Chapter 6: Always Tell Secrets
"Whoa…" Kate says, walking out of the bedroom.
"Wow…" Castle repeats when he reaches the door. At least fifteen magazines are open and sprawled across the countertop. Eight one foot by one foot pieces of silky fabric are covering the back of the couch. Shoes, necklaces, bracelets, books, and some more magazines are surrounding Lux and Alexis, who are both sitting on the couch in their pajamas.
After scanning and processing the room, they slowly make their ways over to the girls. Lux is tense with her knees curled up to her chest. She is facing Alexis, who has one leg crossed in front of her and the other dangling off the edge of the couch. Alexis is chatting (debatably arguing) on the phone, with someone. She stops and holds the phone away from her mouth for a second and holds the bright pink fabric up to Lux's face. "How about pink?" She considers, cocking her head to the side.
Lux uneasily questions, "Cute?"
"Yes," Kate assures.
Alexis smiles then frowns, "Maybe not." She tosses the fabric back over the side of the couch. "How about green?" Alexis throws the bright green fabric onto Lux's shoulder. She suddenly straightens and moves the phone back so she can talk into it, "Oh… Yeah hang on I'll go get the measurements." Alexis quickly hops of the couch and runs up the stairs.
"Now she looks like Ryan's daughter," Castle jokes.
"How do you think we met?" Kate throws back jokingly, as she walks to the kitchen.
Castle's face goes slack as he follows her, "That is not funny."
"You're face," Lux laughs which dies down to a smile. "Yeah, no, it was funny," She continues pulling the fabric off her shoulder.
Kate laughs, "Okay Lux, you need to go get dressed for school."
"Right," Lux says moving off the couch.
"And this is for you," Kate turns and hands Castle half of a bagel covered in cream cheese. She then bites into her own bagel.
"And this for you," Castle says handing her a to-go mug. She wipes the cream cheese with her finger and puts it in her mouth, then presses her lips to Castle's.
"You guys are disgusting," Lux whines before running up the stairs.
Kate laughs and buries her face into his chest with a giggle. She pats his chest and pulls away, "We should go."
…
"Correct me if I'm over stepping my bounds-" Castle says, as she follows Kate closely when exiting the precincts elevator.
"That's never seemed to stop you before," Kate says throwing her jacket onto the back of her desk chair.
"It's about Lux," Castle further cautions, sitting down in his chair.
Kate sits, "Castle, you're not stepping on my toes when it comes to Lux, she lives in your loft, with your family, she's not out of bounds."
Castle cautiously sits down in his chair, "First off, the loft is our loft, since your apartment resembles a ghost town an-"
"You still have your apartment," Ryan interrupts, rolling his chair up to Beckett's desk. They both turn to him with scolding glares. They quickly turn back to each other ignoring him.
"Second off, in exactly three months and nine days, my family is your family and vice versa," Castle continues.
"Speaking of, a bridal shop exploded in our loft."
Castle ignores the comment, to avoid being side tracked, "Lastly, it's about Lux's school."
"What's wrong with Lux's school?" Ryan asks.
Kate looks at him then back to Castle, "The loft needs to change from being a bouquet shop for Fern," she takes a deep breath, "and I've tried to get her into a new school, but her track record is bad," Kate runs her fingers through her hair, "Her grades, her attendance, everything is really bad."
"I'm sure Alexis will clean up the loft before Fern comes and-"
Ryan cuts in, "Who's Fern?"
They both turn to him. Castle replies, "Lux's social worker, she's coming for a home inspection tomorrow."
Beckett squints and nearly cuts Castle off by asking, "Do you need something, Ryan?"
He hands her a folder, "Ballistics came back on the bullet with a match."
…
When Beckett and Castle walk in the front door, they both exhale. Not only has Alexis cleaned up all the wedding stuff, the loft is spotless, almost to an abandoned level.
"Oh," Kate breathes in, "wow."
"It's really clean," Castle stuns. Kate nods, beaming with a huge smile.
She steps closer to the stairs and chimes, "Alexis?"
Shortly after, Alexis comes down the stairs, in a somewhat skipping manner. Her hair is in a messy bun that bounces with every step. "Does it look good?" she asks as she skips past Kate, who is peering into Castle's office, and goes to hug her father.
Kate turns to the two of them, "I have never seen the place this clean."
At the same time, Alexis looks at Castle and whispers, "I need to show you something later," then she turns and starts walking over to Kate, "Well normally I don't clean this much, but I know Fern is coming so-"
"It's amazing," Kate stops her, "thank you, Alexis." She smiles touching Alexis' shoulder. They both turn to the sound of Castle's phone ringing.
He quickly fumbles the phone out of his pocket and answers it, "Hello…Yes this is him… Sophomore… That's great thank you!" He hangs up the phone shortly after. Kate and Alexis inch closer wondering what the phone call was about.
Kate's eyebrows furrow, "Who was that?"
"Marlowe Prep, they're going to let Lux start next week."
"Dad," Alexis half pleads and half scolds, walking into the living room.
"Castle," Kate says snapping his attention back to her, "You can't just do that."
"What?" He innocently defends.
"You can't just change Lux's school without-."
"I thought you wanted her to be-"
"She was going to say without asking me. How could you do that without even asking me?" Castle and Kate turn to Lux, who is frozen in the doorway.
"Lux," Kate breathes.
Lux suddenly sets on fire, "School is the only time I ever get to see Natasha now that she back at Sunnyvale." Kate and Castle stand there, unsure what to say, so Lux starts up the stairs, "Whatever I'm going to my room."
Kate glances at Castle, before quickly running up the stairs after Lux. Castle huffs and turns to Alexis, who is giving him a disappointed pout.
"I should go…" he stumbles pointing up the stairs, where Kate and Lux just disappeared to.
Alexis' voice stops him, "Dad, I really need to show you something."
"Sure," he says, walking over to her and leaning over the back of the couch. Alexis pulls her phone out of her pocket and then holds it out in front of her, so her dad can read the article.
The words spread across the bright screen catch him off guard. He looks at Alexis and gestures to the phone, "Can I?" Alexis nods once and lets him take it. As he reads, his face softens with shock.
After staring at him for a second, giving him time to read, Alexis speaks, "Does Beckett know?"
"No… I don't think so."
"How are you going to tell her?"
"I don't know if you noticed, but she isn't exactly happy with me right now."
Alexis counters, "Isn't not telling her things what got you here?"
…
Kate quietly walks into the room, slowly shutting the door behind her, and begins changing in front of the dresser. If he doesn't talk, he has a feeling, this will be an excruciatingly silent night. "Kate…"
"Castle…" she warns.
He stays quiet for a short moment before pushing forward, "I'm sorry."
"She's fine," Kate says, still facing the dresser.
"I'm not apologizing to her," This makes her turn and glare at him, and turn back to the dresser. "I meant, that's not who I'm apologizing to right now. I'm sorry I over stepped."
She quickly closes her jewelry box and sits on the edge of the bed next to him. She doesn't cuddle into him, but he can feel her relax. She doesn't look at him when she says, "I meant it."
He looks at her, as if he is surprised to hear her voice, "What?"
"I meant it when I said you don't have bounds with Lux."
"So I crossed the imaginary line in the sand?"
He feels her tensing up again, when she turns to him, "No, Castle you just need to tell me when you make decisions for me, for Lux." She stands and pulls on a new shirt. She takes a beat of silence. "I'm going to go get some water."
"Kate…" After a second of silence he questions if, as she walked out of the room she didn't hear him or if she was ignoring him, but then the sound of glass breaking comes from outside the door, "Beckett?" He says louder and more concerned, quickly pushing off the blankets and walking into the living room.
His eyes are drawn to Lux, who is sitting on the couch, watching Beckett carefully. He turns to Beckett, who is squeezing the back of the couch in her hands, her jaw is tight, in fact her entire posture is rigid. He looks at the TV, already knowing what he's going to see. The news broadcasts, "It's been confirmed that, New York Senator Bracken will be running for the next presidential election." He realizes that a minute ago that was a small fight, not even a battle, but this Beckett is a soldier ready for war and that scares him.
Lux turns to Castle, "What's up with her?"
"She's not the biggest fan of Senator Bracken," he says wondering when that discussion will come up.
She rolls her eyes and points at the broken glass on the floor a couple feet away, muttering, "Yeah, I got that." Okay so maybe he hasn't completely won her over. He quickly goes over and tries to clean the shattered glass and water off the floor.
After the story coverage is over Kate softens a tad. "Here Lux you can have that back," Kate says handing the remote back to Lux.
He quickly looks over as he is throwing the glass in the garbage, "I wanted to tell you."
"Castle," she nicely hints, nodding towards Lux.
"Right," he says glancing at Lux. He promptly puts away the paper towels and retreats back to the bedroom. Kate sits on the bed as he looms over her from across the room. "I was hoping to tell you," he says.
"How long have you known?" She asks.
"Two hours, at most," He replies, lying down on the bed.
She relaxes from his response and lies down next to him, slowly cuddling up next to him, "I can't sit and around and watch my mother's murderer become president." He can't see her face, but he can feel her face warming up and her sucking in her cheeks, trying not to cry. He can't imagine watching his mother die and dealing with all the further repercussions: her father, Lux, Montgomery, and everything else he'd rather not think about. Better yet he can't imagine hiding it all behind a wall and putting on a brave face. The woman has more strength than she'll ever know what to do with.
…
Though the afternoon light is seeping through the windows, Castle's one thing to do for the day has made no progress. Earlier when he learned that Beckett only had to go to the precinct to wrap up the case and do paperwork, he decided to stay home and work on his book, but he's been staring at a blank page for the last hour.
He is almost relieved when he hears a pristine knock on the door. He gets up curiously and when he slowly opens the door, only to come face to face with an unfamiliar one. "Hello Mr. Castle."
"I'm sorry who are you?"
"Fern… the social worker," She says extending her hand out.
"Of course, come in," he says opening the door wider to welcome her. "Kate won't be back for another," he pause to look down at his watch and scrunches his face, "…fifteen minutes? What did I do with my day?"
"That's okay. This loft is amazing," She smiles at him, "May I ask how long this has been Mrs. Beckett's official residence."
"Uh… well, she has her own apartment-"
"She doesn't live here?"
"She does she just hasn't gotten rid of her apartment yet," he quickly responds, leave it to him to screw this up, so fast.
"Oh," Fern says as if to correct herself, but Castle is not completely reassured.
He shakes the feeling off, "Here sit. Do you want something to drink?"
Fern sits at one of the island chairs. "Water would be great," after a beat she questions, "Is Lux here?"
"No," Castle says turning his head to the side. "Is that okay?"He asks as he places the water in front of her.
"Oh, yes don't worry. I would only need her here if I needed to immediately remove her from Mrs. Beckett's custody and assuming you're not hiding a dead body in one of the bedrooms, that is not going to be a problem."
Castle grins, "Good, by the way she's out with friends."
"Can I take a look around?"
"Yeah, of course," Castle says slightly straightening up.
As soon as Fern disappears upstairs, Kate comes through the door. She greets Castle with a kiss and after a second he pulls away, "Fern's here."
Her eyes widen, "Fern's here?"
As if on cue Fern slowly walks down the stairs. When she sees Kate she walks over to her, "Hello Mrs. Beckett."
Kate shakes hands with the women, "Hi, nice to meet you, Fern."
When Fern turns her head to look around, Castle whispers to Kate, "You weren't that nice, when I first met you," which is returned with a swift elbow jab in the stomach. "Or now," he lets out.
After doing so Fern smiles and asks, "Where is your guys' room?"
Beckett points over Fern's shoulder, "Right behind you." Fern smiles and turns around to go into the bedroom behind her."
Kate whispers, "Has it been going okay?"
"Great," Castle says. Kate smiles, but when she glances at the bedroom he can see her confidence melting. He rubs her shoulders, "Your fine, Lux is fine." She pulls away to look at him. Something about what he said rubbed her the wrong way.
Before she can figure out what it is Fern walks over to them and say, "Okay, everything looks good. Now, I just need to ask you some questions."
"We can sit on the couch," Kate points and with a reassuring nod from Fern they walk over to the living room.
When everyone is settled, Fern starts, "Okay so first off, the house looks great and I see Lux has her own room."
Castle smirks, "I'm going to take a wild guess and say she wouldn't have been, so keen on sharing a room with Alexis."
"Alexis is?"
"His daughter," Kate says.
"Does Lux get along with her?"
Kate feels a ping defensive again, but answers kindly, "Actually, she seems to be the most comfortable with her."
"Does she seem to be adjusting well?"
"She seems good, but it can get a bit…" Kate stops short.
"Frustrating," Fern fills in. Kate squints, which Fern must assume as affirmation because she continues, "That's normal. Look, Lux has been in seven different foster homes. I see it a lot with the older kids that they keep people at a distance so they won't get hurt."
Kate questions, "How do we make her feel stable?"
"Don't push, but make sure she knows she can depend on you guys. Everything is looking good, but I'd like you to think about a couple of things for the next time I visit, like 'What are your plans for Lux?'
"Plans?" Castle asks.
"Like does she still want to get emancipated or are you thinking about adopting her?"
Castle's eyebrows quirk, "Adopt her? Isn't she in Beckett's custody?"
"Technically she's in the state's custody, but since she didn't sign all her rights away," Ferns stops herself, since she seems to be losing them, and takes a deep breath. "Mrs. Beckett is basically acting as a foster parent… and Mr. Castle the question was directed more towards you."
Kate glances at Castle, and worries that he got more Beckett then he bargained for. She turns back to Fern and quickly asks, "What else should we be thinking about?"
"Try to keep her included, so she doesn't feel like she is falling through the cracks." Fern stands up, so Castle and Kate follow. "But, other than that everything seems good." She turns and starts to walk away, but then spins back around, "Mrs. Beckett?"
Kate looks up at the sound of her name, "Yes?"
"Eventually, I need to either see your apartment as well or you can change your official residence to here," Fern comments.
"Thank you," Kate says opening the door.
"I'll see you in a couple of months," Fern smiles one last time at them before walking out the door.
Once the door shuts, Castle smiles at Kate, "You're good!"
Kate's smile slowly fades, as he walks into the kitchen to get some wine. She thinks to herself 'I'm good.'