Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

"Martha? I can't believe you called."

"There's a chuckle—exactly like Castle's, but an octave higher—from the other end. "Well, you did ask."

"I know, I know," Kate says, sitting up in bed and leaning against the headboard, in case this takes a while. "I just figured if you did it would be in the daytime."

"I'm an actor, sweetheart, which automatically makes me a night owl. Now what's going on? Tell me everything."

Kate swallows hard, wishing that she'd thought out what she was going to say. "Um, would it be all right with you if we did this in person? I'm off tomorrow if you're in town? We could have coffee." What is she thinking? This is Martha. "Or a drink. I'd love to buy you a drink."

"That's tricky, I'm afraid. I'm in East Haddam, Connecticut, doing summer stock at the Goodspeed. Simply marvelous place. Right on the river."

Sliding down the headboard while her spirits plummet, Kate tries to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "Oh. Well, nothing wrong with talking on the phone. And it's, uh, it's great that you're in a play."

"Musical, actually. My Fair Lady. A small part, but it's a gem. I play Henry Higgins's mother, who is of course much, much older than I am so I wear a white wig. But she's very classy and funny and she can really put her son in his place when he needs it. I feel as though it's Richard and me, twenty years from now."

"Sounds like fun, Martha."

There's no response, and Kate's beginning to wonder if Martha has lost cell service when she hears her voice again. "It is. And if you don't mind my saying so, it sounds as if you could use a little fun yourself. Listen, I have an idea. Would you like to come up tomorrow—I guess it's today, already Sunday, isn't it? The drive's only two and a half hours. We have a matinee at two and then I'm free since there's no evening show. We could meet afterwards, maybe even have an early dinner so you could get back to the city at a reasonable hour. What do you say? C'mon!"

Martha's right: she could use some fun. Time is lying heavily on her and it would do her good to get out of town. More important, she really, really wants to enlist her aid, or at least get some advice, which she knows is in endless and enthusiastic supply. "I'll do it. Thank you, Martha, this is so sweet of you."

"Nonsense, Katherine. Now, take some unsolicited motherly advice and go to bed. You should leave by ten-thirty. Do you need directions? Oh, no, of course you don't, you have that whatever it is on your computer. Maps, I don't know. Richard raves about it. Anyway, drive safely. I'll leave a ticket for you at the box office."

Kate almost wishes they were Skyping so that Martha could see her smile. "I can't thank you enough, really. You're a lifesaver."

"I don't know about that, but I look forward to our little tête-à-tête. I have a feeling there's a hell of a story coming. Good night!"

"Night."

To her astonishment, she sleeps uninterrupted until nine, which is almost unheard of for her. There's just enough time to shower, wash her hair, get dressed, and wolf down some breakfast before she has to hit the road. On the drive east she goes over what she wants to say, and also wishes that she'd thought to bring something to her benefactor. She's on the interstate; what can she possibly get, a Cinnabon? A key chain that says MARTHA? When she turns on to a two-lane blacktop a few miles from the theater, she finds her inspiration: a farm stand. She pulls over and there it is, just the thing: a little box of four perfect peaches. Because Martha really is a peach, and that's what she needs right now. Someone who's a peach.

Five hours later, the two of them are drinking wine, sitting on a shaded terrace that overlooks the Connecticut River. The heat wave is now only a memory, thank God, and the show had been the perfect remedy for Kate's funk, driving everything else out of her over-crowded, over-thinking brain. "You were so right, Martha," she says, lifting her glass to the actress. "This was—is—so much fun. Here's to you and Mrs. Higgins; you're both sensational. And thank you so much for inviting me backstage afterwards, too. It was like seeing a beautiful bird in its native habitat."

Martha touches her glass to Kate's. "Thank you. What a lovely thing to say."

"This was one of my mom's favorite shows. I hadn't thought of it in ages, but she told me that when the movie came out she saw it seven times in two weeks. She was a teenager and totally idolized Audrey Hepburn. And she was outraged that her singing was dubbed." She stares at the flow of the river for a bit before she continues. "I remember the night we watched Charade on TV when I was a teenager and I realized that her cheekbones were every bit as good as Hepburn's."

"Yours aren't too shabby either, Katherine."

She feels herself blush, not sure if it's a reaction to the compliment or to the wine. "Thanks."

"All right, now that the social niceties are out of the way, tell me what happened. But there's one thing first."

"What's that?"

"I'm not going to judge you, all right? So if you're holding back anything because you're worried about that, don't."

It takes Kate no time to assess the situation. She's going to spill everything to Martha; there's no one else she can do it to—certainly not Lanie—and for whatever tangle of reasons, she trusts her. "Okay, I won't." By the time she tells the story of the Memorial Day weekend invitation, of her dumping Demming, of Castle not knowing and going off with Gina, they've polished off the bottle of wine and Martha has ordered another. Unlike her son, she lets Kate talk, interrupting only occasionally to ask a small question.

"Richard wouldn't tell me, but I knew that something had happened, because a week before that he'd been avoiding Gina as if she were toxic waste—which, in my opinion she is—and then la, dee, dah, they're swanning off to the Hamptons for the summer. If I'd been there I'd have grilled him like a steak, but I've been up here the whole time and spoken to him only briefly by phone."

Kate needs a moment to process this, and then blurts, "Toxic waste?"

"You said it, sister. That woman is poison and always has been. I wasn't around all that much during what might laughably be called their marriage, because that was before I moved into the loft, but he had some insane idea of giving Alexis a stable family life with a real mother figure. Which Gina may have been, on occasion, or in comparison with Meredith, but that's no stretch. I can't imagine why he got back together with her. It can't be for the sex. Not from what I've seen in the past."

Martha shudders slightly, takes a sip of wine and looks intently at Kate, as if she's waiting for her to say something. But Kate is so stunned that all she can come up with is, "Oh."

"Richard has told me innumerable times how brilliant you are at reading people, so that when you interrogate them you can, as he once put it, 'tear them apart as if she were getting meat from a lobster claw.' Now, if I do say so myself, I'm pretty good at reading people, too, which has served me well in my career. And I'd bet my white wig that something happened yesterday that made you text me, hmm? What was it? You didn't hear from him, did you?"

Now comes the really hard part, so she takes some more wine, too. Needs the courage. "No, I didn't. I was moping around about Castle and my air conditioning was broken and I finally said the hell with it, go out and have a drink. Cheer yourself up."

"Did it work?"

"Well, in a way. But, oh God. Okay, I was in a nice, quiet place over by the Highline, telling the bartender—the very married bartender—about my broken heart when I looked up at the mirror over the bar, and there she was."

Martha is stunned. "She? You mean Gina?"

"Yup."

"And?"

"And not Castle."

"And by that you mean, I take it, that she was not alone, without my son, but with someone who's not my son?"

"Bingo."

"Did they appear to be—" she breaks off and rotates her hand, "involved?"

"Well, since her tongue was halfway down his throat, I'd say so, yes." Oh, my God, she's had one glass too many. "I'm sorry, you didn't need to know that."

"On the contrary, I did. Don't worry about shocking me, dear. Did she see you?"

"Oh, yes. And heard me."

"Oh, I can't wait for this," she says, clapping her hands. "That woman is smart and devious but she could never outwit you."

Kate grins. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was meant as one. Please, go on."

So Kate unloads that too, complete with gestures and facial expressions. She remembers virtually every word.

Martha laughs so hard that she has to dab at her mascara with a cocktail napkin. "You know, if you ever decide to leave police work, you'd do admirably on stage. In improv, too. May I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"When you first saw Gina with Steve, did you think she was cheating on my son, or did you think the romance—and I use the term loosely—had ended? That they had broken up."

"That's going to take a bit. Do you mind if we order something to eat?"

"Excellent suggestion."

While they wait for their pasta and salad, Martha keeps the mood light with favorite stories from summer stock. "The best was when I played Anna in The King and I on the Cape. Richard was longing to be one of the King's countless children, and I tried to explain to him that Asian children do not have blue eyes. And he said, 'I'll wear sunglasses and no one will know!' In the end the director gave in and let him do it, but he was always in the back so he was the least visible. He loved his little costume, and since he has perfect pitch—"

"Castle has perfect pitch? I had no idea. So do I."

Martha puts her glass down and looks directly into Kate's eyes. "Yet another reason why you were meant for each other. As I've said from day one, you two would make beautiful music together if you didn't let so many things get in the way."

Kate is embarrassed, and it shows, as she looks down to her lap. "Yeah, well."

"I hope you know," Martha says softly, "that I'm your number one cheerleader. For you and Richard. I imagine you do know, and that's perhaps why you texted me in the middle of the night. We'll get back to that." She has another sip of wine, and returns to her story. "As I was saying, since Richard has perfect pitch he was very helpful in keeping all the other kids on key."

The server has arrived with their food, and Kate waits for him to leave before she asks Martha a question. "It's funny that he never told me, isn't it? I mean, he has been known to brag about various other talents. Doesn't like to keep them secret."

"It's the kind of thing a boy can get teased about in school, and it happened to him. It took away the joy he'd had in singing, and I always regretted it. Because we moved around so much he went to a lot of different schools, and he'd do just about anything to fit in. That meant no singing, really, because it wasn't cool. Certainly not then, unless you had a rock band, which God knows requires almost no musicianship."

It's a good reminder for Kate, that Castle's childhood, while colorful, was not an easy one. He's erected all kinds of barriers; he just disguises them well. She spears a piece of ravioli. "This is delicious. I'm glad we came here."

"I'm glad we did, too, for a lot of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with the cuisine. I sense you're a little reluctant about answering my question, about what you thought when your first spotted Gina and the tedious lawyer."

Kate grimaces. "It's because I'm embarrassed. Because it reveals so very unappealing aspects of my character."

Martha raises an eyebrow, and says no more.

"I was sure she was cheating on him because I was so wildly jealous. I wanted to think the absolute worst of her because she had what I wanted. And how could she do that? If they'd broken up, no matter whose choice it was, it meant that Castle was available but hadn't called me and that broke my heart."

"But darling," Martha says, covering Kate's hand. "He thought you were with someone else. And if you ask me, that broke his heart."

"Really?" Kate is suddenly fighting back tears, and wondering how it is that she can confess everything to Martha but not to her son.

"You must know that."

"I guess. I mean Espo said, right before, that Castle hadn't been following me around for research for ages. It was the push I needed to to break up with Demming. And then everything went wrong."

"Look, it's been clear to me forever that Richard loves you as he's loved no other woman. When you stayed in the loft a few months ago, after your apartment was bombed, it was even more obvious. You should have seen his face, the guilt he had because some lunatic was using the Nikki Heat books to kill people. I told him that that was as crazy as the killer himself, but it tortured him. I watched him watching you, you know. He's mad about you."

"Still, I was so jealous that I would rather have seen his girlfriend cheat on him because that made me feel better? That doesn't say much about me. Or it does, and it's all bad."

"There's nothing so terrible about the green-eyed monster if you don't let it consume you. My Lord, you should have seen Richard fuming over that detective beau of yours. He was as bad as a sixteen-year-old."

That makes Kate smile. "Yeah, I did notice a spike in testosterone levels when the three of us were working that case together."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"Do?"

"Yes, do. Are you going to tell Richard about Gina? Or have someone else do it? The fact is, infidelity is a deal breaker for him. Richard has many faults, but that is not one of them. When he commits, he commits."

"When he finds out, he'll be shattered. But I feel like I'm in high school, tattling. Especially since I'm, you know."

"You want him."

Kate looks at Martha the way the older woman had looked at her earlier, right into her eyes. " I do. I want him." And then she puts her head in her hands. "I don't know how to do it. It's gonna take a miracle."

"You know that song?"

"What?"

"That song! 'It's Gonna Take a Miracle'."

"Are you kidding? Yes! Bette Midler and Manhattan Transfer! You know that song, too?"

"Oh, honey, I knew it way before they did it. The Royalettes sang it. I was a big R and B fan as a teenager. And then Laura Nyro did a very different take on it when Richard was a toddler. I was still pretty unsure of myself as a single mother, used to sing it to him to put him to sleep."

And then, without any discussion at all, they start singing at the table, their pasta half finished and the sky shot with the colors of a summer sunset.

It's gonna take a miracle
Yes, it's gonna take a miracle
To make me love someone new
Cause I'm crazy for you

"You'll figure this out, Katherine."

"Can you help?"

"Damn right."

TBC

A/N Thank you everyone. And to the Guest reviewer who asked: Yes, there is a Beatles CD called 1. Issued in 2000, it's a compilation of their 27 number-one songs, from "Love Me Do" to "The Long and Winding Road."