She Learned the Truth at 17
I can't believe that Castle would do such a thing. You're engaged, he gave you a ring and – " but then she remembered Kate telling her that she'd put the ring on without benefit of a proposal.
Chapter 27
Lanie's Bedroom
"Tell me exactly what you and Castle talked about today and don't leave anything out."
"He took me outside and told me that he wanted to know why I was 'distancing' myself from you and not even answering your calls so I told him. Then we went back inside the precinct and he sat down with Beckett and then she sent him home. That's all, Lanie."
"You left out a helluva lot of 'told him' so spill, Esposito. I have a feeling that Castle wrote something based on what you said to him and Kate read it and reacted badly and probably never even gave him a chance to say anything. So, talk to me."
"Look, I told Castle that I – that I didn't want you in my life because it was dirty and all you saw of things was the body and crime scene whereas we got to see it all: the surviving family, the plots, the horrible motives some people have. I didn't want you to be exposed to it, even second hand. He asked me if cops should only marry other cops and I told him, basically, yes. I quoted the divorce statistics. That's all."
"Look, you're not dirty and if that's the only thing keeping you away then get over it. I'm not pure as the driven snow and I've seen a lot more things than you think and I'm not afraid of loving a cop. We can talk about things, let you decompress and we can avoid the divorce bullet. All you have to do is talk to me, Javi, just talk."
"It's – it can't be that easy, Lanie. If it was, then so many cops wouldn't be divorced and the suicide rate wouldn't be sky high."
"We're gonna talk about this some more but right now I got to deal with Beckett. Do me a favor and call Castle and tell him to get his butt over here and talk to her. I feel it in my bones that he's perfect for her and she needs to get her head out of her butt and quit screwing it up. Go. Use my phone. Maybe he'll think it's a body call."
Hop Ting Chinese Gardens Buffet & Bar
E22nd Street, NYC
Alexis was full to bursting and still her father had hardly touched his sesame chicken, concentrating instead on creating patterns of rice and sauce with one chopstick.
"Dad, I thought you were hungry?" He's really down tonight. Whatever happened with Kate has taken his spirit. He hasn't been this way since he came back from New Orleans and slept with the lights on for weeks.
"I am. Just thinking. Do you have plans for the first week in June, Pumpkin? I have to be in L.A. for some movie stuff and your grandmother will be in her 'dinner theatre' glory in some small town in Florida and I thought…maybe…"
"Maybe I'd go with you? But what about Kate, Dad? She won't be able to…"
"Doesn't matter. It's just you and me again, kidlette. Are you finished? Dessert?" He wanted to be anyplace but where he was whenever he thought about it. Keep moving and don't let it catch you.
His cell vibrated in his coat pocket but he ignored it just like he had the last two times. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to listen to her excuses. The longer he thought about it, the angrier he got and he couldn't let it show again. He'd seen the look on his daughter's face in the loft when he'd thrown his juvenile tantrum.
"Want to walk off some of these carbs? Check out the window displays?"
"No, Dad, I have to study and you have to call Kate. It's just a little bump in the road, Dad. It's none of my business but you wouldn't have trashed your office over this fight between you if you didn't care."
"Wise beyond your years. It's not up to me this time, Lex. I've gone as far into this as I can. Any farther and I'm coming out. Y'know, 'how far can the dog run into the woods?' Half-way. Then he's coming out? Applies here."
"My teacher says that's an example of trite thinking. She likes your novels but thinks they're rather repetitive and predictable."
"Everyone's a critic these days. Besides, 'if you can't do, teach'. Take that. Mrs. Othmar."
"It's MS. Othmar. She's pretty, Dad. Maybe next time you have a parent-teacher conference you could ask her out for coffee and butter her up so she'll quit assigning all these darn term papers."
"Lanie, he's not answering his cell. It goes right to voice mail and I've called 3 times and left messages. Look, I'm heading home. Maybe he'll call back. It's just after 9 o'clock so it's likely he went out to dinner or something with his kid."
"Okay, but we will talk some more about what you and Castle talked about. I'll see if I can talk some sense into little Miss Disengaged. She so damned stubborn some times – okay, all the time."
After seeing Javier out the door, she sent a text message to Castle.
Rick and Alexis walked back to the loft, neither in a hurry to get back to the scene of the 'crime'. Castle took out his cell and saw that he'd missed 3 calls from Lanie. 'That's a surprise. I thought she'd retreat to her bunker and hunker down.'
His phone buzzed with an incoming text message and it startled him and he dropped his cell into a convenient puddle.
"Shit!" He quickly pulled his phone out of the puddle and looked at it. He could barely make out the text message on the water-filled screen. Alexis laughed at him saying, "That's a new record for trashing a phone, Pops. Not even 24 hours and it's broken."
Writer Boy, your girl is here sobbing her heart out. Call me, or I'll come over there and drag you back here.
He hit speed dial #6 and could barely hear the ringing and almost dropped the phone again when he heard a male voice answer "Beckett". His water logged phone was messing up. Speed dial #6 was Lanie not Jim Beckett.
"Hey, Jim, it's Rick, by mistake. My phone got wet and I speed dialed you by mistake." He didn't want to talk to Beckett's dad.
"Well, I was just wondering if you and Katie had plans for the weekend? Maybe you two could run up and have dinner with me? Alexis is invited, of course."
"Um, well, I think you better check with your daughter. She might have plans I don't know about." Not a lie, just not the truth, either. He didn't know what Beckett's plans were for the weekend now that things had cratered on the relationship front.
"I'll do that. Talk with you later, Rick." He hung up and Rick breathed a sigh of relief. He tried Lanie's speed dial again and got Esposito instead. He almost threw his phone against a building they were walking by in frustration.
"It's Castle. My phone's messing up. I was trying to speed dial Lanie. Sorry to bother you."
"Yo, Castle, man, things are screwed up. Beckett's crying at Lanie's and Lanie's pissed at both of us now. Man, I never meant to create a problem between you two, you know that."
"Yeah, well, what's done is done. Since I have the phone from Hell, could you call Lanie and tell her Alexis and I are taking a walk and I'll be back at the loft in about two hours? I can barely hear you on this piece of crap. I'll call her from the house phone."
Lanie's Apartment
Lanie ended the call with Esposito and told Kate that Rick was going to call back from the loft after their walk. Rick's phone was acting weird and no one could understand the conversation very well.
"No, Lanie, I feel bad enough that I ruined your evening with Esposito. I'm going to grab a cab and head home. I'll talk with you tomorrow. I'm really tired and feel drained but I've made my decisions and I'm okay with what's happened."
Lanie knew better than to try to keep Kate at the apartment so she could talk to Castle when he called so she just hugged her friend and watched her walk dejectedly to the elevator.
Kate gave the cab driver her apartment address but then realized her badge and sidearm were still at the loft so she changed her destination. If she was lucky, she'd be in and out with no one the wiser.
Sitting in traffic left her nothing to do but think. She'd miss Castle's input on cases and how they built theory together even after hours – when they weren't doing family stuff or fooling around in bed. They spent as much time talking about cases and stuff as they did his novels and he'd been very free about seeking her input on 'cases' he'd dreamed up for Heat & Co. to solve.
'I'll miss our talks, our long soaks in the tub talking about cases and Nikki Heat and all the stuff going on with the movie.'
All too soon the cab pulled up in front of the loft apartment building. She paid the cabbie and went into the lobby and the doorman handed her a key and smiled and wished her a 'good evening, Detective'. Her building had a security door and a lobby 'minder' who spent more time surfing porn on the internet than minding the tenants.
Kate took the elevator to the penthouse floor and got off and stopped at the loft door.
'This will be the last time I come here. The last time I come to a place that really feels like home.'
She quietly unlocked the door and tiptoed in but stopped when she saw Martha sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine.
"Hello, Kate. I suppose you come back for your things. You might check out the study, dear. It's quite the sight to behold. I warned you, Kate. I told you he was not the 'pillar of strength' everyone thinks he is."
Martha got up and walked into the kitchen to 'refresh' her wine glass and raised a clean glass in Kate's direction. "A last glass of wine with the nagging harpy, Detective? One last drink in Castle's Keep? You might as well enjoy a glass. Not everyone has a cellar like my son although some have basements where secrets are stored."
Kate nodded her head in acceptance and then walked to the study and opened the door and gasped.
The laptop caught her eye first. It was in pieces and lying on the loveseat after bouncing off the wall behind it. The printer was overturned and paper littered the floor. She saw the remnants of a shattered coffee cup and the broken framed cover of his first book but it was the absence of anything on the desk and the overturned chair that brought home the anger and despair he must have been feeling.
"Check out the safe, darling. It'll never close properly again. He must have been furious when he slammed it shut. The locking pins have sheered off and you can see where the painting that used to cover it ended up. No, he's not a pillar of strength - just a man."
"We argued, fought over getting married – or rather I argued. He'd written something based on a conversation he'd had with one of my guys and I took issue with it. It pissed me off, if you really want the truth. He said – he said 'cops shouldn't marry civilians because of the divorce rate'. Those weren't his exact words but it's the essence of the argument."
Martha had found the engagement ring in the back of the open safe when she first got home thinking they'd been robbed. But seeing Kate's naked hand told her more than Kate had said. It had not been an argument, but an ending.
"Do you still think of Richard as a 'civilian', Detective?" Kate didn't miss the implications of 'Detective'.
"No. Not at all. He's my partner. I thought it extended to everything but I guess I was wrong. He's more cop than writer in my mind. He'd have made a helluva detective, Martha."
"So when you heard what he said, this civilian author, what did you say in return?"
"I told him that I couldn't marry someone who thought our relationship was just 'temporary' and then I left and went to a friend's house. I was on my way back to my apartment when I remembered I'd left my gun and badge here so I just came back to get them and I'll be on my way, Martha."
"Running away would be more descriptive, and you left out one important detail: you gave him back the ring, didn't you? Well, that certainly explains the carnage in the study."
"What else could I do? He was telling me that he felt we'd end up getting a divorce! Why bother with formalities if it's a foregone conclusion that we'll end up in divorce court? Tell me what I should do?"
"Take a chance. Follow your heart. Don't shut him out when you come home from work. Talk about your day. Communicate, Detective. That's what couples do. They talk out their problems, sometimes very loudly, but they talk. They don't 'cut and run' when things get tense. Lord knows it took me three husbands before I figured that one out."
"Martha, we do talk. We talk about anything and everything. We talk about cases even here at home – "
Two things struck her. They did talk. And this was home.
"Where is my former fiancée but soon to be husband, Martha?" She eyed the older woman with respect. She'd been set up. Martha was a skilled interrogator.
"I got a text from Alexis that she'd taken him out for dinner and a walk and hopefully a conversation. I expect them home in an hour or so."
"Then I have enough time to shower and change into something less manly before they get home. Thanks, Martha."
"Whatever for, dear?"
"For being a 'nagging harpy' and a good friend and kicking my mental ass for me." She pulled her into an impulsive hug and then walked upstairs to change. After they had their reconciliation, they'd clean up the 'carnage' in the loft and hopefully never, ever, find themselves in this mess ever again.
Alexis almost ran from the elevator to the loft. She wanted to be first in and tell her grandmother not to hassle her dad. He'd had enough trouble already and wouldn't need her 'advice'.
"I won't say a word, Alexis. But I have a feeling that everything will work out just fine. You'll see. Your father's going to be fine. Now, go get your school books and meet me in the living room and we'll review your homework."
"G-Grams? It's school work, y'know, not reading and 'rithmetic from back in the day when you went to school and wrote on slate tablets and had to bring your own coal to warm the one-room school. And.,."
"Alexis, do as you're told and don't give me any 'back in the day' lip. Someday you'll be in my shoes and kids will laugh at you when you have to take out a calculator to do simple sums."
It was a game between them and it always ended with the 'you'll be in my shoes' line. It was a comforting ritual and her grandmother was an expert at comfort.
Rick trudged up the stairs that he swore were getting steeper and steeper every year. His arm was sore but he didn't feel like walking all the way back down stairs (and having to repeat the uphill climb) so he just lived with it.
The light was off in his bedroom but he knew where everything was after 8 years.
He threw off his clothes and dove under the covers and sighed until he felt…a warm hand caress his chest and lips whisper against his ear, "I know you hear it a lot but I'm sorry, Rick. I should have realized that we're a unique couple. We're part cop and part writer but we talk incessantly and we'll never end up in divorce court, baby."
"Beckett?" There was shock and surprise in his voice.
"You were expecting someone else? Martha set my head on straight. I should have listened more carefully. Now, I think I read somewhere that after a couple has a fight they have…makeup sex?"