Sorry this is late! School has me kind of swamped! I'm now a fiction editor on one of my university's literature magazines, as well as being on the design and layout board for it so I will be very busy in the coming months so sorry in advance! Anyways, please enjoy!
Chapter Twenty Five
James Reese Beckett; known to his drinking buddies as Jimmy, and to his late wife as simply Jim. But to Katherine Houghton Beckett, he's just dad.
Or, at least, he had been her father, before his grief had sent him spiraling to the bottom of a bottle. Now he's just the empty shell of a man she used to know.
His eyes are bloodshot when he opens the door to his apartment on the Lower East Side (further proof that his life had taken a turn for the worse in the years since his wife's death) indicating that he's probably already had too much to drink—and it's not even noon yet.
His cloudy blue eyes squint through the curtain of untrimmed hair that hangs over his forehead, confusion in the furrow of his brow and the twist of his lips. Castle realizes, standing there, awkwardly, next to Kate, that Mr. Beckett tends to get that same little wrinkle on his forehead that Kate gets when she's focusing on something.
On her, he thinks it's adorable. On him? Not so much.
But his confusion is understandable, Castle thinks, as he returns Jim's long study of him with a calm, cool gaze of his own. In order to escape the apartment building without the paparazzi catching their scent (as they'd followed tips and trails straight to Broome Street) he and Kate had had to go digging through Martha's collection of theater costumes for disguises.
Castle had ended up donning a lot of gray hair, thick glasses, a sweater vest, and a walker, sticking a bald cap on his head and hunching himself way over to make himself appear as an old geezer, even going so far as to afflict himself with a warbly voice as he called out, "Hey, you kids! Get offa mah lawn!" which made Kate giggle like a little girl.
In accordance with his costume, Kate was able to locate a pair of dark pink scrubs, pairing them with her old sneakers and a blonde wig, which Martha tied into a ponytail for her. That, paired with an inconspicuous windbreaker, was more than enough to get them to the subway without incident, though they kept up the charade until they'd arrived safely at Jim Beckett's door.
"Can I help you?" Jim asks, finally, his words slurred.
"Dad," Kate sighs, wrinkling her nose at the stench of alcohol on his breath, "Dad, it's me."
Jim's eyes widen, clearing slightly as he looks closer at the young blonde on his doorstep. "Katie?" he asks, softly. Kate nods.
"Unless you have another daughter," she replies, icily, her arms folded over her chest in a defensive gesture.
Jim lets out a deep agonizing breath, rolling his eyes—evidently another Beckett trait, it would seem—and hits Kate with a clouded, angry look.
"Are you still upset with me?" he groans. "Katie, I thought you'd gotten over that by now."
"Gotten over…" Kate's eyes fill with fire and her mouth gapes open for a few seconds, before she's suddenly clenching her jaw and gritting her teeth, stepping forward threateningly, arms unfolding. Castle notices the change in her demeanor and wraps his arm around her waist, squeezing her hip with his hand and murmuring in her ear, "Relax."
She takes a deep breath, and the glare she throws at her father lessens but does not yet dissipate fully.
"Will you just let us in?" she hisses. "We have to talk to you about something; that is, if you're not too drunk."
Jim's jaw clenches visibly at that, but he doesn't bother respond, simply stepping aside to let them both in. As Castle passes through, he does a double take as if just noticing him for the first time.
"Who's this?" he asks, motioning to the taller, gray-haired man.
"This is my bo—"
"Boyfriend," Castle interrupts, offering his hand to Mr. Beckett. "I'm Kate's boyfriend, Derrick Storm. Pleasure to meet you, sir."
Jim stares at Castle's hand as if it's a foreign object, before looking up at Kate. "Jeez, Katie; I had no idea I left you with Daddy Issues."
"Don't flatter yourself," Kate replies. "It's a disguise." With that, she pulls off her wig and cap, shaking out her hair so that it falls messily around her shoulders. "See?"
Jim nods, before turning to Castle, who shakes his head. "This is all glued on," he informs the older man, who nods, his eyes still cloudy and unresponsive.
"Whatever," Jim says, taking a seat in a large, cushy recliner in the corner, adjacent to a loveseat that has so many holes in it, it might as well be made out of Swiss cheese. "So how can I help you today, Katherine? What does my rich little starlet daughter need from her poor old alcoholic daddy now, after five years of not even a single phone call?"
Castle sees Kate bristle at that and he's too far from where she's standing to surreptitiously calm her with a comforting touch, but it doesn't seem he needs to, because then she takes a deep breath and jumps right into it.
"Somebody is trying to kill me," she blurts out, sitting down on the loveseat. Jim seems to sober at that, his spine going rigid and his entire face flooding with worry.
"What?" he replies, looking between the two. "Who? When?"
"You must not watch the news a lot," Castle comments. "Or write things down. Didn't Gina call you?"
"The dragon lady? I think so…I don't quite remember what she said, but she was very rude 'bout it. Called me a jackass; rude old broad." Kate's fists clench at that.
"Well, the old broad was calling to tell you that you're only daughter had been shot at on the red carpet and if you weren't so drunk off your fucking ass you might have realized that," she growls at him.
"Well, you're okay, aren't you?" Jim slurs in return. "You're alive!"
"No thanks to you, you prick!" Kate shouts, getting to her feet. "Because of you, my life might be in real danger. Because of you, I am completely, irrevocably alone. Because of you, I had to grieve for my mother by myself. Because of you…because of you…" she couldn't finish the thought past the lump in her throat, though she continued to glare at her father through tear-filled eyes, her entire body shaking with rage. Jim barely even registers her anger, too far gone is he by the influence of whatever liquor was currently in the tumbler sitting on the dirty glass coffee table.
"I don't see how I could be the cause of your misfortune, Katie," he slurs instead, only focusing on the first thing she'd listed and completely ignoring everything else. "I mean, you haven't even answered any of my calls in—"
"Excuse me if I don't want to talk to a lousy old drunk!" she hisses. "And how are you responsible? Exactly how many friends of yours have you told about your 'starlet daughter', Dad? How many times did you brag about the many movies she was in, the celebrities she dated and all the money she made? HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU SPILL MY SECRET?!"
"Never!" Jim shouts back at her. "I never told a single soul about you, Katie! I swear on your mother's grave."
"Don't do that," Kate says darkly. "Never do that; don't lie to me like that and don't bring Mom into this."
"I ain't lyin'," Jim insists. "Do you know how embarrassing it would be for the guys to know that you're my daughter?"
"Wow, Dad," Kate hisses. "I'm really feeling the love here."
"That's not what I meant," Jim sighs. "What I mean is…do you know how embarrassing it would be to have to explain why I, as the father of one of the most well-paid actresses in Hollywood, would be living in this shithole instead of with my little girl, escorting her to premieres and meeting all her famous friends? Why would I jeopardize that?"
"So it's just all about you then, isn't it?" Kate growls. "All about your image, huh?"
"No," Jim groans. "Katie, don't you see? I ain't ashamed o' ya. I'm ashamed o' m'self. So, no, I would never share your secret; your mom would kill me if I did, anyhow."
At that, Kate gets very quiet, the anger dissolving into confusion.
"Dad," she says, softly. "Mom is dead."
"I know that," Jim insists, reaching for his tumbler. "Hell, I drink every day jus' tryin' to forget." He shakes his head. "But she always said I had a big mouth and told me that every time I said something I shouldn't, she's slap me right on the lips—actually did a couple o' times, too." He chuckles and Kate, surprisingly, joins him, dissipating some of the tension in the room.
"That sounds like her," she says and Jim nods.
"Even in death, I'm a hundred percent certain that she'd keep that promise," he adds. "So, no, I would never share your secret, Katie-bug; 'specially not if I thought it might put you in danger. I can't go losing you too. You're all I've got now."
Kate nods, wiping furiously at her eyes. "Well, shit," she says, turning to Castle, "now we don't have any leads at all."
"Were I you," Jim says, butting in, "I would check out that publicist of yours; she never quite rubbed me the right way, that one. Maybe it's jus' cuz I like brunettes, but there's something not right about her."
Kate sighs. "Thanks, Dad," she says, in a tired tone. "We'll look into it."
"You do that," Jim says, tipping his tumbler at her. "And don't you be a stranger; come visit your dad every once in a while, alright?"
"I'll do my best," Kate promises, half-heartedly. "But, you know, Hollywood's keeping me pretty busy."
"You can never be too busy for your family, Katie," Jim says, sadly. "It took me far too long to realize that."
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