"You've been standing in here for at least ten minutes."

Castle spins away from the rainbow of dress shirts to find his wife silhouetted in the soft amber light from their bedroom. Ethan blinks heavily, drooling a little on the towel that's draped over Kate's shoulder. She's showered, she's dressed and apparently just finished feeding their son, and Castle has indeed been rooted to this spot for considerably longer than ten minutes, under the guise of picking out clothes to wear for dinner.

He's not much closer to accomplishing that task than he was when he walked into the closet as Kate turned on the shower...Castle checks his watch...over thirty minutes ago. Head hanging in consternation, he notes that he's also managed to put on brown shoes with his charcoal slacks. Crap. They bounce off the closet wall with a thud and he doesn't even bother to pick them up and return them to their shelf.

She's laughing at him. Soundlessly. But it's there, in her eyes, in the carefully controlled expression She's going to draw blood, biting the inside of her cheeks like that, willing herself to be supportive and sympathetic, when in any other situation, she'd tease him to no end. But this is a special brand of out of sorts, and his wife is trying so hard not to be a jerk about his inability to dress himself.

Castle considers hating her for it, the irritating amusement wrapped up in absolute calm she's wearing tonight, along with a gray watercolor maxi dress and cashmere shrug that shouldn't look that utterly amazing on a woman who gave birth less than a week ago. Gave birth. To their son. After which she conspired with his mother and daughter to give him a chance to spend some quality time becoming acquainted with his long-lost father. Over the very nice dinner he's about to eat. All through no effort of his own.

Okay, he admits, hate is probably the wrong word.

"Yeah, sorry, just zoned out there for a minute." Castle spares a tight smile for Kate, snags a navy blue dress shirt and black shoes off the rack and follows her back into their room. "What time is it?" he asks. Rick hopes against hope she doesn't realize he looked at his watch scarcely thirty seconds ago, and has already forgotten what it said. Too much going on in his head, too little sleep. He drops the shoes on the floor so he can pull on his shirt.

"Six forty-five."

"What?" Double crap. Castle stomps into his Ferragamos while buttoning up.

"We're good. The caterer just cleared out. Martha and Alexis are putting the final touches on things. We're ready."

"You're ready," Castle mutters and hastily tucks in his shirt. "But I need to..." Rick has no idea, actually, and shrugs. "Do...something."

He straightens his collar while yanking open the dresser drawer, where a riot of neatly spaced silk neckties are fanned out across the shallow drawer like playing cards. Kate hooks a finger through the placket of his button down and turns him to face her. "This is not a tie occasion, it's just dinner at home. So take a deep breath. You already spent some time with him, it's not like you just...mmmet." Kate chews on that last word under her husband's incredulous gaze. Her eyes narrow. "For the first time. This won't be the very first time, anyway. You know what I mean."

"I should be doing something," Castle insists, casting a dubious glance back into his tie collection, before jamming the drawer shut and looping back to the closet for a sport coat.

Whatever the caterers delivered would smell divine if Rick wasn't currently contemplating throwing up. This all seemed like such a nice idea until he spent half an hour going dizzy in his closet wondering what style of shoe communicates the appropriate blend of self-preserving indifference and please teach me to throw a football. He glances between his wife and the closed dresser drawer, unconvinced, but stalks away toward the living room and his fate, tie-less.

Kate trails after him into the living room as he wrestles inelegantly into his charcoal jacket. The collar is kicked up at an odd angle, and she hitches Ethan up higher on her shoulder and fixes it with one hand. "If you feel the need to do something, you could start with some deep breathing exercises."

Castle eyes her, thinly-veiled annoyance in his glare. "I do hate you right now."

Kate pats his cheek. Condescendingly. "This too shall pass."

Kate meets Martha's eye for a moment and Martha smirks. "Failing the Lamaze breathing, my boy, you should follow my example and shotgun a glass of this fabulous Beaujolais." The hand Martha isn't using to toss a dinner salad with tongs reaches into the cupboard and clinks down a wine glass on the breakfast bar.

"I..." Rick considers the glass for a moment, but the oven timer sounds and Alexis, who has been setting the table, brushes past him to attend to the oven. Over her shoulder she eyes her father with an arched brow that says she's about to lay some truth on him in a manner he will find both incredibly annoying, and...well, true. Except she doesn't say anything, just starts plating, with a loaded look in between each pass of the spatula, some lightly toasted crostinis garnished with blonde pesto, crumbled bacon and parmesan curls.

It occurs to Rick, a split second after his stomach rumbles like a jet engine that-

"Lunch?" He asks himself aloud, staring dumbly at the platter of antipasto next to him on the bar. Prosciutto wrapped in basil and spinach leaves, Kalamata olives, marinated red peppers, medallions of fresh mozarella cut into wedges, shaved salami wrapped around what looks like little straw-sized bread sticks. A bowl of hummus with a drizzle of olive oil and a liberal sprinkling of pine nuts sits in the middle of a spray of raw vegetables and haphazardly torn rustic sourdough bread.

He had made Kate a sandwich while she googled diaper rash and he folded laundry while she fed Ethan and rocked the boy to sleep.

"I didn't eat," Rick confesses, snatching up a handful of carrots and dragging a chunk of the bread through the dip, pausing briefly to look around. He expects to find three pairs of eyes on him as he stuffs the bite into his mouth, but they're all busy doing something other than judging him for disturbing the artfully arranged appetizers.

Carrot, hummus, mouth, repeat.

Alexis even holds the plate out to him so he can take a couple of the crostinis. "Bacon makes everything better."

Rick nods wordlessly, loathe to speak and spray a mouthful of carrot/hummus malange on her or the platter. Their everyday china, he notes. Come to think of it, the whole table is set much like it would be any other night of the week. The place is clean, the fire is burning, and Martha is dressed in her typical flowy, bangled kit. Alexis is in a tunic shirt and leggings, and for the first time, Rick notices that Kate isn't really wearing much make up. The whole thing is so normally lovely and underproduced that he actually feels his shoulders drop with the realization that this is just dinner. Sort of. Not really. Who is he kidding? The Beaujolais is looking more promising by the minute.

Kate threads her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck a few times and smooths it back down. "No wonder you're so jittery. You drank espresso all afternoon on an empty stomach."

Rick swallows. "Sorry about the attitude."

Ethan, bicycling his little legs, grunts and lets loose an audible toot. Martha, who has never been much for bathroom humor, laughs out loud, and it grants them all a giggle and a momentary break in the tension. Kate pats the baby's back and looks up at her husband with merry eyes. "We're all running on vapor right now. You get a little leeway."

"You're too good to me." Rick looks down at a prosciutto wrap that's half way to his mouth and a thought occurs to him. "So Italian? No duck?"

Kate shakes her head. "Duckless."

"Should I ask?"

"Something about Herve's supplier and an entire Elk's Lodge banquet puking their guts out in Albany. Apparently it made the news."

Italian is looking more wonderful to Rick by the second. "Wow. Can you imagine?"

"Ugh. I'd rather not," Alexis moans.

A familiar knock at the door causes every one to turn and look. "Dad said he'd be a little early. Make yourself useful?" Kate holds Ethan out to her husband. Alexis passes by on the way to the door and a clean kitchen towel lands on his shoulder as she passes by. Rick receives the baby gratefully, pressing his nose to the clean, baby shampoo-scented crown of his son's head and takes a therapeutic sniff. Anything to keep his mind occupied, really, and this will do handsomely. It doesn't hurt that his son, dressed on a navy blue onesie with a Yankees logo emblazoned across his chest, is blinking his charming, sleepy, almost smile. The book says that babies don't consciously smile this early. Castle begs to differ. If not in actual disagreement with the established research on the matter, with the timeline's applicability to a boy as clearly advanced as his own.

Just as Kate reaches the door, Rick grabs for his mother's wine glass and downs the last third in a gulp. Martha casts him a baleful look. Even though it doesn't bother Jim, they've mostly gotten out of the habit of drinking around Kate's father, and that was Martha's last swallow of liquid courage before Charles Trent arrives.

"Pine nut caught," he offers, clearing this throat. "Sorry."

"Hmmm." His mother deposits the glass behind her in the sink, returning to corked bottle to he wine fridge under the counter. "Uninspired performance."

"Not everyone can down a red with your particular brand of flair, Mother."

"Quite right," Martha agrees, with what he can only read as a slightly pained smile.

Rick has been so caught up in his own anxiety, he's hardly noticed how this might be affecting Martha. The man who left her with child 45 years ago is coming home to them, at last. As unimaginable as it seems for a woman who has lived widely as Martha Rogers has in the intervening years, maybe, just maybe, a part of her has always longed for what could have been? The idea would certainly appeal to her romantic nature, her sense of story and drama. Martha's son studies her, looking for a thread he can tug to unravel the mystery behind his mother's thoughts on the night.

Martha is wiping down the counter and depositing a few lingering items in the dishwasher, returning the unused wine glass to the shelf. Never much of a domestic, she clearly wants to be busy right now. However, she's not so preoccupied that she can't feel the burn of Richard's inquiring gaze. Alexis has followed Kate to the door and Richard and Martha are, but for Ethan, alone. Only the couple of feet across the breakfast bar separates them.

"You're analyzing, Richard. Stop," Martha orders, softly, but directly.

He leans down to make eye contact, but she's steadfastly refusing, scraping a few remaining tomato wedges into the salad bowl and putting the cutting board in the washer. When she turns back to him, Richard is on her side of the bar, with Ethan in a football carry. He lays the other hand on her arm, and she stills.

"Mother, I just...I'm sorry I've been so stuck in my own head. I know this isn't only about me. You've lived a long time with the disappointment."

Martha's head snaps up, her gaze determined, but not unkind. "I've lived all that time with you, and you have never, ever been a disappointment. I made own my choices, and they brought me you, so I'll thank you not to regret them for me."

Richard tangles his fingers with his mother's for a moment, and her gaze softens. "You're all aces, Mother."

The stern line of her mouth morphs into a little smirk. "If you run my mascara, we're going to have words. Scram, kiddo."

Standing will not make the main event arrive any sooner, so with one last squeeze of his mother's fingers, Castle leaves Martha to her work and plants himself on the sofa, crossing an ankle over the other knee and propping Ethan up to face him. Behind him, Martha discreetly wipes under her eyes while puttering around in the kitchen - the dishwasher opens and closes, followed by the refrigerator. Only the moving around and conversation have kept Ethan awake this long, and almost the moment they are settled, the boy blinks heavily a couple of times and drifts off.

At the door, there are hugs and Kate chats up her father while Alexis is hanging Jim's topcoat in the closet. Before Castle can make a greeting, Jim is across the room and leaning over the back of he sofa to squeeze his son-in-laws shoulder and ruffle the baby boy's hair. "So unfair, isn't it? If one of us slept through dinner it would be considered rude."

Rick offers up a pained smile. "Part of me wonders if I might be better off."

Jim eyes the hors d'oeuvres behind him with regret. His son-in-law is in need of a pep talk more than he's in need of a snack, so he skirts the end of the sofa and plants himself within baby-admiring distance.

"I remember waking up one morning, just a few weeks sober, and going to Katie's place for breakfast. She'd saved up enough money to buy some new things, a dining table and a couple of other pieces. It was a new apartment for her, really tiny, but clean and neat and on a nice, quiet street in Brooklyn, and she was pretty proud of it.

"When I got there, she was finishing up in the little efficiency kitchen, and I just took a look around the place, and saw her NYU diploma, framed and hanging on the wall. There were pictures of her and some cops I'd never even met. A couple of framed citations, the fancy version of her peace officer's license from the state of New York. Pictures of her mom. Shelves upon shelves of books. The last time I'd taken a good, sober look at my daughter she was 19 years old and breaking it to us that she'd gotten a belly button ring. Promptly after that, I poured myself headfirst into a bourbon bottle and didn't come up for several years. In that time, she'd put herself through college, established herself in a highly responsible career, kept me from drowning in a pool of my own vomit and bullied me into rehab, all while attempting to mourn Jo."

Jim pauses, head shaking at the memory. "She was a wreck, don't get me wrong, but she was keeping it on the rails. And I was so proud of her, and so painfully aware that I hadn't helped her with any of it. I realized that Katie didn't need me to accomplish any of it, and it was at once one of the proudest and saddest days of my life. I left her place after breakfast and headed straight to church to take in an

AA meeting. I'd never been more ashamed in my life, and given my recent history at the time, that's saying something."

Kate and Alexis are back into the kitchen, filling glasses with ice and strategizing about when best to serve dinner. Jim props and elbow up on the back of he sofa and watches his daughter, elegant, full of grace, all of the best things from her mother on display, smiling and sorting out the dinner details with her mother-in-law and step-daughter.

Rick's eyes have been focused mostly on the baby, giving Jim emotional distance to tell what is plainly a difficult story, but he finally looks up and appreciates the full measure of regret in Jim's countenance.

"Katie accomplished so much without me, an I can't help but think your old man is sort of in the same boat. You're a grown man. You don't need anything material from him. Career-wise you're at the top of your game. Anybody who knows you for ten minutes knows how fulfilling your family life is. If he's gone through his adult life half as emotionally isolated as I imagine he has, he's probably going to show up on your doorstep tonight wondering what on earth he can possibly offer you. And the only answer is something you excel at, and he's likely not had much experience with – genuine relationship. He's got all this ground to make up, and the only burden on you is to keep being the big-hearted, patient, compassionate man who you already are. And besides, if he tries and stinks at this, isn't that better than him never trying at all?"

Rick blinks, and looks a little overwhelmed. "Did you breathe at all during that last part? 'Cause if not, that was amazing."

Jim mentally reviews, and considers that it's not the most eloquent summation of his career, but it's better than nothing. "I dunno, but I gave a fantastic closing argument once after some bad Thai food and sprinted out into the hallway after the gavel and heaved in one of those concrete barrels where you stub out your cigarette. It was like, 1987 and people still smoked everywhere."

Upon which a wadded up kitchen towel smacks Castle on the back of the head.

"Hey!" Castle jerks around to see his daughter glaring at him from the kitchen.

"No more puke stories," Alexis commands, as Martha and Kate turn away to cover their smiles.

"I didn't TELL the story," Castle huffs out in an indignant stage whisper, as Ethan twitches in his arms. "Not even the first one!"

Jim looks between father and daughter. "First one?"

"Dad, tell me honestly that you weren't just about to tell that foul story about Ryan and the bad seven layer dip."

Busted. Castle's gaping mouth slams closed. It's one of his favorite stories. It's definitely his favorite Ryan story of all time. Better than the time Ryan physically attacked his partner in the bullpen for eating a doughnut. It's probably his favorite Esposito story as well, since Ryan ended up vomiting in Espo's gym bag.

"I...rrrrrr! It's like the Best. Story. Ever. I will not be denied the sheer joy of recounting it to Jim just because it's dinnertime and you think it's-" Castle flounders around for a word that conveys how ridiculous his daughter is. "Icky!"

Kate, who well remembers the digestive horror in question, clamps a hand over her mouth, glee at the memory of Esposito's abject horror, and the unwelcome strain on her recently-taxed abdominals conspiring to squeeze out a few tears. She swipes under one eye and finds a smudge of eyeliner. So much for her only concession to vanity tonight. Martha, loathe to miss a moment of the action, reaches blindly behind herself and hands Kate a napkin.

Alexis is gassing up to object when their friendly squabble is interrupted by a tentative knock. Five pairs of eyes fly to the front door, and Rick jerks to his feet on autopilot.

"Later, every gory detail, in all your technicolor storyteller glory." Jim stands and takes the baby, bouncing him a few times before hugging the boy near. "But right now you might want to answer the door."