I apologize for the short notice, but the closing date for my new house got moved up unexpectedly. I closed today, and will be moving this weekend, so there won't be a chapter posted on Sunday. I will return a week from this Sunday with the next chapter.

I want to take this opportunity to let you know that I deeply appreciate all of you who are reading and who follow and have favorited the story, and those of you who take the time to leave reviews, whether you're a member here or a guest.

However, I would like to address a couple of points I've gotten in recent (the past three weeks) guest reviews that I have deleted because I didn't feel they were constructive or, frankly, that they made sense.

To the guest reviewer who said, regarding the latest chapter, "For all we know, Alexis didn't change her name, so she could have graduated law school as Alexis Harper Rodgers," I have to ask, did you ever actually WATCH Castle the show? It was established in canon that Rick legally changed his middle and last names, and all of his books have been published under the name Richard Castle. He wrote his first book, In a Hail of Bullets, in a booth at The Old Haunt when he was in college, and it was published before Alexis was born. Therefore, he had changed his name to Castle before Alexis was born, and Alexis is, and always was, Alexis Castle.

You also stated that the chapter was boring because of the three-hour law school graduation. I went to the Columbia Law School website, as I have done on a few prior occasions in writing this story, and the Class of 2018 is graduating in May (the 14th, to be exact) in a ceremony that begins at 5 PM and ends at 8:15 PM. I also watched the video of the Columbia Law School Class of 2017 graduation, which is how I came up with the number of speakers and the order of the graduation proceedings. So if you thought it was boring, then I have to say your beef is with Columbia University Law School and not with me, because I wrote the graduation as close to an actual Columbia University Law School graduation as I could.

To the reviewer a couple of chapters ago who said that this story is "too perfect" and "nobody has any problems," I take offense at that. The characters do not have the kind of problems in this story that they had on the show; I grant you that. That has been my conscious choice from the very start, as the writer of this story. If you were to go back and read this story from the beginning, you would see that Rick, Kate, and Alexis all three suffered nightmares and/or anxiety attacks in the wake of Rick and Kate being shot by Caleb Brown, on top of the physical injuries Rick and Kate had to recover from. Esposito's father, who abandoned him as a child, came back into his life, and then died, and Esposito had conflicting emotions about his father's return to his life. Ryan was worried about failing his Sergeant's exam again. Lanie's mother tried to hijack her wedding to Alan. Alexis has been stressed about law school, and she and Esposito kept their relationship a secret from Castle and Beckett as long as they possibly could. Mark Fallon had to learn to love again and to move on with his life years after losing his wife on 9/11. Those may not be "exciting" problems, but everyone has had some degree of conflict in their lives in this story.

The murderers, the psychos, the people trying to kill them, that part of Castle and Beckett's lives is over in this story; the people that were responsible for Johanna Beckett's murder, and for LokSat, have all been vanquished. If you're looking for a story where Castle and Beckett are hunting down murderers and being threatened by people like 3XK and William Bracken and Caleb Brown, I can guarantee you will not find that here. This story is my version of what happens in the next chapter of Rick and Kate's life together, and the lives of their extended family and their friends. I don't claim to be one of the world's greatest writers, or one of the best Castle fanfic writers, ever. But this show and these characters changed my life and will forever own my heart. I saw them through the traumas and the misunderstandings and miscommunications and the effects of loss and all of the narrow escapes that played out on the show. The shooting at the end of the series finale was my starting point for this story. I have charted a course, and built a life, for Kate and Rick, and by extension for their family and their friends, that sees them on new adventures, still serving the public, still involved in law in Kate's case, and now raising their children. No life is perfect, but there are different types of problems, and I don't do heavy-duty angst, at least not in any lasting way. The ability to survive what you think, at the time, is unsurvivable, emotionally at least, and the resilience of the human spirit, and the healing powers of love and friendship, of having people in your life who take you exactly as you are and love you for being that person, flaws and all...That's what I'm interested in. That's how I choose to write the characters. If you think that's too perfect, then by all means, I strongly encourage you to find other stories to read instead of trolling this one.

I care deeply about Castle as a show. I care deeply about this story, and I strive to make every chapter the best I possibly can. There is always a method to my madness. I have known from the first word I wrote exactly how and where this story will end, and we are closer to that point now than we are to the beginning or middle of the story.

But when this story ends, after a short hiatus, I plan to write more stories in this universe I've created, though they'll be shorter stories, one-shots or something that's 3 to 5 chapters.

I thank everyone who has been reading, reviewing in a constructive, non-trolling way, and who has followed and favorited this story. It's good to know that Castle means as much to you as it does to me, and that you're all, for the most part, enjoying this journey. I hope you continue to enjoy the journey, both in this story and in future ones.