Kate Beckett, Investigator Chapter 14
"You want to do what?" Castle exclaims.
Alexis rolls her eyes. "You heard me, Dad, I want to go to Stanford with Ashley. He's already been accepted."
"Of course he has. He's a legacy. Both his parents went there. And, unless you've suddenly lost your ability to count, he's in 12th grade, a senior. Which means he's graduating this year. You are in 11th grade, a junior. You have a whole other year of high school to go."
"Not a whole other year. With all the extra classes I've been taking, I'll have more than enough credits to graduate after the first semester next year. I can apply for early admission and join Ashley in January."
Castle begins pacing. "Wow! You're ignoring the best part of being a high school senior, especially one who has very little real work left to do. That's when you get to explore your options and enjoy yourself. And maybe there's a school that would fit you better than Stanford. Ashley's planning on following in his parents' footsteps to become an economist, isn't he?"
"You know he is, Dad. And his parents have the contacts to give him a foot in the door."
"Great! Fine for Ashley. But that's not you, Alexis. If I recall, you've had exactly one economics class, and the only thing you liked about it was the paper you wrote about Thoreau and his theories about the work being more meaningful than monetary profit. That view doesn't exactly match up with the build-your-nest-egg economic gospel according to the Linden family. And Alexis, you've always had such a wide range of interests. You need to explore them all and discover how you most want to spend your life. Following Ashley to Stanford may not be the best way to do that."
"What have you got against Stanford, Dad?" Alexis demands. "Kate went there."
"Only for a year, and she was pre-law. She already knew what her passion was. She's been going down a longer road than she anticipated to get there, but she's still going in that direction. And I've known mine was writing since I was eleven. But unless I've missed something – your devotion to Ashley notwithstanding – you have yet to discover yours. You need to give yourself every opportunity to find it."
"And you don't want me going 3,000 miles away," Alexis accuses.
"Mea culpa. Of course, I'd like to keep you close, but not at the expense of giving you the best college experience you can have. And what if you break up with Ashley? Are you still going to want to be at Stanford?"
"Dad, I've checked out the statistics on long-range relationships. We stand a much greater chance of breaking up if I don't follow him."
"Which would imply that you don't think your relationship is strong enough to stand up to the separation."
"Your relationship with Mom couldn't stand up to her being on the road acting."
"That's because it was the wrong relationship to begin with. It gave me you, and I could never regret that for a moment, but she was never the love of my life. I never really understood that until I met Kate. But if she had been, I would have moved heaven and earth to keep our marriage together. Same with Gina. If you're already thinking about a possible breakup with Ashley, maybe that's your answer. Maybe he isn't the one, the love of your life."
"I want to be with him, Dad. And I'm applying for early admission to Stanford." Alexis stalks up the stairs to her room.
Castle tries to remember if he was that stubborn as a teenager. Maybe he should have had more sympathy for his mother.
"We got class certification," Jim Beckett announces as Kate drops into her chair at the Beckett law office.
Kate shoves her briefcase under her desk. "That's great! So what do we do now?"
"We inform every possible member of the class and give them the opportunity to opt out. They have every right to sue on their own."
Kate swivels to face her father. "Most of the builders and suppliers I've talked to so far figured they didn't have the time or the money to sue on their own. That's why they've had to put up with the situation."
"Then chances are that they won't want to opt out. But by the time the fees from our office come off and the money is divvied up, none of them is going to get much individually. They'll just have to settle for the satisfaction of seeing Nesgadol finally pay the piper. And then Waterhouse can come in behind us with the criminal charges based on what you've dug up. They'll get to see that, too."
"And I get the feeling that some of them will really enjoy watching that hammer fall," Kate says. "So what do you need me to do?"
"You have to research every possible party to the suit. You've done a lot of that already. Then, we notify all of them by mail of their right to opt out. After that, the real fun begins – settlement talks and/or taking it to the jury."
"So for now, I'll be pretty much behind a computer," Kate realizes. "Have you and Castle been conspiring?"
"Rick has mentioned that he'd prefer you to be under as little stress as possible. And, of course, I agree. But this is how the timing worked out, Katie. Maybe you have a guardian angel."
"If I do, it was goofing off when I got shot. But I'll do whatever it takes to make this case work."
"And your LSAT is coming up soon, isn't it?"
"This Saturday."
"Then it's good you'll have a chance to kick back. And by the time you should start sending applications to law schools, we may even have a settlement."
"Do you think that's possible, Dad?"
"It will depend on how desperate Nesgadol is to avoid revealing anything in a deposition that Waterhouse could use to go after it. And they might want to throw Gambitto under the bus as part of a deal. We'll have to see what develops."
"But we've got a solid case?"
"Rock solid, Katie. All your work made sure of that."
Kate stares down at the LSAT's logic games section. As a former detective, she should have been great at these. After all, she used logic to solve her cases, didn't she? But her sessions with her tutor soon revealed that she had depended more on procedures than logic.
Also, as much as she hated admitting it, in her first case with Castle, he pointed to the holes in her logic. Her procedural techniques would have sent the wrong guy to prison or at least an institution. She got better. However, her tutor declared that she still needed a lot of practice. So, she practiced until she got all the sample problems right. And then she practiced more. But now the tightness in her throat has her wondering if that was enough. Her tutor said it was, but he's not the one grading the exam.
She draws in the kind of cleansing breath she learned in yoga. Those are supposed to be great for childbirth, too. But right now, she just needs to get through this test. Hell! She can be logical with the best of them, and she's about to prove it.