the pallet. This morning's sky was partly cloudy, so there were a multitude of colors. Reds, oranges, yellows, blues and greys were about the sky. The ocean reflected the colors with the waves making a series of cuts in the reflection with foamy whites and slightly ominous blacks.

Rick had walked maybe a couple hundred feet down the beach. No birds were nearby so Rick turned back. He took several pictures of the sunrise with his camera and his phone while retracing his steps.

He noticed the footprints in the sand he had left and took a picture of two of them a stride's length apart. His footprint changed the color of the sand from a milk chocolate brown to a light, perhaps pale, beige. He could see where he stopped to ponder the sunrise and the magnificent colors before returning to the house.

Rick walked up the pathway to his porch and reached the door to enter the house. He turned to contemplate the sunrise once again. "God," he thought. "You have made a splendid sunrise, but you outdid yourself with the woman in my bed. I cannot thank you enough for directing her into my life."

Although not terribly religious, Rick continued thinking, "Thank you God for blessing me."

A/N: I just returned from a vacation. Guess where? :)