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“Oh, goodness, I’m so sorry!” Elizabeth exclaimed. Rounding the corner with her relatively full shopping cart, she’d rammed right into a pale dark-haired woman who’d lost her balance, grabbing the shelf next to her to keep from falling to the ground. “I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you alright?”
The woman looked slightly rattled for a second, but quickly shook it off. “Oh, I’m fine, you’re okay,” she insisted. That would have been the end of the interaction if the woman hadn’t locked eyes with Elizabeth and frozen, like she recognized her and couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Elizabeth asked, though what she really wanted to ask was Do I know you?
“You’re her,” the woman suddenly breathed.
Cryptic.
And a bit disconcerting. Now it was definitely situationally appropriate to ask: “Do I know you?”
“No,” the woman said, almost bitterly.
Elizabeth had no clue what her current facial expression was saying, but what she was thinking was, I have no clue what’s going on, am beginning to grow concerned, and would much rather excuse myself and walk away from this situation quickly, which would be a lot easier without the rather heavy shopping cart.
“You’re her, though,” she said. “That woman. Eliza.”
“Elizabeth,” Elizabeth corrected, before realizing the guess had been close enough that it wasn’t a coincidence. “And your name is?” she prompted, wondering if it would jog her memory.
“Charlotte,” she said quickly and absentmindedly, as though her name is completely beside the point. “I want to see him,” she said, much more confidently, like it was a demand Elizabeth could and should immediately fulfil.
Could she get any more cryptic? “See who?”
“My son.”
“Who is your son?”
“Danny.”
“I don’t know a Danny,” Elizabeth said, though she made a note to tell Peter about this incident just in case there was something significant to this. “You must have me confused with another Elizabeth. Or an Eliza.”
Charlotte sighed. “Neal, then.”
Elizabeth tensed.
My son.
The two names… she would have taken it as a red flag if it was anyone but Neal. But it was Neal. Of course he had other names.
My son.
Elizabeth studied Charlotte’s features. She had brown eyes that didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to Neal’s striking blue, but she had the same dark, slightly wavy hair, and she could see traces of Neal’s appearance in her sharp square jawline. “Who told you I knew Neal?”
“She did. She said he was happy”—she said the word as though it personally offended her—“and to pretend I never spoke to her, and showed me this picture of you and him and the other man, Peter…”
She. She? “Ellen?” Elizabeth tried, taking a guess. Ellen had never said anything about Neal’s mother coming to visit her, but then again, it sounded like if she was the one Charlotte was talking about, she’d pretty firmly instructed her to stay out of her son’s life.
Which made Elizabeth rather hesitant to facilitate a reunion between her and Neal. She knew absolutely nothing about his relationship with his mother, but she trusted Ellen.
“Ellen,” Charlotte confirmed.
Then that was that. “He is happy,” Elizabeth agreed, “and Ellen was right. It’s better if you pretend you never spoke to her. Or me, for that matter.”
Charlotte sighed, deflating. “Oh, I don’t mean to come across as a demanding, stalkerish mother,” she said, her entire demeanor far less creepy and off-putting now that she wasn’t staring at Elizabeth like she was a ghost or an affront to her existence. “I just… never mind.”
But now that she just looked like a human, a woman who saw someone who knew her son and reacted on instinct, Elizabeth felt bad for her. She still didn’t know anything about her, but she didn’t want to assume the worst and drive her away if she was someone Neal would want to see. Relationships with parents could be complicated. “Don’t worry,” Elizabeth assured her, “I’m not assuming anything about you as a parent. I just know that you probably haven’t spoken to Neal in a while, and Neal is… going through a lot at the moment.” She wondered if Charlotte knew Ellen was dead, or if she’d done a good enough job of pretending they hadn’t spoken that she hadn’t heard.
Charlotte nodded, eyeing her thoughtfully. “So you’re the woman who did what I couldn’t.”
Elizabeth didn’t know how to respond to that.
“I wasn’t expecting to run into you while getting groceries.” Charlotte pulled an old receipt out of her pocket, tore half of it off, pulled out a pen, and scribbled down a phone number. “This is mine,” she said, handing it to Elizabeth, “for when it’s a better time. I just… I need to see him. I haven’t seen him in so long.”
Despite Elizabeth’s gut feeling that something was off about the interaction, she couldn’t help the way her heart broke for Neal’s mother. She pocketed the number with a smile. This was simple now. Now, she had a way to contact Charlotte (Caffrey?) and time and space to ask Neal whether that was something he wanted. She figured she should learn more about their relationship before inviting this woman she barely knew to speak to someone she cared for so closely, even if there was clearly an important relationship there.
“Thank you, Charlotte. I may be in touch with you soon,” she said, intentionally not making promises. She and Charlotte exchanged nods and walked past each other, though Elizabeth couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder at the woman who represented the mystery of Neal’s childhood, and during the motion she caught Charlotte doing the same.
—
Elizabeth fidgeted with the old receipt with Charlotte’s number on it as she, Peter and Neal shared the dinner she’d made. She’d invited Neal over intentionally to ask him about his mother, but now she couldn’t find a way to bring it up naturally without prompting questions she didn’t want to answer. “Neal?” she began tentatively.
“Yeah?” Neal said, putting down his fork and looking at her seriously, even though she hadn’t meant to sound too serious. He must have sensed that she had an important conversation topic on her mind.
“Peter mentioned that you told him a little bit about how you grew up,” she said, “and it’s something I’ve been curious about, but… I didn’t want to ask him. I wanted to ask you. If you want to tell me.”
That was not bad, actually, as far as naturally introducing the topic went. If Neal knew what she was doing, he’d probably be proud of her.
Neal looked over at Peter. “You didn’t tell her?”
Peter shrugged. “Didn’t think it was mine to tell.”
Neal nodded in agreement, his lips twitching slightly, though his expression wasn’t quite a smile. “I didn’t tell a lot. Just… why Ellen was important to me.”
Elizabeth nodded, but didn’t keep asking. Neal heard her unspoken inquiry and continued. “She was my father’s partner. They were cops. He confessed to murder, and we were pulled into witness protection.” He said it all matter-of-factly, like nothing he just said was a major bombshell.
To him, she supposed it wasn’t. It was just life. His childhood.
But Elizabeth had to work very hard to pretend each bit of information hadn’t knocked her off-balance. She did a pretty good job of it, if she did say so herself, but she was fairly sure Neal could tell anyway. “Witness protection,” Elizabeth reflected back quietly. “How young were you?”
“I was three when we moved and changed our names.”
Wow.
What an experience to go through during your formative years. No wonder he had such rampant identity problems. “Was Ellen her real name, or…?”
“Real name,” Neal chuckled softly, like he was removed from the entire concept. Maybe he felt like he was. “I know what you mean. Her name was Kathryn, before she went into WITSEC. Ever since then, it was Ellen.”
Elizabeth wondered which name “Danny” was—his WITSEC name or his birth one. She wondered which name “Charlotte” was.
“Ellen raised me more than anyone else did,” Neal said, “though I always felt like I mostly raised myself.” That she definitely believed.
“And your mother?” Elizabeth prompted, Charlotte’s face coming to mind. Was it just her imaginative memory making her look so much more like the man sitting in front of her now?
Neal shrugged. “She was there, I guess.”
So you’re the woman who did what I couldn’t, Charlotte had said.
Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of the information, but she had more questions now. “If you changed your name at three years old, where does Neal Caffrey come from?” Was it his real name? Was it another alias, an idea Peter used to entertain many years ago? Was it an identity handed to him by the U.S. Marshals?
“Neal is the name my parents gave me,” he said. “Caffrey was my mother’s name before she married my father.”
He didn’t have to say why he took it.
They were cops. He confessed to murder.
Even though he wasn’t being broody about it, treating most of what he told her as purely factual, she knew it had to have messed him up to know his father killed someone. (His father, a police officer, killed someone. It made a terrible amount of sense. Suddenly, she saw the way he’d latched onto Peter even when he was still on the run in a whole new light.)
But he’d taken his mother’s name on purpose. It didn’t sound like she was the greatest mother in the world—otherwise, he wouldn’t have said Ellen raised him more than anyone else did. But Neal intentionally carried his mother’s name with him, and she knew Neal well enough to know that wasn’t an accident.
Ellen may have thought it was better for Charlotte to stay away. Elizabeth understood why. But… maybe it really was worth asking Neal if he wanted to see her. “Hypothetically,” Elizabeth began slowly, “if I’d run into your mother and she recognized me and gave me her number, would you want me to put the two of you in touch?”
Neal must have steeled his expression at some point, either during the other half of what he was telling her or the minute he realized she was talking about meeting his mother, because his face gave away nothing. “That’s an interesting hypothetical.”
“Would you?”
“Not all hypotheticals are useful,” Neal said. The message was clear: if she was talking about something that actually happened, she would have to say it, and if she really was just doing a thought experiment, he wasn’t going to participate.
“How could you have run into Neal’s mother?” Peter asked, looking between Elizabeth and Neal. “I thought she lived in St. Louis.”
“Charlotte Brooks lived in St. Louis a decade ago.” Neal shrugged. The message was clear: he hadn’t been keeping tabs on his mother. He hadn’t even been thinking about it.
“How would she have recognized you?” Peter wondered.
“Apparently she met up with Ellen recently. That must be why she’s in New York,” Elizabeth said. “Ellen told her not to track down Neal, and that he was fine and happy, and apparently showed her a picture of him with us.”
Neal pursed his lips, but Elizabeth still couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It occurred to her that she’d never truly appreciated how expressive he allowed himself to be around her and Peter. Now that she was no longer being given that window into his thoughts and feelings, she was reminded strongly that Neal was a master at giving nothing away when he wanted to. “Interesting.”
“Does she know what happened to Ellen?” Peter asked.
“I have no idea.”
“You have her number?” Neal asked, his tone unreadable.
“Yeah. If you wanted to see her, I was thinking of inviting her over for dinner, or something,” Elizabeth proposed. “If you wanted to see her. I know your family situation is… complicated.” She’d known that even before Neal shared the WITSEC details. Honestly, being confronted by the fact that Neal had parents felt weird. She’d looked his biological mother in the eye, forced to acknowledge that Neal Caffrey came from somewhere. He didn’t seem that way. He seemed as though he’d popped into the world one day, knowing everything he knew and having every skill he needed, being able to pick locks and sell anyone anything, favoring vintage designer suits and pretentious wines. He seemed created, not born and raised.
Maybe that was because Neal Caffrey was created. He was a character, and Neal was always playing.
For the first time since Elizabeth first brought up his mother, Neal’s guard fell, just a little, and he looked… completely at a loss. He didn’t know what to say. “You don’t have to decide right now,” she added.
“Ellen told her not to try to find me,” Neal mused. He didn’t phrase it like a question.
“I don’t know why she would do that.”
“I do,” Neal muttered.
“I can throw out her number and pretend I never met her,” Elizabeth offered genuinely. “I mean it.”
“Do you think if she’s around, any of us could run into her in the future again?” Peter wondered. “Since she’s apparently seen a photo and remembers it well enough to recognize you on sight.”
Elizabeth shrugged. She didn’t know.
“I haven’t seen my mother since I was eighteen,” Neal said quietly. “I don’t even know what I would say to her.”
“You don’t have to decide now,” Elizabeth repeated.
Neal shook his head. “I’m not going to. But… don’t throw out her number.”
—
Neal hadn’t even known his mother was in New York.
Ellen had told him she hadn’t spoken to his mother in years. Had she lied to him? Again, about his family, “for his own good?” Seriously? He found that hard to believe.
Maybe she approached Ellen while Neal was in Cape Verde, or shortly thereafter, and didn’t mention it because she didn’t think it would be useful. Which… was fair enough.
Neal didn’t know what to do with the fact that Elizabeth Burke had his mother’s current number.
He hadn’t thought about her in ages. The most recent time his mind had even drifted to her was when he explained how he grew up to Peter, most recently preceded by him visiting Ellen and asking if she’d spoken to either of his parents recently. Before that…
…He’d gone years without even thinking about it.
He didn’t miss her. There wasn’t much to miss.
But… he had loved her.
And no matter Ellen’s intentions, he preferred at least knowing that his mother was looking for him. After all these years, something.
He shook his head, admonishing himself for having the thought. What his mother did now didn’t matter. She’d never been family to him, not really. He had a family now, in Mozzie and in the White Collar division and in Peter and Elizabeth’s home, and he didn’t need…
Ugh.
He was pretty sure no matter what he did, he’d regret it.
If he told Elizabeth to trash the number, it would probably be a while before he was able to get back to a state of not thinking about her. He’d probably wonder remorsefully what might have happened if he’d allowed her back into his life for just one dinner. He knew it wasn’t worth having hope that she’d actually changed, but he couldn’t stop it from spreading inside of him like a sickness he didn’t know how to treat.
And if he told Elizabeth to invite her over… well. Chances were he’d regret that too.
In the end, he decided he’d rather regret something he did rather than something he didn’t do.
Maybe Elizabeth’s proposed family reunion dinner would be the bitter, necessary medicine that killed the disease of hope blossoming in his chest.
—
Neal had decided a long time ago that nervousness wasn’t a helpful emotion. Therefore, he chose not to feel it. All it did was make it more likely that whatever you were worried about would happen. It increases your heart rate needlessly, contributes to cortisol release, it makes your muscles tense, it offsets your ability to focus… it was absolutely nothing that a con artist needed. So, though he didn’t mind (and even craved) the rush of adrenaline that came with running a good heist or an undercover operation, he chose to not be nervous.
And yet, nervousness was the only name he could give to what welled up inside of him as he stood before the Burke’s door.
He knocked twice before letting himself in, the slight warning he always gave to let them know he was there, though they insisted at this point he was practically family and might as well treat their door as open. “Neal,” Elizabeth said from the kitchen, surprised. “You’re earlier than expected.”
Neal shrugged, trying to ignore the ridiculous, unhelpful symptoms of nervousness that were impacting his entire body. “I wanted to see you guys first. Before I see her, I mean.”
Elizabeth’s face softened. “Of course,” she agreed. “Here, let me take the lasagna out of the oven so it can start cooling off.”
Elizabeth disappeared back into the kitchen, and Neal joined Peter in the living room. Peter was good at keeping himself together—he was an FBI agent, after all—but Neal could read almost anyone like an open magazine. “Why are you nervous?” he wondered.
Peter shook his head. “I’m not.”
Neal stared at him flatly, feeling like there was something strangely reversed about this interaction. “You’re supposed to be the honest one, Peter.”
Peter chuckled and shook his head again, looking down. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t be. But… I don’t know. She’s such a big part of your past. And I know hardly anything about your past.”
“You know more now than you did two weeks ago,” Neal pointed out.
“That’s true. I just… I have no idea what to expect.”
Right. Neal hadn’t told him much about her, and Elizabeth probably hadn’t gathered much from their short interaction other than the fact that she hadn’t seen Neal in years and that Ellen told her to stay away. Which… yeah.
“She’s fine,” Neal said. “I mean, she wasn’t really a mother, but she was nice, I think. She’s not winning Mom of the Year, but as a person she’s fine, and as a part of my past she’s pretty important.” Even though she’d hardly been around for him, her absence was just as impactful as her presence would have been, and ever since he’d grown to see the Burkes as something akin to family to him, he’d found it in himself to admit that.
And it wasn’t like she was a bad person.
She wasn’t a murderer, like his father.
He took her name for a reason. She was the good half of his bloodline. He’d rather end up completely spaced out in his forties than be a killer. He’d still thrown everything he had into being nothing like either of them (a questionably successful endeavor), but he’d rather be the better version of his mother than the better version of his father. He spent so much time playing the character he’d crafted Neal Caffrey to be that it was… difficult to know how he’d actually turned out, especially since he used the name with his closest friends, the people he considered family, and at his job—the places where he really was as close to just himself as he could be when he wasn’t alone.
“Are you looking forward to seeing her?” Peter asked.
Looking forward was a funny phrase. He was definitely thinking about it. A lot. And waiting for it to happen very consciously. And he did want it to happen. He’d chosen this. “Kind of.”
Peter nodded and didn’t ask any more questions, which Neal appreciated, because he was sure he wouldn’t have answers to any of them.
Neal allowed himself the next few minutes of silence to remind himself that they were in his comfort zone, in the home of the people who’d actually been there for him, and that there was no reason for him to be nervous. She should be nervous. Charlotte Brooks or Eleanor Caffrey or Bennett or whatever she was calling herself.
And then, as expected, the doorbell sounded.
“Neal, do you want to answer?” Elizabeth asked him. “Since… you know.” Since it’s your mom.
From what Elizabeth had said, she already seemed a little insecure that he was happy and comfortable with them in their home.
And… Neal didn’t care. He sort of liked it, actually. “Sure.”
Peter came with him, and Elizabeth went back to the kitchen, beginning to bring the dishes of food she’d prepared out to the table. Neal opened the door, the sight of his mother striking him even more than the sight of Ellen.
It had definitely been something to see Ellen, aged but still the same woman he’d grown up with, in person for the first time since he was eighteen.
But it was an entirely different something to see his mother. “Hi,” Neal said. He didn’t have any more words than that.
She looked similarly stricken to see him. “Hi.”
Neal stepped to the side and Peter gestured for him to come in. It was less the inherent awkwardness that bothered him and more the fact that he still couldn’t figure out how he felt. Was he happy to see her? Did he still feel resentful? He’d definitely felt resentful towards her when he ran away, upset with the lies, but he’d been pretty neutral about her for years. And yet, she was his mother, and there had been… moments in his childhood where he’d been reminded that she was his mother, and it mattered to him to get to see her.
“What should I call you?” Neal asked. Ellen was still going by Ellen, even having been relocated, so if she was still in witness protection, he imagined Charlotte was a safe bet. But he couldn’t be sure.
She looked at him strangely. “Mother. Mom. Whatever you choose.”
“No,” he said, not really meaning for it to be mean or unsympathetic or in any way a rejection, but just… meaning it. No. “I mean, what are you going by these days?”
She breathed deeply, and her eyes looked slightly wounded. “Charlotte.”
Neal nodded.
“Alright,” Elizabeth said cheerfully, gesturing for everyone to sit. Peter, Neal and Charlotte followed her example, taking seats at the table. “My cousins used to make lasagna for all our family reunions, so I thought I’d bring the tradition here for you two. I hope you like lasagna,” she said to Charlotte.
She’d already asked Neal, but Neal couldn’t really remember.
“I do,” Charlotte said. She didn’t touch it, though, still looking at Neal. “Do you live here?”
“No,” Neal said. “I live in the guest apartment of a woman named June’s house. She’s great.” His tone was kind of flat, but he couldn’t really think of any other way to be. How does one greet a person they haven’t seen in years, who they ran away from willingly, who was never around enough to imprint much on their life?
Honestly, the things she didn’t do stuck with him more than the things she actually did.
“So,” Elizabeth said brightly, with that beautiful warm energy she was somehow able to bring to any interaction, “what’s been going on with you lately, Charlotte?”
Somehow, Neal hadn’t thought to ask that. It was the most obvious question, having not seen her in so long, but it just… didn’t occur to him to care.
Maybe the whole dinner thing was a bad idea.
Charlotte shrugged. “Not much, to be honest. I had a boyfriend for a few years, but we broke up a month ago. He was…” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Now I don’t do much. I read some. I tried to learn guitar back when I was dating Thomas, but now it mostly collects dust in a corner.”
Suddenly, Neal thought of something he actually was curious about. “Do you have a job?” There were probably better ways of asking that, but he wasn’t trying to prove anything to her, or elicit any particular reaction. He just wondered. There had been a period of time during Neal’s childhood where she’d made some money cleaning houses, but for the most part, she’d been unemployed. The fact that there was barely any money coming into their family definitely didn’t help with the not-so-great habits he was forming back then.
“Yes,” Charlotte said immediately, the sharp spark of defensiveness in her eyes and tone unmistakable. “I’m a delivery driver.”
Neal wondered how recent that was. And how long it would last.
Maybe she’d been doing it for years. She definitely seemed like significantly less of a mess than the woman Neal remembered. Then again, there were good days, and there were bad days, and she was out of her apartment right now, which was a different context to see her in than when he lived with her.
“What have you been up to these past few years?” Charlotte asked. Like with her earlier defensiveness, there was an unmistakable accusatory note to her tone, and Neal was struck with sudden awareness that he really didn’t know how much she knew.
Or how much he would want her to know, if he had a choice. Which he didn’t, because Peter and Elizabeth were also here, and they probably wouldn’t let him straight-up lie. They likely would let him omit, if he so chose, but first, Neal had to figure out what was up with her tone.
“I work with the FBI,” Neal said, nodding towards Peter. “That’s how I know him.” Well—basically.
“Right, Ellen said you were an FBI agent,” Charlotte said, sizing up Peter. “Wow. Huh. And, Elizabeth, you’re… an event planner?”
“That’s right,” Elizabeth said with a nod.
Charlotte turned back to Neal. “You know, Ellen told me you got into a ‘little bit of trouble.’ Her words. Which, frankly, neither surprised me nor worried me. I didn’t anticipate you running off in the middle of the night to go to school and meet someone and… I don’t know. Not get into trouble. But when Elizabeth said you were going by Neal, I did some research, and—” Charlotte paused, pursing her lips as her eyes flickered between Peter and Elizabeth, like she was realizing she should probably keep things mostly cordial in their presence. “Being a career criminal is not a little bit of trouble, Neal.” She looked at Peter. “You guys knew that, right?”
“We did,” Peter confirmed. Neal allowed himself a brief moment to wonder how Charlotte actually thought it was possible that the FBI agent in the room wasn’t familiar with his criminal history. “And for what it’s worth, he didn’t get into much trouble in the end considering what we accused him of.” The half-annoyed, half-amused look Peter shot him was reminiscent of their normal banter, and Neal grinned in response immediately, grateful for the levity and the familiarity. This dynamic he could do. It was a lot more natural than interacting with his mother.
“Well, you know what they say,” Neal said with a cheeky shrug. “Innocent until proven guilty, and all.”
“More like not guilty until proven guilty,” Peter grumbled, “which I swear in your case somehow shouldn’t hold.”
“No exceptions under the law.”
Peter looked at him incredulously. “You do not get to use that statement against me, Mr. I Can Break In If It Helps Catch The Bad Guy.”
“Sometimes it does,” Neal agreed happily, chuckling slightly at the way Peter shook his head disbelievingly.
Elizabeth turned to Charlotte. “Yes, they are always like that,” she said, laughing lightheartedly and clearly encouraging Charlotte to do the same.
Charlotte did not. “You guys just… make jokes about my son ruining his own life.”
And… there went the much-needed levity Peter and Elizabeth had skillfully provided.
The room was silent.
Charlotte sighed and made a waving motion. “Sorry. I’m sorry. That’s… harsh wording. Obviously you didn’t ruin your whole life—Neal.” She hesitated before saying his name. Neal at least appreciated that she didn’t fall back on calling him Danny.
“My life is fine,” Neal said, keeping his voice even. He didn’t let himself decide what he was feeling, lest it show on his face. “I actually quite like my life.”
“Right. Right,” Charlotte said, nodding to herself. She gestured to Peter and Elizabeth. “How could you not? You have them,” she said bitterly.
Peter and Elizabeth shared a look across the table.
If they’d been expecting his mom to behave like a mature adult, they’d been doomed for disappointment from the start.
“I do,” Neal agreed. He performatively took a bite of lasagna and swallowed it. “And Elizabeth makes fantastic food.”
“She does, she does,” Charlotte quickly agreed, because she actually thought herself capable of taking hints. “Elizabeth—your cooking is phenomenal.” She took a bite as though to prove her point, but as soon as she’d swallowed it, her eyes were fixed back on Neal, like she was contemplating him.
Neal noticed Peter and Elizabeth sharing another look, and wondered what they were telepathically communicating. Perhaps it was simply a mutual sense of this is very strange.
He wasn’t sure what they’d been expecting.
Neal wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. He’d had some sense that this would go one of two ways: in one scenario, it would turn out his mother had gotten her life together and was ready to take on some kind of positive role in his life, or keep in touch with him or… something he had some terrible kind of hope would be true. In the other scenario, she was just a terrible person and he was better off without her and the dinner would simply prove that.
Instead, the dinner with her was just like his memory of her.
Messy.
Not exactly awful or terrible or anything that made him feel particularly justified in cutting her off the way he had. The way he wanted to.
But… not good either.
Maybe a little bit less of a mess than when he’d known her. But he still found very little desire in himself to actually revive some kind of mother-son relationship between them. He was pretty sure at this point that he’d never not feel complicated about her, and that this dinner was never going to answer the question he wanted it to answer, which was an answer in itself. At this point he was just waiting for it to be over and beginning to brainstorm ways to tell his mother he didn’t want to keep in touch. At all. Ever.
He just felt better when he didn’t have to think about her, and wanted to go back to that.
She really wasn’t that bad. Maybe it wasn’t a fair thought. But it was the honest truth, and Neal was a little proud of himself for acknowledging it.
“You were pretty successful,” Charlotte said.
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“As a criminal or FBI consultant?”
“Both.” She tilted her head. “You don’t flinch to refer to yourself as a criminal.”
It was sort of just a fact. He’d come to terms with the label a long, long time ago, and any complex feelings he had about it were buried way too deep to even think about unpacking right now. “Probably because you and I don’t think of crime the same way.”
“Why?” she said softly, setting her arm on the table and resting her chin on her hand, leaning towards him as though to study him. “Why would you prefer that to our home?”
Neal almost burst out laughing. Almost.
“Our home?” he asked wryly, silently declining to comment by taking another bite of his food.
“Yes, our home,” Charlotte defended. “We weren’t rich, but we were family.”
“We—huh? What are you talking about?” Neal asked incredulously. He didn’t even mean it as a jab. It had just never even occurred to him to remember his early years living in a crappy apartment with his emotionally absent mother as familial in any way.
“I didn’t raise you to care about money or pretentious things like…” She eyed his clothing, and if she was judging him for being pretentious now, he wondered what she’d think if she saw him in the vintage suits he wore to work.
“You didn’t raise me… at all.” Nor did she really help with money much.
Charlotte gaped as though he’d said something absolutely appalling. “Neal! That is not fair or appropriate. And in front of your friends, too!”
In front of my real family, he thought bitterly, though he kept himself from saying it aloud. “It’s just true. Were you expecting it to be less true if you came and ate dinner at my friends’ house?”
He honestly felt bad for Peter and Elizabeth.
“I was there for your entire childhood. I would have continued to be there, but then you left. And became a thief of all things. My son! A thief!”
They were rapidly approaching the point where it was just not worth engaging her anymore. “Mom, if you want to keep talking about this, can we at least do it privately some time?”
He really hadn’t meant to call her “Mom” at any point this evening. It just kind of slipped out.
And Charlotte definitely noticed it. She didn’t say anything, but it was written on her face. “That depends. When I walk out of here today, are you ever going to talk to me again?”
He looked over at Peter compulsively. He wondered if that was his subconscious telling him to be honest. “No.”
“If you guys are done,” Elizabeth interjected quietly, collecting the now-mostly-empty plates on the table and taking them to the kitchen, a convenient excuse to remove herself from the room.
“Then no, we’ll do this here,” Charlotte said.
“Charlotte, I really don’t care what you think about my life choices or experiences, and if you’re going to insist on picking a fight with me about them, I’m just going to ask you to leave, and that’ll be that.”
“You sure you don’t live here? Cause you sure talk like it.”
“If Neal wants you to leave, we will ask you to,” Peter said matter-of-factly.
Charlotte laughed incredulously. “This—this is unbelievable. It’s like you guys think you’re his parents. It’s like—” She turned back to Neal. “It’s like you think they’re your parents.”
Not… exactly. But she was picking up on something that was definitely there, something that made Neal happy, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it. “They actually talk to me,” he said. “And ask me how I am. And are interested in my life.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a key factor of his career to be interested in your life!”
“No it’s not,” Neal said, shaking his head. That was one thing he was absolutely sure of. Peter had no reason to ever even look at him again after he’d locked him up, either the first or second time, but not only had he looked at him, he’d given him a chance to try being something other than what he was. Something he’d thought he was fine with always being. That would always be special to him. “Okay, you know what?” He pushed out his chair and stood, gesturing for his mother to do the same. “Conversation done. Good to see you again. If I run into you around New York, I’ll wave to you. That’s that. Bye.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I really am.”
“You think these new people in your life are so much better than because they’re, what, ‘interested in your life?’ I’m interested in your life. I’m obviously trying,” she said, gesturing to where she was standing, “and it’s like you just don’t want me to.”
“Maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s too little too late and my life is simpler if I don’t have to worry about what could have been. Or maybe you’re judging my entire life since I was eighteen based on a paragraph you found about me on the internet, as if you’re somehow the example of someone who’d always had their life together. It doesn’t matter,” Neal stressed. “I have the right to tell you I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You’re my son.”
“And I’m thirty years old,” Neal said agreeably. “If you wanted to force me to listen to you because you’re my mother, you should have actually talked to me when I was a kid.”
“You’re twenty-nine,” Charlotte corrected. Whatever.
Knowing Peter, he was probably doing the math in his head and finding that it didn’t add up correctly, but that was going to be a conversation for later. “Charlotte,” Peter said evenly, “thank you for coming over for dinner. We appreciated your company. If you and your son are finished with your discussion—”
“We’re not,” Charlotte said.
“It sounds like you are. And if Neal would prefer for you to leave and not reach out to him again, that’s exactly what we’re going to ask you to do.”
There was something that made Neal feel very… secure and safe about having Peter there to back him up so firmly. He’d spent most of his life cleverly weaving his words together to protect himself, defend himself, get himself what he needed, what he wanted… it was all up to him and his own manipulations. He had that same strange sense when working with the FBI, the increasingly familiar feeling of having backup in dangerous situations, but there was something even more special about having it here.
His family was a mess, but he had people now who were willing to stand with him firmly through all of it, and not retreat when it got difficult.
“I’m his mother,” Charlotte repeated.
Elizabeth emerged from the kitchen. “We know,” Elizabeth said. “And I’m Elizabeth Burke, and my husband and I own this house, and we’re asking you to leave.”
Neal couldn’t help the slight smile, which Charlotte must have noticed, because she looked affronted again, and… sad. Neal swallowed. It was easier to handle her looking offended than sad. “Fine. I will leave a house where I’m not welcome. But the two of you can’t just keep me from talking to my son.”
The nice thing about the security he felt having Peter and Elizabeth standing behind him was that he didn’t feel the need to back off of what he really wanted to say, or cloak it in nice words that would make her less upset in a show of self-protective instinct. “It’s not them, it’s me. I can keep you from talking to me.”
Charlotte was already backing towards the door like she’d been asked to, and very much unlike Elizabeth, she wasn’t politely showing her the way out with a smile. “You really don’t want me in your life.”
“I don’t.” He was beginning to realize he didn’t even want a better version of her in his life. If she ever did learn how to be an actual normal adult, he still would prefer to just… not associate. He hoped she got it together and lived a stable life without him in it. He just didn’t care to be a part of that life or have her be a part of his.
Things were better when she was off his mind.
“Well,” Charlotte said as she opened the front door, “I love you,” she said defiantly, as though it were her final argument, some trump card she’d waited to play til now.
“Me too,” Neal said, not sure exactly what he meant, but pretty sure it was true.
“They’ll never be your family.” She closed the door behind her.
She was wrong, but she was also gone, which meant Neal didn’t have to respond to that particular statement.
There were at least five seconds of silence.
“Well, that was that,” Neal eventually said. “Thanks for… hosting her. And dealing with that.”
“Really?” Elizabeth asked uncertainly. “Because I was actually going to apologize.”
“Oh, don’t.” Neal shook his head. “It’s not your fault you ran into her, and once I knew she was around… I guess I had to see her once. She’s unique. I don’t need to see her again.”
“She shouldn’t have…” Peter seemed to be struggling for words. “...Said most of what she said.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “Now you’ve met her. Now you know.”
Elizabeth nodded, still looking at the door sadly. Then she opened her arms and brought Neal into a warm, secure hug. Neal didn’t hug people very often, definitely not tightly, so it took him a minute to remember what to do with his arms, but… the gesture was nice. Really nice. “What she said before leaving,” she said when she pulled back, setting her hands on Neal’s shoulders and looking him directly in the eye, “about how we’ll never be your family—well. We might never be blood related. But just know that I think of you as family, and that you’re always welcome in our home.”
“Definitely,” Peter agreed.
And… this was why he really didn’t need Charlotte in his life, even if she did stop being so… temperamental and emotionally difficult.
It didn’t make him feel good to think about her, or the mother she had been, or the possibilities of the mother she could have been or could be now.
It did make him feel good to hear Elizabeth Burke say he was always welcome after she hugged him the way his mother never really had. A way that made him feel safe and loved.
“If she tries to reach out further or causes any problems, just tell me, okay?” Peter said. Neal nodded, and for once he was actually being genuine. After tonight, he felt like he probably actually could come to them with this problem if it were to arise again. They… sort of got it. A little. More than anyone else in his life did, to be sure.
After a beat of silence, Peter said, “So… has it been long enough for me to ask about the whole you-being-twenty-nine thing?”
Elizabeth hit him on the arm lightly, but Neal just laughed slightly, appreciating the normalcy after all the absurdities that had come with reuniting with his biological mother. “Feel free to ask,” he stressed, making it clear that he was under no obligation to answer.
“You were born in 1983.”
“Great math skills.”
“Your birth certificate says you were born in ’77.”
“My birth certificate,” Neal agreed.
Peter sighed and rubbed his forehead, and it was a familiar gesture that felt far more like home than looking into the eyes of his biological mother for the first time since he was a teenager ever had the potential to be.
“Well, I did make a pie for dessert,” Elizabeth said. “And one less person to share it with just means more for us, if we’re in the mood for sugar.”
Neal was definitely in the mood for sugar.
And as the three of them gathered around the Burke’s table again—this time just the three of them, Neal’s only biological relative in their party having been removed—Neal couldn’t help but think instinctually that it felt a whole lot more like family than what they’d been trying before.