Chapter 4
Sitting at his desk, Castle's hands hovered just above his laptop keyboard, but he had not yet had the courage to lower them to the keys. When he noticed a tremor go through his right hand, he leaned back in his seat shook both hands out, and then raked them back through his hair. He had been using the internet for research practically since its inception and he had never before been afraid to search for a topic. True there had been a few times he was nervous that after a certain search was made the FBI might be banging on his door, but he would not have been a good mystery writer if he hadn't had that feeling a few times. But now for the first time in his life he was actually afraid simply because he knew the search results might be more life-altering than he could even process.
As he was an expert at avoiding his work, Castle knew that the best way to handle this situation was to get a cup of coffee, maybe a snack too, and then spend at least forty-five minutes on YouTube looking up videos that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. He had, however, promised himself he would not enter extreme procrastination mode. After all, the search he was about to type into Google was not for the purpose of research he could do anytime—it was for Kate.
Early that morning he'd awoken beside her after a fitful night of sleep. Despite the fact that his dreams had still be infiltrated by visions of Jerry Tyson stealing into his apartment and absconding away with a swaddled baby, Kate appeared to have slept soundly, which he was thankful for. Unfortunately, that morning brought tension, for by the time she was up and showered, her father had arrived for their pre-arranged breakfast. Though they intended to go out for the meal, Kate asked him to meet them at her apartment first so they could have the difficult conversation they needed to have in private.
Over the forty-three days Kate was missing, Castle had been in regular contact with Kate's father. He had called Jim almost right away—just an hour after he spoke with the detectives. Jim had insisted on coming to Castle's apartment to do what he could to assist, and the moment Castle saw the elder man, he felt enough crushing guilt to bring tears to his eyes. Though rationally he knew he was in no way responsible for Kate's disappearance, the guilt permeated every inch of him, for it had been his apartment that she disappeared from ultimately because of his antagonistic relationship with the Triple Killer. Jim assured him he knew that Castle would never let any harm come to his daughter, but still the writer felt guilty during nearly every phone call he had with the elder man to update him on Kate's case.
When Jim arrived, he was naturally quite relieved to see his daughter had returned, though that relief was short lived, because as soon as Kate began explaining what had happened to her, his expression grew progressively more distraught. When she dropped the final bomb: that thanks to Tyson she was pregnant without knowing the father of her child, Jim looked downright ill. "I…I don't understand," he had rasped out. "Why would this horrible man do something like this?"
Sadly, neither Kate nor Castle could sufficiently answer him; there simply was no explaining the behavior of a psychopath.
Needless to say, their breakfast was rather tense. Jim quietly asked Kate if she intended to keep the baby and her response was that they were still trying to figure everything out. Castle viewed this as her not wanting to get into too many details about the sensitive case while in a public setting, which was of course completely fair. By the end of their meal Jim seemed reasonably more settled, though he did ask them to keep him up to date on whether or not the criminal mastermind had been caught, which of course they would have done regardless of the request.
After the meal, Kate told him she felt rather exhausted, and requested to spend a few hours alone, resting and reacclimating to being back at home. Castle was all too happy to oblige, though he did extend an offering for her to come to the loft for dinner. Her response was a quiet, "I'll see how I'm feeling and let you know," but she did press a chase kiss to his lips when they parted ways at the next subway station.
Back at home, Castle chatted with his mother and daughter briefly before retreating to his bedroom and beginning to tidy the space a bit (he really had gotten quite lax while his focus was mostly on Kate's safe return). As he cleaned up, he thought about the situation Tyson had forced them all into. He couldn't even begin to fathom the turmoil that Kate must have been feeling. He hated that he couldn't take away her stress, but then, the more he thought, he realized there might be something that could be done to ease the situation a little bit, so he'd gone to sit at his computer.
One he finally found the strength to lower his hands to the keyboard, he typed, "how to determine baby paternity before birth," into the search engine, hit enter, and felt his stomach flip over in his gut. Unable to view the results yet, he pushed himself away from the desk, stood, and began to pace his office with his hands over his mouth.
God, oh god, how had it come to this? He had thought several times over the years about having a child with Kate Beckett. He had always wanted more children and the more in love with her he fell, it just seemed the natural step for his fantasies to take. Over the course of their relationship, the frequency of those daydreams had increased. He'd even imagined himself putting his hands on the swell of Kate's pregnant belly a few times. Never once did consider that the joy of conceiving a child would be stolen from them. As upsetting as that was, it was in the past, and nothing could change it, so they needed to move forward. If he was the father of Kate's baby, he was fully confident they could find a way to do that. If he wasn't the father…well, that was why they needed to find out: so they could make a plan.
Carrying a mug of tea in each hand, Castle entered the office where Kate sat on the couch with her feet tucked up under her. Despite insisting that she had rested for most of the day, he could still see the dark circles beneath her eyes. He knew that it would take her several days if not weeks to recover from her time under Tyson's control, but he still hated to see her so worn down. He also imagined the buddling life growing inside her wasn't exactly contributing to her restfulness, but he hoped that a little tiredness was the worst of her pregnancy symptoms—at least for the near future.
"Here," he said, passing over the mug, "Chamomile."
"Thanks Castle. Are you having the same?"
"Yes."
She arched an eyebrow. "Don't you want to add some whisky to it?"
He chuckled at her unexpected comment. "Ah, no. If you're not drinking, neither will I."
She looked a bit startled. "Oh, um…you don't have to…"
He shrugged one shoulder. "It's really not a problem." He really felt it was the least he could do as a manner of solidarity. He'd done the same when Meredith was pregnant with Alexis…granted, Meredith had insisted, but he would have done so even without the insistence.
Before he sat down beside her, Castle grabbed the information pages he'd printed out from his computer earlier that day. Then, he held them loosely out to her and said, "It's okay if you're not ready yet, but I did a little research today and I just wanted you to see."
Balancing the mug against her knee, Kate reached out for the pages, skimmed them for a few seconds, then looked back at him saying, "You don't think I looked this up myself?"
He shrugged a little. "Wasn't sure."
She huffed out a breath and let the papers flutter to the floor at his feet. Pinching the bridge of her nose she confessed quietly, "I don't know if I can do this."
The timid sound to her voice, which was so unlike the Kate Beckett he'd come to know, broke his heart. He reached out his hand and wrapped his fingers gently around her forearm. "Do what, love? The paternity test?"
She shook her head and said, "All of it. I just keep going over it again and again in my mind, but it's just so crazy I can hardly process any of it. I never really thought a lot about getting pregnant and what little thinking was based on the idea that my becoming pregnant would take place after a very long, detailed, planned out series of conversations. That we'd know how we wanted to raise our child, or at least have had discussions about it, but now… being a mother is just so…" Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. "I don't know if I'm ready. And this isn't just about becoming a parent; I could be carrying Jerry Tyson's child."
"You could be…but you might not be."
She brushed a tear from her cheek and looked at him. "I don't know, Castle; I really don't. If I knew for sure I was having your child then, yes, I would feel better about everything, but I feel like knowing I had Tyson's child inside of me would make this a thousand times worse and I don't know how I'd get through the next eight months. I don't know how I'm going to get through them now," she added sadly.
Castle placed his mug down on the table and then leaned forward to press a kiss against the side of her head. With one hand rubbing gently up and down her bicep he said, "Even if Tyson was the father—and I'm not saying he is, but if—that doesn't mean anything about the child."
The look she gave him in response was incredulous and he could understand why. Of course he had mused about nature versus nurture when he realized there was a possibility that Kate carried Tyson's child. Even knowing some of Tyson's background, there still had to be something—quite a bit, actually—going on inside of his brain that resulted in him becoming a mass serial killer; certainly not everyone with a similar childhood grew up to be so hateful and cruel. Did that mean that what was wrong with Tyson was guaranteed to be passed on to any child he fathered? Of course not. He hadn't yet done any research about how likely it was for those traits to be inherited, but what he did know for sure was that when it came to Kate's child the "nurture" would not be the concerning part of the equation.
"I admit that it has crossed my mind that my career as a mystery writer gives me some misgivings about raising Tyson's child, but there is no guarantee that this child will turn out bad just as there isn't one that a biological child of ours will never commit a crime. The way I see it: it's no more of a dice roll than any other parenting experience, because I know for sure that you and I would raise the child in the same kind, loving way no matter who the father is."
She turned to him and said in a desperate tone, "But what if it's not your child."
Though he could feel his stomach twist in his gut, he said, "He or she will be." Castle had absolutely no problems with the idea of adoption and had Kate had a child from a previous relationship he would have had no issue accepting that child as his own, and he would accept Kate's baby and love him or her no matter what. Still, he was human, so there would be a part of him disappointed that the child wasn't theirs biologically as he was endlessly curious as to what that child would be like and whom they would resemble.
She gave him a look. "You know I meant genetically. And then I…I..." She took a sip of tea and then put the mug on the end table and turned on the couch to face him. "I wonder…should I just give the baby up? There are plenty of couples who want to adopt babies. I could just…I could just give the baby up for adoption regardless—without ever finding out if it's your baby or Tyson's so we wouldn't have this hanging over us; we could just move on. But could we move on? And…and how would I ever be okay with knowing I could have given up your baby?"
Castle blew out a breath through his lips to give himself a moment to think. He hadn't even considered that Kate might not want to keep the baby, though that did make the comment she had made to her father that morning make a bit more sense. His gut reaction was that he couldn't stand the idea of a child of his being raised by anyone other than himself, particularly since he'd always wanted more children. Kate didn't sound too firm on her comments at that point, but he briefly wondered in his mind whether or not this decision would break them. That was: if he refused to allow her to give up a baby that would his, would that be the end of their relationship? He certainly didn't want to have to choose between their relationship and a child of theirs; it seemed too cruel a decision to make, but he was getting ahead of himself.
"Is that really what you would want to do Kate?"
She shrugged and instead turned the question on him. "What do you want me to do?"
"I…want us to raise this baby together, regardless of who the father is, but I also don't want you to be miserable in the process…"
She nodded and more tears spilled down her cheeks. She excused herself to grab some tissues from the box on the shelf behind his desk. When she returned to the couch she said, "I think I just need some more time."
"Of course; of course. Take all the time you need."
She nodded then slid down on the couch so she could lean her body against his. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pressed his cheek against the top of her head, for the first time genuinely worried about how difficult things might get for them in the coming days and weeks.
"Here you go, Kate," the smiling ultrasound tech said as she handed over the grainy black and white photo taken of the baby growing inside her. Of course "photo of the baby" was a bit of a misleading phrase at that stage of her pregnancy. The ultrasound print out wasn't much more than a black oval-shaped blob in which there was a white-ish smaller blob. Anyone unfamiliar with early-stage ultrasounds would probably struggle to make heads or tails of it, but somehow she knew her partner would still be excited.
"Thank you," the detective said demurely, taking the image delicately with her thumb and index finger.
"Well, you're all set. Once you're dressed you can exit to your left—follow the blue arrows. And we'll see you back here when your doctor schedules the next checkup."
"Thank you," Kate repeated, then waited until the tech had left the room before removing the drape from her lap and hopping down off the exam table. Because the ultrasound was being done so early in her pregnancy, it needed to be done internally, which Kate found to be not the most pleasant experience but understood its necessity.
After dressing and exiting the office, Kate had not fully realized she still held the ultrasound in her hand until the woman she rode the elevator down with said, "Congratulations!"
Slightly startled, Kate did a double take at the petite woman standing beside her, who Kate guessed to be in her mid-fifties. "Oh, um, thanks," she said reflexively.
"Is this your first?"
"Yes."
"Enjoy it!" the older woman said happily before exiting the elevator when it stopped on the ground floor.
Feeling slightly stunned by the interaction, Kate remained frozen until the elevator doors began to close once more. She snapped out her arm to bump into the doors and they opened again so she could step out and slowly make her way across the lobby, still holding the ultrasound photo. It wasn't until she reached the sidewalk outside that she recognized the foremost emotion in her chest: disappointment.
Had she gone into the ultrasound appointment desperately hoping that something was wrong with her or the baby? No, not exactly. However, both that morning and the night before she had thought that the best possible outcome would have been that there was no heartbeat detected on the fetus—or, better yet, that there was no fetus at all and the pregnancy test had shown a false positive. That certainly would have been the easier path. Then she and Castle could have just moved on…assuming Tyson allowed them to.
As thoughts of the serial killer entered her mind, a shiver traveled down Kate's spine. Reflexively she glanced behind her and then to either side, but of course Tyson wasn't standing there watching her. He was somewhere, though, she suspected. Perhaps not at that exact moment, but he would be around, lurking in alleys and hovering over rooftops watching her—watching them. It made her sick. The worst part was knowing that neither she nor Castle—and now, she supposed, the baby as well—would be safe until Tyson was brought to justice. Unfortunately, given the dozens of law enforcement officers on the case had yet to find even the smallest scrap of lead, she doubted very much Tyson would be brought in soon. Perhaps they would get lucky, but the serial killer always seemed to have luck on his side, which made the dark cloud looming over her feel even more heavy.
With a sigh, Kate slipped the ultrasound photo into her purse knowing that Castle would definitely want to see it. Of course he'd wanted to join her at the ultrasound, too, but she had politely declined, saying she wanted to face this first one—during which nothing significant could really be seen—on her own, but promised to tell him all about it when she returned. She appreciated his support, truly, he was being far more amazing than she could have ever asked for, he was still Richard Castle and sometimes he could be a little bit too much, especially when she didn't share his positivity level towards her pregnancy. Still, she knew that as her pregnancy progressed and every-day things became increasingly harder she knew there was no other person she would want to have by her side.
