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64% Dash It All / Chapter 64: 64. Chapter 64

บท 64: 64. Chapter 64

Kate stretches in the beach chair that Castle bought when he was with the kids in town; much better this way. She props the ipad on her knees and glances over at him, digging in the sand with Dashiell, the two heads close as they work. Rick has sand on one cheek, down the back of his arm; he uses a bucket to shape towers for their son while Dash makes explosion noises and drops his green army men into the holes they've made.

Rafe and Allie have taken a long stroll on the beach, still not back yet, and Ellery is only a few feet away, squatting at the edge of the water line, playing with shells in some complicated and intricate way. The little girl has shoved away her older brother more than once, trying to keep him out of her game; Kate can't help but be amused at the intensity of her expression and the seriousness of her play.

Biting her lip, Kate notices the pink flush along her daughter's little leg, leans forward and pushes her sunglasses up. Just a blush, but-

She flips the cover over the tablet and slides it into the beach bag, then grabs the plastic bag of sunblock, fishes out the BullFrog - which smells horrendous but stays on so well they have a hard time washing it off in the bath. "Ellery," she calls, getting to her feet.

Her daughter turns and gives her a mean look, clearly ticked at being interrupted. Kate grins and heads towards her, popping open the sunblock, dropping down to sit beside the girl, brushing sand off her daughter's forehead with a gentle swipe.

"You're getting pink, cricket."

Ellery glances down at her swimsuit, then lifts a look to her mother, eyebrow raised. So inclined to assume everyone else is wrong, and not herself. So like Kate. A little frightening, that innate self-assurance.

"Come here," Kate murmurs on a laugh, shaking her head. "Look."

Ella lets her mother take her into her lap, watches Kate's fingers as she rotates Ellery's leg and shows her the pink at her calf. "Why pink Mommy?"

"The sun. We need to put some more sunblock on; I think it's gotten rubbed off in the sand. Or the water."

"It's sticky," Ella says, making a face.

"It is. To keep the sun from getting you." Kate squeezes the yellowy-white cream out onto her hand and slathers Ellery before she can decide against cooperating. The girl sits still, enduring, until Kate's managed to get both legs covered and her little neck as well. Then she squirms away.

"No, no, Mommy."

"Let me get your face," Kate says, catching her by the arm. "Just a little bit more."

Ellery jerks her head away, but Kate wraps her arm around her daughter, pulls Ella against her chest to hold her still.

"If you fight me, it'll end up in your eyes," she warns.

Ella growls but stops struggling; Kate rubs a little bit into her cheeks, smears it along her forehead, goes for her ears again. Ellery sighs and opens her eyes, looking up at her mother.

"No like it."

"Use your big girl words, not your baby words."

"I use words I want."

Was that defiance? Kate raises an eyebrow at her; Ellery's little jaw is set, intent and a little bit, just faintly, nervous. About Kate's reaction.

Hm.

Kate slides her fingers around Ellery's belly, then ruthlessly tickles her, curling around her little body to keep her in place, trapped, laughing as Ella squeaks and giggles and squirms against the assault.

"Use the words you want, huh?" Kate teases, digging her fingers into Ella's knees now, squeezing, making the girl shriek with laughter, her back arching to get away, helpless with breathlessness.

"Mommy - Mommy!"

"You asked for it, Ellery Kate."

Ella gasps and her eyes open as Kate's fingers still, her little arms reach up and curl around Kate's neck, her fingers clutching her mother's hair, their faces close and foreheads touching. She lays in Kate's lap, sucking in her breath and still giving little laughs, those blue eyes so deep and clear and beautiful as they regard her.

Kate kisses her nose, tastes sunscreen on her lips and wipes her mouth with a smile as she pulls away.

"Hey, baby girl."

"Hey, Mommy. No more tickles."

"No more." Kate gives her a chance to calm down, then gets her back up, standing her on her feet in the sand. "Whatchya playing?"

"My shells."

"Oh?" Kate watches Ella turn back to her game; the girl picks up a grey and black piece of shell, hands it to Kate with a solemn look.

"This one."

"This one?" Kate takes it from her, cradling it in her palm, this little thing her daughter finds such meaning in.

"It's dark."

"Oh." She fingers it and watches Ellery's face. "It's dark." Oh-kay.

Ella seems to understand her mother's confusion because she gets on her knees and cups her hands around Kate's palm, peering down at the shell in the cave made by her fingers. Kate glances up to see if Castle is watching - maybe he'll have some insight - but he's not; she looks back at her daughter, wondering what she's doing.

Ella looks back up with a little, tight grin, sly and knowing. "It's dark in there."

Kate grins back, biting her bottom lip. "I see. It is dark. What else do you have?"

Ellery takes the shell back, carefully lines it up in its place, then picks up a curving white piece, riddled with tiny holes. She hands it to her mother with a beaming smile. "It's got stars."

"Stars."

Ellery picks it up off her mother's hand and uses two fingers to hold it up against the sun, squinting, one eye closing, then the other, back and forth. Kate puzzles for a moment, then realizes Ella is looking at the light coming in through the holes in the shell.

"Oh, I get it." Kate grins and takes the shell from her, then does the same, looking at the bright spots that come through the shell.

Ella takes it back and puts it in the row, then hands Kate another one. "Mommy's."

"Oh? This one is mine?"

She nods, something like hesitance flushing over her face, settling in her eyes. Kate takes the shell tenderly and leans in, kissing Ella's little cheek for that cautiously adoring look. She wonders, for just a moment, if she looked at her own mother this way. Hopes so, fervently, because seeing that look on Ella's face is amazing.

"Tell me about it."

The shell Ella has handed her is a mollusk half-shell with a ridged and curving flare, a rounded hollow like a shallow bowl. The shell is mostly black with swirls of brown that are nearly golden.

"It's pretty," Ella says suddenly, reaching out to the shell and smoothing her finger over the ridges, following the lines. "Like you, Mommy."

Kate leans in, cupping Ella's neck, kisses her quickly on the lips with a little laugh. "My beautiful girl. Thank you."

Ella looks so pleased, her face shining with pride, and she leans in to Kate, wrapping her arms around her mother's neck. Her wet kiss lands on Kate's mouth, fierce and childlike, then she pulls back, grinning widely.

"Love you, Mommy."

"Love you too, cricket." Kate takes her back for a tight hug, rubbing her briskly, wet hair and sandy swimsuit, then puts her away. "Want some help looking for seashells? We can walk down the beach together."

"Yes!" Ella throws up both hands, beaming, then turns back to look at her shells. "Oh."

"We'll put those in my bag, Ella. So nothing happens to them."

"Oh yes," Ella says, turning hopeful eyes back to her.

"Come on, gather them all up and we'll put them away, safe."

Kate leans over and helps Ellery collect her shells, watching the girl's face as her daughter handles them reverently. Kate can't remember ever being like this as a girl, treasuring something so much, but it reminds her of how Ella will sneak off with their possessions, squirrel them away in hiding places all over the loft.

And these are things not necessarily with value or shine, but things with meaning. All these collections. There must be reasons behind them all - the phone charger, Kate's wedding ring, one of Dash's baseball cards - these various things she's been caught with over the past few years.

Kate holds open the beach bag, unzips the inside pocket to take out her phone, dump it back into the main compartment. "Put them in here and we'll zip it up."

Ellery pours her treasures down into the little pocket; Kate zips it closed.

"All right. Go ask Daddy if we can borrow a bucket to put our treasures in, everything we find."

Ella bounces up and runs to her father, putting a little hand on his shoulder to get his attention. Kate watches as Castle turns immediately, his whole being shifting focus from the thing he and Dashiell are creating in the sand back to his little girl.

Ellery has never taken more than one or two things of Castle's, in all this time. Usually things that cause Kate to come looking for them - like the keys she needed. She can't remember a single thing that Castle absolutely had to have, even though Ellery has done that to Kate many times - her phone, her badge, a note.

But maybe she's seeing why, right now. Because Castle knows how to make Ellery the center of his world - just as he does for Kate, for Dash, for Alexis. His passion and loyalty and intensity of focus come to bear on them and there's no room for doubt or anxiety, no need to wonder.

No need to act out for his attention; she'll always have it.

Kate sighs, drags wisps of hair out of her eyes as a breeze dances over the beach. Ellery comes back to her with a bucket, holding it up for her inspection.

"Very good, cricket."

Dashiell has always made himself known; he's often as direct and up front about his needs as Castle is. No mistaking what he wants. Ellery is different; Ella is reserved and quiet and watchful. Her needs are more complicated than Kate expected, require more digging, more focus.

She'll just have to start paying better attention. Starting now.

Kate reaches down for her daughter's hand, squeezes the little fingers. "Let's go look for seashells, Ella."

"Oh, yes, Mommy."


บท 65: 65. Chapter 65

Castle waits until Kate and Ella are mostly gone from view, then he turns back to Dashiell, the boy nearly to his chest in the deep hole they've dug. The pit for the sand beasts. The sand beasts which will commence terrorizing the green army men at any moment, so long as Dash is happy with the depth of his pit.

"Okay, my man, now that Mommy can't overhear-"

"My party."

"Your party. What were you thinking?"

"The chainsaws were good, but I guess no chainsaws?" Dashiell lifts a hesitant face up to him, eyes squinting. Castle can't remember where the kid put his sunglasses.

"Yeah, I think chainsaws might be too much. For Ella at least. She acts tough, but I think it scared her."

"She had bad dreams."

"She tell you that?"

Dash nods, goes back to scraping out sand with both hands, being careful not to fling, like Castle has been reprimanding him all morning. Good boy.

"What else can we do, Daddy? If not chainsaws."

"Well, you don't *have* to have a Halloween birthday party. We've just always done it like that."

"But. . .well. . .what else would it be?" Dash pauses in his work, wipes at a trickle of sweat on his chest only to smear sand across his skin instead. "If not Halloween. It can't be Christmas."

Castle laughs and puts his feet into the pit with Dash. "Actually, kiddo, most people's birthdays aren't holidays. Unlike yours and Ella's."

"Oh. What do they do?"

"They have cake. And ice cream. Like you. And a theme."

"A theme. Like a book?" Dashiell looks incredibly reluctant to pursue this kind of party, a book party. Castle can barely keep from laughing again, imagining what horrors of literacy are going through the kid's head.

"Not. . .well, no. Not like a theme in a book. I mean, a theme for the party. Like cowboys. Or princess-"

"Ew. Not even Ella wants a princess party." Dash shudders, and Castle has to actually bite his lip and turn his head to hold it in.

"Right. Not princess."

"Not cowboy either, cause I did that already." Dashiell resumes scooping, puts the sand on Castle's thigh instead of on top of the pile he's made, tilts his head back to laugh at his father, a wide grin across his face, eyes crinkling just like Castle's. Kate always says the kid looks like him, but at this moment, he truly sees it.

Castle leaves the sand on his leg, wriggling his eyebrows at his son. "So what then?"

"I don't know. I like the scary stuff, but I like Ellery more."

Heart clenching, Castle grabs hold of Dash's shoulder, tugs the boy over to him for a big hug, maybe squeezing too tight, but he can't help it. Castle kisses his cheek, even though he knows Dash feels too old for this, and only consents to his mother's kisses under duress. "Good boy." He can feel the kid's confusion, and slight long-suffering, but he doesn't have the words to say what it means. "You're a wonderful brother, Dashiell."

The boy squirms away, giving Castle a strange look, then shrugging. "Sure, Daddy."

Castle laughs and musses Dash's hair, pushing it out of his eyes. "You are. It's good to think about your sister, but it's even better to love her more than your chainsaws."

Dashiell gives a bright laugh and ducks out from Castle's hand. "Course I do. Ella's better than chainsaws. Even if she always takes my spiderman. And my army men. And my-"

"Okay, all right, kiddo. So. If there's no chainsaws, if there's not even Halloween, what kind of party do you want?"

Dash bends over to scoop out more sand. He seems content to just keep digging, all day long, to never start the battle of army men versus sand beasts. He must like the exertion, the feel of the wet sand, the heavy work. After a moment where Castle can tell the kid is thinking, thinking hard, tongue sticking out, Dashiell sighs and shrugs his shoulders, climbing up out of the pit gracelessly.

He falls next to his father, sweaty and sandy and looking all enthusiastic little boy. "I know exactly."

"Okay. Lay it on me, Dash."

"I want a dinosaur party. With a dinosaur that will eat people up. Like in your stories." He opens two arms wide and then chomps them together, slapping his hands as he growls. "Nom. Nom."

Castle grunts, tries to smother his laughter. "Ah. Well. Dinosaurs aren't alive anymore."

"Oh."

"They're extinct."

"Yeah." Dash screws up his face, thinking on that one too.

"I could get you dinosaur decorations. And probably a dinosaur pinata. But. . .a dinosaur to eat people? That doesn't exist. Unfortunately. Because you're right, that would be very cool."

"No T-rexes."

"Yeah. No T-rexes. What do you really want at your party if you can't have T-rex?"

Dashiell frowns. "How about a party with just all mine people?"

The slip into baby talk makes Castle's chest expand, warm with memory; this is one of Dash's phrases. A Dashism, as Kate calls it. All mine people. He said it one Christmas when everyone was together; he'd just turned two and he had an arm hooked around Kate's neck as she was trying to take him upstairs to use the potty. Dash was afraid everyone would be gone when he got back, but Kate kept telling him everyone would be there, waiting for him.

When Dash came back down with a huge grin on his face, he threw up both hands and announced, "All mine people, I peed in the potty!" And of course, everyone made a fuss over him and he was spoiled rotten that day. But the Dashism has stuck - mostly because he and Kate say it all the time.

Castle pushes a hand through Dashiell's hair, remembering the two year old so proud of himself, and the baby he held for the first time in the hospital, all those moments in between then and now. "Well, except for Gram and Papa, all your people will be there."

Dash grins up at his father, looking relieved. "That's all I want. And some cake."

Of course.

"Actually, Daddy, a lot of cake."

When Alexis and Rafe wander back to the blankets, Castle and Dash have made a pit deeper than Dash is tall, and they've also been warned by two different beach employees of the condominiums that they'll have to fill it in before they leave. The second guy even pulled out a barricade - a bright orange cone - to put in front of the pit.

His daughter lifts her eyebrows and laughs at them. "Well, Dad, looks like you and Dash are getting into trouble?"

"A little bit. But it's all good now. Look, they gave us a cone." Which Dashiell has been using as a megaphone. Kate's gonna kill him if she finds out Dash has had his mouth pressed against the orange, plastic thing.

Dashiell grins too and jumps up and down in his pit, his eyes and hair peeking over the top as he waves at Allie and Rafe. "Look how deep it is. It swallows up whole armies!"

"It's a trap then?" Rafe asks, coming closer. Castle can see the interest on his face. Yeah, he's liking this guy more and more.

"It's a pitfall, Daddy says. A pit-fall. Isn't that cool? Cause it's a pit. And they fall in. Perfect word."

Castle still finds it completely delightful that his son loves words so very much. He often leans towards puns, much like his father, but he's got enough of his mother's intelligence behind his interest to make him have a fascination with anything that means more or less than it should. He's often seen Dashiell pitch a fit over a word that didn't mean what it was supposed to mean.

Like infinitesimal. Dash was quite upset that a word as cool sounding as that didn't mean the biggest number imaginable, but the exact opposite - the smallest amount before reaching zero. Dash said it wasn't fair. He has feelings about words, much like Kate does. Castle? Not so much feelings, but a large vocabulary and a strict command.

Which he likes to use on his kid. And his kid likes to hear. They play well together. Castle is pretty thrilled with his kids, honestly. How often does that happen to parents? And really, to have Alexis, and then Dash? And Ellery. . .the girl is so much like her mother that there's no way he'd *not* be enthralled. She never has to speak another word, and Ella would have him.

"Okay, so when the sand beasts get to the pit, why won't they just go around?" Rafe is asking, laying on his stomach, elbows propping him up to peer down into the hole, and Dash as well.

The boy looks concerned for a moment, then laughs. "Because sand beasts, even though they're way huger than my army men, they're still way tinier than my pit. And they're kinda dumb. They're beasts."

"So they won't see it as a pit? What will it look like to a sand beast?" Rafe fingers an army man set up on the far perimeter. In a kind of crumbling tower that Dash built.

Castle waits, watching the kid to see if he can think outside his own perspective, come up with a rationale for why sand beasts would be tricked.

"Well. . ." Dash says slowly, then wanders around in the sand pit for a moment, looking at it critically. "It's so huge. It. . .it. . ." Dash glances up at Castle for help, mouth parted in frustration.

"Come up here and get down on your stomach and see what it looks like from the sand beast's eyes," Rafe says, reaching a hand down to Dash.

Dashiell glances from Rafe's hand to his father; Castle nods. The boy scrambles up without any help, but he lies down next to Rafe at the edge of the pitfall, propping his chin in his hands like Rafe is doing. Little mirror.

"So now what does it look like?"

"A. . .dark space."

"Does it look like a hole?"

"Sorta."

"Imagine if you were even smaller. Because your sand beasts over there are about the size of my fist. So they have small eyes." Rafe makes a fist and holds it out in front of them, his crooked thumb moving up and down like a mouth. Dashiell laughs and grabs the fist, but Castle can tell he's looking still.

"It could look like a big lake. A dark place of water. Or even. . .well, if I slope the edge, then they won't even notice they're walking right down into it until it's too late. Like when Daddy takes me out in the ocean to the content bookshelf."

"The what?" Rafe asks, glancing up at Castle.

Rick laughs, grinning down at Dash. "Continental shelf, kiddo. That's what drops off so suddenly out there, where you can't reach. Where I can't reach either."

"You take him out that far?" Alexis asks from her beach towel, a look on her face that Castle labels. . .maternal. Damn. He's going to have grandkids in no time, isn't he? God, that makes him feel old. Not even Kate makes him feel old, but this. . .

"Dash is a good swimmer, and he obeys the rules. Right buddy?" Can't hurt to allay Alexis's worry, just a little, even if it does sound like she's questioning his parenting. She's not. She's just used to making decisions for teenagers who are struggling, runaways and drug addicts and miserable kids; she's been the one to mother them all, tough love them. So she tends to do this.

"So let me slope it, Rafe. You help me?" Dashiell slides back down into his pitfall, grinning as he turns to look at the marks his bottom made in the sand, how he's collapsed one side of it. "Just like that. Slopes. Cause the sand beasts will see a little hill, and not a huge, huge, HUGE pitfall."

Rafe sits up, moves around the pitfall, which is rather wide, Castle has to admit. The man dangles his feet in and starts scraping back sand from the edge.

"Might have to move the cone," Castle says with a laugh. "We're basically making it bigger."

Dash throws up both hands. "HUGER!"

"Yeah, buddy. To get a gradual slope, pretty much *way* huger."

Dash jumps up and down in his pit. "Daddy, this is the best ever." His sandy, wet arms come around Castle's legs, squeezing tight. "Can we push the girls in?"

Castle laughs. "No. Pitfalls are just for sand beasts."

But the thought was tempting, just for an instant.


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