Misconception
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She's not sure what this urge is to do it all herself. To close ranks. Wall herself off.
The longer she sits here eating food that she can barely taste, listening to conversation without doing much to add to it, and in general feeling like she somehow managed to trample over his heart again, she can't explain it even to herself.
She's not property to be bargained for, but that's not even what has her defensive. That was just a convenient and plausible argument for the real thing she's hiding, the real issue at stake here. She lashed out because she's wounded, but what is the real wound?
Kate wants to sneak a phone call to her father and warn him: tomorrow is going to be awkward, I'm sorry, but Castle thinks he has to do this with me. A warning. She feels the need to warn her father. Because she and her dad are very much alike, and she can't bear to have witnesses to her and her father's private grief.
That's what it is. Grief. Again. Blocking the way forward.
Her mother isn't here; she'll never be here. Johanna won't be here to see her grandchild, won't hold the baby or complain about Kate's choice of names or give Kate nosy but accurate advice. She won't be here. Her mother is gone and she and her father will have to face, all over again, just how much is missing.
The lack.
She is compounding their grief exponentially. Every holiday a million times more unbearable, every milestone made more poignant for the missing.
Kate still wants to close her skin over the wound, hold herself together.
That's all it is, that's everything. Even Castle, who has said to her, I forget sometimes that you live with this, can't understand what it is to be less than you should be - he never had his father to begin with.
"Hey," he says suddenly, softly, his voice an intrusion she never minds. Kate glances towards him and sees he's risen half out of his chair, one hand reaching for her plate. "You finished, Kate?"
"Yeah," she admits, relinquishing the fork. He clears her plate and his own, takes his mother's as well - there's a look between them that Martha seems to be ignoring - and he places their dishes near the sink.
He's already running water and scraping off her plate (she's the only one who picked at her food), and Kate rouses from her introspection to clear their glasses from the table as well. Martha stands herself and brings the serving dish of stir fry towards the counter.
"Darling, look in that second cabinet-"
Kate does, opening it at his mother's direction.
"-And get me one of those clear containers. The blue lid, Katherine, yes, that's it."
Kate brings her back a tupperware container for the leftovers, and then she finds herself standing strangely between Castle and Martha, wondering what she should do. They already have their own rhythm, their family dynamic, and Kate is odd man out.
And someday soon, she has to add her father to this mix. Both of them, standing on the fringes wondering how they got here, what they're supposed to do now.
The table has their cloth napkins in various states of use, so she heads that way and gathers them up, takes them back to the laundry room.
The second she's out of sight, they start talking. And the acoustics bounce Castle's words right back to her, plain as day.
"Mother, can't you - you know - make yourself scarce?"
Her cheeks heat up, and Kate slowly lowers the cloth napkins to the top of the washing machine, dawdling long enough that maybe he'll convince Martha. She really needs - him. No more halting conversations and talking around a thing, no more hazy plans and fruitless arguments. She wants him.
"Darling, I would, but I have the suspicion you both need me."
"Not for that, we don't," Castle says dryly.
Kate presses her lips together, sinking back against the wall. Not for that.
"No, but perhaps for some actual communication. Every time I ask a question, it's another thing that neither of you have even discussed. You don't know the first thing about each other-"
"We've been partners for four years!"
"Not when it comes to raising a baby together. To marriage. You don't even know if she'll move in with you."
"We don't need you to act as mediator, Mother."
"I beg to differ," Martha sniffs. "Clearly, you are both abysmal at being honest with each other. No, Richard, don't protest - you both."
When Castle has no response to that, Kate swallows and straightens up.
That's enough. This is enough. They shouldn't need his mother to dictate the terms of their relationship. She wants to dictate terms in the bedroom, let them fight and make up there.
She pushes back out of the laundry room and into the kitchen once more. Both he and Martha are consummate actors, smoothing right over their conversation with bland and benign looks. Castle is drying his hands on a dish towel, Martha is pouring another glass of wine.
Kate's not fooled. Martha thinks she has to stick around to negotiate between them? No. She's done with that.
"I didn't want you to come," she says quickly. Let them both hear, let Martha be certain of her. "Because pain has always been private."
His face goes comically, terribly blank. Whatever interpretation he's putting on her statement, it's not good.
"My mother is dead," she says badly. So badly. She really is terrible at talking, but she has to. "And now I've got to find a way to tell my dad - to tell my dad that I've gone on without her. It's bad enough that I haven't given her justice, but now I'm leaving her behind."
Castle's hands drop, the dish towel collapsing to the floor like a sad ghost.
Not even Martha has something to say to that.
"And I don't know how he'll take it. He never - remarried, never looked, never - he loved her, and I'm not only ditching her, I'm going to drag him with me because now there's a baby too. I'm making him abandon her. Because he'll be a grandfather and she won't get to be a grandmother-"
Castle's face goes white. "Oh, God-"
But it's Martha who wraps her up, boney-armed and wiry-strengthed, rocking her back and forth a little in the kitchen. "Darling, darling, no. It's not that at all. I can promise you, as a mother, it's not that at all."
But it is.
Kate detaches herself as tactfully as she can, her eyes on Castle. He still hasn't found his words. That's okay, at least he gets it now.
"I just don't want you going in there with this whole agenda, Castle, when all I'm trying to do is keep my dad together."
Castle is the one who removes Martha, practically picking her up and depositing her to one side. He places his hands on Kate's shoulders, dipping his head to meet her eyes. He's very serious. "I bet that you'll find your dad has a lot of practice at keeping himself together on his own, Kate. But if he doesn't, I won't do anything to rock his boat. I will do everything I can to help you - save him again, if that's what has to be done."
Kate lets out a shaky breath, nodding back to him. His hands drop from her shoulders and slide down to capture her fingers, tangling.
"I want to be there, to explain - if that's necessary - to back you up, to maybe give you the words you can't find."
Her lips twitch.
His do too.
"I know I'll be fine on my own," she tells him. "But I think - it would be right to have my partner there."
He beams back at her, drawing her in for a hug.
Which Martha interrupts, clapping her hands together. "See? Such progress. Aren't you glad I'm here, darling?"
Castle's smile spoils, and Kate frowns, trying to hide it against his shoulder.
"This is getting ridiculous," he mutters softly into her ear.
"Yes, it is. Pack a bag, Castle," she says fiercely. As if anyone would stop her. As if Martha might stop her. "I'm taking you home."
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