Disclaimer: Neither Castle nor its characters belong to me.

~ March, 2001 ~

"Hi, Mom. I'm a little early, I know. I couldn't deal with class today. I got up early, did the usual, but I was halfway to the Village when I just stopped. I know you'd want me to go, immerse myself in my classes and friends and just pretend that today's just like every other... but I can't, Mom," Kate's voice hitched as she yanked at a tuft of grass.

She went silent, squinting as she refused to cry. She would do that later. Alone. She wasn't here for her mom to watch her cry, unable to do anything as her only child fell apart. She'd done enough of that in the past. Taking a deep breath, she continued.

"Dad isn't here, as you can see. I doubt he'll be coming today," Kate paused again, willing her anger not to seep through. "He's still too upset-" and drunk, she added, mentally, "to make it. I know he hasn't come to see you yet, and I'm sorry. I'm trying my best. It would probably be good for him, make him see the truth, come to terms with reality... Honestly, Mom, I don't think he knows how much time has gone by. He's locked into his routine, and I'm pretty sure he thinks it's only been a few weeks. He wakes up at the crack of dawn. He's long gone by the time I leave for class. He comes home late and then locks himself in his den for the rest of the night. He just sits in there, alone." Kate wills herself not to add that he's not truly alone, that he always sits with a bottle of scotch, haunted by the past. She doesn't want her mom to know how she's failed, how their little family has fallen apart. "I'm trying my best. I promise. I try to talk to him. Every night." It's true. She swallows her frustration and brings him his dinner every single night, pretending that nothing is amiss. She has yet to make it through the den's dark, bolted doors. He never answers her knocks, forcing her to set the tray outside. She can't even remember the last time he's spoken to her. "He's just too broken, Mom. I don't know how to fix him."

Kate took another shaky breath, looking down at the small pile of unrooted grass at her side, the result of a nervous habit she'd had since she was little. Johanna would always joke that Kate would be capable of uprooting all of Central Park if she was there long enough, that they would have to move out of their Central Park West brownstone as their contribution to saving the environment. Producing a watery smile at the memory, Kate reached for the bouquet that lay to her other side and gently traced the yellow petals with her ebony lacquered fingers.

"I brought you tulips. I know how much you love them at this time of year. They're all over the city. I swear there are even more this year than ever. You'd be in heaven," Kate cut herself off at the slip of tongue, the burning sensation returning to the bridge of her nose. "Um, you'd love it. As usual, Monsieur Florimont's is only stocked with tulips this month. He's just as smitten with them as you were. He hand picked your bouquet – his poor assistant looked mortified when he 'tut tutted' her away, insisting that only the best would do for Johanna. He misses you. You were his favorite client." Kate still frequented the corner flower shop by their house, stopping their weekly. "Dad doesn't go there anymore." She sighed. As much as she tried, she couldn't help the occasional snipe.

"Classes are going well. I just have two courses to finish, still completely on track for filling my credits and graduating on time. I can't believe I have less than two months left. It seems like just yesterday that I was freaking out about my major. You were so good at advising me." Kate smiled in remembrance of how her mother had comforted her. "We're studying Dead Souls at the moment. It's so much harder in Russian, but it's also a lot richer. There's just so much to the language and humor that can't be translated. I wish you could have experienced it in the original. I know how much you loved Gogol. You were the one to introduce me to him all those years ago.

"I miss you, Mom; so, so much. I wish you could come home. I wish things could go back to the way they were, that we could go back to being the same, happy, little family, that Dad could be himself again. I'm just so tired." She calmly traced the engraved letters. Johanna Beckett. "So tired."

Leaning forward, one hand on the headstone, she kissed the cool marble. It was something she'd done hundreds of times before, something she no longer felt strange doing. She'd never parted from her mother without kissing her on the cheek, no matter if Johanna would be leaving on a week-long business trip, or if Kate were simply heading to the library. She saw no reason for the practice to end now.

"I love you, Mom."

Kate stood, shivering slightly. She tugged at her charcoal coat, hoping that rearranging it might somehow make it warmer, and burrowed her chin into her knit, gray scarf. Spring was officially here, but occasional gusts of wind guaranteed the corresponding weather was only on its way. It was either that or the fact that every time she walked away, she was overcome by bone-chilling cold at the thought of leaving her mother behind, buried under a mound of dirt.

Some said visiting her mother's grave would bring her peace – and it did, to some extent – but Kate was far from getting over the injustice of it all. Johanna hadn't left them peacefully, passing in her old age. She hadn't reconciled herself to an unrelenting illness. She hadn't even been the victim of ill-timed accident. No; she'd been forcefully, brutally taken from them. Her death had been wrong and completely unjustified. No amount of time, therapy or resignation to reality would be able to change that. The only thing Kate could do - that she felt she needed to do - was to find answers and to seek justice for those who had taken her mother from her. But, for now, she simply didn't know how to find it. She didn't even know where to look.

"What's going on here?" Castle asked, chuckling at the sight in front of him.

His newly seven-year-old daughter was hiding behind the partition that separated his office from the loft's living room, sitting with a sparkly notebook and a magnifying glass in hand. Shouting was coming from the other side of the wall.

"Shhhhh." Alexis motioned for him to join her behind the wall.

Castle complied, whispering, "What's unfolding, Detective Castle?" He tugged on a pigtail, making her giggle and shushing her in turn.

Alexis had read Harriet the Spy a week earlier and was incredibly proud of having completed her first, real book all on her own. Castle had gifted it to her for her birthday, selfishly hoping she would fall in love with the mystery genre that he embodied in his own work. He had succeeded. Alexis was enthralled with the story and, ever since, had been running around in overalls and with a magnifying glass in hand, eavesdropping and taking note of the on-goings in the loft. Furthermore, much to Castle's great amusement, she had declared that she was going to be a detective when she grew up and was currently insisting that they refer to her as solely "Detective Castle."

"Gram's fighting with Bernardo. She said he was running around with a twenty-year-old floogy - no, floozy! - behind her back. Daddy, what's a floozy?"

Castle bit back a laugh and tried to look as serious as possible. Having his mother live with them for the last few months had certainly been an experience... and one that had increased his daughter's vocabulary at rate that was slightly – and by slightly he meant much – faster than he would have liked.

"Daddy, why do you look funny? What's a floozy? Is it a bad word?"

The front door slammed in the background. Bernardo must have fled the scene. Castle couldn't say he blamed him. An angry Martha was hardly a joy to behold.

"It's... a word you don't need to know yet."
"But you're the one who said one can only ever learn new words. I want to write it down."
She had him there. He did encourage her to look up new words, and he had been the one to buy her the shiny, pink notebook she used to write down and memorize them.

"I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you what it means, but you don't write it down, and you do not use it... especially not in school."

Alexis nodded eagerly as she answered, "Deal."

This wasn't enough. They'd come to a similar agreement the week before after Alexis had overheard Martha say "damn." Yet, the next day, Castle had received a phone call from a shocked Miss. Roberts, Alexis' elderly – and very proper - first grade teacher, inquiring as to why his daughter had deemed it appropriate to express her annoyance at their canceled spelling test by swearing.

"Pinky swear?" He held out his pinky, arching his eyebrow conspiratorially as he waited for her to take the binding oath.

"Pinky swear," she promised, linking her pinky with his. "Now tell me!"

"Okay, well, a floozy is a woman with a bad reputation."

"What does that mean?"

"It means she isn't very nice."
"Oh. Like Marissa?"

Castle's eyes widened at the mention of Alexis' six-year-old, playground enemy. This was exactly why he shouldn't have explained it to her. "No. Not at all. It's only a word for older women who aren't very nice, and it definitely isn't a word that should be used by sweet, little girls like you. Is that clear?"
Alexis nodded solemnly. The budding perfectionist, not being deemed a "sweet, little girl" was currently one of her biggest fears.

"Now, I say you've done enough spying around the loft for one afternoon. What would you say to some hot chocolate and ice cream, Detective Castle? We can take a cab up to Serendipity and then go for a walk in the park?"

"Yay!" Alexis agreed, bounding up.

"Good, then go get your coat while I go have a few words with your grandmother," Castle proposed, his eyes sparkling as he watched her run towards the stairs.

Kate fumbled with her bedroom door, balancing her book bag and the latte she had picked up on her way back from the cemetery. She made her way in, flinging the bag by her desk, and shut the heavy door behind her. She'd been surprised to find her father at home, given that it was early afternoon and he rarely made it home before dark. Yet, the muffled sobbing accompanied by the clinking of glass coming from his den had been unmistakable. He obviously hadn't been able to make it through the day undisturbed, either. Kate had almost knocked at his door, hopeful that they might be able to keep each other company, united in their grief. A jarring crash, surely that of a bottle, had jolted her back to reality, reminding her that he wouldn't answer, that he preferred to be alone, continuously repressing the fact that he was hardly the only one suffering from Johanna's loss.

The tears came as she settled into the window seat, clutching the cardboard coffee cup as if it was the only thing keeping her from completely falling apart. She knew things had to change in their house; she just didn't know how to make it happen. She looked out, into the park, the minutes passing as she took in its tranquility, trees budding and children running about, oblivious to the darkness the world had to offer. Pacified, she leaned back and reached for the novel that lay atop the red, leather-bound album that always remained in the little nook, adding to a place in which she'd always taken comfort with her books. Opening the volume to where she'd left off, Kate turned her attention to the world of Derek Storm, thankful to be drawn away from her own reality.

Castle watched as Alexis ran off in front of him, wrapped in her shiny, pink parka, her red pigtails flying all over. Seconds later, he chuckled as he saw her fervor pay off and watched as she enthusiastically settled into her favorite swing. He was still amazed by the joy Alexis found in the simplest things and, in turn, how they then managed to cheer him up. Just as her suffering was his suffering, her happiness was equally his. It sounded horribly cliché, but it was true. Today was a testament to it. He'd been having a horrible day. He had submitted his second Derek Storm installment to his publisher the month before but had grown concerned as the weeks had gone by without a reply. It had been that morning that he'd finally gotten a call, summoning him to Gina's office. She'd told him the novel been ill-received, by both herself and the editors, that she thought he'd lost his touch, that he needed to rework the volume in his entirety. In short, it hadn't been the reaction for which he had hoped. He'd walked home after the meeting, hoping to blow off steam before facing his family. Only when he'd seen Alexis' gleeful expression at her early-afternoon spy game had his frustration melted away.

Finding a bench near the swings, he sat down and waved to Alexis. Moments later, he found himself laughing as the minuscule redhead chortled fearlessly as she swung higher and higher. As he watched his daughter play, he couldn't help but think that perhaps it hadn't been such a bad day, after all.

Author's Note:

I'm back! I hope you all enjoyed reading this first chapter! There's much more to come, so please let me know what you think. I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you to IMW both for her support and for being the best of editors.