60. So damn lonely

Beckett realises that she hadn’t switched her phone back on when she left the hospital, and does so. Her father has called twice.  She deletes both messages, unheard.  Lanie has called.  She listens briefly, grimaces, and deletes that, too.  Espo has called.  She listens carefully to that one.

Yo, Beckett. Got the TOD, around ten thirty.  Punched, and probably beaten with a branch, which I reckon is in the river.  Someone took a helluva risk.  Uniforms’ll have another go about that time tomorrow.  So far, so good.  Lanie’s not happy you didn’t come down yourself.  Too bad, Beckett thinks.  Lanie Parrish can go swivel.  The vulgarity doesn’t help her mood, and nor does her phone ringing.  Since it’s Lanie again, Beckett ignores it.  She doesn’t even swipe it to reject.  That’s only going to let Lanie know that she’s noticed.  She makes her coffee and picks up a book and tries not to think about her father or the therapy session.  When her phone rings again, she switches it to vibrate and continues to ignore it.  She doesn’t need to be told that she’s not enough, either by Lanie or by her father.  She just wants to be left alone.

She does yoga till her muscles scream, fails to bother with dinner, takes a long hot bath and goes to bed with her eyes completely dry. Crying won’t help.  Crying never helps.  Never had helped.  She just needs to put it behind her, and she can do that by throwing herself into work, and when work’s done, maybe there will still be Castle.

As long as she doesn’t have to be with his family. She really can’t deal right now with knowing that his family is so much more, so much better, than she is.  Not that it’s too surprising.  They welcomed her father in as if he was already one of them, no hesitation, no reservations, no history to get hung up on.  Nothing to be forgiven.  No wonder he likes them better. She would, if she were him.

She’d considered cancelling therapy, but Montgomery will know. So she’ll go often enough for it to appear she’s done it right and then quit.  No point.  No one to fix herself for, and no need to protect her father.  She needn’t ever have bothered.  He was either strong enough by himself, or he wasn’t.  Either way, she couldn’t change it.  She wonders if she can confine it to fixing her issues with Castle’s family, and then she wonders what the point of that is if she doesn’t have a family of her own.  Still, it might mean that Castle stayed around a little longer.  It might cure this feeling of inadequacy, and the petty nastiness she hates in herself.  Though he’d said she didn’t need to fix herself for him… but did he really mean that?

She tries to sort out her confused, confusing thoughts, and then to fall asleep, and finally succeeds in finding sleep, at least.

When she gets in the next day, the phone list is taped to her screen, with a note saying This way you can’t miss it.  She smirks, briefly.  There’s going to be a lot more canvassing today, once they’ve wiped out calls to Dr Roberts, and out of state calls.  That’s what God invented uniforms for, and she’d done her share of it when she was in uniform.  She starts slimming the list of numbers.  It keeps her mind off everything else.  Her father hasn’t rung again, yet, and that’s been eating at her since she woke up.  But it wasn’t she who saved him, it was he himself.  It’s always been he, himself.  So he’ll do it, or he won’t do it, but she isn’t the reason or the cause.

But telling herself that doesn’t help, and all the time the guilt claws at her, and just like the last time she simply throws herself into work for the whole day to blot it out, knowing that at the end of the day it’s her second full therapy session and now she has no reason to make it work. The day is not improved by a series of messages from Lanie, none of which pertain to the case.  She ignores their increasingly aggravated tone and demands for answers.  She also manages to avoid Esposito’s beady-eyed stare by ensuring that he has enough to do with the canvass that he can’t corner her.  She knows that’s simply deferring Nemesis, but that’s a better outcome than anything else.  And she ignores her father.

She and Castle make another visit to Dr Roberts, but he can’t think of anyone who really disliked his wife: no professional jealousy, no disgruntled patients of whom he knows, no relatives who are named on her life insurance. Sure, he’ll be better off by the amount of her life insurance, but he’s totally devastated.  He promises to tell them if anything at all occurs to him, offers them anything they need, searches, details, finances, anything at all that will find her killer, and then they leave him to his grief.

The day ends without any concrete results from the canvass, but the list is narrowing down. She leaves Ryan to the phone numbers and Espo to the canvass results, and departs.  Castle had left some time ago, claiming that his eyes were bleeding and he was no good at fine detail anyway.  He’s a big picture man, he had said.  Espo had pointed out that Castle’s big picture is normally full of crazy stories, and Castle had retreated in some disarray.

And so she wends her weary way to Dr Burke’s office and therapy, in no mood to speak or explain or try. It’s the same perfectly groomed receptionist, the same blue painted room, as unsoothing as the last time.

“Good evening.”

“Hello.”

Dr Burke is sitting in his armchair, again, as dapper and as fussily formal as before; the same sharp intelligence sparking in his eyes. Beckett raises her defences further.

“In our previous session, Detective Beckett, you said that Mrs Berowitz was not listening to your father, and so you left.” She nods once, sharply.  “But you, presumably, had heard his story before?  It cannot have come as a surprise to you, given that you have informed me that he has undertaken the twelve-step program and that he has remained sober for slightly over five years.  He must have told you his thoughts, and apologised to you for the hurt he caused you?”

“Yes. Of course he did.”

“And what did you do?”

“I forgave him.”

Her answer is, to Dr Burke’s well-practised ear, too quick, and too definite. Ah.  “Naturally you did,” he says smoothly.  There is no point in beginning that argument now.  “But you were displeased with Mrs Berowitz.”

“Yeah. Dad was there to help her and she wouldn’t be helped.”

“Do you know what happened after you left?”

“Dad stayed for a while. Castle stayed with him.”  Dr Burke forces himself not to react.  He would have expected Mr Castle to leave with Detective Beckett but, as he had surmised in the previous session, she had left alone.  “I suppose Dad told her a bit more.”

“Why did Mr Castle stay?”

Detective Beckett shrugs. “He’d managed to calm Julia down a couple of times.  He probably stayed to make sure she wasn’t getting hysterical on Dad.”

“Did you see either of them following this intervention?”

“No. I was tired.  Castle texted me, and I told him I wanted a quiet evening.  He said Dad was fine, so I didn’t worry.”

Detective Beckett is quite clearly skirting the edges of the truth. Dr Burke is sure that she has not told a direct lie, but she has skated over something quite crucial.  He makes a small note.

“So I went to work the next day, but I’d picked up a stomach bug and kept throwing up, and I had to go home till it was cleared.”

“How unfortunate.” Dr Burke does not believe that Detective Beckett had any form of physical illness at all. He believes, in fact, that she has just told him a lie.  “You are very devoted to your career, are you not?  You have been highly successful.”

Detective Beckett seizes upon the diversion.

“I enjoy my job.” That is clearly wholly sincere. 

“Tell me again how you reached your current role.”

“When I had to come back here because of Dad, I finished at NYU and went to the Academy. It was a goal I could achieve.  I couldn’t make Dad sober, but I could do that.  Then, when I wasn’t trying to help him, I always had work.  I found I really enjoyed it, and then I got put on a case and somehow I impressed Captain Montgomery, so I was transferred to the Twelfth and made detective.  There’s always plenty to do when you’re working Homicide.”

“So when you were not at home, you always had your job to do?”

“Yes.”

Dr Burke is not at all satisfied by that answer. Detective Beckett should have had more to her life than her father and her job.

“Was there anyone in whom you could confide?”

“I…” Detective Beckett stops, for a second.  “Dr Parrish knew.”  Dr Burke cocks his head, indicating that she should continue.  “But I didn’t need everyone knowing and thinking it was an excuse or feeling sorry for me.  I didn’t need special treatment.”

“Who is Dr Parrish?”

“Lanie Parrish. She’s one of the MEs that I work with.  I met her at NYU.  We were friends.”

“Were?”

“We’ve grown apart.”

“Who is aware now?”

“My team, and my boss. Castle.”

“Mm. Do they treat it as an excuse?”

“No. We work around it.  We sort the shifts out so it works out fairly.”

“They know the history, of course.” Detective Beckett nods again.  “So I presume that they are sympathetic when you need to discuss it.”  There is silence.  Dr Burke leaves the silence unbroken.

“We work around it,” Detective Beckett eventually repeats. Dr Burke translates that to mean that she does not discuss it with her co-workers.

“How much working around is necessary?”

“Only when Dad is away. He’s been away once since Christmas.”  A flash of unpleasant memory passes over Detective Beckett’s face.  “Since Christmas he’d been more interested in what I’ve been doing.”  An interesting choice of verb tense.

“More fatherly?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that pleasant?”

“Yes.”

“Would you characterise your relationship with your father as improving?” Dr Burke is exceedingly careful not to state a starting point for that improvement.

“Yes.”

“When did this improvement begin?”

“About six months after he got dry. We started having dinner every week, as long as I didn’t catch a new case.”  Ah.  That is not at all consistent with Detective Beckett’s statement about Christmas.

“I see. And when did you last see him?”

“Sunday.” That is clipped off.  Dr Burke deduces that the meeting had not gone well.

“Thank you. Please make your next appointment for Friday.”

“Okay. Good night.”

Dr Burke would be prepared to swear in any courtroom that he had heard a sigh of relief as Detective Beckett left. He would also be prepared to give his professional opinion that her relief is at having evaded any matter that might have been relevant to her issues or might have given rise to Dr Burke learning anything of use.  He is highly dissatisfied with the session, and with Detective Beckett.  It had achieved almost nothing.

Beckett reaches home and starts to make herself coffee. She can’t think of anything else to do except go back to the precinct, and she can’t do that because someone will tattle to Montgomery and she’ll be deep in the shit straight away.  She can’t face being benched again, for no reason at all.  Her work is top class.  She only needs to be left to get on with it.  She looks at her phone, deletes the calls from Lanie unheard, deletes the messages from her father likewise – she doesn’t need to hear his lies and promises that he didn’t mean it; that he needs her, that she saved him.  He did, and he doesn’t, and she didn’t.  No point listening.  They always lie.  He’d said it himself: I always lied.  Lying can become a habit, if it gives you an easy life.  She can only save herself, and for her own sanity she can’t get sucked back into believing the lies.  Better to accept reality, deal with the pain, and walk away from it.  Save yourself.  Protect yourself.

She sips her coffee and picks up a book, decides she can’t be bothered to read and switches on the TV, doesn’t like the choice of shows and switches it off, thinks about going out to run and doesn’t want to make that effort either. Nothing appeals to her at all.  She looks at the little red beach stone, smooth in her white-edged grip, and wonders why she can’t just have some happiness.

She twists and turns the small crystal, thinking about the weekend just gone and how good it had been; contrasting that with the fiasco of Sunday evening, the stress of trying to get through Monday without simply collapsing and the unpleasantness of therapy. She resolutely does not sniff.  It’s too late to call Castle and drag him out just because she’s miserable.  She could call him, but then he’ll hear the upset in her voice no matter how she tries to hide it – he always does, even when no-one else can – and he’ll come round anyway, and it’s after eight and that’s not fair.  He’s got a family to look after.  She sniffs, and forces her eyes to dryness, and keeps forcing the tears back.  She won’t cry.  She never has and won’t now.

Naturally, there is a loud rap on the door just at the point she’s desperately trying not to dissolve into a puddle of unhappiness. She pads over quietly, so that if it’s anyone she doesn’t want to see – such as Lanie, or her father – she can pretend she’s not at home. 

It’s Castle.

He’s the one and only person in the whole wide world that she might be able to cope with seeing. She opens the door – and buries her face in his coat as he enters.  He toes the door shut and simply holds on to her.

Castle had gone home from the precinct early, firstly because he couldn’t help while everyone was following up police and other databases to which he has no access, and after they’d seen Dr Roberts there were no interesting things happening such as further interviews with witnesses or (more happily) suspects; and secondly because watching Beckett ignoinge her phone, her father, and Lanie and pretending nothing at all is wrong, all the while expecting that she’ll be at therapy tonight, (it’s a guess, but the way she’s pushing for everything to be with her before five-thirty is quite a clue) is leaving him with a deep desire to remove her from the bullpen by any means available up to and including picking her up and carrying her. Since doing so will entail being shot, being shot is likely to be painful if not fatal, and he dislikes the thought of both pain and death, he takes the path of discretion and quietly departs.

He writes, somewhat less productively than he’d like, for a while, hoping that the distraction will clarify his thoughts as to what to do. No question but that he’ll turn up on Beckett’s doorstep shortly after eight, but whether beforehand he should talk to Lanie (a dangerous prospect) or to Jim (a worrying one) is vexing him substantially.

He thinks for a little longer. Lanie, Castle considers, is quite capable of looking after herself and is about as fragile as an allosaurus.  Lanie needs to sort her own issues with Beckett: he is not getting into the middle of the clash of those titans.  (He might sell tickets, though.)  Jim… is very fragile indeed.  He grits his teeth and prepares to lie through them for the next – however long he needs to.

“Jim, it’s Rick. Are you okay?”  Are you sober? Please be sober, even though you’re being ripped apart.

“Yes. No.”  A sucked-in breath, but sobriety.  “Katie still won’t answer my calls.” 

Castle thinks extremely quickly. Jim trusts him, and has done – God knows why: he wouldn’t trust any boy going out with Alexis, but presumably Jim is used to sizing people up immediately – from the get-go.  Time to use it.

“Jim, what exactly did you say to Beck – Kate? There must have been something.  This is just plain weird.  She was perfectly happy with you right up to” – he coughs horribly to avoid saying Sunday afternoon and thereby having to explain their weekend to Jim.  Somehow explaining to her father that he’d taken Beckett to the Hamptons for what could undoubtedly – but very wrongly – be characterised as a dirty weekend is all sorts of wrong.  Very fortunately Jim is too upset to notice.  “She’s spent years not walking away from you, making sure she’s there when you need her.  She loves you, Jim.  I’d have bet my loft she wouldn’t do this.  So what did you say, and maybe we can fix it?”

Castle has no idea why Jim merely suggesting that he and his family should come for dinner would explode Beckett like it has done. They’d all got through the dinner the other night, after all, and Beckett hadn’t blown up there or after.  Much.  Not with her father, anyway.   It had been Julia who’d triggered that, and even then she’d covered it all up in short order – at least with her father.  He concludes that Jim has, surely inadvertently, said something that hit Beckett’s manifold insecurities head on, but for the life of him he can’t see how.

“I don’t know,” Jim says, as exasperated as his daughter might be.  “Don’t you think I haven’t tried to work it out?  I don’t get it.”

“Sure you’ve tried, but let’s work it out together.   Tell me what you said – the exact words.  It’s got to be in the words.”

“You think you know my daughter better than me?”  Castle doesn’t answer that.  After a few seconds, Jim sighs, defeated, weary and old.  “Maybe you do, at that.  Seems like I don’t know her at all.” 

Jim pauses, and thinks back. “I was asking about you being round to dinner on Tuesday last, and she told me what she’d cooked.  Sounded nice” –

“It was.”

“ – and then I suggested you should all come round, and said I’d help her cook. Said I wanted to hear a bit more about the theatre, said Alexis was cute but not like Katie, and she was fine with all that.”  Castle rather doubts that, but it’s not that which has triggered a complete cluster bomb.  “Then I said you were all really easy to get on with, and it was great, just like being part of a family again.”  Uh-oh no.  The full horror is still hitting Castle as Jim carries on.  “And then she lost it.”

Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Oh God.  Everything dawns on Castle.  He’d guessed right.  Jim couldn’t have phrased that worse if the city’s low lives had paid the Devil to whisper the right words in his ear to break Beckett.  It’s frighteningly clear.  Beckett heard that as you’re not enough of a family for me.  She’d spent five years doing everything to keep her dad together, she’d said that if she’d done what she wanted then she wouldn’t have had to be family for him but he’d wanted to be a family and needed her – oh God - and one ill-considered sentence has blown that whole belief apart.  The whole of the last five years, everything she’s sacrificed – and all she’s heard is that she isn’t enough of a family for Jim.  Her whole life, wasted – for nothing.

“She just lost it and said she didn’t want you all in her apartment and she wouldn’t come if I invited you and I could play happy families all I wanted if she wasn’t enough.  And then she said she was done.”  Castle can hear Jim’s heart break all over again. “She left.  She was crying.  I haven’t seen her cry for years.  She won’t take my calls and I don’t dare go see her in case she won’t open the door.  What’ll I do without her?  She’s my only family.  She walked away before and it saved me, and she knows it.  I don’t understand why she’s done it now, Rick.  All I meant was that it looked like we were being part of your family.  I thought… well, I thought you…”  He dries up.

Oh, fuck.  Oh, Jim. What have you done?  Castle has absolutely no idea what Jim will do, but he certainly knows what Beckett is doing.  She’s walking away from her father, who loves something else – so she thinks – far more than he loves her. 

Again.