We never learned exactly what Alexis was majoring in at Columbia on the show, so I took the liberty of assigning her a major. I kept in mind the classes we know she was interested in, and her internship with Lanie, and her bachelor's degree is in a real field of study. I'd like to say thank you to Nkeagle for helping me out with this part of the story. Also, studies have shown that people who major in pre-law or political science actually do the worst on their LSAT exams, which is why I did not make one of those Alexis's major. And Hayley, and Alexis working at the P.I. office, never happened in this story, so that's why those two things don't get any mention. On to the chapter now, and thank you all for reading, following, favoriting, and reviewing.
What if I just don't come anywhere near this room?" Kate suggested.
"Paint fumes and pregnant women are a major no-no," Rick said firmly.
From her perch on a stepladder taping the window frames, Alexis looked over her shoulder at her parents. "Practicing your 'no-no's already?" she asked with a grin. "The baby is half you, Dad, so that's probably a good idea."
"You know what else is a good idea? You not breathing paint fumes, Kate," Rick said, turning his attention back to his wife.
Kate sighed. "I just hate that I can't help with this part," she said. "I understand why I can't, but I hate that I can't. I'm her mom. This is supposed to be part of what I do."
"The painting is the only thing you won't be able to be a part of," Rick said. "And Alexis and I can get it done in a few hours, get the smell out in a few more hours, and while we're doing this, you can go to your office and finish working on your platform."
They had set up Kate's campaign office in Rick's old P.I. office shortly after New Year's Day. Now that it was the middle of the month, and the primary was in April, Kate had begun work in earnest on her platform—the reasons she was running, and what she intended to do if she was elected. She was getting requests for interviews from virtually every media outlet—print, TV, and online—in New York City, but she had insisted on getting her platform down on paper before having a meet-and-greet with the press.
"All right," Kate finally agreed. Alexis had finished taping the windows and climbed down from her stepladder, crossing the empty room to give Kate a big hug. "You'll call the second I can come back?"
"Yes," Rick promised.
"Thank you for helping your dad with this," Kate said, turning her attention to Alexis.
"Anything for my little sister," Alexis replied. She hugged Kate, kissed her cheek, then gently touched Kate's baby bump quickly. "Dad and I are painting your walls today, little sister," she addressed the baby. "You're gonna love it when we're through."
"The paint color is called She Loves Pink. She's got to love it," Rick quipped.
"I'll leave you guys to it, then," Kate said. "At least I'm used to paperwork after all my years at the precinct."
"No commentary on me never helping with the paperwork?" Rick asked.
"Not when you're getting ready to paint our daughter's nursery walls," Kate replied. "Maybe later, though." They kissed, and then Kate retrieved her laptop from the office and her purse from her and Rick's bedroom, shouted a farewell, and left.
Once they heard the front door close behind Kate, Rick pried the lids off the cans of paint and hunkered down to begin stirring one, while Alexis stirred the other. "This is a pretty shade of pink," Alexis said. "Not too light and not too dark. Right in the middle. Kind of like an Easter egg. I think she will love it. The baby, I mean. Have you and Kate started thinking seriously about names yet?"
"Yes," Rick replied. Despite the plastic drop cloths all over the floor, he carefully poured the paint into a pan, then handed Alexis a roller. "Pick a wall, any wall," he said, gesturing to the bare white walls.
Alexis smiled as she watched her father pick up a small paintbrush and the can of paint whose major contents he had just poured into the paint pan for her to use. "Is that your way of saying you're not revealing the name until she's born?" she asked as she coated the roller with She Loves Pink paint and then began applying it to the wall opposite the one her dad was working on.
"We wanted to wait until she's here to tell everybody at the same time like we did telling you she's on the way," Rick said as he dipped his paintbrush into the can. He paused, then looked over his shoulder and across the room at Alexis. "Does that bother you?"
Alexis met her father's gaze. "Why would it bother me?" she asked. "You and Kate are her parents. It's your decision. Besides, if I don't know the name, then I can't possibly slip up and accidentally reveal it to anyone else."
"Lanie?" Rick asked knowingly.
"And Gram," Alexis replied. "Jenny too, for that matter. I, personally, don't think a newborn baby needs personalized clothes and toy boxes, but that is apparently an opinion only I hold."
"Not just you," Rick said. He and Alexis began painting as they continued talking. "Kate and I don't want anything with her name on it, actually, at least not that she'll be wearing in public."
Alexis nodded sagely. "Stranger danger is even more dangerous now than it was when I was growing up," she reflected. "That's a wise decision on your parts...but then, I wouldn't expect anything less from you and Kate. She sure is lucky. She won the parent lottery."
"Does it bother you? That you're not going to be my only child, my only daughter, anymore?" Rick blurted out.
Alexis smoothed the roller over the section of wall she'd been working on, then stopped painting entirely and turned to face her father, who had also stopped painting entirely. "No," she said honestly. She walked across the room and put a hand on her father's shoulder. "She's going to get to grow up with the two greatest parents in the world. And at the risk of sounding selfish, I had something she'll never have. I had you all to myself. I didn't have to share you with her, or with Kate, or with anyone. But I love it for her that she gets to have you and Kate right from the start. I know that I wasn't always very gracious about sharing you with Kate, but I think I'm better now. At least, I hope I'm better now."
"You are," Rick assured her. "You definitely are. Sharing isn't something that comes naturally to either one of us. But I'm learning...you know, how to share you, with Esposito. At least, I'm really trying."
"I know you are," Alexis assured him. "And I remember how difficult it was for me at first when Kate came into our lives, and I first realized exactly how important she was to you and how much you loved her, which was way before you got together. I get what you're going through, because I've been there myself, Dad."
"I could use some of your grace in adjusting to this," Rick admitted.
"Sharing me with Javier, or the fact that it's Javier you're sharing me with?" Alexis asked.
"Both," Rick said with a rueful smile. "I want you to be happy, pumpkin. And I want you to have what I have with Kate."
"I am happy, and Javier and I do have what you and Kate have," Alexis said. "But we're not in any rush. We're not moving in together like Lanie and Alan, and we're not running out and getting married tomorrow."
"But someday?" Rick asked.
"I sure hope so," Alexis replied honestly.
"I guess I thought it would take you longer to find it," Rick mused. "I don't know why I thought that, though. You've always been smarter than me."
Alexis smiled at her dad. "I am definitely my father's daughter, because I know the best thing that ever happened to me, and I'm going to hold onto him for the rest of my life," Alexis said. "Now, we'd better get back to painting, or else this room won't be done and aired out by the end of the day, and we can't have that, for my little sister or for Kate."
"You know, Sweetpea's very blessed and lucky in another way," Rick said.
"What way is that?" Alexis asked.
"She's also going to have the best big sister in the world," Rick replied with a proud smile.
Alexis went and set her roller back in the paint pan, then crossed the room again to hug her father. Rick hugged her with one arm while he set his paintbrush back in the can before wrapping Alexis in his embrace. "I love you, Dad," Alexis said.
"I love you too, Alexis," Rick replied.
Alexis released her dad and stepped back. "Now, we have a room to paint, so let's get to it," she said.
They worked steadily, and finished in about three hours. Rick insisted on another three hours to get the fumes out of the loft before he called Kate with the all clear.
After they finished cleaning up the last of the drop cloths and rinsing out the paintbrushes and pan, they heard Kate's key in the front door. "I'm home!" she announced.
Rick greeted her with a kiss, then bent to kiss her baby bump. "Sweetpea behave herself?" he asked.
"She's a future kickboxer, I swear," Kate said, and motherly wonder and pride already suffused her voice. "But I did manage to get a complete first draft done. Will you look it over later?"
"Of course," Rick replied. "And now..." He put his hand over her eyes.
"Really?" she asked, but she was amused. "You do realize I know what the color looks like, since I was there when we bought the paint?"
"But you haven't seen it on the walls yet. It's different when it's on a paint sample chip or a computer screen," Rick said. "And you'll get to take in the whole room this way." With his hand over her eyes, he carefully put his other hand on her elbow and steered her toward the nursery.
Alexis was waiting in the nursery, by the windows. Rick steered Kate into the room. "Here it is," he announced, taking his hand away from her eyes.
Kate opened her eyes and took in the room, and her hand flew to her mouth. The walls were the ideal medium shade of pink—not so light as to be almost white, but not so dark as to be almost red. Alexis had turned the ceiling light on since it was dark outside now, and since she and Rick had already picked out nursery furniture online, Kate was mentally picturing where the crib would go, on the wall furthest away from the window, and the dresser, and the changing table, and this giant cube-shaped toy box that they were going to have painted in pink and white to look like an alphabet block.
For an instant, Kate thought about how many versions of this room there would be in the years and decades ahead, remembering her own changing bedroom growing up, as Lily grew and changed, and the stacking rings and bouncy seat would give way to dolls and stuffed animals, or toys and stuffed animals, to posters of Teen Beat pinup boys and rock stars on these same walls in another fourteen or fifteen years.
Lily...her and Rick's daughter...would live and play and sleep in this room. From the first night they brought her home from the hospital, this space would be hers.
There would be tea parties and bedtime stories and maybe even a heavy bag that Lily would kickbox until it was flat in this room.
And at the beginning, when she wasn't so new that she needed to sleep in her bassinet in Kate and Rick's bedroom so they could tend to her needs immediately, Lily would be in this room. Lily would enter the world tiny and totally dependent on Kate and Rick for everything she needed and wanted, and they would be there to provide all of those needs and wants, from the first breath Lily took outside the womb.
But the day would come when Lily would move to this room. And the day would also come that the crib would eventually give way to a toddler bed, which would then give way to a twin bed, and maybe eventually to a four-poster or a canopy bed, depending on Lily's tastes in furniture. This room would reflect Lily's personality, and as she got older, it would be her private space, and her safe haven from the world outside.
Kate had only ever felt this overwhelmed twice before: when she was waiting for Rick to answer the front door the night she came to him, after four years and almost dying twice, and telling him she just wanted him; and when she was standing with her arm through her father's, nosegay of roses in her other hand, looking at Rick waiting at the end of the makeshift aisle for her.
Both of those times, she knew that her whole life would be irrevocably changed in the next moment.
Looking at this room, with Alexis smiling from beside the window, Rick with his arm around her waist, looking anxious now because she hadn't said anything yet, and Lily kicking her from the inside as if she sensed Kate's feelings and that she, Lily, approved of the paint on her new bedroom walls, and almost assuring Kate that everything would be just as wonderful as it was those first two times Kate had taken that leap of faith, Kate knew that everything about this, all of it, was right, it was meant to be. She was meant to be married to Rick, she was meant to have children with Rick, and their first child, their daughter, was meant to live in this room.
"Kate, if you don't like it, we'll go right back to the paint store first thing in the morning and get whatever shade of pink you want," Rick said then. "Or if you've changed your mind about pink, we'll get whatever color you think-" He was cut off when Kate framed his face in her hands and kissed him soundly but chastely, since Alexis was standing at the other end of the room.
"It's exactly right," Kate said softly when she broke the kiss, resting her forehead against Rick's for a moment. "Exactly right. This is our daughter's room, Rick."
"Now all you have to do is get all the furniture in here and then clothes and diapers and toys and, oh, where are you guys on the pacifier thing again? Yay or nay?" Alexis asked.
"And who are you asking for, Lanie again?" Kate inquired, her eyes twinkling merrily. "I promise, we will fill out a registry online tomorrow for the baby shower. In fact, I will text Lanie, and Jenny, and Martha, and Victoria myself and let them know, so they stop bothering you with it."
"Kate, you're the best," Alexis replied.
"You have more important things to worry about right now than pacifiers," Kate said. "And for the record, we're willing to try pacifiers, but if the baby doesn't go for them, we're certainly not going to force them on her. So we don't need a whole lot of them."
"I'll let you tell Lanie and the others that," Alexis said.
"They won't mess with pregnant Beckett," Kate said.
"Well, how about some dinner?" Rick suggested. "What do you feel like?"
"Chinese?" Kate suggested.
"Fine by me," Alexis said.
"You don't have plans with Javi tonight?" Kate asked.
"They have a case," Alexis replied. "I have my last final next week anyway, so I'm going to start studying for that after dinner."
Rick smiled as he watched the easy rapport between Alexis and Kate as they discussed exactly what they wanted for dinner, Alexis's last undergrad final, and her graduation. "They aren't going to have a separate portion where they give out the honors at my graduation since it's happening in February," she said, "but it'll be on my diploma and my transcript, and I'll be listed in the graduation program in May."
"How many honors are we talking about here?" Rick asked.
Alexis paused. "One that's definite, one that's highly probable, and one that's strongly possible," she said. "And that's all I'm saying until graduation on February 8."
"Dean's List! That's gotta be one of them," Rick said.
"Daaadd," Alexis said warningly.
Lily started kickboxing Kate's insides again. "Okay, let's go order a whole lot of Chinese food, because Sweetpea and I are both famished, and then we'll talk about non-graduation-related topics," Kate said.
"All right," Rick grumbled. "I am completely outnumbered here by all you women."
"And you love it," Kate said knowingly.
"You bet I do," Rick said with a smile.
"I'll go call in our order!" Alexis exclaimed, and she left the nursery to make the call.
After Alexis had left the room, Kate said, "Does it seem at all strange to you to be starting all over again? Your firstborn is about to graduate from college and she's going to law school in the fall, and by the time Alexis starts law school, Sweetpea will be three months old."
"Strange? No," Rick said. "Incredible, because not only do I get to be a dad again, I get to be a dad with you as the mom of my kid right from the start." He paused before continuing, "Although I don't want a 24-year age difference between Sweetpea and her little brother or sister."
"Neither do I," Kate said. "I'm not looking to make the Guinness Book of World Records, or Ripley's Believe It or Not! I think three years is a good age difference, hypothetically. She'll be potty trained, she'll be in her first year of preschool, she'll be able to understand and maybe help out a little bit with simple things. Of course, I'm sure she'll also be jealous. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
"You're already thinking about the next kid?" Rick asked, amazed.
"You did promise me a mini-Castle," Kate reminded him.
"I'll do my best," Rick promised seriously.
"I keep picturing her," Kate said, smoothing her sweater over her baby bump. "Her in this room...her with you...with both of us… She's going to be amazing."
"Of course she will," Rick replied. "She's going to take after her mother."
Alexis interrupted them kissing in the middle of the nursery several minutes later to tell them that dinner had arrived. Before leaving the nursery, Rick and Kate both looked around at the room. "She's going to live here and sleep here and grow up here," Kate said, her voice filled with awe.
"Yeah, she is," Rick said, the same awe in his voice. He pressed a kiss to Kate's temple before they went to join Alexis for dinner.
"Do you see her yet?" Javi asked everyone, "everyone" consisting of Martha, Castle, and Beckett. Jim was sitting in the faculty section but would be meeting them after the graduation ceremony was over, and Alexis hadn't been able to get tickets for the others, much to her regret, even though undergrads were limited to a total of four tickets, and the rest of their family of friends had all assured her that they understood, and Kevin and Lanie were working anyway.
Rick had the video camera going and he panned across the crowd. "Not yet, but I see movement on stage, so I think they're getting ready to march onto the stage," he said.
Kate had the binoculars that Alexis had bought Rick after he was sidelined with a bum knee when he tried to show off too much on their first ski trip together, which were part of the best birthday gift of Rick's life, and she too was scanning the crowd.
Martha had Alexis's binoculars and was also crowd-scanning.
Finally, the small band struck up "Pomp and Circumstance," and the graduates, decked out in their sky blue caps and gowns, slowly marched across the stage to take their seats.
"There she is!" Javi exclaimed.
Rick, Kate, and Martha were all looking through their various devices. "Where?" they asked almost in unison.
"The seventh student in the front row," Javi said. "See her?"
"I see her!" Rick exclaimed, aiming the camera right at her.
"Me too!" Kate added.
"Look at her," Martha said proudly.
Rick, Kate, Martha, and Javi were seated in the middle of the third row—Alexis had camped out overnight with a couple of her classmate friends to get tickets as soon as they were available to the undergrads—so Alexis knew where to look for them. She spotted her dad first, video camera to his eye, and she could see his smile from her seat. Kate was seated next to him, the binoculars now in her rapidly shrinking lap, and she gave Alexis a proud smile and a thumbs up. Alexis smiled back at Kate and waved. Gram was next to Kate, and Alexis could see Gram's misty eyes from here. She met her grandmother's gaze and beamed at her.
And seated next to Martha, dressed in a suit and tie and beaming proudly, was Javier. Alexis caught his eye and smiled the smile she reserved for him alone. He smiled back at her and exaggeratedly mouthed, "I'm so proud of you!" which made Alexis's smile grow wider.
Alexis then scanned the faculty section and she spotted Jim Beckett right before he spotted her. He gave her a small wave, and she nodded at him in acknowledgement, smiling at him as he smiled at her.
They sat through the speeches, and then all of the graduates from Alexis's particular school were called up to shake hands with their dean and receive their diplomas. When her name was called, Alexis crossed the stage, and after shaking hands with the dean and accepting her diploma, she flipped the tassel on her cap to the other side to signify that she had graduated, and she looked to the quartet in the third row, all of whom were on their feet. Martha was crying, Kate was applauding and cheering with a big smile on her face, Rick was filming, also with a big smile on his face, and Javier was applauding until he saw Alexis looking, and then he let out a piercing whistle before giving her a wink and a big grin. Alexis held her diploma aloft in triumph before returning to her seat.
When the caps had been tossed and the graduation ceremony was over, they all moved through the crush of people until they finally found each other. "Dad! Kate! Gram! Javier!" Alexis shouted through the buzz of conversations.
Clutching her diploma tightly, Alexis flew at her father, who had already handed the video camera off to Kate. Father and daughter embraced, and then Alexis hugged Kate, then Martha, and then Javier, who literally picked her up off her feet and whirled her around.
"All right, let's see that diploma!" Rick exclaimed.
Alexis flipped the cover open and held her diploma so that everyone could read it.
"Dean's List! I knew it!" Rick crowed. But then he was floored. "Alexis..." He looked at his daughter. "Summa cum laude?"
"Dean's List was the definite one," Alexis replied. "Summa cum laude was the probable."
"Which would make Phi Beta Kappa the possible," Kate said.
"A hat trick!" Javier exclaimed excitedly. Alexis looked at him blankly. "Hockey term. Means you score three goals in a game," he explained.
"Oh, Alexis, Phi Beta Kappa! That's wonderful!" Martha exclaimed.
"And a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, with a spot in Columbia University Law School this fall," Kate said.
"Way to go, Lex. I am so proud of you," Javier said, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
"We're all proud of you, Alexis," Rick said. "So very proud."
Jim Beckett finally joined them then, having been detained by a few of his colleagues and students. "Congratulations, Alexis," he said.
Alexis hugged Jim. "Thank you, Jim," she replied.
After almost every possible combination of pictures had been taken—Alexis with just Rick, just Kate, just Martha, just Jim, and just Javier; Alexis with Rick and Kate; Alexis with Rick, Kate, and Martha; Alexis with Kate and Martha; Alexis with Rick, Kate, Martha, and Jim—they adjourned to the loft for cake and Alexis's graduation gifts.
Rick and Kate's gift was a new laptop. Jim's gift was a set of the Examples and Explanations study supplements to several first-year law school classes, including Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, and Torts. Martha gave Alexis four gift cards, insisting that three were for "lawyer-type" clothes and one was for fun. And Javier gave Alexis a professional leather portfolio for storing papers.
Alexis received congratulatory phone calls from Victoria Gates, Jenny and Sarah Grace, who also said hello for Nick, and Alan, and quick congratulatory texts from Lanie and Kevin, both of whom promised to follow up with her later about graduation. They would have more gifts for her—a gift card to Starbucks from the Ryans, a nice pen from Gates, and a gavel from Lanie and Alan—and more good wishes.
Later on, Jim and Martha were in the living room chairs and Alexis and Javier were sitting on the couch as they all talked quietly, while Rick and Kate were finishing up in the kitchen. Kate had just turned on the dishwasher after Rick covered what was left of the cake, and Rick watched Alexis laugh at something Javier said before he sneaked a kiss from her. Rick sighed.
Kate was about to go to Rick when she saw her dad get up, ostensibly to get another cup of coffee, since he was carrying his coffee mug. But he detoured past the coffee pot directly to Rick. "It helps when you know your daughter is in love with a good man," Jim said. "At least, it helped me. Of course, Katie and I had a more difficult path than you and Alexis. But when you love your daughter as much as I do, and as much as you do, it's not easy to realize that you're not the number-one man in her life anymore."
"How did you do it, Jim?" Rick asked, turning to face his father-in-law.
"I have to say, you made it easy for me, Rick," Jim replied.
"I did?" Rick asked, surprised.
"Oh, I didn't meet you for three years, but I heard chapter and verse about you from Katie in those three years before you and I met," Jim replied. "Katie talked about you all the time. And when the look in her eyes when she talked about you changed from annoyed and exasperated to something softer, something more emotional, I knew that it was going to be you that my daughter would love for the rest of her life. That's why it was so important to me to know where you stood. Do you remember the first time we met, Rick? What I asked you?"
"That if I cared about Kate, I wouldn't let her lose another twelve years of her life to her mother's murder," Rick replied.
"I had just formally, officially met you five minutes before. Did you ever wonder why I asked that of you immediately after officially meeting you? Did it occur to you that it wasn't just about the inherent danger involved in the investigation?" Jim asked. The look on Rick's face said that it hadn't occurred to him until this moment. "I asked that of you because I knew, Rick. I knew my daughter, even with all the time that we lost, and I knew you were it for her. And in those five minutes, you proved to me that you felt the same way about Katie that I knew she felt about you. I phrased it as an 'if' so as not to scare you off in case I turned out to be wrong about you, but deep down, I knew I wasn't wrong about you. I knew that you would go to the ends of the earth for my daughter. And no father can wish or ask for any more than that for his daughter."
Rick looked at Alexis and Javier, their heads bent together, as Martha smiled at them from her chair.
"It gets easier, right?" Rick asked Jim.
"It does get easier," Jim promised, clapping Rick on the back.
"Thank you, Jim," Rick said, "for trusting me with your daughter's heart, and her happiness, and for helping me through my own process of trusting Esposito with my daughter's heart, and her happiness."
Jim smiled. "You're welcome," he said before heading to get his coffee.
Kate came up behind Rick then and wrapped her arms around his torso, resting her cheek against his. "Alexis is really happy," she said.
"It's been a great day," Rick replied.
"Yes, it has," Kate agreed. "One of the best days."
"But Alexis is not just happy because she got her bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies today," Rick said as he turned into Kate's waiting arms. "That's a big part of it, for today, but being with Esposito makes Alexis happy."
"And being with Alexis makes Javi happy, happier than I've ever seen him, and I've known him longer than you have," Kate replied.
"When we were painting Sweetpea's nursery, Alexis said that they have what you and I have, but they're not in any rush. They're not going to be moving in together like Lanie and Alan, and they're not going to run out and get married tomorrow."
"Which would imply that they're going to get married someday," Kate mused. She watched Rick carefully, intently, waiting for some kind of tic, jaw twitch, some sort of negative reaction. But there was none, and she silently thanked her father, who had rejoined Martha, Alexis, and Javi in the living room.
"I just want Alexis to be happy, and she is," he said. "And Esposito is a good man. I'm still adjusting to their relationship, but I just want her to be happy." Standing there, holding each other, Kate was close enough to Rick that he could feel the baby kick his belly through hers then. "Can we keep her from dating until she's 30?" he asked hopefully as they both looked down at Kate's baby bump.
"Probably not," Kate said. "But we can keep her from dating until she's sixteen."
"Promise?" Rick asked hopefully.
"I promise," Kate replied, smoothing a hand through his hair.
