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It was a bright and sunny late July Saturday in New York City, promising to be hot and humid, but, while Lily spent the day being doted on by her besotted grandparents, her parents, big sister, and most of the rest of her extended family were celebrating Lanie and Alan's upcoming wedding at Coney Island and Luna Park.

Alexis rode with Javier, and everyone else—Kevin and Jenny; Gates and her husband Gerald; Lanie and Alan; Alan's parents, sister, and brother-in-law; and Lanie's parents—would meet there.

Martha and Jim were eager to have a whole day with Lily, and Kate and Rick said their goodbyes and promised to check on Lily a few times throughout the day. Jim was holding Lily and said, "Tell your parents that we'll be just fine, Lily Jo."

"Well, we'll call anyway," Kate said.

The drive to Coney Island was mostly silent. Rick didn't push Kate, but when they parked the car, he turned off the ignition and turned to face her. "Talk to me, Kate," he said gently, encouragingly.

Kate took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "I just...I haven't been here since the day of my mom's funeral. And we just walked on the beach then, Dad and me. It was January, the place was deserted. That certainly won't be the case today." They could hear the screams from people on the roller coasters, the wheezing of the calliope from the carousel, the high-energy buzz of a Saturday summer crowd beginning to gather at Luna Park for the rides, games, and food. "This is Lanie and Alan's day. I can do this. You're here, and I can do anything with you by my side."

Rick smiled, reached across the console for her hand, brought it to his lips, and gently kissed it. "If there comes a point where it gets to be too much for you, all you have to do is say the word, Kate, and we'll leave."

"I really hope it doesn't come to that," Kate replied. "This is supposed to be a fun, great day for all of us, celebrating Lanie and Alan's upcoming wedding. It's in a couple of weeks."

"Alan and I had our last fittings yesterday," Rick replied.

"Lanie and I have ours next week," Kate said. "Now, we're supposed to meet the others on the boardwalk, so we'd better get going." She opened her car door, and Rick opened his, and they strolled to the boardwalk hand in hand to meet the others in front of the famous Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs on the boardwalk.

Lanie and Alan were already there, along with Alexis, Javier, Kevin, and Jenny. Javi was razzing Kevin because Kevin was wearing a fanny pack. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Kevin said. "When you need sunscreen, or lose your sunglasses on a roller coaster later, Javi, don't come crying to me."

"Play nicely, boys," Kate mock scolded by way of greeting.

"Yes, Mom," Javi and Kevin replied in unison, followed by laughter.

"Kate! Castle!" Lanie called. "You remember my dad."

"Of course," Kate said. "It's good to see you again, Dr. Parish." She reached out to shake his hand.

Dr. Walter Parish smiled warmly and shook Kate's hand. "It's nice to see you again, De—no, wait, Lanie told me that you're not with the NYPD anymore. You're running for City Council, and you have a beautiful baby girl. She showed me pictures, and your daughter really is beautiful."

"Thank you," Kate replied. "And you remember my husband, Richard Castle."

"The writer," Lanie's father said as he shook Rick's hand. "It's nice to see you again, too."

"Likewise, Dr. Parish," Rick replied. "And where's your lovely wife?" Too late, he saw Alan's frantic look and totally unsubtle signal not to mention Lanie's mother.

"She doesn't think this is an appropriate venue for the party, and she's not happy that I'm not having a traditional bridal shower, so she decided not to come up today," Lanie said.

Rick inwardly winced. "I'm so sorry, Lanie," he said.

"I expected it," Lanie said. She was standing between her father and Alan, and she wrapped her arms around her father's waist and hugged him now. "I've got my dad here, though."

"I've never been to Coney Island, or to Luna Park," Walter Parish replied. "I'm excited. And they don't have Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs back home, but you know I love a good hot dog."

"Drenched with everything," Lanie said fondly as her father hugged her back.

"Rick, Kate, these are my parents, Dave and Sue Masters, and my sister and brother-in-law Liz and Chad Weston," Alan said then, as he introduced his parents, an attractive-looking couple in their early-to-mid-60s, Dave Masters in a golf shirt and cap and khaki cargo shorts, his gray hair close-cropped, his face clean-shaven, and Sue Masters in a pink polo shirt, white capris, and pink flip-flops revealing a flawless candy-apple-red pedicure, her ash-blonde hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. Liz Masters Weston had dark hair like her brother, in a stylish bob, and wore a ready smile. Her husband Chad had thinning blonde hair and was wearing a gray t-shirt that declared "FEAR THE ACCOUNTANT," denim shorts, and battered white Nikes with a red swoosh that had seen much better days. "Mom, Dad, Liz, Chad," Alan continued, "Rick and Kate Castle, our best friends."

"It's so nice to meet you both," Sue said, stepping forward first to shake hands with Kate and then Rick.

"Alan talks about you all the time," Dave added, shaking Rick's hand with one hand and clapping him on the shoulder with the other. "It's nice to know he's finally found another guy to geek out with."

Standing behind his parents, Alan dropped his head into his hands. "Dad," Liz interrupted.

"What, is that not the right term? Has the lingo been updated since the '80s and '90s? Because I'm down with that," Dave said earnestly. "I'm totally down with that. I'm just really happy my boy finally has a homeslice." He smiled happily, proudly.

Liz snorted loudly. When everyone turned to stare at her, she coughed, then said, "Sorry. Adenoids."

Chad Weston saved the day. "Since I don't see the Wayback Machine anywhere around here, how 'bout we hit the rides?"

"Thank you, Chad," Alan said in an undertone.

"A few more seconds, and Pop would have been saying either 'damn skippy' or 'amped," Chad replied. "Just doing everybody a favor."

"We're still waiting for—oh, here they are," Lanie said. Victoria and Gerald Gates approached the group then. "Hello, Deputy Chief, Mr. Gates. We're so glad you could make it."

Victoria and Gerald were dressed as casually as everyone else, Victoria in a green tank top and denim capris, and Gerald in a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap and t-shirt and navy blue cargo shorts.

"Thank you for inviting us," Victoria said. "We haven't been to Coney Island in ages."

"All right, so what's the plan?" Alan said.

Everyone looked around at each other. "We should probably go on the rides first," Walter Parish said. "Then when it gets to the really hot part of the day, we can cool off in the arcade or get something to eat if we want to get out of the heat for a while."

The others quickly murmured their agreement, and they headed into Luna Park in one big group.

All of the men, even Lanie's and Alan's fathers, wanted to go on all of the roller coasters. Alan's sister Liz produced a paper bag and handed it to her husband Chad with a smirk. "You know your stomach can't take those drastic plunges," she said. "And since I don't want a repeat of Space Mountain when we went to Disney World last year, I'll pass on the roller coasters."

Lanie, Kate, Alexis, Jenny, and Victoria were game for the roller coasters, but Liz and Sue opted to sit them out. "You boys have fun," Sue said, kissing first Dave and then Alan. "My stomach has never liked roller coasters. I'll wait with Liz. I definitely want to go on the water rides. The drops aren't as deep and they don't go as fast as the roller coasters."

And so the group, minus Alan's mother and sister, went on all of the roller coasters first: the Coney Island Cyclone, the Thunderbolt, the Soarin' Eagle, the Steeplechase, and the Circus Coaster.

Alan's brother-in-law Chad did just fine on the Coney Island Cyclone, but Liz's prediction came true on the Thunderbolt. After the initial 90-degree vertical drop, at a speed of approximately 55 miles per hour, Chad, who was sharing a car with his father-in-law Dave, shouted, "Uh oh!"

"'Uh oh'?" Dave repeated. "I don't want to hear 'uh oh' right now, Chad!"

Alan and Lanie were seated directly in front of Dave and Chad; Rick and Kate were behind Dave and Chad, with Javier and Alexis behind Rick and Kate, Kevin and Jenny behind Javier and Alexis, Victoria and Gerald behind Kevin and Jenny, and Lanie's father in the last car by himself.

"Use the bag, Chad!" Alan shouted. "Use the bag!"

And so it was that Chad fumbled to get the paper bag open and managed to make it just in time to throw up for the duration of the 112-degree over-banked turn, and dry heave through the 100-foot vertical loop and the 80-foot zero-g roll both.

When the ride was over, it took Dave, Alan, and Lanie's father Walter to help the ashen-faced Chad out of the car and off the platform. Chad sat out the rest of the roller coasters, and Liz bought him a Sprite from a vendor and made him wait until it was slightly flat before he began sipping.

"Is your brother-in-law gonna be okay?" Rick asked Alan.

"Oh, yeah," Alan said. "He just always thinks he's going to conquer the roller coasters at any amusement park. He and Liz met in college, and the first time she brought him home to meet us, it was my spring break from school and we went to Six Flags in St. Louis. Chad threw up all over Liz on the Shock Wave. In his defense, we were turned upside-down seven times in three different ways at 65 miles per hour on that ride. But the fact that she just cleaned up as best she could in the ladies' room and bought a new t-shirt at the park, and then spent the rest of the day moving from bench to bench with him while the rest of us went on rides was when we knew she was going to marry him someday. I had just turned 14 a couple months before that, and even I knew it. My parents definitely knew it."

The others rode the rest of the roller coasters, by which time Chad had recovered sufficiently that he and Liz rejoined everyone else, along with Sue, for the Coney Island Raceway, at which Kevin skunked everyone as they each drove a go-kart solo over the 900-foot race course, complete with switchback curves and hairpin turns.

Javier, who finished in seventh place, behind Kevin, Kate, Rick, Victoria, Jenny, and Lanie, demanded of Kevin, "Where'd you learn to drive like that?"

Kevin just grinned. "I never told you that I worked at a go-kart track all through high school?" he said innocently.

"Next Halo night, you're goin' down, Ryan!" Javier called after Kevin as he and Jenny strolled away hand in hand.

On the Brooklyn Flyer, a ride comprised of double-seat swings, everyone but Lanie's dad coupled up. Before the ride started, Rick asked Kate, "How are you doing?"

She smiled at him, reaching over to squeeze his thigh. "I'm having a great time. Really."

The ride started, and before they knew it, they were 100 feet in the air, traveling in a circle and enjoying the view.

After the Brooklyn Flyer (and Kate's call to Jim, who reported that Lily had had her morning nap, tummy time, and now Martha was doing a dramatic reading of Horton Hears a Who), it was on to the Wild River, the water ride where everyone sat single file in log-themed boats and soared through the winding troughs until they came to the 40-foot ledge, which the boats raced over, plunging everyone into headlong into the cooling splash pool below. Everyone exited Wild River drenched and laughing.

"As long as we're all already wet," Lanie reasoned, "we might as well go on Watermania."

Watermania was a ride consisting of several four-seater cars in a large pool. Each car was equipped with multiple water blasters, and when the ride started, it was soak or be soaked as everyone took aim at each other from their various cars in an epic water pistol battle. Much laughter and shrieking ensued, and what started out as a free-for-all morphed into the girls against the guys and finally, the couples against each other. Between Rick's decades of Laser Tag experience, and Kate's shooting skills honed over fifteen years on the NYPD, theirs was one of the few water battles that was pretty much a draw, both of them drenched and laughing their heads off by the time the ride was over.

Alexis and Javier had been fairly evenly matched as well, for pretty much the same reasons as Rick and Kate, but everyone else was varying degrees of soaked. Victoria was the clear winner against Gerald, and Chad may not have been able to handle the roller coasters, but Liz was so drenched that she squished when she walked and was wringing copious amounts of water out of her clothes. Jenny looked like a drowned rat but was quick to state that she didn't care because it had been so much fun, and Alan's parents and Lanie's father had ganged up on the newlyweds-to-be, so Alan and Lanie looked much worse than all of their respective parents and Jenny combined.

To give themselves time to dry as much as they could in the summer sun, everyone agreed it was time for lunch, and so they adjourned to Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs on the boardwalk, where everyone had a variety of hot dogs, corn dogs, chili dogs, fries, and lemonade.

After lunch, they headed off to play games. Rick won a gigantic teddy bear at Bazooka Blast, which boasted about its jumbo prizes. "We're gonna have to strap that thing to the car's roof to get it home," Kate said. "It's almost as tall as we are!" Indeed, the teddy bear had to be almost six feet tall. Kate wondered idly where in the world they would put it when they got it home.

"And totally worth it," Rick said, preening.

"Okay, somebody else has gotta win something, quick, or else Castle's gonna be bragging about that bear all day long," Ryan said.

"To the victor belong the spoils," Rick said simply. "And I think it'll fit in the car. At least, I hope it will, because we don't have any rope to tie it to the roof. If you'll all excuse me, I'm going to take the bear back to the car." After taking the bear back to the car, he called Martha, who assured him that Lily had had her lunch and Jim was rocking her to sleep for her afternoon nap. Everything was fine. When Rick returned to the others at the games, he quietly relayed his mother's message about Lily to Kate. They were both glad that Lily was doing so well under the care of her grandparents, and not suffering separation anxiety from either of them. Then they turned their attention to the games once more.

Ryan played Pong Pool, Whac a Mole, and Water Racer, winning one prize at each game (though none were as big as the ginormous teddy bear Rick won at Bazooka Blast), and having won one prize each for Jenny, Sarah Grace, and Nick pronounced himself done. As hard as he tried, Rick didn't win another prize that day, but when they left the games that were inside Luna Park for the air conditioning and electronic noises of the Luna Arcade, Victoria soundly beat Rick, Kate, Javier, Kevin, and Lanie all five at skeeball.

When Kate spied the interactive motorcycle racing game, she talked Rick into going head to head with her at the game, for which they sat side by side on motorcycles with regulation handlebars and seats. Seeing Kate so focused on the game, the long, lithe lines of her body mimicking the actions she took when she rode a real motorcycle, it didn't take long for Rick to completely crash and burn at his game, while Kate ran up a high score on hers. "If you hadn't spent so much time watching me, you might have survived your game, babe," she said with a knowing smirk.

"I'd rather watch you anytime," Rick replied.

"You're gonna have to work on that before we take that cross-country motorcycle ride," Kate told him.

After the arcade, everyone adjourned to Coney's Cones for their choice of gelato, sorbet, or coffee. Kate got the coffee gelato, and shared Rick's white chocolate macaroon gelato.

After Alexis and Javier had finished their desserts—lemon sorbet for Alexis, chocolate gelato for Javier—they went to check out one of the souvenir shops. Javier lingered over the baseball caps emblazoned with CONEY ISLAND. "I thought I'd pick one up for Matias," he said. Matias was back at his motel in the Bronx for the time being, and Javier had seen him twice since he had been released from the hospital. Alexis was going with him for their third meeting.

Javier carefully studied the navy blue baseball cap that said CONEY ISLAND in yellow letters, then shifted his gaze to the white baseball cap that said CONEY ISLAND in light blue letters. He picked up the white baseball cap. "He already has a dark baseball cap, that Marlins cap," Javier said.

Alexis smiled. "I think it's an excellent choice," she told him.

Rick and Kate bought coffee mugs, of course.

When everyone met up again, Alan said, "Lanie and I have a souvenir for all of you, in my car." They all trooped out to the parking lot, and Alan opened the trunk, which contained a large cardboard box. He opened the lid of the box to reveal a stack of t-shirts. The t-shirts were white, and they said in blue letters, since blue and white were his and Lanie's wedding colors:

PARISH-MASTERS PRE-WEDDING CELEBRATION

CONEY ISLAND

BROOKLYN, NY

JULY 29, 2017

"Now I know why you wanted our t-shirt sizes!" Jenny exclaimed.

"We have to get a picture," Alan's mom Sue said. "All of us together wearing the shirts before we head for home."

After the shirts had been distributed, and everyone had pulled them on over what they were already wearing, they all crowded together by the entrance gate to Luna Park. Uncertain that a selfie would work, Alan got one of the employees from Coney's Cones, who was headed on her break, to agree to take the picture for them on Alan's phone.

"Okay, everyone, big smiles," the teenager said as she framed the shot, making sure everyone was in it. She took three pictures, then returned Alan's phone to him with congratulations as he thanked her.

Everyone said their goodbyes and parted for the day. Alexis and Javier wanted some time to chill out at his place but promised to come over for dinner at eight. Everyone else went home, or back to their hotels, in the case of the Masters', Westons, and Lanie's father.

When they reached the car, Kate burst out laughing when she saw that the teddy bear Rick had won was so big that he had to lay it down across the back seat. Kate's laughter made Rick laugh too. As for Kate, she had purposely avoided the beach, and thankfully no one else had wanted to go down there, and once they were going on rides and shooting each other with water guns and playing games and hanging out eating and talking, Kate was so busy being present in the moment that she didn't have time to feel any sadness or remember walking the windswept beach that horrible and freezing January day she and her dad buried her mother.

"It was a great day," Kate said as they drove home.

"It really was," Rick agreed. "And I think I'm gonna stock up on Super Soakers before the big Labor Day weekend in the Hamptons. We can have an epic water gun battle all over the grounds and the beach." He looked so enthusiastic and excited about that prospect.

"Great idea," Kate approved. "But first, we have Lanie and Alan's wedding, and more campaign work."

"Yes, we do," Rick agreed. A year earlier, neither he nor Kate could have guessed this was where they would be, this is what their life would be, but they wouldn't have wanted their life to be any other way.