Kate and Rick, 2019 (one of two)

"It is a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree…"

—Luke 13:18

When her father called about the storage locker he was cleaning out, Kate had a pang of something that might have been guilt, might have been grief. Even after so long.

But she met her dad at the storage facility in Brooklyn as he'd asked, and she waded through the furniture stranded like driftwood inside the storage locker to reach him.

"Really made a mess of things, didn't I?" her dad said. He stood with his hands on his hips surveying the dusty couch, the musty chairs, the dining room table flipped on its back like a beetle and stored on top of some boxes. "Just sold the place and shoved everything in here. Didn't even ask you."

"We did the best we could," she told him, hooking an arm through his.

"I didn't do the best by you that I could," he said with a sigh. He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissed her knuckles. "Ah well, let's tackle what we can. I only have through the end of the month and I've been putting it off."

She patted his arm and braced herself for a day spent sifting through memories, most of them aching, even the good.

Castle arrived home after his Black Pawn meeting and carefully hung his coat in the closet. "Kate?" he called, craning his neck to see down the hall as he toed off his shoes. When she didn't appear at his call, he went searching for her, relatively sure she'd said she'd made it home but concerned by the note of vulnerability he'd heard in her voice this morning.

A storage locker filled with her childhood, he couldn't imagine.

Well, he could. He was a writer; it was his job to imagine. He imagined too much.

There were a couple of tattered boxes set up before their as-yet empty tree marked Xmas in bold black marker. He was struck by the timing of everything, how late they'd put off getting their tree so that now these childhood memories could be incorporated into the decor. At least he hoped that was her intent, placing them strategically before the tree.

He wandered into the study they shared and saw three more: Johanna-office. Castle winced, laid a hand on top of the box; it was no longer stiff, the cardboard soft from two decades of storage. He moved through to the bedroom, and finally heard signs of Kate.

She was in the bath, water trickling from her hand as she skimmed bubbles from the surface.

"Hey," he called quietly, waiting for her eyes to open before he stepped inside the bathroom.

She turned her head, smiled at him. Lifted a bubble-clad hand from the bath water and beckoned to him.

Castle came and knelt and did his obeisance, kissed her temple as he took her hand. "How was it?"

"Rough," she admitted.

"Want a glass of wine?" he murmured. Curved his hand in her wet warm one.

"Maybe so," she sighed. "How was the meeting?"

"They're not eager for a change in genre," he admitted. "But my agent managed to negotiate a two-book deal, one in the series, one serious literature."

"Mm, that's a good start." She offered him a better smile, fingers playing in his. "You happy with that?"

"It's something anyway. Everything depends on this book, if I can manage to pull it off."

"You can," she said. "You have an impeccable sense of story, and your voice is—"

"You should save the flattery for when I'll really need it," he chuckled. "Let me get that wine for you."

"Wasn't empty flattery," she huffed, flicking water and suds his direction. "I meant it."

As he got off the floor, he kissed her cheek with a laugh. "Well, thank you. I'm supposed to be comforting you."

"I'm comforted. The bath is doing the trick. No need for you."

"Ha!" He jabbed a finger at her as he paused in the doorway. "See if you get your wine."

She was chuckling as he left, which was the whole point anyway.

After Castle had handed off a wine glass and the bottle, should she desire it, she had given him free rein to do as he liked with the Christmas decor piled up before the tree. She had laid her boxes to one side of his, theirs really, and the difference between his plastic tubs with their red and green lids and her brown mushy boxes was painful.

He was nosy, so he started there first.

At the top was some musty garland, which he had better, so he set that to one side and delved deeper. A Countdown to Christmas felt calendar which looked well-used, each pocket on the tree with a numbered day; a golden star attached by a ribbon to the back allowed the child to move upward with the days. Golden star to crown the tree? No wonder she was so self-motivated and ambitious. She'd been given a gold star for Christmas.

It was pretty cute, actually. He picked it up by the wooden dowel and scouted the loft for a place to hang it, finally settling on the back of the pantry door where it would be seen every time she went to get oatmeal for breakfast.

He plucked the star from its dangling ribbon and placed it in the December 22nd pocket. It was shockingly high on the tree; he couldn't believe he'd let so much of the holiday season pass them by without putting up decorations.

It'd been a weird year; they each had decided on changes that required so much energy and focus.

All the more reason to get this place decorated, reclaim the season for their own. Reclaim them.

Castle went back to the 'Xmas' boxes from storage and dove into them once more. Kate's childhood ornaments, some identical to things his daughter had made in kindergarten (which was slightly disconcerting). A wreath of construction paper and flattened tinsel. Snowflakes which must have been re-hung every year, as the paper was yellowed and even stained here and there. All the things which looked to be hand-made, he set aside for her to go through later, to allow her to identify which were precious, which should be hung.

The trinkets and tchotchkes were cute, reminiscent of the decades: St Nicholas with a bell, plastic Rudolph on wobbly legs, a miniature blow mold Santa, bristle brush trees. Some of the items in the box were knitted from yarn: stockings, limp stars, a Santa with spiraled arms and legs that was faintly off-putting. Why make a Santa a white collared ruff and then these octopus arms?

To each his own.

Other ornaments, glass balls and vacation souvenirs, he interspersed with some of their own on the tree, filling the higher branches at eye level so that she would see those familiar pieces amidst the ones that had meaning for him. The rest he stacked on a chair so that she could decorate the tree as well. It looked kind of lopsided, with only the white lights and a handful of ornaments, but that had been their year so far, hadn't it?

Castle shifted the first box aside and opened up the second.

More garland, some string lights, packages of fake snow-

At the bottom, though, were books.

Castle sat back against the leg of a chair and pulled the first one out, flipping it over. Black's Law Dictionary, in a beautiful leather cover, an inscription in Latin which he believed matched the one on her mother's headstone. A sense of reverence touched him as he handled the dictionary, and he couldn't quite bring himself to open it.

Next in the box was a hardback edition of a Patterson novel, but it was soothingly pristine, as if no one had cracked a single page. He resisted the impulse to toss it away, simply put it back in the box and grabbed another.

It was his. In a Hail of Bullets. His dumb smirking photo on the back, that same author photo that hung in The Old Haunt. Ouch, he looked both shallow and incompetent at the same time.

Had her mother read his books?

Castle cracked the spine and the heady scent of old books wafted up to him. But there was more, something underlying that musty paper smell that was vaguely familiar, almost sparked a memory… He tilted the book away from him and realized the front cover and some of the deckled edges were stained with coffee.

He laughed, sniffed it closer. Yeah, not just coffee he smelled, that was coffee with a splash of vanilla syrup. This was Kate's book.

He perused the front, paging through the title page and—

He had signed this book.

That was his signature.

Granted, it was ink pen, and no inscription—which he always did in a book signing because he thought it was important that those things be as personal as possible—but yes, he had signed a book that Kate had bought. And read, as the coffee stain showed, which meant it was also well-loved.

He was giddy. It was an un-looked-for Christmas present. She must have bought it at one of the many bookstores where he'd signed stock copies before an author event. She'd purposefully bought a signed copy of his first book, and that made him inordinately proud.

Although, if it was buried in a box with her mother's thing, just how long ago had she bought this?

She had bought it a before him.

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