Chapter 3

"Beckett!" Castle bounced happily. "You called!" He was quite delighted by her contact, which he hadn't at all expected. "Are you okay?" he suddenly asked, no longer bouncy, because why else would she have called?

"Hey, Castle. I'm fine. I just…"

"Mm?"

"I-just-wanted-to-talk-to-you," she blurted out.

"Okay then. What shall we talk about?" He pondered for a split second, and decided on his go-to strategy whenever Beckett sounded even slightly stressed: flirtation. "Your busy social life?"

"What, the squirrels? Yeah, Castle, they're really good company. A bit nuts, though."

He guffawed. "Nice one. How about the fish?"

"You remembered?"

"Sure. You said you were sick of fish."

"If I eat any more fish I'll turn into a mermaid."

"Ooooohhhh," he said annoyingly. "I'd like that. You in a skimpy bikini…"

"Are you still thirteen?"

"No, but I have a very good imagination. And I've seen you in a swimsuit." He hummed lasciviously. "I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it again."

"Mind out of the gutter."

"It's not in the gutter. It's in a pool." He was looking at the pool, from the deck of his Hamptons house. "Or the breaking waves, like that Botticelli picture…."

"The Birth of Venus? Castle! That's totally inappropriate."

Castle didn't agree. In his fantasy world, Beckett imitating the famous artwork would be totally appropriate – and very much appreciated. Beckett's sigh, however, sounded very much as if her eyes were rolling. He backtracked.

"But it's cheered you up. Much better than fish." He heard a disgruntled mutter. "Anyway. How are you?"

"Fine."

There was an odd undertone to that.

"Are you?"

"Yeah…" but now there was definitely an I'm-not-so-sure flavour. Castle waited. And waited. "I think the painkillers are making me a bit paranoid," she blurted.

"Er-urgh?" Castle emitted, incoherently.

There was another uncomfortable silence. "I jumped at a snapping branch," she admitted. Castle was absolutely certain that that wasn't what she had first thought of, nor did he think it was anything like what she had intended to say. He parked the point.

"Not really surprising," he soothed.

"Huh?"

"Um… it probably sounded a bit like a shot?"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess. But it wasn't." He heard her breath gush out, and an indefinable tension receded. "I hadn't thought of that. Those painkillers are really slowing me up."

"Why are you still on painkillers that strong? I thought you said you'd be off them after a week or so, and you've been up there three weeks already."

He would have sworn he could hear Beckett squirming guiltily. "Beckett?" Promise be damned, he needed to know what was going on. "What happened? What aren't you telling me?"

"I slipped," she said evasively. "So they gave me some stronger drugs."

"They?" Another extended, guilty pause. "Look, just tell me. Your dad's up there with you so you aren't trying to do it all alone. I won't come dashing up. I said I wouldn't and I meant it – though," he added thoughtfully, "if you asked me to come I would. To see if you've turned into a mermaid, of course."

Beckett snickered, though it still sounded a little forced. "No mermaids. No fish tails. No silly supernatural entities which don't exist."

"You'd make a lovely were-panther," Castle mused. "All sleek and deadly."

"Castle! There are no such things."

"How do you know? You can't prove there aren't."

"Just because you've been watching True Blood late at night again…"

He huffed. "I do not."

"You so do."

More huffing, but she'd got him there. Of course he did. But… she was very cleverly trying to distract him. "Stop evading, Beckett. What happened?"

"I slipped."

"And?" It was like pulling teeth.

"I banged my arm a bit when I fell."

"Beckett, if you don't tell me the whole story I'll ring your dad and ask him."

"Don't do that!" she gulped, with a very odd note of complete panic, which only served to panic Castle. "Okay. Bully."

He relaxed a little. "Am not."

"Are so. Bully."

"I don't bully. That's such an ugly word. I could dominate, if you'd like that, though I think you might like to be on top…"

"Castle!"

"Oh, you would like it? Any time, my dear Detective. Any time. Top or bottom. I'm easy."

"You sure are."

"And you love me for it," he oozed suavely.

"Behave."

"I don't like behaving. Misbehaving is so much more fun."

"You have a one-track mind."

"No, I'm a modern metrosexual. I can multitask. Though not when I'm concentrating on" –

"Shut up, Castle."

"So tell me the story." He was determined to get the story. If nothing else, he was absolutely certain she was minimising. Again.

"Okay, okay. Stop fussing." He stayed silent. "I slipped on the steps and fell on my wrist. It jarred my ribs a bit."

"What did the doctor say," Castle asked with some resignation and plenty of intent to receive a straight answer.

"I broke it," she growled. "And cracked a rib."

"Beckett! Can't you stay out of trouble for a moment?"

"You're not my dad, Castle," she snapped, instantly aggravated. "Don't try telling me off like that."

He hadn't meant to: it had simply been a word-vomit of his innate horror that she'd managed to damage herself even more when she was supposed to be getting better.

"Sorry. Can I sign your cast?" he tried.

But the easy conversational back and forth had gone. Beckett had retreated into her normal closed-off self, and in the discomfort and awkwardness his instinctive reaction had produced, Castle rapidly forgot that she'd been unwontedly panicked about any suggestion that he might talk to her father.

"Night," she said, closing off the call.

"Till tomorrow," Castle answered automatically, and didn't realise until the line went dead that tomorrow could easily be another month away. He really hoped not. He also hoped that he could keep his promise not to go haring up to the forest cabin in which Beckett was supposedly recuperating, because if anything was clear to him, it was that her father wasn't exactly keeping her safe. He wondered if a delivery of half a ton of cotton wool would be excessive, and only after some deliberation decided that it would be.

Beckett cut the call in a cloud of irritation. It had all been going well, too. Why'd he have to react like he was her dad? She didn't want Castle to be her freaking dad. Ugh. She certainly didn't want to be told off. It had been an accident.

She grumped her way through an abbreviated, one-handed bedtime routine, harrumphed at the plastic over her cast as she showered, and flumped into bed, distinctly cross.

Cross was replaced by outright terror as she heard the outer door open and close. It didn't reopen for almost half an hour. She determined that in the morning, she and her father had to talk.

"Dad," Beckett opened over her breakfast caffeinated coffee.

"Yes, Bug?"

"Can I come fishing with you today?"

Beckett had planned her tactics carefully. First, try to go fishing. If she was with him, then he couldn't be drinking. She ignored the sore place in her chest and the unpleasant feeling that she was going behind his back rather than asking outright.

"There's no way you're up to that long a walk, Katie. You're still wincing every time you put your foot down too hard when it hits your ribs, and you said that even a hundred yards made you tired. How are you going to manage a mile? Just take it easy for another few days." He was perfectly smooth and relaxed: no fright or panic.

If only she didn't remember the first time. He'd always been smooth and relaxed then too. Lied with a clear expression and no guilt. All her investigative talent told her he was lying now, and her heart quailed. Since her first tactic had failed, now she'd have to go to the second. Search. Quite what she was going to do when – no, if, it had to be if – she found the booze, she didn't know.

"Okay," she replied compliantly. "In that case, I'm going to sit in the sun with my coffee." She paused mischievously. If he could act, well, so could she. "Well out the way of flying soap suds."

As soon as she shut the door behind her, she left her coffee cup on the porch, took the steps as fast as she dared, and headed for the outbuilding. Once there, she swiftly searched her father's fishing bag.

Oh, fuck.

She pulled out the small bottle of Jack Daniels. Only a little was missing: maybe five or six mouthfuls.

One mouthful would have been too many. Having the bottle at all was too much.

She carefully put it back exactly where she'd found it, so shocked that she couldn't even bear to open the cap, and trudged back to the swing seat and her cooling coffee. Now what?

By the time her father wandered out to tell her he was off to catch a fish, she hadn't reached any conclusions. She waved him off, and relapsed into frozen terror. This was all her fault. She'd been shot, and then fallen, and he couldn't cope with it. What was she going to do about it?

In the same position as the day before, Jim pulled out the bottle and sat it beside him. It could just sit there. He didn't need to open it. He only needed to know that he had it.

Consequent upon another disturbed night, he drifted, dozing – and was jerked awake by another nightmare of the crumpled, agonised wreck of his daughter. He didn't even try to resist unscrewing the cap, or taking a mouthful. Only one mouthful. That was all. He didn't need more.

He stared bleakly over the pond. Katie would be so upset if she knew… but she wouldn't know. She couldn't know. He thought about leaving the bottle here, where she'd never find out: scraped up a patch of earth and made a hole… but then he remembered the lonely evenings, and the memories, and the nightmares…. He needed it nearby. Only to know that it was there, of course. He didn't need to open it.

He slowly dissolved his worries in the sun and the play of light flickering over the water, almost hypnotic, beguiling. He allowed himself to be beguiled.

A long while later the rod jerked and he startled back to life, reeling in the fish without thought. Horrified, he realised that the golden, alluring taste of whiskey was coating his mouth. He leaned over the pond and vomited, thin, acid fluid polluting the water; recriminations polluting his head. He didn't even stand up till he'd crunched through two breath mints, rinsing his mouth between them, trying to wash away his shame.

But he couldn't quite force himself to pour away the remainder of the bottle, and all the way along the trail back he berated himself for his weakness.

Beckett was no nearer an answer at the end of the day than the beginning. She'd fretted the entire time, terrified that her father was falling all over again: the booze and the blackouts and the tank. She couldn't cope: not half-healed herself, a broken wrist, the still-present pain in her ribs and radiating from the two scars: death and life together written on her skin and both of them hurting. She couldn't have said which was worse, but then, nothing could be worse than her father falling all over again.

When he strode up, his step was steady and his gait regular: no wobble or weaving or stagger or stumble. Somehow, it wasn't reassuring. But surely, Beckett thought, if he were drinking, there would be some sign, some flaw. Maybe… maybe she had been wrong. Maybe it had just been apple juice, in an old bottle. She hadn't uncapped it, smelt it, or tasted it. Maybe she had simply jumped to conclusions: cop habits leading her straight to the worst-case scenario.

Maybe she'd got this all wrong.

But deep inside, she knew she was only putting off the issue: not wanting to hurt her father's fragile feelings; not wanting to provoke a fight when she was almost entirely dependent upon him to help her. If he were to take offence, or leave, she would be stranded. Not that he would ever do that, of course.

Still, even deeper inside, she remembered that he had abandoned her once before, for amber whiskey and oblivion. That had been after a murder, too, and while she was not, through grace of God and Castle's hard hands pressing down to staunch the spurting blood, dead – she had, nevertheless, died. Cold chills slithered through her, despite the late afternoon's summer heat. Her father hadn't dealt well with the first loss.

But he hasn't lost me, she argued with herself. He hasn't, so there's nothing to deal with.

And that was another lie. He had plenty to deal with. Just as she did: the startlement from a snapping branch, the occasional jump when there was a reflection from the rippling river. She knew – hadn't Castle pointed it out? – that it was merely a hangover from being shot: flash of rifle, crack of shot. She was working past it. Slowly.

Just like her father must have been working past it. Another pang of bitter guilt for her stupidity in slipping on the steps washed through her. If she hadn't fallen… it was only after she had fallen that she'd noticed the breath mints.

But she couldn't raise the subject tonight. If she was still suspicious tomorrow, then she would say something. Quite what she would say, she didn't know. She trailed inside, and slowly set the table as her father cooked; pleaded tiredness and went to bed early.

Going to bed, of course, didn't mean that she could sleep. She didn't: first waiting to hear the soft steps and the opening and closing of the door, the pause, the re-opening and re-closing late in the evening; and, when that had passed, sheer worry kept her from slumber till long into the small hours.

She woke far later than she had hoped, and on descending found breakfast laid for her and a short note. Gone to town. Back soon.

She amused herself (or not) by undertaking all her exercises, and somewhere in the burn of effort, had an idea. If she could look after herself, then she could have a frank discussion with her father and not worry about him leaving. Not that he would, she firmly told herself, but then it really wouldn't matter. And of course, she had her phone, so if the worst came to the worst, she could call a cab to get her back to Downsville or Roscoe and then arrange transport from there.

It occurred to her that – if worst came to worst – she could call Castle. She firmly put that idea out of her head. It was simply too attractive, and if she once started leaning on him to solve all her problems when she was in no position to resist, she'd let him do it all the time and then she'd drown in her own weakness. That just was not an option.

She let herself sniff, precisely twice, wiped her stupidly tearful eyes, and told herself extremely firmly that she was totally overreacting to something that wasn't even necessarily real. She followed that up with a stern lecture on how nobody ever solved their problems by merely cuddling into a broad chest, which even her cynicism could not quite manage to deliver sincerely. She would really like said broad chest. Right there, right then. But he couldn't help. Her father's probably-non-existent issues were their problem, not Castle's.

Maybe she'd call him that evening, anyway. His particular brand of insanity would undoubtedly cheer her up. The flirting wouldn't hurt, either. She didn't exactly feel particularly desirable right now, but Castle always managed to be inappropriate and, well, it was very nice to feel wanted, especially with a red, angry carbuncle in her cleavage and a scarlet scar up her ribs. And the cast. She couldn't exactly miss that, either. Not sexy.

Just as she was clearing her dishes, her dad walked in.

In Roscoe, which Jim regarded as a small hick town without many (or any) advantages except for an excellent fishing tackle store, he parked up and went to the supermarket. While stocking up on ice-cream, coffee, and vegetables, he spotted both clear apple juice, which closely resembled his whiskey, and the liquor shelves.

He turned away. He shouldn't be thinking what he was thinking. But it nagged at his mind. He didn't want to worry Katie, and as soon as she was better he would stop. Of course he would. It would be for her own good, really. She wouldn't heal as quickly if she were worrying about him, so she shouldn't have to worry about him.

He put one bottle of clear, golden apple juice, one of water and one small (it was only small: it wasn't like he was going to drink all, or even any, of it) bottle of Jack Daniels into his cart; finished the rest of the shopping and went out to the parking lot to load it into the trunk and drive home.

Halfway to the cabin, he pulled over in a lay-by. He drank most of the bottle of water, and tipped the rest away; poured the whiskey into the now-empty bottle, rinsed the whiskey bottle with a little apple juice, poured that out – see, he could pour it away – and then tipped the apple juice into the whiskey bottle. He put everything back in the trunk, got home, and then replaced the whiskey bottle in his fishing bag with the apple juice filled one.

But then he hid the whiskey in the outbuilding nonetheless. He couldn't, just couldn't, throw it down the drain. He reminded himself that he'd replaced the alcohol with apple juice, which proved, absolutely proved, that he was in control.

Jim trotted up the steps to the cabin, a little confused that Katie wasn't on the porch, and found her stacking her breakfast dishes in the sink.

"I got us more ice-cream," he said. She jumped.

"Dad!"

"I went to Roscoe to the supermarket and stocked up." He started to unpack. Katie left her dishes, which he would no doubt need to wash since she wasn't allowed to get the cast wet and – based on her childhood behaviour – she would do just that in order to escape the plaster, and peered over his shoulder to see what he'd bought.

"Coffee," she noted happily.

"I thought I remembered that you could have more real coffee."

"Yep. Two whole cups a day now." She looked more closely. "Vegetables."

"You need your vitamins."

"Stop mother-henning me. I take vitamins."

"In tablet form." Jim raised an eyebrow and in that moment resembled his daughter very closely.

"I'm not in the box. Stop cross-examining. My diet is fine."

Jim smirked evilly. Katie growled, which didn't affect him at all. "Now it'll be better. Natural." More growling. "Let's have lunch, and then I'll go fishing."

"It's too early for me to have lunch."

"Just like when you were fifteen. You never got up in the morning then either. Well, I was up early so I'm hungry."

He made himself a sandwich, munched it happily, and then betook himself to collect his fishing kit. He thought that it might be better not to annoy Katie any more. She'd already despatched herself to the porch.

Beckett had, in fact, despatched herself to the outbuilding, rapidly found the bottle in the fishing bag, and, with a sinking feeling of horrible inevitability, unscrewed the cap to sniff at it.

It was apple juice. She couldn't believe how relieved that made her – and then how horribly, horribly guilty she felt for doubting her dad. She practically bounced back to the porch, so that he'd never work out that she'd been a nasty, suspicious daughter. Just as well she'd never raised the subject. She'd have upset him so much, and all for nothing: unwarranted paranoia. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers: named, guest, old and new. Very much appreciated.