Author's Note: Anything new added to this story ends up chronologically before this last piece, so I rearrange them after I post a chapter. Sorry if the "new chapter updates" and the link to the newest chapter in this story don't synch up!
She stayed out at the Hamptons house in the summers, preferring the privacy in the last years. Her hair went white years ago, though her eyes were still bright and keenly sharp, letting few details go by her. (Rick's slightly-self-aggrandizing memoir-turned-love-story mentioned that he'd been attracted to her for her haunting good looks, and she was still described as striking - something only those who'd been on the receiving end of a beat-down during a sparring match even later in life found ironic.)
She was still involved in various causes, taking her battles to the state legislature for tougher and better laws. Hers was not a voice you wanted to hear swearing in the Mayor's office, still raising hell. Between her years of service on the force, the homicide cases closed, the series of bestselling books "loosely" based on her, Kate Beckett Castle was still a voice in New York political circles to be reckoned with and had been for three decades.
Her private life stayed mostly that – private. (The same couldn't be said of one of their granddaughters, lauded as the Audrey Hepburn of her generation.)
Sometimes she let her memory range over the decades together, from their first meeting, their wedding, the birth of their first child, and their second, Alexis' college graduation, and standing up at her wedding. She remembered comforting him when Martha died and grieving the Grand Damn who had loved life so very fully. She still ached when she thought of the grandson they'd lost to a senseless car accident, the day in court facing the man who'd hired her mother's killer and the way Rick had been her silent support throughout her testimony, the loss of her own father. She remembered their travels through the world from their first anniversary jaunting through Europe to when they'd celebrated his 80th with a birthday bash in New York and then took their grandkids to climb the Great Wall of China with them. There were a lot of good memories, times they laughed so hard her face ached, and times when the joy was quieter - and always always the steadiness of how much love there was even when they fought as crazy as they made love.
And she remembered the day he'd gone. She'd held his hand…and rolled her eyes when he said that he was glad he was going first, because he didn't want to be the one to live without her. When he'd gone, she'd wanted to rail at the unfairness of the world that she had to live without him. The world got a bit darker for her after that.
Life had the annoying – and beautiful - way of continuing. She read his books – not unaware of the irony that they'd helped her survive her mother's death years before. And this time, there were grandchildren to read his books to, looking up at her with his eyes.
And so she bided a little while longer, matriarch of the Castle clan, dispensing wisdom and love in equal measures, teaching the lessons of integrity and passing on some of Rick's sense of fun.
Alexis drove out to the house one gorgeous summer day, coming to check on Kate who'd been quieter on their last call. She walked through the house to the back veranda, where she knew Kate loved to sit.
At first Kate looked like she was sleeping, resting peacefully in the hammock on the back porch, a Richard Castle book in her lap. Alexis recognized it instantly with a glimmer of amusement, the memory of its launch party still fresh in her mind, as much as its dedication to "the extraordinary KB".
In some ways, she wasn't surprised Kate wouldn't wake. It somehow fit. Alexis sat heavily on a nearby rocker and just let her tears fall.
*Author's Note: IMW's story got me thinking. One might ask why I'd end this on this note – but I think in this life we take the bitter with the sweet. Sometimes I have the line from a song, "One of us will die inside these arms", and it's just so darned achingly poignant because there's a truth to it. I hope what's glimpsed at the end is the truly great life they had. The poet David Whyte talks about loving in the face of the "bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat", and Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes that a part of each man and each woman wants to deny that of every relationship death must have his or her share. I think that the human ability to love anyway, in spite of that inevitability, is something "even the gods bow down to." And so there's a sort of bow to that in this.