Based on the premise that while "our" Castle was in the Alternate Universe, the "other" Castle had to be somewhere, and when he gets back from there—boy, is he in for a few surprises.
"You sure you don't want me to drop you at your place?" Damien asked. "It's no trouble."
"No, here is great," Castle said. "I want to get a coffee, fortify myself for the evening ahead. It's going to be a long one."
Damien chuckled, then his expression turned serious. "As long as you're sure. I mean, are you feeling all right?"
Castle was touched by Damien's concern. It had been a long time since anyone was much concerned for his well-being. "I'm great. It was probably just low blood sugar or something."
Damien miraculously found a parking spot near the coffeehouse and pulled over. "Well, tell your mom I said hello and to break a leg."
Castle got out of the car; he grabbed his overnight bag with one hand and with the other reached out to shake Damien's hand. "Thanks for everything."
"You're welcome. And don't be a stranger."
Castle waved goodbye as his old school friend's car disappeared into the traffic. Sighing, he turned and headed into the coffeehouse. As he waited to place his order he shifted the overnight bag from one hand to the other. It wasn't heavy—far from it, for all he'd packed was a couple changes of clothes, his toothbrush and comb, and a marbled-cover composition book. He hadn't even brought his laptop. He could tell himself that he just hadn't wanted to bring the extra weight, or that he'd just wanted to be off the grid, but the truth is that he hadn't wanted to jinx things. He'd come to hate his laptop these last few years. Sometimes he wasn't sure which was worse: the cursor blinking on a blank screen, or the screen filled with prose that was utter garbage.
But now he had a composition book half full—or a third full, anyway—of ideas and brainstorms. He had no clue if any of them would pan out to much, but at this point beggars couldn't be choosers. Castle wasn't sure what had brought on this burst of writing energy. Maybe it was being in the Hamptons again. He hadn't been in years, not since he sold his house. (Be honest, he chided himself, you had to sell the house.) Or maybe it was Damien's influence. After all, Damien had been one of the first people to believe in his writing, and when they met by chance a few days ago, Damien was gracious enough not to bring up the failure of Castle's literary career, and his invitation out to the Hamptons had seemed to come from the genuine warmth of friendship rather than pity.
Castle, for his part, had had an excellent time. He'd spent hours sitting out on the balcony overlooking the beach, writing down notes for stories and characters with an energy he hadn't felt since the last Derrick Storm novel. When he wasn't occupied with his writing and Damien wasn't glued to his phone or computer, the two of them talked about old times and safe things.
They hadn't planned to come back until late afternoon. Castle was dreading opening night. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy seeing his mother on stage. He'd learned to accept, mostly, the fact that her current success had been achieved in no small part because of his own failure. He could have let it go, except that at every play or party he got dragged to, someone would come up to him and ask if he was writing, why he wasn't writing, how did it feel to not be a writer any more, and so on. Which was why he was ordering the largest cappuccino he could, with an extra shot, please. He needed something to make tonight tolerable, and though he would have preferred scotch, he'd learned the hard way that was a bad idea.
He would have liked to come home as late as possible, the less time to deal with his mother's opening night histrionics the better. But something had happened this morning. He'd been standing in the guest bedroom, debating whether to take a stroll on the beach. Out of nowhere, it had come over him: a sensation as if something had hit him, hard, in the chest. His head swam and his pulse raced, yet there was no telltale pain or pressure from a heart attack. The world went gray for a moment, and when it returned he was lying on the floor, gazing up at the ceiling and feeling horribly weak, as if all the blood had drained out of him. What the hell was that, he wondered, and at the same time Damien's worried-sounding voice came from the other side of the door: "You OK, Rick? It sounded like you fell down."
He'd said he was fine, and after a moment, he was. He'd told himself he was fine, and he mostly believed it. But every so often—like now, while he waited for his order—he considered what it might have been. A problem with his heart, most likely. Or with his luck, something even worse, like a brain tumor. That was depressingly likely, for as he'd been lying there he'd caught a phantom scent. A pleasant scent, something fresh and almost fruity, yet subtle, too. Cherries, perhaps? Impossible for it to have come from anywhere in the guest bedroom. Weren't people with brain tumors prone to olfactory hallucinations? He was sure he'd read that somewhere.
Well, that was a problem for tomorrow. Today's mission was to get to the loft and slip in as unobtrusively as possible. With any luck his mother and Alexis would be busy and he could hide out in his office, avoiding the drama of the former and the indifference of the latter. It would be just him and his cappuccino and the composition book, and it was possible—just possible—that the ideas and notes in the book might actually amount to something.
If they didn't, well, he was no worse off than he had been.
With coffee in one hand and his overnight bag in the other, Castle briskly walked the few blocks to the loft. When he exited the elevator he retrieved his key and with the ease of long practice silently unlocked the door. He pushed the door open carefully, as stealthily as if he was a teenager sneaking in long past curfew. There. He closed the door and turned toward his office.
The sound that came from the living room froze him in place. It was a low, keening sound of pain that he'd heard a bare handful of times in his life, yet instantly recognized. The sound of his mother weeping. Not some theatrical facsimile of sorrow but the real thing. Castle whirled around and saw his mother sitting on the sofa, crumpled forward with her face buried in her hands. There was another woman there, one he didn't recognize and barely glanced at, because all he could see was the way his mother's whole body shook as a wave of grief seemed to hit her.
He wanted to call out to her, move to her, but horror had left him dumb and statue-still. Alexis. Something's happened to Alexis. She's gone, and we never got to fix things between us. He watched as the other woman put her hand on his mother's shoulder in the age-old gesture of comfort; he saw the woman's lips move and couldn't hear her words for the tumult in his head, but felt sure they were some variation on I'm so sorry for your loss.
He tried to speak, to say something profound and original like No, please no. All the sensation seemed to have left his body; the coffee and the overnight bag fell from his numb hands and landed on the floor, the coffee spraying in every direction. At the sound, the women looked up at him.
"Richard!" In the next instant, it seemed, his mother had flown across the room and captured him in an embrace so tight it squeezed the breath from him and made his ribs creak.
With what little air had not been squeezed out of his lungs, he managed to gasp out, "Mother, what—"
"Oh Richard darling, I'm so glad you're all right. What a horrible mix-up must have happened but you're fine. You're fine." She looked up at him and cupped his face with her hands.
Castle had never felt so bewildered in his life. Yes, he'd gone to the Hamptons without telling her, but… "Alexis," he said. "Where's Alexis, is she—"
"She's off with some old school friends, I'm so glad she wasn't here for this…this…" His mother's look of relief cracked and she embraced him again.
Desperate for an answer, any answer at all, Castle looked over the top of his mother's head at the other woman, who was no longer sitting on the couch but standing over by the fireplace.
She was a striking woman—scratch that, she was beautiful—tall, with hair like chocolate and honey. Her face was beautiful as well, but what he noticed now was the expression she wore. He saw disbelief, and relief, and a bewilderment that seemed a mirror of his own.
Their eyes met, and he gave her a quizzical look in the hope that she could explain things.
Apparently, this was not what she wanted to see.
Her face darkened in a scowl that was rather frightening, and if his mother had let him go he would have taken a good step backward if not actually fled the apartment. The woman stalked over toward him. "Mr. Castle," she said in a voice that was low and not loud, but vibrating with emotion—mostly anger, it seemed. "Mr. Castle, I don't know what game you're playing at, but I want to see you at the NYPD Twelfth Precinct in an hour, and if you don't have a good explanation for all this I will hit you with every charge I can make stick."
Turning to his mother, the woman said, "Ms. Rodgers, I am so very sorry for this misunderstanding."
"It's quite all right," his mother said. "I promise you we'll get this sorted out. Won't we, Richard?"
The woman didn't seem interested in Castle's reply, and in any event he had no idea what to say. She turned and left the apartment without another word.
Castle's mother had finally released him and seemed to be returning to her old self. "You can hardly blame Captain Beckett for being angry with you, darling. You've made quite a nuisance of yourself these last couple days, and then this morning…"
Castle stared from his mother to the door and back again. "Mother," he finally managed, "what in the hell is going on?"
In the next installment: A visit to the Twelfth for incredibly awkward conversations and a lesson in why you should always hang on to your receipts (because you never know when you'll need to prove your whereabouts).