214. Walk right through the storm

Beckett leaves a few minutes early to ensure that she hits the café first. She wants to have her back to the wall: a very primitive response to a situation that, she thinks bleakly, will redefine difficult to a whole new level.

Her coffee arrives just before Martha does, swishing through the door with a theatrical entrance that, Beckett notes, covers not simply severe uncertainty but something that looks a lot like terror. If it’s possible, Martha looks even worse than the previous night, and it’s certainly not a result of the careful application of make-up. If Beckett were to extrapolate from her own experience, she’d place a hefty bet on a sleepless night.

“Thank you,” she opens up. “I… I’d have understood if you’d simply refused.”  

She orders herbal tea as a server passes. Beckett requests another double espresso. Her usual latte hadn’t seemed quite enough, somehow, and the first espresso hadn’t touched the sides. Caffeine induced courage, to make sure she’s still sitting here, cool faced and calm.

“I just want to fix it,” Martha emits. “You… he loves you. You know how I can mend it. You have to know.”

“You hurt him,” Beckett states flatly. “You as good as told him he was as bad as your parents” – her mouth twists – “or that creep in LA that conned you.” She puts her hands under the table, where Martha can’t see them flexing. “It’s not surprising that he’s hurt. He adored you.”

“Past tense?” Martha says, miserably.

“I don’t know. He’s been upset enough that it could be either.”

Beckett isn’t pulling any punches here. She won’t lie to Martha, but she’s not above some pretty hard truth. Truth is, she herself isn’t sure how Castle currently feels about his mother. She’d thought, at the party, it was clear – Beckett had even said – that he loved her. But after the last set of revelations, she’s less confident. If she’d been asked to bet her life (or his) she’d have come down on still loves her. But she isn’t entirely convinced that he would articulate it, unless Martha were in dire straits.

“Let’s look at the facts,” she continues, and first gives a concession. “I get why you sent him to school, and so does he. He didn’t tell you how he felt. Just like I didn’t tell Dad,” she adds, through gritted teeth. “So he had all the chances you could give him and he took them. Then suddenly he was all grown up and went his own way. So did you. But because you didn’t know he’d been unhappy, you didn’t know there was always a small doubt in his mind that you loved him. Likely he didn’t know it either.” She skips ahead. “But when you got conned, he opened his life to take you in. Didn’t hesitate” – she’s sure of that – “because he wanted, more than anything, to be family. I guess somewhere, he felt that he couldn’t send you away like you sent him away.”

Martha gasps, and her eyes brim. Beckett continues her dissection: cool, calm and imperturbable. She is perfectly well aware that this is how Dr Burke behaves. Whatever works, she thinks, and forges ahead.

“So he didn’t ask anything of you. You were family” – she can’t help the emphasis – “and that’s all that mattered to him. That matters to him. Castle believes in family and he would never have let you suffer if he could stop it. Never.”

Again, she can’t stop the emphasis. All the early problems and quarrels and troubles she and Castle had had – had come from the differences (real or misunderstood) in their views and experiences of families. She doesn’t say that. It’s not relevant here and now.

“Anyway. Everything was fine: he made sure you had everything you needed. Not just money or lifestyle, but a loving family around you. And then you started to meddle, because you were scared and didn’t trust him any more. You didn’t trust him to know what he was doing and you didn’t trust that all the support he’d given you was for real.”

Beckett stops, and downs her coffee, and signals for another. She’ll be jittering, if she does this much more, but she needs the concentrated caffeine hit to get through this without a spectacular loss of temper. She wants, oh-so-badly, to yell at Martha until she’s reduced to scraps of misery and hurts as much as she’s hurt Castle, but she is not going to descend to that level. She’s terrified Martha quite enough, and this needs fixed, not further fractured.

Martha has barely touched her tea, though her hands are clamped around the cup.

“The only way you’re going to fix this is by showing him you know you were wrong. Words aren’t going to be enough. They’ll help, but they aren’t enough.” Beckett thinks for a moment. “You need to fix things with Alexis, too. Same point.”

“I’m hardly going to turn into Grandma Walton,” Martha says bitterly. Beckett sits calmly silent. “I’m not exactly the milk-and-cookies rural type.”

Beckett shrugs, unhappily. “I can’t tell you how you show him you were wrong. I’m not you or him: I don’t know how you show the truth, how you love him. All I know is that he needs to know you love him. How you do that… is up to you.”

She looks at her watch. “I have to go.”

“How did your father fix it with you?” Martha asks, desperately. Beckett ceases her departure.

“He let me say everything I needed to,” she says bleakly. “He didn’t try to argue with me. He just sat there and took it till I was ready to hear him. He didn’t push. He owned up to his mistakes. And he did all of it by coming to therapy when I asked him, and that showed more than any words.” She stops, to ensure she hangs on to her composure. “It’s taken us months,” she adds. “On top of all the time we wasted by doing it wrong the first time round.” Her mouth tightens. “If it weren’t for the shrink, we’d never have fixed it at all.”

Beckett knows what Martha’s next comment will be. She’s not wrong.

“So you think we should go to therapy?”

“I don’t think anything. I think you need to think about what would help you. But don’t try for Dr Burke. He won’t see you.” Martha opens her mouth. “Castle already asked. He said no.”   Martha’s mouth closes. “Anyway, Castle’s already told you how he feels. Therapy isn’t going to show you anything about him you don’t already know. If you go, it’s to fix your issues. Not his. Dad and I had a different situation.” She doesn’t elaborate.

“Oh,” Martha says despondently. “I just want him to know I do love him. He’s my child. How could I not love him?”

Beckett manages not to point out that Martha’s own parents had evidently managed not to love her. It’s not likely to help. Nor would pointing out that Beckett’s own father loved her, but it hadn’t stopped him spending five years down a bottle and then the five years of disastrous non-truth after that.

“I need to go,” she says again. “Try talking to him, first. How you show him I don’t know. You have to work it out, because it only ever works if you work it out for yourself.”

She stands, and collects her purse. Martha stares down into her tea, now tepid at best. “Thank you for seeing me,” Martha says, quietly. “I know I didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry for what I did.”

Beckett doesn’t know quite what to say, and settles on the entirely inadequate and uncommunicative, “It’s not about me. It’s about Castle. We all want it fixed. Bye,” she tacks on, and departs before anything else can be said.

She is already late, and when she walks into Molloys the gang is in full voice. Pete, sensibly, is not present. Beers are on the table, as is food. She’s not sure that she wants either. Now that it’s done, reaction is setting in: she’s wholly unsure that seeing Martha was the right course of action and she’s equally unsure that anything she had said will have an effect, let alone the right effect.

Castle is surprised that Beckett isn’t there when he gets there, just ahead of the rest, but puts it down to a last-minute hitch. However, when Ryan discloses that Beckett left exactly on shift end and said she’d see them all there, he concludes that she’s plotting some piece of discomposing (but, he hopes, arousing) Castle-pranking, gets the first round in, and leaves an empty space for her between himself and O’Leary.

His first inkling that her tardiness is not due to any pleasant cause is when she enters and doesn’t sit down. Instead, she’s standing a little distance away, regarding their table as if it’s some foreign culture that she doesn’t understand. He’s only a little reassured when she shakes her head as if to clear it, and then sits down. Somehow, he thinks, she’s closed something off, and when he cautiously touches her hand, out of sight of the others, it’s tense.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs, under the general hubbub.

“Yeah,” she replies, but it’s not convincing. “Can I get a soda?” It’s clearly a close-down, and he accepts it, for now.

Beckett sips at her soda and listens to the exaggerated tales of cop derring-do as Ryan, Espo and O’Leary try to outdo each other. O’Leary is winning by several miles.

“So I was called in to Central Park,” O’Leary says happily, “to break up a domestic. Leastways, that’s what they told me.”

“Dispatch,” Ryan grumps. “Never get it right.”

“Too true,” Espo adds. “Surprised they c’n tell a homicide from a hamburger.”

Everyone snickers.

“So anyways,” O’Leary drawls, “I went off to the Park an’ when I got there I couldn’t find anythin’, so I called back an’ asked what was goin’ on. Just then I heard some yellin’ an’ cussin’, so I reckoned that was my domestic, an’ followed the noise.” He grins widely.

“So what was it?” Castle asks, intrigued. “It doesn’t sound like it was a domestic at all.”

“Only if you count shouting at your dogs as a domestic,”

“Someone called the cops for shouting at a dog?”

“Waal, that’s where it got a bit int’resting,” O’Leary smirks. “See, it wasn’t just the one dog. An’ to be honest, I’m not sure one of ‘em was a dog at all.”

“Huh?”

“When I got there, there was this guy with about six dogs cowerin’ up to him; an’ this other big guy with just the one animal. ‘Cept his one animal looked like an ambulatin’ carpet, an’ had dreadlocks just like its owner. Was the size of a pony, too. Didn’t know you could get floor mops that size,” he says wonderingly.

“How d’you mean, a big guy?” Espo enquires, while Castle soothes his curiosity by Googling dogs that have dreadlocks and is shortly staring at pictures of something called a Komondor.

“Bit shorter ‘n me,” O’Leary explains. Espo breathes a not-entirely-hidden sigh of relief. One O’Leary, it seems, is enough for him.

“So I ambled up, an’ asked what was goin’ on, loud enough to get heard through the shoutin’, an’ they didn’t like bein’ interrupted. Funny, though,” he grins, “they both shut up pretty quick when they turned round an’ saw me.”

The group sniggers. Castle thinks that people shutting up pretty quick when they take cognisance of O’Leary’s immensity is pretty common.

“Least till I asked what was goin’ on. Then they started shouting again. Then the dogs an’ the other animal got goin’. Sounded like a war. So I told ‘em to pipe down an’ I’d take one story at a time.” His slow grin ambles, much as O’Leary does, across his face. “Summarisin’, the man with six dogs, all of ‘em those little yappy things that fit in a teacup an’ ain’t no use to anyone, was a dog-walker. He was sayin’ that the big dog had scared his little ones. Other guy said that the walker had delib’rately gotten up close so the little ones were nipping at his dog.”

“So? What’s so interesting about that?” Lanie fires. Lanie is obviously not much of a one for dogs, or indeed domestics.

“Waal, turns out the two guys had a bit of a history. Came out when they were yelling at each other. This wasn’t the first time they’d had a run in at the Park. Seems like the walker had a bit of a beef with the other guy’s dog, complained it was outta control a coupla times. No evidence, so nothin’ happened. But, y’know, big black dude with dreadlocks an’ a big black dog with dreadlocks too, he’s not gonna be treated same as a five-foot nothin’ grandma with a dyed-pink pug, so he was a bit uptight, y’know? Anyways, his story was that the walker was tryin’ to get his dog taken away. He was a bit emotional ‘bout it.”

“So what’d you do?”

“It all hinged on whose dogs were under control,” O’Leary explained. “So I had an idea.”

“Yeah?” Castle says happily.

“I told ‘em we’d settle it at the Academy. They’d each put the dogs through some tests an’ we’d see whose came out best.”

“Sneaky,” Ryan says admiringly.

Castle notices that Beckett isn’t listening. Though he expects she’s heard the tale before, her inattention isn’t normal.

“What happened when you got them there?”

“Well, see, I never intended to take ‘em there. How’d I manage that on no notice? Academy’s got classes and schedules an’ everythin’. So that was the funny thing. Dreadlocks and the matchin’ dog, they were dead keen on it. Couldn’t wait to get there an’ show off his dog. He’d’a gone right there an’ then. By this time I’d noticed that his dog was sittin’ good as gold, even if it did look like a rag rug, so I was beginnin’ to think that he wasn’t the problem.”

O’Leary’s eyes are sparkling. “The other guy wasn’t havin’ any of it, an’ he was gettin’ pretty antsy, which I didn’t get. For all the fuss he’d been makin’, you’d’a thought he’d wanna see it through.”

The sparkle develops into a rumbling laugh. “Found out why he was in such a hurry to leave, ‘bout a minute later. This real pretty girl, with a real pretty red setter, turns up. She’d been runnin’ with the dog – gee, it was gorgeous” –

“Dog or the girl?” Ryan asks.

“Both.”

“Thought you weren’t into girls?” Espo says, just a little combatively.

“I’m not,” O’Leary says equably, “but just like I can tell Beckett’s good-lookin’, I can tell some other girl’s pretty. Like I’m sure you could tell a good picture from a toddler finger paintin’, even though I guess you’ve never been inside the Met in your life?”

Ow, Castle thinks. That’s telling Espo. Espo growls, and shuts up.

“So what about this woman and her gorgeous dog?” Castle asks, before there’s an argument that O’Leary’s going to win.

“Notice you’re not describing the woman as gorgeous,” Espo points out nastily.

“No eyes for anyone but Beckett,” Castle oozes sickeningly. Beckett’s lack of attention doesn’t prevent her punching his shoulder in retaliation. Various versions of ugh, shut up, and save it for private emerge.

“I think it’s sweet,” O’Leary says, to general disgust.

“Don’t encourage him, man.”

“Okay. So anyways, this girl an’ her dog clocked the situation and came over.” The rumble re-emerges, louder. Castle is sure his bones are resonating. “I was about to tell her to move along – politely – when she laid into the walker. Her voice sure didn’t match her looks. Hoo boy, she was mad. Then she flung herself on the big guy and kissed hell out him. Her dog was pretty keen on the mobile mop, too. Snuggled right up to it. It was really cute.”

“So she’d broken up with the first guy to get with the big man?”

“Not quite. Turns out she’d met them both at obedience classes an’ picked the big man, so the other guy thought if he could get the dreadlocked dog taken away for bein’ out of control she’d pick him instead.”

“Surprised it didn’t end in the morgue,” Lanie says cynically. “That’s where it usually ends up.”

“Ah, the optimism of the City’s ME department,” Castle puts in. Lanie makes a very rude gesture. Castle smiles seraphically, at which she repeats it.

“What’d you do with them?” Ryan wonders happily.

“Waal, I thought about sending the little guy to obedience classes, or one of those clubs you sometimes hear about from Vice” – Esposito snorts, and beer exits his nose; Ryan almost falls off his seat with laughter, and Lanie sniggers in a very knowing fashion. Castle guffaws. Beckett just about raises a smile – “but I wrote him up for his dogs not being under proper control an’ told him if it happened again I’d have his permit as a dog-walker revoked. He scuttled off pretty fast, after that. I left, too. The others were – er – occupied with each other.”

“How come you get all the funny ones?”

“How come you guys get all the weird ones? Natural talent,” O’Leary says happily, and smiles. “I gotta talent for humour, and you gotta talent for weird. I have to say that weird looks good on you all.” He ducks, as Ryan flaps a beer mat at him.

Esposito growls. “We ain’t weird. You’re the oversized freak of nature here.”

“Yep,” O’Leary agrees amiably. “Wanna spar again, little man?”

“Any time, mountain. An’ when I win” – Lanie snorts – “you’ll admit we ain’t weird.”

“Don’t think so. ‘Cause Beckett there is def’nitely weird.”

Beckett fails to react, much to Esposito’s disappointment and considerable surprise. “Beckett? You awake?”

“Uh? What? Did I miss something?”

“No,” says O’Leary, as Ryan says,

“Just O’Leary sayin’ we’re all weird, an’ you’re definitely weird.”

“What? O’Leary, you’re crazy. I’m not weird.”

“Hmmm,” O’Leary hums, very sceptically. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“Everyone’s crazy except me and thee, Beckett,” Castle singsongs, “and I’m not too sure about thee.”

Beckett mutters darkly, and drinks her soda. Castle notices O’Leary watching her carefully under his enormous eyebrows, meets O’Leary’s gaze, and waits while a quick exchange of mutual understanding passes between them.

More beer is consumed, more stories told, and Beckett manages just about enough attention for no-one to pull her up on her unsociability. Gradually people peel off. Ryan claims a date, Espo admits to nothing but departs anyway, and Lanie smirks evilly and says that she’s going looking for this club where men get taught obedience, at which Beckett raises the first real laugh she’s emitted all evening.

Now, it’s just the three of them. Castle looks at the empty bottles and glasses.

“Want another?” he asks generally.

“Yeah,” rumbles O’Leary. “How about some nachos or somethin’? I’m hungry.”

“Sure. Beckett? You want something?”

“Soda,” she says, “please.”

“Food?”

“Nah. Not hungry. Not like Colossus here. You should be the size of a truck, O’Leary.”

Castle arranges for beers, soda and food while O’Leary snickers happily.

“I already am, butterfly. Hadn’t you noticed?” Now that the others have gone, O’Leary’s down-home drawl has slipped away. “It’s all muscle, though.” Beckett grins, slightly forced. “Though I guess I’m not surprised you didn’t notice, since you haven’t been noticin’ anything all evening.” He pauses. “What’s up?”