AN: This chapter is for Ducky, who loves her some Martha and is working overtime to keep me encouraged.


When her son and daughter-in-law are settled on the couch, Martha sets her wine glass down and blows a heavy breath out through her nose.

"I was closing up shop last night when he paid me a visit."

"The man who found Kate in the park, it's really him?"

Martha nods, the burden of over forty years of concealment showing in every line and shadow on her face. "Oh, Richard. Every time I see you, I see him."

Richard blanches at that, and Martha's already pained expression tightens up even more.

"No, son. Don't assume it's a bad thing. I actually have very fond memories of Charlie." Martha, in an uncharacteristic moment of discomposure, scrubs a hand through her hair. "We were very young, and it was so long ago. He had just graduated from West Point and he had six weeks to go before his enlistment came due. Charlie's cousin's girlfriend, Beth, was doing summer stock in a little theater up in Watertown. I was was dying for stage exposure and I scoured New York state for opportunities. I took an understudy part to spend time in a real theater. Charlie had the free time on his hands and ended up volunteering to paint scenery for the theater company one weekend when he was visiting his cousin. That's where we met.

"Most of my friends in the theater were...free spirits. Serious actors, hippies, beatniks. Charlie was so clean cut, so earnest, and completely unlike anybody I was used to. His father was in the service and they lived abroad off and on when he was a child. When he was accepted to West Point, they discovered that he had an aptitude for languages. He was vague about it, initially, but he gave me to understand that he was groomed throughout the academy for some kind of special service overseas.

"Kate, you may not know some of this. My parents claimed they were performers, vaudeville and carnivals and the like, and I suppose that was partly accurate, but my father was mostly just a con man, a small-time hustler. He despised the government. Today I think the term would be "off the grid." He managed to live his entire life under the radar of the IRS and managed to never pay taxes, never had a drivers license or a Social Security card. I lived with them off and on after high school out of sheer necessity, but it was a bad situation. There was no way I could come home and tell my father I was having the baby of a squared away Army type. My father would have seen it as a personal betrayal. He was a hard man, he drank heavily and was not above striking a blow to make his point. In his less sober moments, my mother and I were just weighing him down, keeping him from living the freewheeling life he wanted, and he never let us forget it. In the end, I told my parents that I'd met an older actor who lied to me and turned out to be married. If my father knew who Charles really was, I would have been on the street. As it was, my father had little to do with me once he found out about the baby.

"My mother already had late-stage emphysema, and she died in a convalescent hospital six months after Richard was born. My father left her body there, went home, packed a bag, and disappeared. I stayed in their apartment through the end of the month, and I was on my own, with an infant and no family to speak of.

"We slept on cots in the Catholic mission for three weeks when a theater girlfriend's parents let us move into their basement in Utica. My friend, Beverly, was starting college and her parents both worked, so I kept house and cooked for them for almost two years. Her father traveled a lot and mostly it was just us girls at home, and Richard, of course. It was nice, actually. I was so grateful. Richard was thriving, and Beverly's grandmother lived there and took an instant shine to him. She loved looking after him, and it gave me the chance to reconnect with the theater and I took a few small, local roles.

"The Vietnam war was in high swing. I thought about Charlie a lot, mostly hoping he was safe. I never did kid myself into thinking that it was a great love story. We were just stupid kids. I was trying to escape a bad home situation in the theater, and he had no idea what the future held, beyond a direct flight to a war on the other side of the world. He probably told me more that he should have about his work. He'd learned Vietnamese in the academy and was headed to a unit that was trying to cause havoc in enemy territory, supply lines, communication, things like that.

"I was convinced he had no idea about the baby. And I imagined if he somehow did, that it would be a stretch to think someone from his background would want to attach himself to a broke, grifter's daughter just because she'd carried his child.

"Eventually one of my little acting roles got me noticed, and things started to pick up on the stage. I moved to the city and waited tables some and I got into my own little apartment and I managed to get Richard a scholarship to a little Episcopal pre-school. If I had a show at night, I'd hire a baby sitter. Money was tight, and I didn't get much sleep, but Richard was such a sweet, easy child, and I was landing roles. I started to believe it was going to work out for us.

"And then it happened that one night, after show, I was out late with friends and who should I see at a diner, but Beth. We didn't talk long, but I found out she had married and divorced Charlie's cousin. She wanted to visit for a while, and we chatted, but one of the girls from my theater group and I were splitting a babysitter that night, and she reminded me that it was time to go. Beth heard her, asked about my child. On an impulse, I showed her a photograph of Richard, by then, nearly four years old. She held the picture in her hands and studied it for the longest time. She was so intent on it, and when she looked back up at me...I just knew that she knew. I had no idea how to find Charlie, I didn't even know his last name then, and I'd resigned myself to the idea that he was out of the picture for good. It's not like in 1974 you could just Google someone. Especially someone who was attached to a phantom Army/CIA unit inserted behind enemy lines in North Vietnam.

"Beth asked very quietly if she could keep the picture. I almost couldn't hear her over the pounding in my ears. I told her she could, and before I lost my nerve and snatched it back, I ran out the door with my cast mate in tow.

"Two months dragged by, and I began to believe that Charlie was dead, or unreachable, or knew and didn't care. So I just slogged on and kissed my son goodnight every night and waited tables and pretended I was someone else on the stage. And one afternoon, I picked you up from school, Richard and when we got home, there was an envelope peeking out from under the door mat. There was a single sheet of paper in it, and a key."

For the first time since her storytelling began, Martha moved. She reached into her handbag beside the chair, and drew out a sheet of paper, passing it to her son.

"Do you remember that Mercury Carpri we had?" Martha asked. "It was the most appalling color, metallic burnt orange. A four speed, it was new and ran like a top."

Castle, until now completely absorbed in the story, cleared his throat and answered. "I remember you tried to teach me about shifting gears, but I didn't understand that you had to push in the clutch first. We stalled on Columbus Avenue and were almost rear-ended by a cab."

"Exactly! I can't believe you remember that, you were so very young. But that car? The envelope under my front door mat contained the note you're holding, the title, and the key to that brand new Mercury."