Kate had been meeting for sessions with Dr. Burke for several years, though less frequently now than she had early on, when he was first recommended to her in the wake of her mother's death. And it was true; it sometimes felt more like she continued to return now out of habit than anything else, but he'd been a life raft for her when it seemed she'd had little more, and despite how difficult it often was to face what she needed to and, further still, to talk about those things, their time together remained something of incredible value to her.

Without question, he'd helped save her, and in no small way. She'd had time to prepare herself for the afternoon her mother closed her eyes to rest and never again woke, yet the moment it happened, Kate quickly realized just how empty all the pep talks she'd given herself were, how all the assurances she'd offered her mother about how strong she'd be for herself and for her father had been meant only to placate, and the feelings of guilt her perceived failures brought on felt like mountains on her shoulders. Burke had taught her how to begin to let go of that burdensome weight, and her gratitude was true.

"Kate," he said when he stepped out of his office to find her waiting, "nice to see you, as always."

He moved aside and allowed her to pass. "I bet you say that to all the patients," she teased without reply.

The two sat in their usual way in their usual chairs and began as they usually did, Kate waiting for him to instigate the initial course of their conversation. There'd been more than a few occasions when she would've been happy to sit in fifty minutes of complete silence, but he'd certainly never allowed her that childish indulgence.

"So, how are things? Did you do what it was we spoke about last session?" It sounded positively rehearsed-therapy-cliché-but that was just Burke's way.

She'd had homework, but it was homework of her own assignation, a list item that'd remained unexecuted for far too long. "You mean Josh?" She knew exactly what he meant, of course.

"That is what I mean, yes. Have you talked to him?"

Josh was a complication. Josh made things messy, and Kate was supposed to be in the game of simple. Josh was where she'd run too many times and for too many wrong reasons, and she knew it-yet still.

He was someone who'd been in her life for a long time, since days involved little care more than making sure they were home in time for dinner, and she'd made the mistake of thinking that meant they still knew each other. Time and again, it'd been proven otherwise, but the illusion of its trueness, the comfort of a connection to a person from a happier past, was one often too convenient for her to resist.

"Yes." Burke nodded once, his tacit ask of more. "Sort of. I mean, I told him we need to talk, but we haven't, yet. I will, though."

"You're not doing this for me, Kate," he reminded her around her attempt at a sufficient reply.

"I know that. I'm seeing him tonight. I'll be at the station."

Burke recognized the hardened tone and he veered off. "And work? Your father?" He asked as though those things were somehow equal. How she wished they were.

"Work's fine. I finished my spring inventory this morning. Things are slower right now, but traffic will pick up with the summer coming. It always does." As she talked, she picked at the cuticle of her thumb, a common target of her residual energy during her sessions. "My dad's the same as he always is. I go to work, and he sleeps. I come home and sleep, and he drinks." The answer never came out of her any easier, no matter how many times she'd given it. "He told me he's going to start renting out our cabin this summer since we never go up there, anymore."

Kate hated everything about that unexpected bit of news. They'd had that cabin in the Catskills since she was just a kid, and every thought of it, every memory of it, was filled with her mother-with her with her mother. The idea of strangers invading that space like they would any other for the right price felt like some sort of betrayal, like yet another crack in a Beckett family already teeming with cracks.

"It sounds like that might not be something you want."

"It doesn't matter what I want," Kate snapped at the easy target, her hurt masked as anger. "It never does."

"Is that what you believe, Kate? That what you want doesn't matter to your father?"

She found a spot off in the distance and locked onto it, anywhere but in his eyes, because there suddenly presented a very real chance tears would come, and in that moment she wasn't prepared for that. It'd been months since the last time, months of control, control that was hers.

"It used to," she replied faintly to some knickknack off on a shelf.

xxxx

Rick unpacked his bag-the only one he brought, in sharp contrast to the girls-tossed his clothes into a drawer, mostly shorts and tees that they were, and spent the subsequent ten minutes lugging their things upstairs for them. They were both already well in mode, Martha on the phone arranging a spa afternoon for later in the week and Alexis out on the back steps with her head in a pleasure book, leaving Rick the only one of the three who still seemed to have any restless left in him.

He popped his head out the door and told Alexis he was going into town for some groceries, his invitation to join declined over her need to find out what was to come on the pages ahead, and he took off in the Benz, largely to make sure it still felt like the same car he'd bought just a few months before, given Martha's earlier stint behind the wheel.

The traffic around was already a nightmare, and though Rick knew to expect it and was accustomed to its inevitable reality come the holiday weekend leading into summer, it felt particularly offensive on that day.

He finally managed to find a spot in the side lot of the market after the unleashing of many a rowdy expletive of frustration in his search, and he climbed out of the car just as the person parked between the lanes next to him did the same.

"Rick?" came a female voice from behind him, one he immediately recognized and one he wished desperately not to have to stop for. "Rick Castle, is that you?"

His eyelids dropped shut and he took a deep breath in. The Hamptons really was too damn small.

"Misty, hello," he said turning to find her now very much in his space. She always did that, he remembered, and the recollection wasn't a fond one.

"Well, well, it is you. What are you doing here?" She sounded positively amazed, as though shopping for pasta and bananas was something she couldn't imagine he'd ever do.

"Donating a kidney," Rick deadpanned to the blank stare he imagined might result. Misty never was the sharpest crayon in the box. Funny enough, that was something he actually once liked about her. "No, I'm joking," he went on tossing in a faux chuckle for good measure. "Just here to stock up the house for the week." He instantly regretted giving her that much and hoped the words might simply go in and fall out the other side.

She gave him a pinch to the arm and released a raucous howl of laughter, one far greater than the moment warranted. "You're still so funny," she said slowly coming down from the high. "Almost as funny as you are hot." She was all but climbing him by that point. "I heard about your divorce. Call me," she whispered in his ear before stepping around and continuing on her way.

He stood and watched her go; one, because he wanted to give her a head start in order to avoid any further contact, and two, because she left him with the thought of the days when he spent time with people like her, days that suddenly seemed like a lifetime ago, one he felt more remarkably removed from than ever, and that was a thought that came with a punch.

xxxx

Following an afternoon spent by the pool and a pasta dinner courtesy of Rick's hand, he and Alexis headed out, at Martha's insistence, to their favorite ice cream shop for triple-scoop cones. She volunteered to stay behind and clean things up, the wine bottle open on the counter more than likely the reason for her charity, so father and daughter parked themselves on a bench in town and feasted on dessert without her.

"How's the butter pecan?" Rick asked around a mouthful of mint chip. Inevitably, no matter how delicious his own final combination tasted, he always found himself regretful over not choosing this flavor or that and envious of whatever anyone else had.

"How are you, Dad?" Alexis said without offering him a response. She'd been more hesitant to ask of late, not because she didn't want to know, but because there was some part of her that was afraid of what the answer might be.

She couldn't recall a time when she'd seen him the way he'd been during the past few weeks. Her father was the very opposite of dark, always-or around her, certainly-but aside from an occasional glimmer, the light she was so accustomed to now appeared to have been swallowed up.

"What do you mean? I'm fine, sweetie," Rick responded far too quickly. "Everything's just fine."

They didn't lie to one another. That wasn't a spoken rule or a decided upon course of action. That was them, part of their bond, from day one. Except in that moment.

"Don't do that, Dad. You may not think of me as a woman, but I'm not a kid, either, and I know you better than anyone else does. You don't think I can see it? You don't think I can feel it?"

His chin dropped. As much as he wanted to pretend with her, as much as he'd tried to-not to deceive but to protect-he knew she'd see. "I'm sorry. I know you're not a kid, which I do hate a little bit, by the way."

"A little bit?" She nudged him with her elbow, a gesture of silent comfort, and he reciprocated.

"This has really been a tough one for me, Alexis, and not because of the sales or the money, though those never hurt. This book was different. I've never connected in this way with something I've written, and the fact that it seems to have had the very opposite effect on everyone else is just something I never expected. I guess I haven't quite been able to make peace with that, yet." He quickly slurped the edge of his neglected cone. "So much for lucky number thirteen, huh?"

"Your book was really great, Dad, and for whatever it's worth, I loved it. And I know it's easy for me to say this, but like you've told me a hundred times before, the only person that matters is you. As long as you love it, it shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks."

Rick leaned over and pecked her forehead. "Your father is so wise," he teased. "If only he could learn to take his own advice."

xxxx

The radio station was quiet that night, not that it was ever really a beehive of activity with its size, and Kate found herself there alone with Josh, who was the current station manager, ahead of the start of her show.

She'd felt nervous or anxious or some other incarnation of unsettled since her appointment earlier that afternoon with Dr. Burke, and being around Josh when she knew what was to soon come certainly didn't help to alleviate any of that. The trouble of it, what made it so difficult, was that she did love him, in many ways she did, but the role she'd cast him in was bad for her life, and knowing that and actually saying that were two very different things.

Josh squeezed the back of her neck as he came in, passed behind her chair for his own. "You look hot tonight," he told her absent a greeting. "You and Lanie going out after?"

A week without a shared word and that was the first thing he chose to say.

"She's on shift, tonight, just like every other Friday." He should know that. She could already feel her defenses. "I want to talk after the show, Josh."

"Yeah, I mean I'm supposed to meet Tom for a beer over at the bar, but I'm sure I can spare a few minutes for you first." He smiled but she didn't, and he noticed. "I was kidding, Kate. It's okay to smile." He settled at the board opposite her to get ready for air. "You never used to be this serious."

Honestly, it was like they were living in two entirely different worlds.

"I'm doing chapters ten and eleven, tonight," she said moving for the convenient distraction, the one consistent joy she could count on. Her regular listeners, of which she'd earned many, had chosen To Kill a Mockingbird as their most recent novel, and the irony of her dedicating her nights to a story that involved such an exalted father-daughter team wasn't at all lost on her. "And then the phones."

She always stuck around for calls after each show, some folks phoning in with questions or opinions about the material and others who simply wished to praise her for the night's performance, and that part of the experience was why she kept coming back to it. If only for a couple of hours each week, she almost felt like the teacher she'd dreamed of becoming, impacting people with words and immersing them in new worlds. Being a part of their excitement is what fed her, what filled her.

When they wrapped up that night, Josh shut things down while Kate visited the restroom, finding him afterwards in his office in the back. She dropped onto the old loveseat by the door and he remained at his desk across the room, a perfect visual metaphor for their current circumstance, if ever there was one.

"So, what's this all about, Kate? This is the second time you've said we need talk. Are we actually going to do it this time? Tom already has a cold one waiting for me."

And that was it. Everything about him set her off in that one second, everything about his tone and his demeanor, and all that had her on edge in the hours and weeks before suddenly felt as uncomplicated as turning off a light.

"I'm done, Josh," she said plainly, noting a palpable tinge of relief.

"You're done with what? With the show?"

No, absolutely not. Even with him around, she wouldn't give that up. That was hers.

"With us, with whatever it is we've been doing, with this thing where I give a shit but you don't, and we both just go on like everything's fine because it's easier."

Not that it was any surprise, but his response came without reflection and without true argument. "Okay. I'm not sure where this is coming from all of a sudden, but if that's what you want, Kate."

It wasn't sudden, and his marked indifference only served to reinforce her decision. This wasn't the person she knew.

"You know, it must really be nice to live in a world where everything's so simple, Josh." She stood and straightened herself out. "I wish I could live there. I'll be here to do the show every week, but I won't be here for anything else. I love you, but not anymore," she said and she walked out.

xxxx

Martha managed to convince Alexis to put her book down for a few hours in the middle of the week and join her for her afternoon at the spa. Rick stayed behind at the house, grateful, quite frankly, to have a bit of time to enjoy it on his own. In a few weeks, when school was out for the summer, he'd be delivering Alexis upstate to camp and bidding his mother adieu as she headed for summer stock theatre on the Connecticut coast, and though this trip was to have been heavy with family bonding, as he worked to find a path out of the funk he was in, the breathing room felt like something of a relief.

He cracked a second cold beer and set off again for the patio when the doorbell stopped him. And it wasn't just one ring, but rather a prolonged attack on the button that didn't stop until he tore open the door with a chafed Enough already!

"Three goddamned messages I leave you, and nothing," barked Paula as she plowed through the tiny space between him and the doorframe and into his foyer. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

Rick still had the beer in hand, which he quickly chugged a large portion of before turning around to her-some sort of feeble attempt at instantaneous liquid courage. "Paula, what are you doing here?" he asked and then instantly wished he hadn't. Of course she knew he was there. He was there every Memorial Day week.

"What am I doing here?" Her booming voice echoed off the walls and it sounded like there was four of her. "I'm here trying to find out why my client, you, is ignoring my phone calls like I'm some goddamned telemarketer instead of the woman who's helped make his career." Her hand found her hip and the stare began, the one with the high eyebrow and no blink.

He took a few steps backwards and crouched to a seat on the stairs. It felt like he was doing a lot of apologizing lately, especially to people he cared about. "I know. I'm sorry," he said. "I was going to call you later."

She set her handbag on the table beside her. "I'm a big girl, Rick. I can do without the apology. And you were going to call me later? Really? That might be the shittiest dialogue you've ever come up with."

Somehow her Queens managed to sound even thicker when she was pissed off. Rick always found that fascinating, mostly because he wasn't sure how it was even possible. "It seems that's debatable," he replied with a self-deprecating snicker. "At least if you read my recent reviews."

"Oh, is that what this is about? Huh? Some bullshit posted by morons on the internet? Come on, Rick half of them probably never read the damn book in the first place and the other half probably can't read at all. Since when do you give a crap about this stuff?"

The honest answer was probably always, but he'd become a master of deflecting with humor. Maybe it was his mother's doing-countless auditions and countless rejections-or that his gift of wit earned him the sort of attention he welcomed. Whatever it was, it'd served him well, to a point.

"Since five weeks ago."

Luckily for her, she'd elected to wear a pants suit for her lunch meeting at Southampton Grill, which made it far easier for her to take a comfortable seat next to him. "Look, Rick, you wrote a dozen decent books everyone orgasmed over and one great book idiots don't know what the hell to do with. Who gives a shit?" Rick gave her a suspicious eye. "What the hell's that look for?"

"Paula, are you a reviewer with the username TopJock4747 on ? Your poetic speak is eerily similar."

"Hey, this speak has made you a lot of money, okay. And don't start with the sarcasm. You think I didn't invent that game?" She pushed herself up off the step and retrieved her bag. "The book was really good, Rick, so stop listening to all the shit out there, and go bang on your keyboard for a while, okay? Give that ex-witch of yours-thank God, by the way-the one book you owe her, and then write me something to sell."

He followed her to the front door, which was still open from when she came in. "I'll call you," he told her.

"But I shouldn't hold my breath, right?" Her lips pursed in a smirk. "Write something," she called out as she slipped into her car. "It's one of the best things you do."

"Thanks, Paula." His words were quiet, surely too quiet for her to hear them, but he knew. She didn't need them, anyway.