A/N: See Disclaimer in Chapter 1.
Chapter 5: Forward Motion
It is the morning of January 10th, and Rick, Alexis, and his mother, Martha, bustle around the house, getting ready for the Becketts' arrival. When three 'o' clock has rolled by and Johanna hasn't confirmed that they are coming over, Rick senses there is something off. On his hunch, he phones the Becketts' house.
"Hello?" he says as he hears the phone being picked up. He is surprised to hear sobs on the other side of the line.
"H-Hi..." comes the shaky reply.
"Are you...Katie?" he asks, not really knowing what else to say. "Is something wrong?"
He hears a muffled, half-hysterical laugh. "She's gone. My mother is gone..."
Another person picks up. "Hello? Who is this?" It's Jim, and his voice lacks the usual good humour Rick is familiar and comfortable with.
"It's Rick, Jim."
What he hears next drives him to his knees, and but for his tight hold on his phone, it would have dropped to the ground.
"She was murdered last night, Rick. My wife." Rick can hear the beginnings of a breakdown in his voice, and knows immediately he wants to be there for his friend. "Jim, I'll be there in ten."
"Richard, what's wrong?" His mother has gone pale at the sight of her son in tears, and instinctively knows there is something wrong. Rick looks around, and sees that Alexis is in the other room, out of hearing. "Johanna...was murdered last night."
Martha gasps, her hand rising quickly to her mouth. "Oh, Lord..."
"Mother, I have to go," he says tersely, throwing on his coat, and walks out the door. Abruptly, he turns back, and gives his mother a hug and a kiss. "You're all right with staying with Alexis, right?"
At Martha's nod, he adds, his eyes tearing up, "I love you, Mother."
And he is away in the snowy evening.
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The door is locked and bolted, and Rick can feel the opening of the peephole before finally hearing the clicking of the lock, indicating that the door is about to open.
And just as his mind registers that the door has been opened, Jim Beckett is sobbing in his arms, a grown man unashamed of his tears. His daughter stands behind him, her face tear-streaked, but determined not to be found crying in front of a stranger. "I am so sorry, Jim," Rick says finally after closing the door behind him, tears streaming down his face. "I'm so sorry."
Eventually, Rick pulls himself together enough to make tea for all of them. As they sit, drink and weep, Rick is aware of how much of a hole this loss has dug into him. None of them feel like eating, but Rick orders a pizza anyway.
It sits on the dinner table, untouched; Rick has no appetite in grief, and Jim and Kate simply feel ill at the sight of food – though they know and are touched by Rick's gesture. Finally, Jim excuses himself to go to bed, and Rick is left with Katie - Kate, he firmly tells himself; it seems only her parents are allowed to call her "Katie".
It seems strange to share such a private moment with a person he barely knows – though Johanna had talked in the past of all her misdeeds and accomplishments. It must be stranger still for her, having to host a stranger in her home the day after she's lost her mom. He knows enough not to bring up Johanna, but beyond that, he has no idea what to say to this girl - woman - who has lost her mother. Brutally, above all. Rick had gathered as much from what little bit they had talked about earlier, before all of them had been too overcome by sobs to make any sort of sense.
Abruptly, he knows what to do. "C'mon, Kate, let's go for a ride." He can sense under any other circumstances there wasn't any way she would usually get into a car with a stranger, but she is no place to make decisions. Oddly, he feels protective of her; he takes a look to his right and lets his writer's sense take over.
She is beautiful, even in her grief. Long brown hair, haphazardly tied back, expressive brown eyes...and sitting confusedly in his car. Finally, she breaks the silence. "Where are we going?"
"Just to the Kroger," he replies, making reference to the supermarket. "There's something I want to get." You, he leaves unspoken. "And you needed fresh air. I can see you've been taking care of your dad more than you've cared for yourself, just in the last two hours I've been around."
He can see her biting back an angry retort, and he lifts his hand in surrender - before frantically grabbing back on the wheel. "Hey, I'm just saying."
"Just keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, Castle," she answers the question his protest raises.
"So I'm 'Castle' now, am I?" he thinks to himself for a moment. "Hey, I think I actually like that."
She rolls her eyes at him. "I'm grieving, not useless. You on the other hand..."
"Hey!" he protests again, so caught up in the argument he almost misses the turn. "Oh, here we are."
They walk into the supermarket, and Rick leads them to the back, to the ice cream section of the store. "Where is it, where is it..." He peers up and down the refrigeration units. "Aha!"
He swings open the door, and quickly grabs a carton. As Kate tries to take a look, he shakes his head at her, and proceeds to the counter. Once they're back in the car, though, he has no choice but to give the bag to Kate as he starts the car and back to her house. She peers into the bag, and as she lifts the carton up, her eyes swell with tears. "How did you know...?"
"About the candy cane ice cream?" He stops the car by the side of the road. "You know, the first time I met her, this was the flavour she picked out. And when I asked her why, she told me it was 'Christmas in May'. Your mother was a remarkable woman, and I figure, the way she went on and on about you, you two had a good, strong relationship." He shrugs. "And I guessed you would have similar tastes."
Rick only hears silence, and then he realizes why: Kate is crying again. He fumbles around his car for Kleenex, but comes up with nothing, instead smashing his head accidentally on the roof of the car. And then the giggles start; she must think his antics are funny. Encouraged, he begins to tell jokes (though he knows how awful they are; even Alexis frowns in disgust at them).
"Shut up, Castle," she says through watery tears, but he knows she doesn't mean it because she's hiding a smile.
"What!" he exclaims, mock-affronted, but he knows he has brought comfort to her in an otherwise dark day.
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He is back at the Becketts' house, more often than not. He feels a strange pull to this family, as if he owes them, though what it is exactly he owes them, he really isn't sure.
His daughter doesn't quite understand why her Aunt Johanna isn't coming back, doesn't understand when she sees her favourite playmate, her father, her Grams, and Poppa Jim with red-rimmed eyes, trying not to cry in front of her. But she comes with him, too, on his visits, if only to cheer Kate up.
He is there when the police stop by with their report, hearing, but not listening. Even in his haze of grief he feels there is something wrong with their story, and Kate can sense it too. But who is he to tell the police to do their jobs? He's a crime writer, not a crime solver; not in real life, in any case.
While his grief is expressed in keeping Johanna's family together, Kate has plans to drop out of school altogether and move in with her father full time; Rick knows she thinks he doesn't know what she's planning – police academy is on her radar.
"Kate, don't do this," he stands in front of the only doorway of the kitchen. "Johanna wouldn't have wanted this for you."
"What do you know what she wants!" Tears stream down the already-worn tracks on her face. "Rick, I need to do this. I need to know what happened to my mother. You know as well as I do those cops weren't telling the truth." She struggles for breath, and for a moment, Rick panics, thinking she's hyperventilating and oh-God-what-do-I-do. "You know they've closed the case, and it's been what? Less than three weeks!"
He agrees with her: there is something fishy going on, but outwardly, he shakes his head. "Kate…I may not know your mother as well as you, but I know she wouldn't have wanted you to have her death define your life."
She leans against the counter, and her lip quivers as she tries to smile. "You know, Rick…" Her voice is at an audible decibel again, lower even. "My dream, all my life, was to go and practice law with my mother." She looks up at him, and his heart just shatters, knowing the words she is going to say without her having to say them. "That dream, Rick…that dream is gone. And it will never come back."
He is speechless. He has nothing to say to that, nothing beyond the trite words of half-comfort she's already heard half a dozen times.
His mother is with Jim in the other room, and in the silence, he can hear their conversation, but none of the words are intelligible. He knows Jim has been looking at the bottle of bourbon in the corner, and his mother has travelled that road before – he isn't sure if he should be concerned or relieved. He chooses to believe the former; after all, there isn't much the two of them can do while Alexis is in the same room.
She's started speaking again, but he only catches the last bit of the sentence. "…get to see her."
"Wait, say that again."
"I said, we didn't even get to see her. The detectives told us that her face had been so mutilated they hadn't been able to identify her. The only reason they could was because she still had her wallet on her."
Now, that he didn't know. The detectives hadn't said anything of the sort when he'd been around. "She still had her wallet?"
Kate huffed. "It couldn't possibly be a random mugging, Rick. The detectives told us it had been a mugging the first time they came around, and that my mother was just unlucky." The derision in her voice is clear, speaking as to how highly she really valued the detectives' opinion. "But how can you mutilate someone's face so badly in a random mugging? And why leave her wallet?"
Rick starts to nod, but catches himself. "It doesn't matter, Kate. She's gone. Wouldn't her legacy be better served in the law firm and the works she'd started?"
It's futile; she's made up her mind, and both of them know it. Rick sighs. "Have you…have you at least told your father about your decision?"
"It's too late, Rick. I've already signed up. I'm going to finish my degree at NYU, and the police academy's said they'll take me as soon as I graduate. It's a done deal."
Her expression softens. "This is the right thing, Rick. I'm going to find justice for my mother. And you know what? I'll help other people find justice, too." Her eyes turn towards the other room, where she can see her father smiling for the first time in three weeks, bouncing Alexis on one knee. "I'll tell him, eventually. But you know, this might actually drive him into the bottle we both know he's been looking at these past couple of weeks. And look at him. I can't destroy what happiness he has at the moment."
He shakes his head. "It's that your father's started grieving, Kate." And you haven't, were the words hanging unspoken between them. "But it's your family, and your life. I don't have any business poking into your things."
She nods once, before shaking her head and heading up the stairs, steps heavy and hesitant, as if she herself isn't sure of her decision, no matter the things she has just spoken out loud.
A/N: Big thanks go out to TonyCastle78 for helping me stay true to my storyline, NinaK.05 and melindaWRITER for beta-ing. For those of you following, favouriting, and reviewing, I cannot express to you how appreciative I am. Next chapter should be out within the next week, but no promises. Leave me a review to tell me what you think! Best, Ce'Nelenia
