A Dash of Summer
Ellery is the princess of the bridesmaids' lunch - a dragon princess, of course, but catered to and exclaimed over nonetheless. Kate lets her go, content to have her happy as the center of attention, while she slowly works herself into a corner with Meredith. A literal corner though, and hopefully not a figurative one.
Allie and her friends - just the three girls who took her out last night - are so focused on Ellery that Kate can tell Meredith is starting to get antsy. She fingers the edge of the silverware and keeps throwing in comments designed to draw their attention, but Alisha is holding court at the moment, telling Ella a story about her experience with a fashion designer in Paris last year. Not that Ellery cares, but it has something to do with shoes, and she's being included, and so she stays rapt.
Kate lays her hand over Meredith's arm and guides her back to their discussion of LA traffic, nudging her back to a two-person conversation once more. It's not what Meredith wants, but she seems willing to cede ground to the louder, more engaging Alisha. For now. She might be biding her time though.
It probably helps that Kate is trying her hardest to look interested. She wishes she had Ellery as her buffer for this, but she won't take her daughter from the older girls; it's obvious Ella adores them.
When the intimate lunch has finished and Alexis starts cleaning up plates and silverware like the servant-hearted girl she is, Kate quickly takes over, sensing her moment. "No, don't do this. Meredith and I will clean up. Give you girls a chance to check out the wedding venue. We'll come along later."
"I go too, Mommy?" Ellery asks from her place in the middle, up on her knees in the chair so she can be as tall as the other girls.
"Allie, you mind?"
"I've got her," Alexis says easily, already reaching for Ella and scooping her up. "Come with me. Mom, uh, you and... Meredith don't do too much. The guys should have to do something too."
"Oh, we won't," Meredith says airily. Kate can see that despite their intentions, Meredith's picked up on the distinct orientation of 'Mom' in that sentence. "You girls go."
Sounds like Meredith wants to talk to her as well.
As the girls leave, Ellery in her sister's arms and seemingly content to be there, Allie gives Kate a look of appeal, pleading and helpless. Kate can't help leaning in to kiss Ella's cheek and brushing a kiss to Allie as well, quick and hopefully surreptitious enough that Meredith won't notice.
"Thanks," Allie breathes against Kate's cheek. They disappear down the hall and towards the sliding glass doors, opting to take the back deck and the boardwalk down to the pool.
"So, Kate," Meredith calls from the kitchen. She's brought her own plate back but it looks like she's left the rest for Kate to handle. No problem. It's a way of asserting her superiority, Kate knows, but it doesn't work on Kate. Not now.
"So, Mere," she says back easily enough, collecting the bridesmaids' plates in a stack. Modeling was easier than waitressing, she confessed once, and she's still not that confident in the balancing of such fine china. All Castle's decorator's picks, but they're still good stuff and gorgeous. She leaves most of it still on the table as she goes in to confront the ex.
Ex-wife, ex-mother as well. Though perhaps you can't ever be an ex-mother. Perhaps that's the point.
"She's not calling me 'mom' anymore," Meredith says without preamble. "I've noticed."
Kate gently lays the dishes in the sink and takes the dish rag to wipe down the mess made on the counter when Meredith ran water over her plate. She studies the effort of her work for a moment and then turns to face the woman.
"I did attempt to warn you. That this might happen. Five years ago."
"You were warning me?" Meredith asks, genuine surprise on her face. "I thought you..."
"That day we talked I was letting you know - giving you fair warning - that I intended to treat her like my own, for Dash's sake if not for Alexis herself." In the beginning, it really was mostly for Dashiell's benefit. She wanted her son to feel that his family was connected, and not just pieces jumbled together under the same roof - because that's how Kate had felt about herself with Castle. Now, of course, that's not it. And even back then, it quickly became about the girl - meaning something to the girl whose heart also had a mother-sized hole in it.
"Oh, that was you throwing down the gauntlet?"
Kate sighs. "It wasn't meant to be a duel," she promises. "Only that I wanted Dash to have his sister, to feel his family was there for each other. And if that was going to happen, then it'd have to be true. We'd have to pick up each other's pieces and come through for each other and actually be a family. So I took Alexis."
She isn't even apologizing for it, though perhaps she is apologizing for some of the consequences. For Meredith not having anyone who calls her 'mom' any longer, though Kate can't quite feel guilty, even if she does sympathize. Meredith danced her way into it as surely as Kate led Alexis there.
"To be honest, Kate, I didn't understand most of what you were saying. Only that you were quite worked up over Dash having a real family and I felt impressed by you, impressed that you were being so purposeful about it. It never occurred to me that family would be purposeful. Family has always been the people who already happened to you. To me anyway - the ones I've been stuck with." Meredith frowns and flicks her hand out as if dismissing that insight. "Or well, that sounds gauche. You know what I mean."
Kate isn't sure she does. She runs her fingers over the edge of the sink, places the dish rag back over the faucet. She'll have to put in the laundry room and get a clean one; she can't stand having wet and dirty like this. But now is not the time. "I didn't know how else to do it but purposefully. After my mother's death, family never happened to me. I had to create it in order to survive. It had to be purposed. With Rick, with my friends at the 12th. It was always work for me. I think it still is."
Meredith glides a hand through the air towards the open sliding glass door. "Perhaps if I had been purposeful then Alexis would still be calling me 'mom' instead."
Kate lifts her eyes, stands strong under that pronouncement. "She does call me 'mom'," she answers. Confirmation, should Meredith choose to take it that way, that Meredith has never been purposeful about treating Alexis as a daughter.
She won't take it that way, of course. She'll only see it as a statement of fact and not the implicit accusation that Meredith never tried to retain her status as Alexis's mother. Never once tried.
Kate has stolen Meredith's daughter from her, but it's not like she wasn't so very easy to steal. If it was Ellery, Kate would never have let it get to this. Would never have given her over to Meredith without a fight.
"I think you've done for her what I can't," Meredith says finally, nodding. "It's obvious to me that Alexis requires... that purposeful kind of motherhood. It's always been obvious she needs more than most can be expected to give. Good for Rick for finding her someone who doesn't mind."
Kate sinks back against the counter, caught unaware by the sentiment in Meredith's tone - and the strange, backhanded compliment. And perhaps concession.
But it comes to her again - if it was Ellery. If Ellery needed something from her mother that Kate couldn't give, what then? Would she cede her daughter over, just for a little while, if it meant that Ella gained that intangible thing she wouldn't take from her mother? Kate's not perfect - she doesn't even feel she's all that good at this when it comes to Ellery - and now she can see that the day might come - may come, in fact - that Kate will have to give her up.
God, it leaves her sucker-punched.
Karma will come back on her; she has to do this right so right is done to her.
"Meredith, Alexis has asked me to sit beside Rick during the ceremony - at his side. And if you don't mind, you'll be on his other side."
"One on either side," Meredith muses, a gossamer smile on her lips.
"He doesn't care," she offers. "He'll be too busy with the effort of smiling through his tears. I know you'll both be so proud of her."
"Certainly," Meredith smiles wider, more permanent, less ephemeral, and she gestures for the sliding glass doors. "I assumed you'd be sitting with the family. Is that what this was all about, Katherine, darling?"
Well, not exactly. "Yes," she says calmly. It's not Kate who is sitting with the family, but Meredith. If that's how the woman needs to see it, then Kate will leave it be.
Meredith takes a broad step towards the open doors. "I want to catch up to them, see the set-up. I hear the pool's guest house has been transformed. You coming?'
"Of course," Kate says in relief.
Maybe Meredith understands what's been said, maybe not. But as they head down towards the pool where the chairs are set up, Kate knows that the placecards in their seats with their names on them will be the true test. Either Meredith will keep her mouth shut, or it will all blow up in their faces.