A/N: So this is the spinoff/companion thing for If You See Kate I was talking about. I decided to skip past Raglan giving the news of Johanna's death to Kate and Jim just because I didn't think I was going to be able to write it that well and also because the more important part of this story is what happens afterwards. I hope you enjoy this and that it helps to explain why Kate does what she does in Chapter 3 of If You See Kate.
Disclaimer: I am not Andrew Marlowe. I do not own these characters. I'm just borrowing them.
Her eyes are puffy, dry and red from a night of crying into her pillow. Her limbs ache from how the sobs wracked her body. When she wakes that morning, for a moment she wonders where the sound of her mother humming as she dances around the kitchen making breakfast is before she remembers that she's never going to wake to see that ever again and she's filled with that crushing grief that makes her want to burrow so far into her mattress and pillow that she never has to come out.
A film of tears blurs her vision as she stares at her reflection in the mirror, trying to at least clear away the streaky mascara that has run down her cheeks if she's not going to bother having a shower or getting dressed.
As soon as she opens her bedroom door and steps out, she kicks an empty bottle of whiskey and then spots several more empty cans and bottles littering the floor and coffee table. It actually takes her a moment to spot her father sleeping in amongst the mess on the couch, still cradling an uncapped bottle of what looks like vodka. She hopes he hasn't been drinking that straight, but if the stench permeating the room is any indication, her hopes are in vain. She cracks a window open before stepping across the room, taking a path that involves stepping from side to side to avoid the bottles and pieces of broken glass.
"Dad?" she asks uncertainly, leaning into the potent aroma of alcohol surrounding him to shake him by the shoulder.
He sputters and growls as if she's just chucked a bucket of water over him, angrily starting forward, sending her stumbling backwards until a piece of glass is embedded in the bottom of her foot.
She gasps, tearing up at the pain. But her dad doesn't even notice, he just mumbles something about getting her mother to fix her up, taking another swig right out of the bottle and falling straight back asleep. Denial is one thing, but this is another. He's her father and she needs him. She's lost her mother, and right now the one person she needs to help her, is too wrapped up in his own grief to remember that she's suffering too.
She hobbles to the bathroom, limping awkwardly because she can't put her heel down on the floor without pushing the glass further into her skin or leaving blood everywhere – not that that's a big concern when the apartment is a tip anyway.
Pulling the pointed shard from her foot has her gritting her teeth, biting her lip as a muffled cry slips out swiftly followed by a hiss when the glass slides free. It's easily two inches long. She knows she should probably have it checked out at the hospital in case she needs stitches and so it can be properly cleaned. Instead, she simply grabs a clump of tissue and douses it with surgical spirit, holding it against the still-oozing cut for as long as she can manage before the stinging pain becomes just too much. A small part of her enjoys the pain, finds it a comfort, a mirror of the agony that's hidden inside her, a distraction from everything she's trying to hold back and keep in.
Once she's cleaned the gash the best she can, she wraps it in a bandage and staggers back through the wreck of their living room, stopping short when she sees the closed door of her parent's bedroom.
She understands why her Dad hasn't been able to face sleeping in there. The décor in there? It's all her mom's. She sees the Brazilian rug on the floor her mother had fallen in love with at a flea market as soon as she opens the door. In stark contrast to the living room, the bedroom is pristine. The throw pillows are still artfully arranged on the bed as though Johanna Beckett had only been in and made the bed up that morning. The bedside table on her side still holds a pile of her legal notes and files as well as a few books, whichever ones she had started before a big case came along and dragged her attention away.
Kate is slow walking into the room, feeling like in some way she is violating the space, somehow destroying the memory of her mother when she picks up the first book on the bedside table and remembers as soon as she reads the cover that this is the book she was desperate to go and get signed the other week when there was that big book release.
Hell Hath no Fury by Richard Castle, she reads. She flips open the cover and runs her hand over the first, textured piece of paper glued into the binding. Just before she shuts the book, she catches sight of the author's face staring at her from the inside of the book jacket and freezes. She'd know that face anywhere – those crystal clear, sky blue eyes.
Taking the book with her, she dashes back through to her own bedroom and promptly shuts the door before sinking down on her bed as tears spring to her eyes.
Her diary is pulled from under her pillow and flipped open until she finds the entry from that day at the bookstore.
He said his name was Rick Castle.
Oh god.
She flips forward again, stopping at the entry she made on New Year's Day.
Oh God, I am so hungover. I can't believe that the ID Jason got hold of for me worked. I'm still pissed at him for standing me up that night just so he could go and get high with Danny and Robbie. God, what an asshole. If he thinks he can just waltz back up to me before I go back to college, he's got another thing coming. He's called twice already, not that I answered. He's definitely not getting any now. Rick Castle, on the other hand, well that tongue of his was sinful when we kissed. I wonder what else he can do with it.
Scrawled underneath is a copy of the number he penned on her hand.
She's hyperventilating. Oh God. Oh God.
She'd been talking to her mother's favourite author, flirting with him, kissed him even, and she hadn't even realised. All of a sudden it's too much. She can feel the world pressing in around her and she needs to escape.
She whirls around the room, flinging whatever clothes she can get her hands on into a bag with her purse. She doesn't even realise that the book has been put in at the bottom. She's not even thinking, she just knows she needs to get away.
She doesn't look back at her room, where her diary lies open on her bed, or her father sprawled out on the sofa, drooling from his open mouth, vodka leaking out of the top of the bottle as it slides from his grip. She just keeps walking, bag and leather riding jacket slung over her shoulder, keys jangling where they hang on her finger as she pulls open the deadbolt and opens the door, striding out into the hallway, knowing and not caring about how much of a mess she looks with unbrushed and unwashed hair, clothes wrinkled from sleeping in them and tears still streaming down her face.
She grabs her helmet from her bag before zipping it shut and tightening it, the canvas bag lying diagonally across her back, the strap parallel around her chest, so it's not going to be moving whilst she rides. She doesn't even know where she's going yet, not that she cares. Escaping everything – her pressing thoughts, her passed out father, her guilt, her grief – that's the most important thing.
As her helmet slides over her head, she hears her phone ringing again. She guesses it's Jason, but he's the last person she wants to speak to. He must have heard about what's happened by now – she knows it'll have been reported in the newspapers, maybe on the TV. She's already had a number of messages from old high school friends who've heard. But listening to them is unbearable. It makes it too real, and the whole thing, the pain, the memory of Detective Raglan waiting for them on the doorstep; it's all still too raw. She sniffs heavily as she starts the engine before riding away.
It takes her almost three hours before she pulls to a stop, leaning to one side on her bike outside the cabin her family had spent every Easter holiday at for a good ten years of her life.
She drags the bike up to the porch, hoping it will stay sheltered enough not to rust before taking the key out from under the flower pot that still holds a young, but weary-looking conifer. Her hand shakes, both from the freezing temperatures and her emotions, as she unlocks the door and steps through into the dim interior.
Her first priority is to fetch the firewood her father usually stored out by the coal bunker and start a fire before checking the power's still working. Once she's done that and gathered every blanket from the squat, one floor building, she sets up camp in front of her newly-lit fire, huddled in the warmth of her mother's wool rather than her arms.
It's lonely and peaceful in the quiet woods until her cell phone shatters the silence, ringing insistently. She'd felt the vibrations of the device against her back more than once during the journey, and frustratedly fishes it out of her bag, switching it off as soon as she sees Jason's number on the screen. Tossing it back into the bag, her eye catches on a hard edge, a shiny corner and she pulls out the book she'd picked up in her parent's bedroom.
She opens it and begins to read. It's not like she has a whole lot else to do.
She only stops reading to keep the fire going and to forage in the pantry for whatever food she can make, heating a can of chicken soup over the stove. She knows she'll need to make a trip to the local convenience store for some bread and a few other necessities, but it'll have to wait. The small country roads are a nightmare to navigate in the dark, and until Daylight Saving Time starts again in a few months, she's stuck with day turning into evening far too early for her to get to the store and back.
As soon as she's finished eating, she returns to the book. She knows it's absurd, kind of morbid really to be reading about death and murder when she's so close to it already, but like any good mystery, she's desperate to find out all of the secrets so she can solve it. It helps, she thinks, that it's not an old fashioned murder, but a more elaborate plot of a cultic group ritually killing – something much more removed from her mother's stabbing.
Her eyes are drooping in the waning light, but she persists until she falls asleep on the floor, waking confused in the middle of the night when the fire goes out. Her bones ache as she empties the last of the logs she stored in the bucket beside the fireplace into the hearth and relights it before moving to the comfort of the old couch to fall back asleep. In the morning, she abandons the book for a few hours to head to the shop. She doesn't have much cash with her, so she goes looking for her father's emergency stash, checking through all the pots and jars in the little kitchenette before moving into the bedroom he and her mother always used when they stayed there. She checks all the books on the shelf, finally hitting the small jackpot with her dad's copy of Moby Dick of all things.
She grins wryly to herself, the uplift of her lips small however.
Driving to the store, she leaves her helmet back at the cabin because she wants to feel the wind on her face, blowing through her hair while she rides her '94 Harley softail. She buys as much food as she can with her meagre twenty dollars and safely stows the bag of bread, peanut butter, pasta, vegetables and ham into her bag before riding back. Just that one small task of getting the groceries, doing something normal, helps her forget about why she's there in the first place.
She makes a late breakfast, toasting a slice of the bread before spreading crunchy peanut butter over it, enjoying it at the table whilst she carries on reading Hell Hath No Fury. It's not the best book she's ever read, but she can't deny that Richard Castle really has a way with words. Already she's half way through and she still has no idea whether Adam Parel and his family will escape from the Wiccans alive.
By the evening, she's forgotten about lunch and everything but the words on the page. It's only the insistent rumble of her stomach that draws her thoughts away from the book and towards food. She cooks pasta, opening a can of chopped tomatoes to make a sauce – quick and easy.
That night instead of sleeping in front of the fire, she takes the blankets into her old bedroom and reads with the aid of her bedside lamp until the early hours of the morning when she finally makes it through the last page. Adam Parel's survival and the punishment of his would-be killers restores her so misplaced faith in the universe, makes her have hope again that Detective Raglan will be able to find out who murdered her mother in that alleyway and have them up in front of the court where the jury will find him guilty.
After a few hours' sleep, she feels okay enough to switch her phone back on and listen to all the messages her closest friends have left for her. She makes it through all of Jason's 'What's going on? Where are you?' messages and a few of her friends apologetic, supportive voicemails before she breaks down in tears. It's their sympathy that does her in. She doesn't want their sympathy; she just wants her mother back. She longs for her caring embrace, the way she would always rub her palm up and down her back when she was upset. Her mother would know just what to say to make her feel better. But she's never going to have any advice from her ever again.
Her phone rings again and startles her. It's Jason. She switches it off – she's still not ready to talk. She hasn't figured out what she's going to say to him yet.
For the rest of the day, she lies in bed, alternating between recalling happy days with her parents and remembering how much she'd argued with them during this winter break. The last thing she and her mother did was go shopping together. She's been wearing the softknit sweater her mother insisted on buying her for almost four days now. She knows she needs to shower and change, but it's so much effort when she'd rather sleep for an eternity. She knows she's being pathetic – how is what she's doing any better than her father losing himself in the bottle?
The next day she forces herself up and out of the warmth of her sheets, telling herself that she has to start taking care of her body, that her mother would scold her for the tangled state she's let her hair descend into and the way her jeans are starting to hang off her hips already. After she showers, she braids her hair into a plait down one shoulder and pulls on clean clothes, finally beginning to feel like a human being again. She fixes herself another slice of toast for breakfast, wondering what on earth she's going to do to keep herself busy now that she's finished the book she accidentally brought with her. The TV holds no draw for her, nor do the jigsaw puzzles she used to love when she was a kid. It's been a few years since they were last at the cabin, so most of the stuff in her room is too young for her. She's left with perusing the shelves of her parents' bedroom, hoping that they left behind at least one book that will take her fancy.
When she sees another of his books on the shelf, she doesn't hesitate. She pulls Death of a Prom Queen off the shelf and fingers the lettering of the title before leaving the bedroom with it.
On her fifth day at the cabin, the landline rings. She freezes, fingers twitching as she ponders whether she should answer it. Before she can decide, the line rings off, so she just goes back to preparing a stew with the vegetables she bought from the local store the day after she arrived.
It rings again the next day though, and the day after. She doesn't feel like she can ignore it, but the only person who could be ringing that number is her dad.
Her voice quivers when she finally picks it up and answers, "Hello?"
"Katie, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You can come home now. We're worried about you, come home."
She blurts, "Sorry, Dad," into the phone before hanging up. He's sorry? That's all he's got to say, he's sorry?
It's a shock when a few hours later she hears a car pull up outside, engine rumbling for a few moments before the driver cuts the ignition. His footsteps up the porch steps are familiar, heavy lumberjack boots that thud with every step. There's no pause as he walks past her bike. He doesn't even stop to knock at the front door, just twists the handle and pushes it open, calling out for her as he enters. "Katie?"
He easily catches sight of her lying on the sofa with one of their old blankets over her. She doesn't respond to his voice though, or even his approach. Picking up her legs, he sits down before laying them over his.
They sit in silence before he says, "The funeral's in a week."
She nods. A week. That's…soon. Too soon, maybe.
"So. Are you going to carry on hiding out here or come back to the city with me?"
"Are you going to carry on drinking yourself into a drunken stupor?" she counters.
He sighs at that. "Look, Katie, I made a mistake. Your mother was – well, she was my life-"
"-Yeah? What about me? Aren't I important too?"
"I'm not explaining this properly," he says regretfully before trying again. "I met your mom so long ago. We got married when we were barely older than you – I was twenty four, she was twenty two. And now I'm fifty, Katie. It's been so long that I barely remember what my life was like without her. I'd never loved anybody like I loved Jo. She and you were both my whole world and all of a sudden, half of that world is missing. It feels like Jo's taken a piece of me with her."
"I miss her too, Dad," Kate sniffs.
"I know, Katie-bug, I know. And I'm sorry I didn't think about you and that I haven't been here for you." He draws her towards his body and she finally goes, crying in his embrace.
"Come on," he says after a while, when her sobs have died down to shivers, "Let's go home."
She nods and stands. "Just let me pack okay?"
"Take as long as you want. I'll just be putting your bike in the back of the car."
It doesn't take her long to round up the few things she brought with her and throw them back into her bag. Before she leaves, she stops in her parents' bedroom and on impulse grabs the few other Richard Castle books from the bookshelf.
It's been weeks. She's not with Jason anymore. She's still not returned to Stanford. All she's done is attend her mother's funeral, have a few sessions of therapy – at her father's insistence because he didn't want her running away again. Her agreement hinged on his own promise to start attending AA meetings, to get himself clean because even after they returned to the city together, he couldn't quite quit the bottle.
She briefly looks up from the new Richard Castle book she's been reading, At Dusk We Die, and glances down at her father's watch on her wrist, wondering what time he'll get back from the police precinct after Detective Raglan requested to meet with him. She remembers him coming back from his first AA meeting and giving her the watch, before fetching her mother's engagement ring and giving her that too. One was a reminder of her mother, something to remember her by; the other a promise to her that he was going to get better for her, a thank you for pulling him out of his black hole even if she had to fall into her own to make him realise.
The door opens with the familiar scrape of the key being inserted into the lock and she turns, looking over the back of the couch as her father walks in.
"So? What did Detective Raglan want? Have they caught him?"
He hesitates, taking time to shut the door so he can put off the moment he has to tell her.
"Katie… I don't know how to tell you this. The police…Detective Raglan…Well, they haven't had any new leads, and they don't have any suspects." She stares at him in disbelief. "They're cold filing the case," he mutters.
"What?" She turns her gaze from her father and back to her book, wondering why in all of Richard Castle's novels the killer is always brought to justice, but in real life, she and her father are left to suffer not knowing why her mother was killed.
These last few weeks her sanity has been hinging upon her mom's killer being brought to justice, and now that they're receiving the news that it's unlikely he or she will ever face a jury for what they've done, she can feel herself teetering on the edge of the abyss that she only just crawled out of.
She shuts her book, breathing deeply in and out like her therapist said.
Her dad's still hovering by the door, taking off his coat and hanging it on the rack of hooks right besides Johanna's. They still haven't sorted through all of her things. Kate thinks they were subconsciously waiting until the case was closed, but they'll have to do it now anyway since the case will apparently never be closed.
It hits her that night, what she's going to do.
Being a lawyer is no good if the people responsible for heinous crimes such as her mother's murder are never even caught. She can't have them sent away for their crimes in that case. And what about being hired to defend someone she knows is guilty? She doesn't think she could ever face that, not now.
It's the first thing she does in the morning, calling NYU to set up her transfer and the courses she needs to take. For the first time since that dreadful night when they found the police waiting outside their apartment, she's ready and determined to go back to college so that she can make the fantasy of justice in Rick Castle's books a reality.
A/N: I hope you guys like this little oneshot. It was kind of hard to write at times. I've never experienced loss or grief, but the way that Kate reacts, the depression side of things, is something I'm kind of familiar with and I don't really share that with people.
Anyway, let me know what you think.