"Oh, the neighbors aren't involved." Beat. "Unless you wanted them to be." A signature Castle brow gets shoved high along his forehead, thinking of his neighbor (a sixty-six-year-old muter with three kids living in San Francisco and a husband who yelled at old re-runs of ER) before the hopeful expression comes crashing down. "Yeeeeah. Maybe not so much."

He rolls his head toward the kitchen. "Y'hungry? I put a smoothie on. I can make coffee." Castle the eager golden retriever of the breakfast hour, one or two questions away from bringing her her slippers in his teeth.