Finding home

Chapter 41 - The Hamptons(final chapter)

"Mom, dad!" Alexis' voice sounded through the beach house.

I quickly went towards the porch where my stepdaughter stood waiting.

"What is it sweetie?" I asked and she gave me a big grin.

"Where's dad?" she answered with a question of her own.

I narrowed my eyes but turned towards the kitchen.

"He's probably fetching some coffee, why?" I asked again, needing some answers.

She bit her lip and I felt my cop-senses set in. Where was the rest of the kids?

"Don't worry mom, it's not something serious!" she quickly said once she saw my look. "Well, at least not in the bad way," she added after some thought.

Before I could add another question Castle came from the kitchen with two cups of coffee in hand.

"What's going on?" he asked handing me one of the cups.

I immediately accepted it, taking a sip to calm my nerves. Alexis just smirked with a small glimpse of excitement in her eyes.

"Do you think you can drink that up quick? Then you gotta come with me," she said and I felt my heart start pumping faster.

What was it that she wouldn't tell us? I glanced at Castle who met my eyes with a mirroring nervousness. We drank the coffee as quick as we could and put the cups on one of the tables nearby before we walked towards the porch to where Alexis had gone. Once outside Alexis and Molly stood in our way to hand us one blindfold each.

"Put these on, don't worry, you can trust us to lead you," Molly said, also she had a smirk like her sister.

They might be teenagers but so far we'd had no worries with the two, always choosing school in front of parties. Though, right now, I was worried we'd relied on that too much. They had been quite a practical-joke team as kids, always pranking both me and Castle all the time as soon as they were old enough, especially on April fools. Alexis had not entered a faze of where she went to a lot of parties yet, though she was indeed to 17 so perhaps it would start soon, my biggest fear was that she was going to drag Molly with her, or perhaps it would be the other way around. Molly was 15 now and even though we were all fully aware of her being adopted she had easily shown she was one of us, taking after Castle's childishness and my instincts. I was worried our kids easily could be a lethal combination of the two of us.

"You're not gonna regret this, we promise," Alexis exclaimed when she saw me and her dad exchange worried looks.

Finally agreeing I could see the girls' eyes shine with happiness. They helped us out on the blindfolds to make sure we wouldn't be able to see anything. As soon as the blindfolds were on their places and we for sure couldn't see anything I felt Molly's hand grip mine and pull carefully. I followed in darkness, glad I knew, by heart, every step of the porch before we finally reached the grass where I knew there shouldn't be any bumps that could trip me. If I could count on my location sense we were on our way down to the beach, and to my satisfaction we soon stepped in the sand. I was surprised though, what were we doing on the beach? I suddenly got a weird thought, what if they were going to push us in the water.

"You are killing, what is going on?" Castle asked beside e and the girls giggled.

"Guess uncle Javi won the bet, he didn't last longer than ten minutes," Molly chuckled.

"Yeah, why couldn't you wait ten more minutes huh?" Alexis questioned with fake irritation.

I couldn't help but laugh at that, hearing Castle grunt something incoherent as answer.