Chapter 6
Only the weeks that immediately followed the death of her mother passed more quickly for Kate than the final two that remained of her current life in New York and with the 12th. Even with her most resolute effort to capture and catalog the important details of the moments that comprised them, by the final hour of that final day, much of it was but a blur.
It came as little surprise to those in her professional orbit when she declined the offer of a big send-off-of a modest one, too, for that matter-but the reasons for it, reasons that stretched beyond the preciousness of time, she chose to keep to herself, not the least of which was that she foresaw the tears, and they were her own. She'd already shed many in private. There wasn't need for anyone else to see them.
"So, me and Ryan'll be over to your place by 7 a.m. tomorrow. Cool?" Javi checked in with her as she packed into a box what was left of the personal items from her desk. "I'll bring coffee for the road."
She'd rented a car for the one-way drive to D.C., which she wasn't particularly looking forward to, but it allowed for her to have some of her things with her in the new place right away. She had to welcome comfort wherever she could find it.
"Espo, you guys really don't need to-"
"Stop," he jumped in. "Need's got nothing to do with it and you know it. Ryan went upstairs to the gym. You want me to wait?"
Out of her peripheral vision, she could see Gates standing in the doorway to her office.
"No, thanks, go. I can get this stuff. I'm good."
"Later," he nodded. "Call if you want, for whatever."
When he walked off for the elevator, Kate turned back, and Gates was gone. Leaving the box, she crossed the bullpen toward her office and found her sitting at her desk.
"Don't hover, Detective," she said, and the corners of Kate's mouth curled up.
"Can I come in, sir?" She helped herself to a seat when Gates waved her approval.
"Detective," her captain thought aloud. "This is the last time you're ever going to hear anyone call you that. How does it feel?"
It struck Kate strange how that hadn't crossed her mind.
"I'm not sure it's really hit me yet, honestly. How did it feel for you?"
The woman slowly leaned back against her chair, a shift teeming with pride. "Pretty damn great. Like I came to find out, you're more ready for this than you realize," she said after studying Kate a moment. "Beckett, I'm going to share three pieces of advice someone shared with me when I was in similar shoes. Take them or leave them, but I think you should hear them: Give yourself the time you need to settle and forgive yourself for not having all the answers at the end of Day One. You don't need to try to make an impression. You make one just by walking into the room. And don't let the job be everything, because if you do, it will be."
"I'll take them, sir, thank you. I want you to know how much I've appreciated your leadership and your patience this past year, with Castle being here especially. You gave me a lot of rope that I know you didn't want to give, and I'm a better cop today than I was on the day we met."
"You're a better cop because of him, too. I'm still no fan of Mr. Castle's," she clarified on Kate's twitch of surprise, "but I'm not blind, either. I'm big enough to admit he did more around here than just aggravate the hell out of me. Whatever happened between you two, I hope it works itself out."
Kate wasn't sure what to say, so she said nothing.
"Now, I have work I need to get done and I imagine you have the same. Get out of here. Let's not do the long, sappy goodbye thing." Kate got up and went for the door. "You ever need anything, Detective-Kate-anything at all, you dial my number."
"Thank you, sir," she said again, and gathered her things for home for the last time.
xxxx
"Dude, did you never play with blocks when you were a kid?" Javi pulled out the boxes Kevin had just stacked on the backseat of Kate's rental car and set them back on the sidewalk. "The way you're doing it, Beckett'll have to leave half her stuff here. Just go up and get more. I can do this part right."
Kate passed him on her way out to the car. "It's 7:15 a.m. and Ryan's already pouting? Give him a break once in a while, Espo, huh? I can't be playing mother to you guys from two hundred miles away."
"Like I don't give my boy all the breaks already," he muttered, resting his arm across the top of the car door. "This is pretty weird, you know? You leaving. It won't be the same around here."
"Maybe it'll be better," Kate shrugged with no self-deprecation intended. "I'm going to miss you a lot, Jav. We've been through it me and you, and you've always had my back. Wherever I am, I'll always have yours."
Barely able to see around the cardboard mountain in his arms, Kevin approached, interrupted the pair's hug.
"A little help here? Guys?" His wobbly plea amused them both.
"Jav, can you…?" Kate sent him inside for a moment alone with her wearied aid. "I just wanted to say that I was lucky to be able to call you a partner, Ryan, and I'm even luckier to call you a friend. I know you have Espo and Jenny and everyone else, but I'm just a phone call away, if you ever need me."
"I hope Jordan Shaw knows she's getting the best," he said as they, too, shared a hug, "and I'm the lucky one. Don't be a stranger, Beckett."
Thirty minutes later, with the car packed and Kate behind the wheel, each of them stood at one of its open windows.
"Drive safe," Javi said.
"And don't pick up any hitchhikers," Kevin added with a chuckle only he contributed.
"I love you both," she told them with a smile that required more of her heart than she was prepared for, and as she pulled away, she glanced in the rearview mirror, and wished the two were three.
xxxx
As the long days of summer kicked off, Alexis began spending less of them at home, her time divided between earning early credits for school through a special program at Columbia, a new beau she met in that very program, and her friends, who in a matter of weeks would all be spreading their wings and likewise heading off to college.
That afternoon, she returned to the loft with lunch in hand, a surprise for Rick and a chance for the two to check in and catch up.
"Dad?" she called out, wandering into his office when he didn't answer. Lined up on the floor there in front of his bookcases was a collection of boxes she hadn't seen before. "I got us lunch." She snuck a peek inside, found each filled with books, all of them his own.
"Hey," Rick said, entering by way of his bedroom. "You look familiar. Have I seen you somewhere before?"
"Dad, stop. We've had this discussion. I'm not always out." She gave him the hug he silently asked for. "I brought Korean from that place a couple of blocks down if you're hungry. What are you doing with these?" Then she noticed because she really looked. "They're all Nikki Heat books."
"Yes, they are," he confirmed and started out of the room.
"Dad." Following behind, Alexis pressed. "Why are they all in boxes?"
"Because I'm giving them away, that's why. Do you want to eat at the bar or the table?"
Nothing about him suggested he wanted to discuss it, but she muscled on anyway.
"Wherever. You pick, and why are doing that?"
"It's not a big deal, Alexis, okay? I'm allowed to get rid of my own books. I just don't need them sitting around. If I ever want more, I'll get more from my publisher." He grabbed the bag of food and the plates he pulled down and brought them over to the dining table. "Thank you for bringing lunch. I'm starving."
The two sat, served themselves, and with the undercurrent of tension ate quietly, until finally she called attention to the elephant that'd been in the room for too long without.
"Gram told me about Beckett moving away for that new job. You never said anything. That must've been hard."
"Yeah, well, moving's never fun."
"That's not what I meant, Dad." He knew what she meant, and she knew he did. "It's been hard for me and Gram these past few months, seeing you like this. I know you're angry, but if you miss her, you should just talk to her, hear her side of it. Maybe then you won't have to get rid of everything that reminds you of her."
"Alexis-"
She cut him off immediately.
"You haven't been the same person, Dad. You haven't, and it doesn't matter how much stuff you give away or how many women you do whatever with or how many smiles you fake. You're never going to get past it if you don't let her at least try to explain. I mean, she got shot in the middle of her friend's funeral and almost died. Have you even tried to imagine what going through that must've been like? And you kept secrets from her, too."
"Since when are you the president of Beckett's fan club?"
"Since I asked you and you told me she made you happy. That's what I care about, your being happy again. You could be making each other happy right now instead of wasting time boxing up your books like it's going to help you forget her."
Rick let her breathe a moment. Himself too. His daughter never ceased to astound him with the young woman she'd become.
"You should talk nicer to me. I probably paid for this feast."
"Not everything is a joke, Dad, and not everything is black and white."
That's when it got quiet again.
xxxx
It happened a couple of days later, on a morning up until that moment so routine, it could've been any other. Rick couldn't know it at the time, but it was to be an accident that would change everything.
He set out from the loft for what he imagined would amount to a couple of hours of errands, and somewhere along his journey from this place to that, his phone rang.
"Hello," he said but got no response. "Hello?" There was a voice he heard, multiple voices, in fact, distant, muffled, and clearly not addressing him but each other. After a third attempt and concluding it must've been a call unintended, he just hung up.
He stood there a beat, frozen, staring at the screen, stunned far less by the fact that the call came from Kate's phone, than by the casualness of his reaction in answering it, a once automatic response he worked so hard to condition himself to fight.
That was it. In the middle of that sidewalk and that mundane morning of errands, it hit him that Alexis was right, that he had to know.
And so, with his bags of goodies from the pharmacy and the market in hand and his wallet in his pocket, he flagged a taxi and directed its driver to take him to JFK, where, just over three hours later, he boarded a plane to D.C.
He waited outside Kate's apartment building for twice those hours, the address for which he wrestled out of Lanie in a match that went many rounds, the one person he knew would have it that he guessed might still be speaking to him after he essentially disappeared without a peep. Lucky for him, his bet paid off.
Through sunset and into darkness, he sat on the front steps, the backpack he bought at the airport to hold what things he had by his side, his body achy and stiff from the unyielding concrete.
Eventually, she appeared, walking his way with her own bag strapped across her body, her hands shoved into her pockets, and just as he did that morning, she stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk.
There was a hesitation. Even after he stood and came down the steps to her level, Kate had to take a pause to grasp that what she was seeing wasn't some wild act of her imagination, and once she accepted it wasn't, she passed right by him as if it were.
"Kate," he said as she breezed by. "Beckett, hang on. Just wait, please."
"Why should I?"
She had her fingers squeezed around the handle of the door. She couldn't even bring herself to turn and look at him.
"Because public urination is a crime?"
Kate snapped her head around, not amused in the least. "Don't" was all she said, and that was enough to prompt a swift and earnest recalibration. "Because you're a bigger person than I am, and if you're willing to hear me out, I promise I'll go when you tell me to go."
Out of view, her eyes closed, and upon her measured exhale opened again. No, it definitely wasn't a dream. She knew because she could feel him with every part of her.
When someone who lived in the building approached it from the inside, she pulled open the door and moved aside to let them by. "I'm tired. Let's just get this over with," she said, and Rick remained a few deliberate paces behind as they climbed the stairs to the 3rd floor.
Inside her apartment, Kate flipped on the light and relieved her body of her bag. "There's a bathroom on the left," she pointed out, then continued beyond it for her bedroom to change her clothes.
If someone had asked her ten minutes before, she would've told them it was more likely she'd come home to find the president waiting for her than Rick. And she probably would've been able to process that shock with greater collectedness.
"You look great," he told her when she returned in her jeans and her zip-up, her feet bare, her hair free. "I'm sorry. I couldn't not say it."
"Why did you come here, Castle? After all this time, after you pretty much wrote me off, why? I'm trying to move on with my life." Her eyes found his for the first time and locked on. "The way you obviously wanted me to."
When he got on that plane in New York, Rick didn't think he was going down there to fight, but it suddenly didn't feel wrong, and he had the gloves off in the blink of an eye.
"You know what, Beckett, I wish I could stand here and tell you that you didn't have the first friggin' clue what it is I wanted, but you and I both know that'd be a load of crap, don't we? You've known since the day I told you a year ago, and I came, and I sat beside your hospital bed and I listened like an idiot while you fed me some BS amnesia line, and it killed me, but I believed you."
Feeling momentarily faint from the blow, Kate reached out and put a hand on the back of the turquoise blue chair she would never have chosen on her own.
And then it was as if she slid on a pair of glasses. Everything started to become clear, from the giggling with the flight attendant, to the throwaways about lies, and the impossible coldness. It all finally had a shape she could see.
"How many other people besides a suspected mass murderer did you loop in before I happened to be standing at the wrong one-way mirror at the wrong time? How many people knew what a sucker I was before I did? Imagine the money I could've saved on coffee all that time if you'd just told me you didn't love me back."
Martha had said he was hurting. Kate only then began to understand how much.
