Back to Where We Have Never Been
Part 2
A/N: So, I know I have said this many times before, but I am completely blown away by your support. You are seriously some amazing readers. Some of your reviews made me cry. I'm sorry I haven't had time to respond to them all individually but trust me, I read and appreciate every single one of them.
On another note, those of you who have been asking me about original fiction should be happy to note that I am getting myself amped up for NaNoWriMo in November. I'm excited and hopefully something publishable will come of it.
In any case, on with chapter 15. :)
Chapter 15
The first postcard he received was from New Orleans. It wasn't signed. In fact, it only had thee words printed on it.
Best. Coffee. Ever.
Castle smiled when he recognized the handwriting and flipped it over to see the picture of a French coffee shop on the front. He wanted to call her and talk to her, ask her how she was, what she was doing, where she was going next. Instead he pulled on his coat and locked the door behind him as he made his way out into the city. Johanna had said that she wanted space, a chance to figure things out for herself. He could give her that.
It was the beginning of October and a slight chill was settling into the air. Alexis had just received her rejection letter from Stanford a few days before and had taken to moping around the apartment in her pajamas and bathrobe. He could now understand why his mother and daughter had been so worried about him when he had been doing the same thing.
He shoved his hands into his pockets as he made his way down the street towards the store. The last two months had gone by in a swirl of activity, which had seemed to drag on years and sped by in seconds at the same time. He had been wondering if he would hear anything from her. They hadn't spoken since that night Mark had returned. He had received no news from her since her mother had visited his apartment. Two months of quiet brooding and wonder.
Would she actually come back?
The postcard with three words acted like a balm. It healed his burning heart just a little bit, enough to take away the edge of the sting.
He felt the edge of the card slide against his finger and he couldn't help but smile. Of course she would be thinking about coffee. She drank it like water. In fact, he had never actually seen her drink water. He shook his head as he pulled his hand out of his pocket and reached out to grasp the handle to the shop.
He had shipped the first draft of the novel off to the publisher a couple of weeks before and was waiting on the inevitable phone call for a meeting of "suggestions". He rolled his eyes at the thought. Gina would see right through his characters and give him that look. She didn't even have to say anything to let him know that she knew.
Castle gulped.
He really hated that look.
The smell of coffee hit him like a wall as he walked through the doorway and into the specialty coffee shop. He wandered down the short aisles slowly, taking his time as he searched for the right name. In the end, he ended up having to ask the girl behind the counter with the purple hair and a ring in her eyebrow for help. He showed her the postcard and eyed the tattoo of Rosie the Riveter on her arm as she motioned for her to follow him towards the back of the store. She reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a yellow tin for him.
Café du Monde.
He let out a small thank you as she rang it up for him and he walked back out the street, can in one hand, post card in his pocket.
The second postcard came a week later from Key West, Florida. This one said more.
Just spent the evening at a drag show with a couple of hot lesbians and one very convincing cross dresser.
P.S. The cats say hi.
The writing was a little slanted, slightly sloppy, and he shook his head as he pictured her nursing her hang over the next morning. But, the cats? He flipped the card over and laughed as he saw the image of Hemingway's house and his cats on the front. Of course, she would write a blurb about a drag show on Hemingway's post card. The man was probably rolling over in his grave.
By the time he received the third card he had decided to buy a map. This one didn't arrive for a month, but then again it did come internationally and his heart started to beat double time when he saw the location: Morocco.
It wasn't the fact that she was in an Arab country that worried him; it was that she was a woman alone in an Arab country that worried him. Granted, it was Morocco, not Afghanistan, but still. His heart started to pound as he looked at the haunting eyes of the woman on the cover, her hand help up in front if her face, showing off the intricate henna covering the back of her palm and wrapping around her wrist. He peered at the smoky, heavily made up haunting eyes and the scarf wrapped around her head. He couldn't help but think how beautiful it was. He could imagine Kate sitting, watching as an old woman painted the patterns on her own skin, asking quiet questions as the heavy ink stained hands and feet. Wearing loose fitting, flowing clothing that covered her from her wrists to her ankles in respect.
He finally tore his eyes away from the image and flipped over the card.
It's beautiful here.
Stop worrying, I'm fine.
He smiled. Of course she was.
By the time he had found the perfect map and cleared a space for it on his wall he had received the next card from Spain. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it. His moment was prematurely interrupted though as Alexis ran into the apartment crying, running up the steps to her room without so much as a 'hi'.
He sighed and pinned the card to the map before making his way out of his office and clomping up the stairs to his daughter's room.
"Alexis? Are you okay?" He asked gently as he rapped a bent knuckle gently against the wood.
"Boys are stupid!" Came a muffled reply and Castle let out a small sigh. It was about Ashley.
"Can I come in?" He called.
"Are you a boy?" She shouted back.
"Yes…"
"Then, no!"
Castle sighed again and shook his head as he stepped back from the door. It was times like this he needed back up, someone to talk to about the intricacies of the female, teenaged brain. He had managed, somehow fumbled through, the past seventeen plus years without too much trouble but the past few would have been so much easier with another woman around.
He trudged back down the stairs and into his office. He stared at the map and his eyes flickered down to his phone. He could call her. She spent so much time abroad that chances are she had an international calling plan. He picked up the phone and felt the weight of it in his palm. He had her number saved, had from the first time she had texted him months before.
He turned it on, pressing down on the little "Beckett" icon that popped up.
His thumb hesitated, hovering over the little green button for a second too long.
Katie is stubborn, does everything in her own time. Always has.
Johanna Beckett's words echoed through his brain.
He would have to wait for her.
He sighed again and scrolled down to the next number in the phone, pressing on that one instead.
"Mrs. Beckett? It's Richard Castle. Yes, I know it has been a while. I was wondering if you would be willing to meet me for lunch?"
They had been meeting for lunch every week for the last couple of months, chatting about everything and nothing at the same time. Castle listened to the stories that Johanna had about raising her own daughter as a teenager and he felt his heart start to pound. Maybe Alexis wasn't so bad after all. A little moping built characters, after all. It wasn't like she was out partying all the time or getting tattoos.
Kate had a tattoo?
He felt his throat go dry. Where?
He shook his head and focused back Johanna was saying. She was the expert on teenaged girls after all.
The conversations progressed the more they met, turning from parenting advice to other easier topics, like literature, politics, religion. He began to get character ideas for his next book when Johanna started talking about her work.
She had started out as a civil rights attorney, working on as many pro-bono cases as she could. She said she changed her focus after a near miss thirteen years prior. She and Kate had been walking to meet her husband for dinner. They had stopped briefly to get pictures of an alley pertinent to one of the cases she had taken for an inmate. Kate started to get agitated, paranoid, looking around. Jittery. She had pulled her mother away from the alley and made her promise to drop the case.
"All she said was that she had a feeling," Johanna shrugged. "She was nineteen. She had never had a 'feeling' about anything like that before."
Castle leaned back in his chair and stared at her. "Why did it convince you then?"
Johanna looked up at him, her coffee cup clutched in her hands. "You didn't see the level of terror in her eyes. It was like she just knew that something bad was going to happen. I dropped the case the next day. Two weeks later I heard that another attorney I knew had been murdered in that alleyway. He had taken over the case, the inmate- Joe Pulgatti- had been shanked in his cell in Rikers."
Castle took in a short breath.
Johanna looked him dead in the eyes. "I should have died that day. I know it. I know it every time I look at my daughter. She saved my life. She saved us all."
Johanna looked down and spun the mug once on the table. "I changed my focus, handed off all of my open cases and started working with my husband. Civil law. It's boring, but it's safe."
Castle nodded. "Do you ever wish you had kept on with the case?"
Johanna shook her head. "I feel bad for the guy, but this whole thing was bigger than I could have ever imagined. It went deeper, holds tighter. Too tight. Some secrets are meant to be kept; I think this is one of them."
Castle nodded his head slightly.
The first Knight and Rook novel went to publish in March after too many debates and rewrites at Gina's insistence. Sometimes Castle swore that she did it just out of spite.
Just for the record, the sex scene had not been his idea. His ear burned just thinking about Kate's reaction.
The map in his office was barely visible; so many colorful cards covered it, most not even where they were supposed to be, due to limited space. The postcard from France had been written in French. He had growled in protest when he had seen it and there was no way the Google translation of it was correct.
He had been forced to ask Alexis for a translation, his ears burning bright red when he had left her room moments later, the card clutched in one hand and her laughter ringing after him.
The French do it with their tongues.
He had gone out and bought a jar of pistachios later that evening.
The woman was pure evil.
The last post card he received was on the eve of his summer book tour. He was going to be gone for the majority of the summer, touring the country. He wanted to let her know in case she came back into the city. It had been almost a year since she had left and the fall semester was fast approaching. He ended up leaving a message with Johanna after he pinned the card to Australia on the map. The picture of a kangaroo doing the limbo stared back at him and he couldn't help but laugh as he remembered the line scribbled on the back.
How low can you go down under?
He would be back in August and hopefully she would be, too.
Kate took a deep breath as she pulled open the door to the lecture hall. She had printed off the course list a minute before rushing out the door of her new office. It would not be good for the new professor to be late for the first day of classes. Especially, not with a lecture hall full of fresh faced freshmen waiting for her. The older students seemed to understand— the grad students most of all. They new, some of them taught, too. But freshmen? They would leave and never come back or worse, they would take it as meaning they could show up late to class, as well.
She placed her stack of books on the lectern and turned to face the classroom. Almost every seat was full. Apparently Popular Fiction 101 was popular. No pun intended. She took another deep breath. Russian lit never got this many students. Forty tops. This class has to have at least a hundred students in it and they were all staring at her.
Great.
"Welcome to Popular Fiction 101. My name is Katherine Beckett. You can call me Professor or Dr. Beckett. No, Doc, Prof, Becks, Kate or Katherine are not allowed. If you are here because you wanted an easy A or because you think my ass looks hot in jeans, I would highly recommend that you leave now. Trust me, it won't be worth it. As you can see on your syllabus you have a reading list of approximately sixteen books. There are sixteen weeks in the semester. Amazing how that works out. You will have two exams: a midterm and a final. You will also have three papers due. My lectures are not posted online. Yes, you will have to do all of the reading and no, attendance is not mandatory but you will fail if you don't come to class. You are here for an hour at a time. If I see a phone out during that hour I will take it and you will have to come to my office during office hours to get it back. I think the world can go without your tweets for 50 minutes. If there is an emergency situation please excuse yourself to take your call outside. Any questions?"
Kate scanned across the blank, semi-terrified faces looking back at her. It was eight am on Monday, the first day of classes. She forced herself to suppress a smirk.
"No? Good. Welcome to Columbia."
Her eyes finished scanning the crowd as she gave instructions to initial by their names on the attendance roster and she stumbled over her words slightly as her eyes caught those of a single red head sitting in the far back corner.
She turned around to make her way back to the desk in the middle of the floor and shook the mouse by the computer to wake up the sleeping machine. Her eyes flickered back up and she saw the girl staring back at her, her expression blank. She shook her head slightly. She could deal with this in forty-five minutes. Not, right now.
Kate had been back in New York for a month and yes she had been busy but not busy enough to use it as an excuse. She had seen that Castle had had a book signing at her favorite bookstore a week before, but had turned back to her apartment instead of going in. She had thought about it constantly since she had left almost exactly a year before: what she would say when she saw him next time. When it would be. She had wondered every time she had sent a new postcard. But in the end, when it came time for her to pick up the phone and tell him she was back in the city she had faltered.
She had gotten scared.
Now, her fear was about to come back around and bite her in the ass.
Kate watched as the students filed out. She could hear some of the grumbling about the reading list, she could hear others placating them, saying that it wasn't going to be that bad. She busied herself with cleaning up her desk and collecting the three phones she had confiscated during those final forty minutes. And they thought she had been kidding.
A throat cleared and Kate looked up to see Alexis staring back at her.
"Hi Dr. Beckett," the girl stated quietly.
Kate couldn't help but smile at the sweet girl. Her hair was shorter, cut in layers to hang just below her shoulders. It was more a mature, grown up style. Her father had probably cried when she came home with it.
"Hi Alexis," Kate responded just as quietly. "How are you?"
Alexis nodded in reply, her binder clutched to her chest. "I'm doing well."
Kate nodded again. She could feel it coming, the girl gathering up her courage. She waited, shifting from one foot to the other as she ducked her head for a moment.
"My dad doesn't know that you're back. I didn't tell him when I saw your name on in the course listings. I figured you would call him yourself."
Kate couldn't bring herself to look the girl in the eye. She needed to call him. He deserved that much, even if he did hate her for leaving.
She hadn't even brought herself to open the copy of Checkmate she had purchased in the airport the minute she touched back down in JFK weeks before.
"He has a map set up in his office with all of the postcards you sent him. He missed you."
Kate's eyes snapped up. "He does?"
Alexis let out a small smile. "You should call him."
Kate nodded absently as she watched Alexis turn towards the exit.
She should call him.