The week passed pretty quickly and Johanna and Kate were getting closer. They were little by little learning about each other all over again and they were almost back to what they had before Johanna had to leave. They were often having lunch or coffee together but they were not spending all their time together. Both had agreed that they needed to go on with their own lives and not stop living. They were aware that they would not be able to have the time they were apart back, so they just decided to talk about anything they wanted when they were together. Kate had read all the letters her mother had written to her when she was gone. It took her two whole days and half a night to read all of them but it had helped her a lot. It helped her understand her mother, why she had to leave and that it affected her deeply too. She had cried a lot when reading them. Rick had even threatened to take them away if she did not stop reading and get some sleep. But it was good. It sped up the process of accepting her mother into her life.

It was now Friday and Kate was coming back home after have been grocery shopping. She was surprised to find her mother waiting in the hallway, sitting against the front door.

"Mom? What are you doing here? Is everything alright?" Kate asked, suddenly concerned.

"Everything's fine Katie, don't worry." Johanna answered, getting back on her feet and taking a few shopping bags from her daughter. "I just need to ask you about something."

"Sure. Let me just put this away and I'm all yours." Kate smiled, opening the front door and heading to the kitchen.

"Nobody's home?" Johanna asked, used to seeing Rick and Emily and Alexis or Martha the few times she had been at the loft.

"No. Rick took Emily to Martha's while he was at a meeting with his publisher and I think they're going to the park when he is done." Kate answered, putting away the food she had bought. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Katherine Castle, what kind of question is that? Of course I'd like some coffee." Johanna laughed.

Kate hurried to tidy the kitchen while coffee was brewing.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" she asked, putting a fuming cup of coffee in front of her mother.

"Well, I tried to talk to your father about it but he won't tell me anything."

"Mom, what's going on?"

"Well, after you, Rick and Emily left the other day, I remembered what Dr. Burke said on the day I came here for the first time. He said you had to watch out for your father and be careful he didn't start to drink again. What happened to him Kate? He doesn't want to tell me anything. Every time I bring up the subject, he leaves the house, saying that he needs to go and see Charlie. Who is this Charlie? Did he meet someone when I was gone?"

"He didn't meet anyone Mom, not that I know of anyway. Charlie is his sponsor."

"Sponsor? As in ..."

"Yeah. An AA sponsor. You know, when you disappeared, it was hard for everyone. I buried myself into becoming a cop so I could find you. Dad started to drink. A lot. I don't really know how it started but I was called a few times after I graduated from the Academy to go and pick him up from a bar because he was passed out."

"Oh my God. And you had to deal with him alone? I'm so sorry Katie."

"You remember what we said? You stop apologizing. It was not your fault. Yes, a lot of bad things happened after you disappeared but is was not your fault. You did not choose to leave. Are we clear?" Kate asked, using her best detective voice.

"We're clear." Johanna said. "I would not like to be a suspect in one of your investigations. You get pretty scary when you talk like that." she laughed. "So, how did you deal with your father.

"At first I didn't do anything. I thought it would pass, you know? I thought when he accepted the fact that you were gone, he would stop. Of course, he didn't. It only got worse. If I had done something from the start he would have been ok but … but I waited. I confronted him one night after I picked him up from a police station. He promised me he would go to AA meetings. I don't know if he even went once. I was struggling to keep going, I felt like he had just given up and I couldn't bear to see him like that. I'm not proud of it but I almost didn't see him for two years. And one day he showed up at my apartment, telling me that he had stopped drinking, that he had been going to AA meetings twice a week and that wanted me back. All went well for a while and then he lost his job and started drinking again. One day at work, the hospital called me. He had been found unconscious in an alley behind a bar during the night. He was in a coma for a week. It was horrible. All I wanted to do was leave him there and never see him again but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't lose the only parent I had left so I convinced the doctors to declare him unable to take medical decisions and give me the right to decide for him. When he woke up and they told him he couldn't decide, that I was the one in charge, he was furious. I had him committed in a rehab center where he couldn't go out at all. After he had been settled there for a week, I went to see him. It did not go well. We both said horrible things to each other but I left him there. I wrote him a letter and he called me about a month letter, telling me he would do it, that he couldn't lose me too … Anyway, when he left the center, he came to see me and swore that he would never drink again. I told him I couldn't trust him anymore and that he would have to prove himself to me. He started looking for a job and went back to AA meetings. After a while, he found a job at the university library and started to help organizing the AA meetings. For the following Christmas, he gave me his '1 year' token. He didn't drink ever again. I guess he needs to go and see Charlie again because it's a trying time right now. He will talk to you when he's ready. That's what he did with me. Just give him time to adapt to the situation."

At the end of Kate's story, both women were in tears, a box of tissues sitting between them on the counter.

O-o-O-o-O-o-O-o-O

When Rick came home with Emily a couple of hours later, he found his wife and his mother-in-law asleep on the couch, Temptation Lane playing on the TV. He put his daughter to bed for her nap and went back downstairs, starting the coffee machine. Kate must have heard him come home because she appeared next to him in the kitchen.

"How was your meeting?" she asked, rubbing her eyes to get rid of the sleep in them.

"Boring, as usual. How about you? Why is your mother here?"

"She came to talk about dad and his drinking. Needless to say it was a very emotional conversation." Kate sighed, going to bury herself in her husband's arms.

What started as light kisses to reassure her quickly moved to very passionate ones. Kate found herself pushed on the counter, Rick's hands traveling up her thighs and down her back, trying desperately to reach some uncovered skin. He lost all kind of control when he felt her hands playing with the hair at the back of his head and her lips kissing him behind his right ear. That was his weak spot and she knew it. She was driving him crazy. He opened her shirt, one button after the other, taking his time to kiss every newly uncovered spot of skin on his way up. When he reached the valley between her breasts, she moaned and brought him closer, grabbing his ass and pulling him to her.

They were so taken up in each other that they completely forgot Johanna was sleeping on the couch. She woke up at the sound of a cupboard slamming shut. She looked over the top of the couch and immediately closed her eyes. She was really happy to know that Rick and her daughter were so in love but she definitely did not need to see that ! She gathered her things quietly, left a quick note on the coffee table and left as quickly as possible. Taking care to close the front door of the loft without a sound, she turned around to find Alexis looking at her strangely.

"Uh … you might want to wait for a while before going in there. They're … uh … busy. Hey, would you like to go get coffee or something? Talk for a bit?" Johanna proposed.

"Sure, why not." Alexis answered.

Johanna was relieved. She was not at ease seeing her daughter like that, and she couldn't imagine what it would be like to walk in on your parents!