Disclaimer- I don't own Castle or any of the characters. I've read the Nikki Heat books (and the Derrick Storm novella, but not the comic) and watched the show, but they belong to Andrew Marlowe. Please don't sue me, I'm poor. I just like playing with the characters and I don't make any money from writing this and I didn't beta it. So, if you wanna beta, please feel free to ask me, I'll probably accept the offer. Leave me reviews if you did (I'm one of those douchebag crybaby authors who can't write without somebody patting them on the back for each chapter, I suck).

My weeks turned into days and the stress of starting to plan a wedding started to set in. We finally just hired a wedding planner, which took a lot of the load off my mind. The first week after Alexis's fall break, I realized that her mother just wasn't contacting Richard. I wondered briefly if she was doing so for Alexis and not telling us. I expected a mother to be the person that was there for her daughter in a time like this. Like a time my mother had been for me in a crisis. I had thought myself to independent, but in the end, I was scared and needed my mother. I missed her now. She'd know how to handle a wedding. I wondered what my role would be when Alexis got married, if I'd equate to anything or would Meredith be there to faun over her? I wasn't going to have that.

"Dad! Kate!" I heard Alexis shout. "I'm home! With laundry!"

I had been in the kitchen trying to defrost a Thanksgiving Turkey in the kitchen sink (honestly, I didn't cook that well, Richard surprised me with his skill in the kitchen). I was ready to just leave it alone and tend to Alexis. I turned around to see Alexis enter the kitchen.

I almost didn't recognize her.

Her eyes and cheeks were sunken, a vein pulsing through the translucent skin on her forehead, her mouth stretched back, revealing her teeth and white gums. Even though she was wearing a sweatshirt and a navy peacoat, her collarbones were cutting out along with the sinews of her neck. Her eyes were dilated and she was huffing, as if she had climbed the stairs the whole way up here. She tossed her stuffed laundry sack onto the kitchen floor. "God, that was heavy!" she cried.

"Sit down," I said, not sure what to do. If she hadn't been on meth or speed before, I couldn't imagine how else she had lost enough weight. Normal people didn't do this to themselves, did they? That didn't mean she was… the girls I had gone to college with who puked in the bathrooms and popped laxatives were so insecure and shallow and petty, I thought. Not, not Alexis. She was so smart and sensible. Smart, sensible, practical, perfect girls didn't do this kind of stupid shit, I thought. Not girls like Alexis.

"I'm fine," she said.

"Let me take your jacket?"

"No," she said. "It's kinda cold in here. What are you making?"

She inspected the turkey sitting in the sink that I had just taken out of the protective sack. "I'm defrosting the bird," I admitted.

"I'm sure it'll be good," Alexis said. "I need to go to the store. I found this website, Pinterest, I've been pinning recipes I think everyone is going to like. How many people are coming on Thursday?"

"Well… overall, about twenty people said they were going to stop by. You know, the cops at the precinct who had to work the beat."

She nodded. "Well, I'm going to toss my clothes in the washer, if you don't mind, I'm taking over the laundry room," she said, she picked up the laundry sack and went to the tiny closet that housed our washer and dryer.

She wanted to cook. Anorexics didn't cook, did they? She was definitely on drugs, I convinced myself. As a cop and detective, I dealt with drug addicts all the time. Get them through the withdrawals, figure out what the traumatic bullshit was that they were trying to dull, get them on some legal prescription antidepressants and you could just send them on their way. Or so I thought.

When she left the apartment to grocery shop, I went through her laundry to find glass pipes or little plastic ziplock bags with little white rocks in them. Most addicts forgot about these things and they'd find them like Christmas presents in their pockets when we frisked and searched them. Nothing more than some caffeine pills and some ibuprofen tablets in her pockets and a few tissues. Well, it was New York in the winter. I put her dark clothes into the washing machine, trading them out for the whites in the dryer.

She got home right as I was smoothing out her fitted sheets and folding them the only way I knew how: wadding them up.

"What are you doing?" she cried furiously.

I shrugged. "I was never a housekeeper."

She snatched the sheet out of my hands and started folding it precisely. "I like them folded a certain way," she said irritated. "I don't like laying down on crumpled sheets." I hadn't known that 800 thread count egyptian cotton sheets wrinkled.

"I was just trying to help," I said, throwing my hands in the air.

"I can take care of my own underwear, don't touch it," she snapped. She glared at me and took the laundry basket upstairs.

My fiance was under a deadline that weekend; Richard had been working at a furious pace in his office the whole week, and he finally came out of his office. I'd come home from work and he hadn't even eaten lunch. "I'm done!" he shouted. "Ahead of schedule! A hundred and thirty-thousand words line-edited in less than seven days! I am the man!"

"Indeed you are," I said. "Look, I just tried to fold some of Alexis' laundry, I think I pissed her off-"

"She's been doing her own laundry she was eight," he said. "Don't worry about it. She just likes things done her own way. She's very particular. You'll get used to it… ALEXIS!"

"WHAT?" she shouted from upstairs.

"Come on down, we're about to have dinner!" he shouted.

"Not hungry!" she yelled back.

"Just a second," he said, going up the stairs.

I waited, pulling the broiled chicken out of the oven (to my credit, I could broil chicken, among other cooking tricks Richard had taught me). "She said she's already had dinner," he said, coming back down in the kitchen.

"Don't you worry about her?" I asked.

"Like a father would? Yeah, sure I do, but she's so independent… you know what I mean."

"Richard," I said. "Have you actually seen your daughter, yet? She's lost a lot of weight."

"She's a smart girl. She knows what she's doing," he said.

"I can't believe you're not doing something right now!" I cried. "She looked like a meth addict!"

He looked a little defeated. "She says… she says she's eating."

"I don't believe that."

"Alexis doesn't lie to me."

I crossed my arms. "Everybody lies to their parents. Didn't you?"

"I grew up with a nanny until I was thirteen. I did my own thing after that."

I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Martha. "I checked her laundry. No drugs."

"Well, everybody smokes pot. You did."

"Pot makes you eat, not starve."

"That's not true, one of my roommates in prep school upstate was a major pothead and he'd start engineering things when we got high. He made an entire dining room set when we scored two kilos of weed."

"That doesn't bother you? That your daughter could be hiding major drug use?"

"No. You know what they say about private schools; that's where you find the best weed. Besides, Alexis would never endanger her future. I know her better than anybody."

I rolled my eyes. "I think she's developing a problem. Maybe it's time we nipped it in the bud before it's too late. Have you been in contact with her mother at all?"

"Nah." He shrugged. "She's in college. She's just testing her freedom."

"Testing her freedom? Even I was jealous of how much you let her do whatever she wants when she was living here. I didn't get to do that in high school!"

"Have you said anything to her?"

I shook my head. "What's there to say?"

The next morning, Alexis was in the kitchen when I woke up, already busy with what she was cooking. I tried to work around her when it came to the turkey, but she seemed a little annoyed. I took the hour between the tuns I took checking on the turkey to watch football and flip back and forth between the Macy's Parade. Alexis never left the kitchen.

When Dad came over, Alexis was still busy. We watched some football together taking nickle bets, and then Martha showed up with a few bottles of red wine. We opened the first bottle and when I offered some to Alexis, she shook her head. She was in the zone, I supposed. Or maybe she was so high and nervous she couldn't stop what she was doing. The turkey was finally finished, and Alexis's culinary creations were done, and we sat down to eat. Alexis was still in the kitchen.

"Alexis, do you want to actually join the family for Thanksgiving dinner?" Richard prodded.

The microwave dinged and she came out with a measly little TV dinner tray that was steaming. "I'm coming," she said, taking her plate, putting it on top of the TV dinner tray and then flipping it over. She smiled in satisfaction at the three slivers of turkey, the half cup of dry-looking stuffing, and the shriveled cranberry jell-o. "There."

"Are you kidding me?" Richard asked.

"Alexis, really, you worked so hard on all this food, and it's Thanksgiving Day," Martha began. "You're going to eat the same thing we are, aren't you?"

"No!" Alexis cried. "I just finished the half-marathon a few weeks ago, I want to get into top shape for the full next year!"

"It's a little early for that, isn't it?" I interjected.

"It's never too early," she said. "Okay, let's eat."

That afternoon, when my friends came over from the precinct, I was too distracted.

I knew that whatever Alexis' problems were, so far, the worst of it was her weight loss. That afternoon, I ended up in Richard's office in the armchair, rubbing my bare feet nervously. "I think the least of our concerns should be drug abuse right now," I said. "She's absolutely deluded to eat the way she does. She didn't even finish her food."

"Do you think somebody called her fat?" Richard asked. "Maybe that got to her."

I shrugged. "I don't know," I admitted.

"Maybe if we just talk to her about this diet she's put herself on she'll stop this," he said confidently. I could almost see the conversation forming in his head; he'd ask her, she'd tell him some boy broke her heart and called her fat, and that's why she was dieting, he'd tell her she was beautiful and didn't need to diet, and she'd agree and tell him she loved him and everything would be rainbow unicorn farts from here on out. I realized it wasn't going to be that easy. Yes, he had been a good Dad to her, but I got this sinking feeling it wasn't going to be this easy. At a moment like this, I wasn't sure what to do.

The conversation we had with Alexis went exactly like I thought it would; she got mad, saying that she did eat and that we were worrying over nothing. I caught her glaring at me as if this was all my fault and I was overreacting and influencing her father against her. It didn't end the way I'm sure Richard expected it to. I hoped that some of it had sunken in with her. I knew that sometimes, when you were doing something dangerous but didn't realize it, sometimes it took hearing it from people that loved you before you thought about changing your mind.

A beat cop friend of mine said that he saw her at Columbia up near Harlem. He said she looked almost dead. She was hard to miss with that beautiful red hair.

Maybe the fact that she came away angry with us didn't make Richard any less worried. He hounded her, asked questions, all but harassed her though her finals, then he'd report back to me. "She says she's eating," he said. "I think she gets that we're worried and it's all going to be okay, now."

"What does she say she's eating?"

"She said she had to skip the dining hall today and got a bagel for breakfast on her way to the track, so if she's eating carbs, I think she's just fine."

"Richard… I don't believe her."

He sighed. "She doesn't lie to me."

He was in so much denial that there was something wrong with her. "Richard… listen to me, everybody that wants independence lies to their parents. That's what she's doing. She might be on something, but something really, really bad is going on here."

I tried to make Alexis's room ready for her arrival home from the dorm with fresh sheets and the bathroom clean, although I got the perquisite cold that all New Yorkers seemed to get when it got too cold out. New York experienced a snow storm and a record low temperatures She said she'd get home late on the 14th, but we didn't hear anything that night. Richard fell asleep on the couch waiting. When I woke up the next morning and saw him still laying on the couch, half-awake, instead of making coffee, I said down beside him and took his hand. He knew I was right. And this was no moment to mock him with I told you so. It never crossed my mind and it would have been cruel.

After sitting with him for a long time, my precinct-issued phone rang in the other room. "I've got to go," I said. "Keep me updated, okay?"

"I will," he said.

I kissed him good-bye.

I had only been at work for two hours when I got the call from Richard. "She can't move. She sounds bad. I need some help getting into her room."

"What's going on?" Javie mouthed. I had confided in him and Detective Ryan about this situation, and of course, Lainey. I held a hand up to tell him I'd be right with him.

"I've got to go to a deposition," I told Richard. "I can't get out of it. She's a legal adult, though, privacy laws."

"I think she'll let me come up if I can just get past Housing Security."

"Call your lawyer. I don't know if this qualifies for an MPA, but it might."

"Alright. I'll call you back. You're the one with all the legal contacts."

I hung up and turned to Javie. "It sounds bad," he said.

I thought about Richard losing Alexis. Was she close to death? Death always snuck up on the people who you loved. Always. I was around it all the time. I couldn't imagine what would happen to Richard if anything happened to Alexis. He loved her so much, and I'd never be able to fill up the hole in his heart that would be torn out if she died. I suddenly felt rebel tears stinging my eyes. The thought was overwhelming and made me feel helpless. I was part of him, as was Alexis. I had never realized how connected the two of them, were, and how much I was connected to the two of them, now, and how delicate that balance was.

"Come on," Javie said, tugging at my arm. I couldn't burst into tears in the middle of the bullpen. I almost never cried. The last time I cried was at my mother's funeral. I didn't cry when I got shot, I didn't cry when I almost fell of a building. I was strong, right? No… How foolish of me. We went to the coffee shop across the way, waving to a few of our fellow cops lining the bar counter. "What's going on with Alexis?" Javie asked.

I wiped my eyes. "I don't know," I said. "I honestly don't."

"There's been a lot of speculation in the force," he admitted. "Do you think she's… she's mimicking meth addiction."

"She's in her dorm room, and she's just told Castle she can't move from her bed," I admitted. "He's trying to get in, but Housing Security is a problem."

"You've got a deposition in an hour," he said. "Look, we're family. I'll just go down there with him and flash my badge and we'll see what's going on."

The knowledge that my friends were good enough friends to me and would do that for Richard and I overwhelmed me again. I nodded, trying to stem my tears.

"Five minutes," he said. "Give yourself five minutes to absolutely lose it. Feel it all. And then, you have to pull it together and act. You can handle this."

I nodded, and a sob escaped my lips.

I had to turn my phone off when I arrived at the courthouse. I tried to put this whole situation with Alexis out of my mind as I testified, but it was difficult. The moment I got out of the courtroom, I turned my phone on and it was flooded with text message and missed calls. The first one I got from Richard tipped me off.

I called an ambulance. She's too tired and too cold to move. It's bad.

I felt my pace quicken.

She's insisting she's not on any drugs, but she's so starved, she can't think straight.

They're taking her to St. Vincent's.

I was in the room when they put her on the scale, and tried to resist. She's down to 79 pounds. I can't think.

I called to the precinct and called out for the rest of the day, getting into my car. The ride to the hospital made my head race; she's that thin, she's insisting she doesn't do drugs, she's lying, there's no way she could be eating food at all. What in the world would drive such a beautiful, intelligent, bright young woman to do this to herself? Alexis was anything but shallow. She never struck me as someone who cared disproportionately about her looks over her education and future. As far as anybody could tell, she was the perfect daughter, too mature and too rational for this kind of thing, even at her age.

Where's her mother? the thought rang in my head. Alexis needed a mother in a time like this, where was she?

I had met Meredith Farrelly Castle Maxwell Holland Alexander Guillory (or whatever her last name was now) almost five years ago when Richard first started following me on the job. She had been a piece of work. She had seemed so self-involved and useless… I had just met Alexis, and I could see her rabid need and want for her mother, but at the same time, the disgust at how she treated her like a toy to play with and then stick on a shelf in her life. I had heard her call once-in-a-while, but she never came to the East Coast if she could help it. All my friends whose mothers were divorced but were still in good contact with their fathers usually made it a point to be good friends with their ex-husbands new wives. I had never considered it for Alexis's sake. Meredith never called or sent for Alexis to visit ever. I wondered if that was what was wrong with Alexis; she needed a mother. I was setting up myself to be her father's wife, her stepmother… Maybe it was arrogant of me, but maybe I had to act as her mother. But the problem was, I had no idea how to do that. At that moment, I wished I could have called my own mother and asked her what to do. Oh Mom…I felt those rebellious damn tears stinging my eyes for the second time in a day. I missed my own mother so badly at that moment, I almost hit a taxi in front of me I was so distracted. Oh Mom, I don't know what to do. I realized I was shaking.

Five minutes, Kate. Five minutes.

A/N- okay, Kate's cried enough for one Chapter, right?