prepared
"Are you sure you're gonna be okay?" Castle says, planting both hands at Jack's shoulders to keep him in place.
Her brother is this thrumming ball of energy, striding back and forth through the loft and gathering things, his possessions scattered wide. Neither of their parents will let him carry boxes, so Bea has to do most of the heavy lifting.
She doesn't mind. Not really.
Jack turns to their mother, curls flopping into his eyes as he groans. "Mom. Can you tell him?"
"Rick, leave him alone." Their mother laughs, lacing slender fingers around their father's wrists to ease his hands off Jack. She leads him over to the couch and pushes him to sit, leaning in to murmur something in his ear that makes him grin, arching to kiss her.
Gross, guys.
Bea moves to take the last of Jack's belongings and box them up, stopping toe to toe with him for a moment. "You need me to take Dad out to get ice cream?"
Her brother laughs, hooking an arm around her neck and scrubbing his knuckles against her scalp. "No, Little Bean. I can handle him."
Jack's still in the soft cast, a silvery line at his temple where his skin split as his head smashed against the car window. And their father is haunted by shadowed places, echoes of bruises. It's taking him longer to recover than Jack and herself.
He's old, and it breaks her heart sometimes. The grey at his temples and spooling out, the soft grunt every time he stands.
Bea's sort of really, really jealous of her sister. Alexis got to have their father as a young man, still able to chase her and carry her and just. . .keep up.
Not that he didn't with them. It's not that, exactly. She's just not ready to watch her parents degenerate. At sixteen, she needs the certainty that they're sticking around.
Kate must sense some of the wash of despair through her daughter because she's standing, smoothing a hand over Bea's hair where her brother mussed it up. "You okay Beanie Baby?"
"Yeah. Is Dad?"
"He's fine." Her mother says, that careful certainty she's always had helping to untie the knot of fear in Bea's gut. "Why don't you go give him a hug? He looks like he needs it."
There's some truth to that. Her father is still on the couch, watching the three of them like his whole world is unravelling.
It's just college. Just her brother moving four hours away. Their father had some complaints about that, kept asking why not Columbia like your sister?
But Jack wants to study architecture and he got into Cornell and that's amazing. And it's only Ithica. Not that far.
Bea flops down on the couch next to her father, pushing the melodrama a little higher than what she really feels just to draw a smile from him. "Mom says you need a hug."
"Your mother is a smart woman, Beanie Ella." He says, curling an arm around her shoulders to haul her against his chest.
He's still got that soft warmth, somnolent and home. Even now, she sees hazy, half-formed memories of pillowing herself on his ribcage and listening to the quiet lilt of his voice spinning stories for her, taking her to a magical world.
And she knows he'd still do it if she'd only let him.
"You've still got two more years of me, Dad. We haven't all flown the nest yet." Bea sits back to look at her father, shoulder to shoulder with him.
He laughs, trenches of wear at the corners of his eyes. "I'd better start getting ready for that now then. Who am I going to blame the mess on once you're both gone?"
"Mom's gonna kill you." Beatrice laughs, watching her mother drawing Jack in for a hug. They both know that it's not true.
Her parents adore each other. It's sometimes disgusting, but mostly kind of sweet. And she knows they'll be fine. She doesn't have to worry.
Her father might needle and tease and annoy her mom, but she's not going anywhere. Bea figures that if her mother has already survived twenty six years of him, another thirty or so will be easy.
Jack moves over to the couch, dragging their mother by the wrist. She settles down next to Bea, Jack sprawling out in the armchair. "So, my last night at home. You know what this calls for, Father?"
"Ice cream, my son." Their father says gravely, bursting into a laugh as Mom's hand slides behind Bea's shoulders to slap at her husband.
Bea grins, turning in to press her nose at her mother's collar bone. She feels needy, today. Like a child again. And their mother has always been the calm, serene in the eye of the storming chaos.
The place Bea can always go to feel safe.
Jack and their father are getting up, moving through to the kitchen to rummage in the freezer. And Bea knows for a fact that there's no ice cream left, because last week she and her friends finished it up in the middle of the night, clutching at each other and trying not to scream at the god-awful horror movie up on the projector.
They'll have to go out.
Bea takes the moment of ephemeral quiet to draw her knees up, curl closer in to her mother. "Mom, it's gonna be okay right? When Jack leaves."
"Oh Beanie, of course it is." Her mom says, drawing both arms around Bea to keep her close in the cove of her body.
"And when I go too. You and dad will be alright?" It's such a stupid thing to worry about, but she can't seem to help herself.
"Beatrice, your father and I were together for four years before Jack was born, and we were friends four years before that. We know how to get along."
Okay. Okay. Everything will be fine.
"I love you, Mom."