She dresses quickly, efficiently, surprisingly fast for the hour and how tired she feels, and then moves on bare, silent feet across the hallway to the bathroom to splash some water on her face. It's only afterwards that she overhears the sound of Castle on the phone, and pauses by the partially open doorway to listen to the conversation on his end of things. A smile finds its way onto her lips as she imagines the potential barrage of questions coming from the casa de Castle, and she rests her forehead against the doorjamb, waiting until she's heard the conversation finish before she even dares to reappear.

He's got his back turned to her when she comes back into the room, dressed for bed, her face clear and clean of makeup, her dark hair brushed out over her shoulders. She doesn't announce herself right away, just watches him glancing over her bookshelf, then plucking a copy of one of his novels off the shelf, handling it with unsurprising care.

Beckett draws in a breath, one probably audible enough to announce her presence before she says anything to him.

"You were the only one I read," she murmurs, the confession quiet but not exactly reluctant, as she tries to figure out how to phrase things, "after she died. It, um, it helped. A lot."