A/N: Sorry for the delay in getting this last chapter up! The plan was to post one chapter a week, but then life got in the way. Big thanks for your favourites and follows and your feedback and generally awesome welcome into this fandom. In exchange, I'll try and write something else where I don't kill off Kate before the first sentence. ;)
And as always, huge thanks to my proofreaders, Annie and Kel!
Chapter 3
Thirty
We've been at the Old Haunt for a couple of hours now and are ready to say our good-byes.
Kevin's the one who gets up first, gives Lanie a kiss on the cheek and steps around our table to give me and Espo a slight slap on the shoulder. We're all old now (I've stopped pretending I'm not. I'm just glad my mind's still sharp, my bladder and knees are in good shape and I still have a full head of hair, even if it is white. Thanks, Dad). Neither Javi nor I bother getting up. Kevin wouldn't have it anyway.
The four of us do this once a month, meet up at the Old Haunt, that is. It's become a tradition; our 12th Precinct Family Gathering, and it's always on me because I still own the place. I owe them more than a drink and dinner once a month, but it'll have to do.
Mostly we laugh, drink and eat a lot, but lately there have been some sombre gatherings too. Kevin's youngest daughter was sentenced to ten years in jail last year and he hasn't been the same since.
Shannon Ryan was loved to pieces like her older siblings, but she was always different from the other Ryan kids. She dropped out of school at sixteen, no matter how much tutoring Ryan arranged for her or how much time Jenny spent trying to get her butt back into class. She moved into her troubled boyfriend's place at eighteen and started selling drugs when she was nineteen. She was charged twice and got minor sentences, slaps on the wrist really, thanks to Alexis and some of her lawyer friends. But when she was caught dealing to a minor along with her priors, there wasn't much even Alexis could do for her.
Worst of all, Kevin blames himself, no matter what we do or say, and no matter how much we all pulled together to try and help his daughter. Doesn't matter that he knows his marriage will crumble if he keeps this up.
If I've learned anything from working with them, it's that cops like Ryan, Espo and Beckett are a proud bunch and they carry the weight of the world their shoulders.
"I better get back to my honey too," Lanie announces, pushing her chair back and getting up with a sigh. This time I get up too, because, well...because it's Lanie and I might be old but I haven't forgotten all my manners.
I lean in to kiss her cheek. "See you next month."
"Of course. Wouldn't miss it," she replies.
Lanie recently celebrated her twentieth wedding anniversary. She's married to a big bear of a man that she wed in a lavish ceremony on Long Island. We were all there, including my two daughters. He's a popular chef and she met him while eating at his Manhattan restaurant on a girl's night out. I don't know Malcolm that well, but judging from how happy Lanie is, his biggest flaw is his irresistible cooking. (She complains that it's a full-on assault on her waistline). They never had kids and Lanie has no regrets. They're both retired now and spend a lot of time enjoying life on golf courses and taking salsa lessons.
She walks out together with Kevin.
"Alright, bro," Javier Esposito gets up as well. "Let's call it a night. Wanna lift back to your place?"
"No thanks," I decline his offer. "I'm going to stop by Allegra's practice. Convince her to head out with me."
"It's nine o'clock," Espo points out. "My niña's still there?"
"Of course she is."
"I'll drop you off there."
"It's the opposite direction from where you're going."
"Stop arguing with me, Castle."
I smile. He still calls me that. Even long after I've stopped working with them at the precinct. "Fine then."
We walk to his car, our pace much slower than it was twenty years ago. Unlike the rest of us, Esposito never married. He's dated a bunch of women since he's been with Lanie, one of whom stayed with him for nearly five years. But for some reason, he could never bring himself to give any of them a ring. Whether it was because he didn't love them enough or because the idea of forever still terrifies him, I'm not sure. We never talk about it because he's not one for deep conversation.
He's been a foster dad to half a dozen troubled teenagers and he's still in touch with all of them. For all his macho posturing, Espo's got a huge heart, and just the right amount of tough love that all those boys needed.
He would have been a great dad and sometimes I wish he would have had kids of his own, but he's made me realize that biology is only one part of being a father. He's played a huge part in the lives of his foster kids, in Allegra's life and in the lives of Ryan's kids. In my book he is a dad.
I never remarried either.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a saint, or a monk. I've dated a handful of wonderful women in the last twenty years and I'm grateful to them for letting me into their lives and helping me feel alive again. But I always knew that a fourth marriage wasn't in the cards. It took me three tries to get it right and three is plenty for one lifetime.
I still wear my wedding band and have no plans to ever take it off.
"Here we are," Espo announces after our ride, bringing his car to a stop next to the converted warehouse building that houses my daughter's law office.
"Thanks for the lift."
"Give my girl a hug for me, 'kay?"
"Why don't you come up and do it yourself?" I suggest. "She loves seeing you."
"What? And get my car stolen in this neighbourhood?" Javier smiles, letting me know he's kidding. "It's bad enough her old man keeps dropping in on her unannounced. One of these days you're gonna catch her doing..."
"Stop it," I raise my hand. I don't need this image in my head. "I'll give her your damn hug."
"Night, bro," he says with a smirk. Some things never change.
I make my way into the building using an access key that Allegra gave me some time ago. The elevator that I have to take to the fifth floor is one of those old ones, with a grated iron door that you need to open and shut yourself.
It's late and save for myself, I don't see anyone else in the building. I can hear every single one of my footsteps echoing into the empty hallway. It's creepy enough to be a perfect setting for a gruesome killing.
Sometimes I wish my mind didn't go there. Especially not when visiting my daughter's workplace. But it does. Writer's curse.
Both my girls turned out to be lawyers. But their jobs couldn't be more different.
Alexis is back in New York City after spending nearly two decades abroad. Her field is international law and she works inside a gorgeous art deco office at the UN building, surrounded by dignitaries from all over the world. Allegra is a defense lawyer, who's moved on from representing all sorts of criminals as their appointed counsel to now running her own small claims and personal injury firm in Brooklyn. It was an ambitious decision for a young lawyer but that didn't stop her. She shares a small office with her partner and still mostly represents those who can't afford an attorney. Except now very few of them are hardcore criminals and I'm happy about that.
Unlike Alexis, Allegra never really left New York City. Aside from a mandatory backpacking-through-Europe-trip after college and a three-month stint in Bolivia, where she helped build a school in the Andes, she's had no desire to be anywhere but here. Like her parents, this city's ingrained in her, and she'd rather find her professional footing in a former warehouse in Brooklyn than a sterile new office in the suburbs of Atlanta or Las Vegas.
Most of her cases are pro-bono. Thankfully, she's good at what she does or else she'd still be living at the loft. (Although, I'd be lying if I said I would mind. I miss having her around since she moved out.)
The elevator comes to a jarring halt on the fifth floor and I pull open the door and proceed down the hallway.
It occurs to me then that she might not be here anymore. I really should've called.
But then, she always works late. And I like to surprise her. If she's not here I'll head back downstairs and call a cab. No big deal. It might not be the best neighbourhood in the world but it's not the ghetto either.
It's when I get closer to the sign that says 'Castle & Dennison: Attorneys at Law'
that I suddenly hear a deafening crash behind the closed door.
Terrified, I barge through the door.
"Allegra?"
My daughter's angry face turns towards me. "Dad? What are you doing here?"
"Are you okay?" I ask. "What was that noise?"
I follow her gaze and spot the glass shards and mangled flowers lying in a pool of water at the other side of the room. Given that there's no one else here, I think it's safe to assume my daughter is the one who threw the vase and all its contents against the wall.
"That must have been a really offensive arrangement."
Allegra lowers her tensed up shoulders and runs a hand through her thick, long hair. Normally that would have elicited a smile. But not this time.
I don't hide my concern when I look at her. There's anger and frustration written on her face, but other emotions too, ones I can't quite make out. Because I can't read her as well as I could when she was ten.
"What's wrong, sweetheart?"
"Dad..." she sighs again. It's her way of saying 'not now'. Maybe not at all.
Allegra's become more closed off as she's gotten older. Sometimes I think it's because she wants to protect me, doesn't want me to share the burden of her problems. Other times I think it's just her nature.
"You can't throw a vase against a wall and expect me not to ask you what prompted it," I point out.
"I wasn't expecting you here."
Valid point.
I pull out a chair from her partner's desk (her law firm partner, the Dennison part of the sign, is an older black woman from Louisiana, with the deepest laugh I've ever heard) and sit down without a word, while Allegra leans on her desk. Neither of us say anything for a few long moments, until she steps over to her coffee machine and offers me some coffee.
It's too late for coffee but I accept it anyway.
"It's Roberto," she says softly, going back to pour herself a cup too. "He's been missing for two days."
I see the fear in her eyes now, fear that she masked with anger only minutes ago. I always have a hard time knowing when she's afraid because she hides it so well. (It's eerie sometimes, how much she's like her mother). But I see it now.
Allegra and Roberto have been together for nearly five years. They met and fell in love when she represented his mother for a minor charge. It was one of her early cases.
As her father I often wish she'd fallen in love with someone less...complicated than Roberto Alvarez. He's a good man with a huge heart and he's deeply in love with my daughter. Best of all he makes her laugh and I think she needs that. But he's got so much baggage it scares me sometimes. A troubled family that he's always bailing out. A crazy ex-girlfriend that keeps trying to destroy his happiness with my daughter. Did I mention he's also a marine who's already done three tours in the Middle East? He's often away for months at a time.
As much as she tries to hold it together, I've seen the toll it's taken on Allegra and it's hard to watch. When he was called back again only recently, I couldn't believe it.
Roberto promised Allegra that this was his last tour. That after this he'll get an honourable discharge. If he comes back alive, that is.
I force the thought from my mind. Don't even want to think about what it'll do to my daughter.
"What do you mean he's missing?" I ask, not entirely sure I want to hear the answer.
"He went out on a routine overnight patrol with three others. They ran into some insurgents and had to go off the grid. No one's heard from them since." Her voice is a whisper.
"I see. What does...what could that mean?'
"That they've been captured. Or killed."
"Or maybe they're hiding and lost communication?"
"It's...possible," she says, not believing it for a second. Agreeing only to assuage my own fears.
There's a sadness and a weariness in her eyes that reminds me so much of the haunted looks I'd sometimes catch on Kate's face in our early days, when we were investigating her mother's death. The dark places she'd recede into which I couldn't always pull her out of.
"Look, Dad...about the vase. I'm sorry I scared you."
"Hey..." I put a hand on her shoulder and take an even better look at her. See the circles under her eyes and how exhausted she is. "You don't have to explain...or apologize." I want to tell her she also doesn't have to be so strong. All the time.
"He asked me to marry him before he left."
"What?" I'm shocked. Why wouldn't she tell me something so big? "Why...?"
"I didn't tell you because I didn't say yes."
"You didn't? Why?"
"Well, according to him it's 'cause I was speechless but I'm pretty sure I said no." After a moment of levity she's serious again. "I love him," she tells me. "I do wantto be his wife."
"But?"
"Not like this. I don't want to wear a ring on my finger just so I can be the one to get an American flag handed to me when he comes back in a casket."
"Allegra...come on." Here I was thinking morbid thoughts are a writer's curse. Apparently it's a family trait.
"I told him to ask me again when he gets back." Her eyes water. "That if he wants to talk about even the possibility of us having a family...then I need him around. In one piece."
To hear her talk about marriage and family as though it's some pipe dream rather than a possibility, breaks my heart a little. Alexis was already married, to Xavier, my gentle son-in-law, a French researcher she met in Geneva, before she turned thirty. She had her first child less than a year later. Her second, a bubbly teenager now, two years later.
Both my daughters worked hard for what they earned, but at the end of the day things always seemed to come more easily for Alexis than Allegra. Whether it was it was grades or men or court cases, I always got the sense that my younger daughter had to work twice as hard for what she got.
Sometimes, I think the universe keeps throwing obstacles at her because it knows Allegra can handle them. But seriously, enough already. I want it to stop. My baby's only human.
"I was so angry after I got that phone call," Allegra admits. "That after all we've gone through...that it might end like this. It's so damn unfair."
"Hang on a second. Since when do you lose hope so quickly?"
Allegra sets down her coffee mug and gives me a questioning look. "How is it that you never lose it?"
"What?"
"For as long as I've known you, I've never seen you get frustrated like I do. God knows you would have had ample reason. Life hasn't exactly been kind to you."
"Well..." I shrug my shoulders. "To be honest. I have a lousy throw. The vase probably wouldn't have made it all the way to the wall if I'd thrown it."
She doesn't let me off that easily.
"Dad...your first wife left you to raise Alexis alone, you lost your mother the day I was born, and then Mom was killed when I was only two years old, leaving you to raise another kid by yourself."
I raise my brows and calmly take another sip of coffee. "That is miserable. Didn't even realize it until you spelled it out like that."
Allegra's eyes darken in shock and instant remorse as she covers her mouth with one hand. "Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." She groans. "What a stupid thing to say."
"For what it's worth, no one forced me to raise you alone. I had the option of putting you up for adoption. Lord knows Espo or Lanie would've taken you in a heartbeat."
"I'm such a thoughtless idiot."
"Hey...it's okay." I chuckle and squeeze her shoulder. More amused than anything else. She can be so serious sometimes. So hard on herself. "You're upset."
"Not an excuse."
I ponder her words and they suddenly weigh me down. Is that what I've led her to believe her whole life? That I was never angry? Never lost it? Never said anything stupid?
Is that why she thinks she needs to be so strong all the time? Because she thinks I was?
"Allegra, it's not true," I tell her.
"What's not true?"
"That I never lost it."
"It's just that...I've never seen you. My whole life."
Because after the funeral I promised myself I wouldn't let her. Told myself I would never go down that rabbit hole again. Although there have been times when I did. Occasional lapses, when I sent her off to summer camp and was home alone. When I played all of Kate's favourite songs on the stereo, wallowed in memories, drank so much I couldn't see straight and didn't leave the loft for days. By the time I went to pick her up again, it was over. I flushed the despair from my system and was sober and happy again. Not because I had to be, but because I wanted that for both of us.
"I lost it big time right after your Mom died in my arms."
Allegra looks at me strangely. "What do you mean, died in your arms? She died in ambulance, on the way to the hospital..."
"That's what the news reports said."
"It's not...?"
"She was gone before they put her in the ambulance."
I've never told her my daughter this. The only who knows everything is Esposito. He was there in the minutes after it happened. Apparently he saw some stranger try to film it on his smartphone, ripped the phone from the guy's hand and threw it down a sewer grate. Threatened to shoot him if he so much as tried to retrieve it.
I don't condone the abuse of power by the police, but I'll be forever grateful for what Espo did that day. For giving me and my wife one last moment alone together. One that wouldn't be plastered all over the media before the end of the night.
It happened so long ago, 28 years now, but every minute of that day is still fresh in my memory. Because I've relived it a hundred times.
"Will you tell me what really happened?" Allegra asks.
I can. But I'm not sure I want to. There are so many little details I've never shared with anyone. Never cared to.
"Please?"
It's not often Allegra asks me for something these days. When she does, I feel like I should try and give it to her.
So I agree and tell her to sit down, I grab a chair of my own and sit down next to her and start telling her everything. From the beginning.
I start with the call I got from Kate just as I left my meeting at Black Pawn publishing. It was a gorgeous summer day, all vibrant blue skies and bright sunshine. Sunglasses on, I was walking down 43rd Street towards Hell's Kitchen. There was a new pastry shop there I wanted to try out.
"Hey, babe, is your meeting over?"
"Just got out."
"Feel like checking out a crime scene? For old time's sake?"
"What do you mean?" That's what I asked. Hell yes, is what I was thinking.
"Espo and Ryan have got a really weird one. Satanic symbols and voodoo rituals next to a body under a highway overpass. They called me about it today and were saying it made them think about you. That they could use an out-of-the-box theory."
"Out-of-the-box is my middle name."
"You wanna go?"
"Yes!"
I missed it, to be honest. Missed working with Beckett and the boys. Missed the adrenaline rush we'd get when we cracked a lead wide open and solved a difficult case. Sometimes I still get a call from the boys when they want to bounce ideas off me. But it's not the same without Beckett bossing us around and reining us in.
I stopped shadowing her after she made Captain and aside from our off-duty get-togethers with Lanie and the boys, she didn't see Espo and Ryan that often anymore either. Her new precinct was halfway across town from theirs and she had more than enough work on her own plate without having time to poke her nose into anyone else's cases.
"Where are you?"
"Near 43rd and 10th."
"I'll come get you."
"Police escort. Nice. Can we turn on the siren for old times sake too?"
"Don't make me regret this."
"Love you too." I was grinning. I missed this. Rita Rudner was right. The best part of being married was knowing that you found that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
She was driving the captain's cruiser when she picked me up less than fifteen minutes later. The AC was turned off in the car and the windows rolled down, her shoulder length hair windblown, a smile on her face when I stepped into the car, because she saw the coffee and the cinnamon bun I was holding in my hands.
"You know me so well," she gushed. "I skipped lunch so I could get everything done and sneak out early."
"You skipped lunch so you could leave early and take me to a crime scene? That's love."
A smirk lifted her lips, even as her eyes remained on the road. "Something like that."
"Had I known I'd have brought you a real lunch."
"No, this is perfect," she left one hand on the steering wheel and grabbed the pastry with the other, taking a big bite of it. "I've been dreaming about a good cup of coffee all day."
Sitting in traffic we chatted about work. Things were good at her precinct these days. She'd made massive inroads in weeding out the bad apples, their case closure rates were climbing steadily and she now held the grudging respect of even those officers who used to enjoy throwing her under the bus every chance they got. Her success took some NYPD higher-ups by surprise, but not me. I knew how good she was.
After she finished scarfing down the cinnamon roll, Kate put a free hand on my leg, our eyes meeting in the rear-view mirror. Her long fingers inched towards the inside of my thigh.
"My Dad offered to keep Allegra for the night."
"Oh...he did?"
The second she said it my mind was already on the endless possibilities that this implied.
It had been some time since we had a night to ourselves at the loft.
"He'd be insulted if we didn't take him up on it, don't you think?"
"Think you might be right."
Part of me wanted to insist we head straight home. I didn't really care about the case anymore, no matter how bizarre it was. My mind was on strip poker, wine, strawberries and making love in the living room.
But I didn't say anything (and would torment myself for weeks afterwards, wondering whether I might have saved her life if I had). Kate stopped the car when we got close to the crime scene. It happened yesterday, so the body was long gone, already at the coroner's. She parked on the street. We'd have to walk along a sidewalk and then veer off it to the highway underpass on foot.
That's where we spotted Esposito in the distance and I heard him calling out, "Yo Captain...Castle!" He gave us a small wave of acknowledgement before kneeling down and writing something in his notebook. Ryan wasn't there that day. He was off following another lead related to the case.
I forgot my sunglasses in the car, so my eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight and then trailed my wife as she stepped out of the car. Kate looked great that day, regal almost, in her cream-coloured tailored suit and heels. Her attire was more formal than it used to be in her detective days.
I noticed a passerby on the sidewalk checking her out so I hurried to catch up to my wife's quick pace, in order to take my place by her side and mark my territory.
You can look, but she's mine.
When I was close enough to her that our shoulders nearly touched, she turned her head for a second and leaned into towards my ear.
"I brought handcuffs," she whispered.
"For what?'"
"For tonight."
She bit her lip, smiling and taunting me, and every fibre of my body really, really wanted to leave that crime scene right then and there. (I don't tell Allegra this part)
Kate saw my reaction and her hand reached for mine and suddenly our fingers were entwined. Her soft skin cooling mine off. We held hands for a few steps until we approached the crime scene and she let go.
We'd been married some time then, and there were many routine, uneventful, even frustrating days, but there were also moments like this; perfect summer afternoons in the best city in the world, when my gorgeous wife drove me wild, turned the heads of strangers and didn't notice because I was the one she was still madly in love with.
Another pedestrian came towards us, wearing jeans and a sweater and holding a paper bag in his hand. He raised it towards his mouth, so we figured it was stuffed with something edible. We barely gave him a second glance.
Except it wasn't food inside his bag.
The instant we realized how wrong we were, he'd already yanked the handgun out of the paper bag and pulled the trigger once.
It all happened so fast.
Kate gasping and doubling over with the impact of the first bullet. Me, breaking her fall, just as the second bullet hit her. Esposito screaming and running with lightning speed towards the guy who shot her, tackling him to the ground.
Kate was on the pavement, struggling to breathe and I was cradling her in my lap. The first bullet hit her in the chest, not far from her sniper's scar and it paralyzed me with sheer terror. Subconsciously I already knew that there was no way her heart could survive that twice.
Miracles only happen once.
"Kate..." I pressed my palm against her stomach, where the second bullet hit her, in a futile effort to try and stop the flow of blood. Her cream-coloured suit was fast turning crimson red.
She was losing blood so quickly and all I could do was watch, helpless and useless.
I heard Espo calling for help for help on his phone. Heard him calling my name after he cuffed the shooter. Asking me if I was okay. Then I heard him yell at a bystander (the guy who was filming us on his cell phone).
Kate groaned and her eyes were clouded with pain but she grabbed my shirt.
"Kate...hold on. Espo called for help...they're gonna be here any moment..."
I started to hyperventilate and I think that's why she grabbed my shirt with the last of her strength.
Castle, focus!
I could hear her saying it, even though she didn't. It was my imagination.
"Rick...stop..."
"Kate...please!"
She fisted the fabric of my shirt in her hand and whimpered with the effort. My hands were wrapped around hers and I wanted to take her and scoop her up in my arms. Protect her from this godawful world and keep her warm and safe and never let go.
Her skin already felt cool against mine, in spite of the heat outside.
"Rick..." It took so much effort for her to speak but her eyes were on mine and they demanded my attention. "Rick...it's okay. Babe, it's okay. You're here. I'm not alone. Rick.." She struggled to say the words and I wanted to tell her to stop. To conserve every damn drop of energy she had because she could not leave me.
"Want you to know... that you're...you're the best thing that ever happened to me. You make me so happy."
It's the last thing she said before she lost consciousness. The pain and tension on her face disappeared the moment her eyes closed and she suddenly looked calm. As though she'd fallen asleep on me. (Like she sometimes did when I made her watch my favourite sci-fi show).
No, no, no, no, no...don't you dare say goodbye. Not happening. Not allowed. No way, Kate. Nope.
I couldn't stop my tears when she closed her eyes. I was shaking and hysterical.
My wife was dying in my arms and I was a useless, slobbering mess. Struck by two bullets, she was the one who found the strength to say goodbye. Not me. I couldn't get a single word out. Richard Castle, best-selling author, couldn't even croak out an "I love you". Not this time.
"Dad..." Allegra's hand is on my arm and suddenly I'm back in the present. In her law office in Brooklyn. "She knew. You know that she knew!"
I nod. Didn't notice until now that my cheeks are wet. (I'm not stoic like Kevin and Javi. Or as strong as Allegra seems to think. Crying comes embarrassingly easy for me). Of course Beckett knew. But there's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I said it out loud. I wish that would've been the last thing she heard. Not the sound of sirens approaching but my voice telling her how much I loved her.
But I couldn't bring myself to do it this time, because that would've been a goodbye and I was so not ready to say goodbye.
"They tried to revive her in the ambulance, but she never regained consciousness again, " I tell Allegra. "She was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital."
My clothes were covered in her blood when the doctor at the hospital came out to tell me what I already knew. Hearing it out loud was the final straw.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Castle. The paramedics did everything they could."
We did everything we could. Is there a sadder sentence in the English language? I don't think so.
My knees gave out and I collapsed into one of those cheap chairs they have in the waiting areas outside of emergency rooms all over the world.
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Didn't want to exist in a world without her.
I remember Kevin Ryan stepping into the room, kneeling down next to me and I didn't even question how he got there so fast as he handed me a glass of water and told me I needed to get changed. He literally took me by the hand and helped me get up and get out of my clothes in the men's room because I couldn't function.
I wanted to die.
I vaguely recall seeing Javier Esposito, along with half a dozen uniforms at the ER and he was just as much of a mess as I was. Between him and Ryan, it was always Javi who was closest to Beckett. She was like a sister to him and losing her wasn't something he could deal with either.
Ryan made me splash some water on my face and then drink some more of it.
"There's gonna be reporters here any minute and cops that wanna talk to you," he told me and when I saw his face in the bathroom mirror, I saw that he was near tears too. Of course he found a way to hold them back, unlike myself. "You already gave your statement to us, okay? Javi's gonna get you out of here before they arrive and swarm you."
"What?" I couldn't think straight. "No...no, no! I'm not leaving her."
"Castle," Ryan's voice was hollow but firm. "You should go see her dad. Before he hears it on the news."
The two of them flanked me on the way out of the hospital and I'm not sure how I made it into a taxi and over to Jim Beckett's place. At one point the driver had to stop so I could open the door and throw up.
I couldn't deal with this, never mind be strong for someone else.
But somehow I found a way to clean up, steady my voice and stop my hands from shaking by the time I knocked on his door.
"He was holding you in his arms when I got there," I tell Allegra. "You were asleep and drooling on his shoulder."
I'll never forget Jim Beckett's face that day.
"Rick, what are you doing here?" he asked. Terrified at the thought of what my presence might imply. "There's breaking news on TV of a high ranking NYPD officer killed in the line of duty. But they're not giving any details. Rick, tell me you're not here because of that...tell me it's not Katie..."
I didn't even have to say anything. He knew with one look at my face.
"I remember taking you from his arms and watching him sit down and start sobbing. You stirred in your sleep, but didn't wake up."
Jim Beckett started drinking again a few weeks after that night. He died of heart failure eight months later.
Sometimes it makes me angry that he gave up after Kate died, leaving Allegra without a single grandparent (I had no idea then, or now, whether my father was dead or alive. I've never heard from him again) but I get it. I do. I survived losing Kate because I had to, for my girls, but I'm not sure I could survive losing either one of my daughters.
"I was a mess afterwards," I confess to my daughter. "I mean, hardcore. Couldn't do anything. Didn't want to do anything. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't take care of you. Couldn't even look at you. Alexis was the one who stepped in and did everything. She was the anchor for all of us."
I locked myself in the bedroom and listened to the endless news coverage about the shooting. Debates over this and that and Kate's face always plastered all over the background.
The gun lobbyists suggesting I should have been armed. It was such a silly argument. Beckett, who was ten times faster on the trigger than I would ever be, was armed that day. There was a fully-loaded Glock 19 sitting snugly in a holster underneath her suit jacket. No additional firepower would have made us react any faster.
The anti-gun lobbyists went on about how a mentally ill man shouldn't have had access to a gun. But he wasn't diagnosed with his illness when he got it. He was ex-military and his gun was licensed and registered. It was all completely legit, so their argument was pointless too.
People questioned why she wasn't wearing a vest. As if she wore one every time she walked down the streets of New York.
Reporters wanted to know what we were doing on a case that didn't involve her precinct. Kevin and Javier were grilled endlessly over the fact that they reached to me as a consultant even though they'd done it a dozen times before. Funny, how the NYPD never minded when it was my crazy theories that cracked a case.
There were even debates on whether she was actually on duty when it happened. (I don't think she was. For once in her life she'd left the precinct early and had no intentions of going back that night) But because she was helping the boys on a case, off the record or not, they decided she was.
It made for a better story anyway.
"NYPD captain killed in the line of duty" was a way better narrative than "NYPD captain randomly shot by schizophrenic on way home from work."
I guess I'd have done the same if I were writing it.
Except this time there was no story and that was something else I couldn't handle.
'What do you mean?" Allegra asks me.
"The very first case I worked with your mother, she insisted to me that sometimes there is no story. Sometimes a guy's just a psychopath. I disagreed and I was nearly always right. Except this time."
The man who shot and killed Kate wasn't one of Bracken's goons coming at us in an epic battle of good versus evil. It wasn't one of Kelly Nieman's former patients, wanting revenge because Beckett killed their favourite plastic surgeon.
He wasn't even a psychopath, just a paranoid schizophrenic who stopped taking his meds because he couldn't stand the side effects. Beckett's shooter was obsessed with the number 46. Convinced that the 46th woman he'd see that day was a demon sent to kill him. He counted them one by one after he left his apartment that afternoon.
"You mother was the forty-sixth woman he saw that day."
It was so random and nonsensical, I still can't wrap my head around it. To this day.
Sometimes there is no story.
Allegra doesn't say anything. She knows this part all too well. She devoured every news report about her mother's shooting since she was old enough to read. And god knows there was enough written about the guy who shot her to fill several novels.
Allegra leaves to go get me some more coffee. I don't really need any more. It'll just keep me up all night. But it's her way of saying she wants me to go on. She often used to make me coffee at the loft, when we brainstormed about my latest novels.
"What kind of stupid number is 46 anyway?" I ask my daughter. "Couldn't he have at least picked a good one? Like thirteen? Or 666? Or even...69?"
Allegra gives me a lopsided smile.
They institutionalized the guy after his trial. He got off on an insanity plea and I'm okay with that. He was driven by insanity. Slapping the death penalty on him wouldn't have given me any satisfaction. I read somewhere that after they put him back on his meds and he realized what he'd done, he tried to kill himself. I know he didn't succeed and beyond that I have no idea where he is now. Whether he's back out or even still alive.
I don't care. What difference does it make? Nothing will bring her back.
The funeral was the worst part of it all.
It was huge.
Beckett was the highest ranking officer killed in the line of duty in god knows how many years and that meant law enforcement officials from all over the continent were going to attend. Police chiefs from as far away as Canada and Mexico. Full honours with flags and endless regalia all over the place. The President was supposed to there too, if she hadn't been on a trade visit to China at the time. Instead, she sent the Vice President.
"They wanted to bury her at Arlington," I tell Allegra. "But that's where I put my foot down. We never talked about it but I know Kate would have wanted to be buried next to her mother."
Beckett always had a healthy respect for police traditions. She dutifully wore her full dress uniform whenever she had to but I think she would have hated the sheer pomp and circumstance of her own funeral as much as I did. It was overwhelming and suffocating.
Clichéd as it might sound, Beckett was never in it for the glory and she didn't care about being a hero. She did it for justice and to give the dead a voice.
"I was a mess the morning of the funeral," I told Allegra. "Hung over from too much scotch the night before, unwashed, unshaven...last thing I wanted to do was put on a black suit, sit in the sweltering New York heat and listen to bagpipes while watching your mother's casket being lowered into the ground."
Allegra's expression is sorrowful. "I'm sorry..."
"I'm telling you this because I want you to know that there were plenty of times that l lost it. Did worse things than throw a vase against a wall."
"But you went to the funeral?"
"Of course I went. I couldn't not pay my last respects to your mother." I grin a little. "And I couldn't give the media whole new fodder by not showing up."
Alexis made me get cleaned up that day. Shoved me into a cold shower fully clothed and told me I wasn't allowed to come out of the bathroom until I shaved.
"It was...the hardest thing I've ever done. Attend your mother's funeral."
"But you did it."
"At one point, as Commissioner Victoria Gates read the eulogy, everyone was quiet and sombre. I was baking in the hot sun in my black suit, thinking I was gonna pass out. The heat was crippling and I hadn't had any real food in days. Alexis was holding you in her lap, and her and Lanie were both crying. And then...this..." I grin at the memory. "This ladybug lands on your bare arm and starts crawling along it and you start giggling. Right in the middle of the most unbearable hour of my life, you start giggling. I mean...really loudly! Even Iron Gates cracked a smile. There you were squealing in delight because of this insect. So I took you from Alexis's lap and held you for the first time since I went to see your grandpa. I did it to try and get you to be quiet but it made me realize how much I missed holding you in my arms."
Allegra's eyes are watering.
"Call me crazy, but I know that was a message from your mother, telling me to man up and to stop neglecting the biggest gift she ever gave me."
And reminding me that even on the worst days, there is the possibility of joy.
Funny enough, that's the picture that all the newspapers carried after the funeral was over. Not the ones of hundreds of police officers swamping the small New York cemetery in a sea of black and blue, but the one of me holding my smiling daughter in my lap during the eulogy.
I liked that.
Because that's the legacy Kate would've wanted to leave. She fought so hard to knock down all her walls and to destroy the enemies that tried to prevent her happiness. In the end she succeeded and left behind a husband who was crazy about her and one seriously happy little kid. That was the ultimate tribute to Kate Beckett.
And that was her story. The love she left behind, not the way she died.
"Sometimes it makes me angry that your mother never got to see you grow up and that you never got a chance to get to know her," I admit. "But in many ways, I already got more than I bargained for."
"More?" Allegra questions.
"The day your mother got shot by a sniper at Montgomery's funeral, I remember going to the hospital, pacing the hallways waiting for her to pull through the surgery...and the only thing I wanted was for her to live. That's it. Kate needed to live. It's all that mattered. Everything else was gravy. If someone had said to me that night at the hospital that she's not only gonna survive this...but that we'd be lovers, get married and have a daughter. I'd have told them they were crazy. That was so far beyond what I dared hope for." I turn to my daughter and her blue eyes meet mine. "Happily-ever-after would really have been pushing it, don't you think?"
"Oh Dad..." Allegra grimaces. "That's a hell of a way of looking at it."
It's true though. We squeezed a lot of life and love into those eight years of borrowed time. More than most people do in a lifetime.
I want to tell Allegra as much but then her phone rings and I see the panic on her face.
"I don't recognize the number..." she says.
It rings. Several times. And my daughter still doesn't answer.
"Allegra...pick it up."
The colour drains from her face as she finally takes the call.
I get up and make sure she stays seated. Just in case.
"Yes...this is she."
I swallow. Please let it be good news. Whatever else you throw at my kid, at least give her a chance to be as happy as I was. It's all I'm asking.
"Yes..."
I watch her intently. Watch the way her hands grip the phone so hard that her knuckles are white.
"He was...found? You found them?" It's then that her tears start to fall. But it's not sadness I see on her face, it's relief. Happy tears.
I exhale and feel my muscles relax.
"Yes!" she exclaims. "Put him on!" She smiles at me and gives me a thumbs up sign. As if I couldn't read every emotion on her face. "Oh my god, Bobby...I was so worried, are you okay?"
I listen to her talk to her boyfriend, their conversation interspersed with low-voiced sweet nothings that remind me how much she loves the guy. It's a gentle, vulnerable side of my daughter I don't often see. That too reminds me of Kate, who could be so soft and tender when she was alone with me and so very different from the unyielding cop the rest of the world got to see.
"There's something else," I hear my daughter say. "I've changed my mind. About your question...I said no, but what I really wanted to say was yes." She giggles. "Yes yes...that question. Yes...I wanna marry you." "
"Congratulations!" I yell across her desk and I'm grinning now. (I said I'm old, I didn't say I was mature).
She's blushing. "My Dad's here...I think he approves."
"Tell him you're worth at least twenty goats."
Allegra rolls her eyes and then narrows them conspiratorially. "He says he's happy to host our wedding at his place in the Hamptons."
Smart-ass.
It's true though. I'd be totally okay with that. The house is big enough to have Allegra and Roberto, along with Alexis and her family stay over after the wedding. We could make a weekend celebration of it. And I love the idea of all of them coming together under one roof again. A wedding would be the perfect excuse.
Now that she mentioned it, I'm planning it already.
She ends the call and I can see the relief written all over her. She can't stop smiling.
"Congratulations, Mrs. Alvarez."
"Oh no..." Allegra grins. "I'm not changing my name. Way too much paperwork."
I chuckle. Guess she inherited more than my blue eyes after all.
"I was kidding by the way," she adds, getting up to lean against her desk again. "About having the wedding in the Hamptons."
"I wasn't. You are worth at least twenty goats."
I get another eye roll for that one.
"Seriously though. I think you should have the wedding at the Hamptons," I tell her. "It's a fantastic idea. "
"You really wouldn't mind? Won't it remind you of your own..."
"My own wedding?"
"Yeah."
"You know that was one of the best days of my life, right?"
Allegra scrunches her lips and I can see she really is contemplating it. "Okay...I'll run it by Roberto."
"I'll talk him into it."
"Leave that to me," my daughter orders, just before stifling a yawn. Now that all her pent up tension is gone, she looks like she's ready to give in to her exhaustion. "Did you drive here?" she asks me.
"Taxi." I never drive to and from our Old Haunt gatherings just in case we drink more than we plan to.
"I'll drive."
"No. I'll take a cab." Allegra's apartment is in Queens and that means she'd have to head back in and out of Manhattan.
She turns towards me. The happiness is still radiating from her face, but she's serious again. "I was thinking of telling Mom the big news. Wanna join me?"
"What?" I don't understand. "The cemetery...it's closed at this time."
"I know a way in."
"You do?"
"I do," Allegra says mischievously. She might be all grown up now, in her law office and heels and suits, but my little one is still crazy and reckless. I forget that sometimes.
I don't even know what to say.
"I sometimes snuck in after-hours when I was younger," she confesses. "When I needed to spend some time with her. I went to see her whenever something big happened in my life." She grins. "Like the one and only time I got a better grade than Alexis on a law exam."
"I don't know what to say..." I admit. There's a lump in my throat at the thought of my teenage daughter spending time with the mother she never really knew.
"I wanted her to still be a part of my life," Allegra explains. "That's all."
I swallow. Blown away by her admission. "I didn't know."
"I didn't tell you because I didn't ever want you to think that you weren't enough for me. Or that you'd feel bad because I needed to be near her sometimes. You're the best Dad I could've ever asked for, you know that, right? I never lacked for anything."
I nod a little, not trusting my voice. If she keeps this up she's going to make cry again.
Allegra walks over to where the mangled flowers and glass shards are lying on the floor. I move to help her but she won't let me.
"My mess," she insists.
So I sit and watch as she grabs a dust pan, squats down and wipes up the broken bits of glass off the hardwood floor. Then she scoops up the flowers and finds a piece of ribbon in one of the filing cabinets and ties them together.
"Bring them," I suggest.
"What?" Allegra looks at me sceptically.
"We'll leave them for your mother, after we tell her what you did to them. She'll get a kick out of that."
She will too. It's a good story. I'll probably go back alone sometime soon and tell her the rest. I'll tell her that our daughter's become an extraordinary woman and that she'd be so damn proud. That I'll try not bawl my eyes out when I give her away at her wedding.
Allegra chuckles, hooking her arm into mine as we leave her office together. She turns off the light behind us and the deserted hallway looks fabulously creepy again. Even more so when the wooden floors start to creak with our footsteps.
"You sure?"
"Oh, yes. She's gonna love it. All of it. Your news and the battered flowers. Mostly she's gonna love seeing me."
"Whatever, Dad," Allegra mumbles before yanking open the elevator door, cursing when it doesn't budge at first and then giving me a gentle push inside when it does.
That's my girl.