Edmund and Irene Caffrey's home. April 9, 2006. Sunday night.

Neal was pleasantly surprised at how the evening was going. He'd never attended a wake before. The closest experience he had for comparison was a celebration-of-life event June Ellington hosted after her husband passed. Most of the attendees seemed to enjoy the party at June and Byron's mansion, but it had been an agony for Neal, and he'd escaped to his loft as soon as he could.

Was it easier this time because he'd had that prior experience with grief? Or was it because he knew everyone here instead of being among strangers?

It would be an interesting topic to delve into with the psychologists in the family one day. For tonight, he simply appreciated this room filled with people he loved. When Byron died, Neal couldn't have fathomed having this many people in his life that he'd feel comfortable leaning on and mourning with. Now it was difficult to imagine life without them.

The stories shared this evening brought smiles and tears, and the group accepted both as normal. A box of tissues was handed around, hugs were given, and then they moved on to the next story.

Neal stretched an arm around Sara, aware that she was the outsider this time. Although now that he thought about it, she knew almost everyone. Only Paige and Neal's grandparents were strangers to her, and Irene and Edmund seemed to have made a career out of turning strangers into friends.

In fact, Irene had guided the conversation to Christmas and was making it clear that she expected everyone — including Sara — to spend the holidays here in D.C. Irene and Edmund explained that they wanted to host one last big holiday bash while they had the health and the space to do so. They were thinking of either downsizing or remodeling their home next year to have a place that would be easier for them to maintain.

Sara glanced at Neal, clearly hesitant to make a commitment for the holidays. There was so much they were planning for in the near term, including his graduation. They hadn't even talked about Thanksgiving, much less Christmas.

Angela won Neal's gratitude by taking the spotlight. She promised that she and Michael looked forward to spending their first Christmas as a married couple here, and then she deftly changed the subject to her upcoming wedding.

That topic eventually led to Irene finding a photo album filled with images from the wedding of Meredith Caffrey and James Bennett. Seeing his mother so young and carefree brought a lump to his throat. She'd had no idea the twists her life would take. Neal ached for her, and for the life they might have had if things had gone differently.

Sara squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back. Then he looked around the room and said, "Over the last few months, Sara and I have been sharing secrets. I told her about Mom and WITSEC." He looked at her. "But I haven't shared my deepest, darkest secret. In fact, I'd been hoping to convince everyone here to keep it from you."

Sara smiled encouragingly. "I do love deep, dark secrets."

Neal asked Henry to find the DVD of one of the movies their grandmother had acted in. In fact, it was her last movie, in which she'd had only a cameo. It was a remake of an earlier film in which she'd played a lead role, and if they were going to watch the movie he'd have picked the original. However, this evening he instructed Henry to bring up the movie's extras.

"Are you sure?" Henry asked. "There's no going back."

Neal nodded.

Their cousin Angela looked confused. "What's in the extras that's a secret?"

"Think about it, Funny Bunny," Henry told her.

"Oh." Angela's eyes widened. "I get it."

Now it was Sara's turn to look confused.

Neal wanted to thank her for flying out from London to be with him, and he was going to do it by sharing what he considered to be his most embarrassing secret. He explained that the extras included an interview with Irene in this very room, and that both he and Meredith had been present that day. "This will be the closest you'll ever come to meeting her. It also reveals something I've been keeping from you. When I reconnected with the family, I learned that Caffreys go for embarrassing nicknames that get assigned when you're an infant."

"Like Funny Bunny," Angela added. And she bounced a little in excitement, unconsciously demonstrating part of the inspiration for her nickname.

"Ready?" Henry asked.

"Let's go, Tickle Bug," Neal confirmed. He glanced over as Sara choked back a laugh over Henry's nickname.

A few minutes later, the clip ended. Seeing and hearing Meredith had brought a lump to his throat, but the scene also made everyone in the room smile. Neal was glad he'd requested it.

"You were an adorable baby," Sara said. "And Irene is right, you do growl sometimes when you're grumpy."

Neal was quick to deny it. "No, I outgrew that long ago."

Sara shook her head. "I'm afraid not. You'll always be Baby Bear."

A chorus of agreement followed, with family members insisting that Neal was still Baby Bear.

Neal's loft. April 12, 2006. Wednesday night.

Neal closed the door behind U.S. Marshal Annina Brandel and checked the time. Nearly midnight in London. Fortunately Sara was a night person like him, and he decided to call her.

"Neal." There was a smile in her voice when she answered the phone. "Or should I call you Baby Bear?"

Neal groaned. He was certain it was a groan and not a growl. "Already I regret sharing that secret. What can I do to buy your silence on this topic?"

"Hmmm. I feel as if I've been granted a wish, and I want to use it wisely. Let me think it over and get back to you."

Neal relaxed into a few minutes of teasing, grateful for Sara's skill in lightening his mood. "Remember the Christmas letter I wrote to my mom?" he finally asked, well aware of the answer. He'd obsessed over what he'd wanted to say and had run it by Sara before handing it over to the Marshals. "The Marshals did give it to her. They said they let her keep it long enough to discuss it with her therapist, who suggested she write a response. She knew they wouldn't let her send it to me, but they agreed to hold on to it, to send it along if anything happened to her."

Sara took a sharp breath.

"Yeah, it made me wonder if she had a premonition that something would happen to her. It's unlikely, but still hard not to go there in my mind."

"Did the Marshals give you the letter she wrote?"

"A few minutes ago," Neal confirmed. "They wouldn't let me keep it —"

"Why not?" Sara demanded.

"They're concerned it could be used to find her therapist, whose notes might contain information of interest to the people who are looking for my dad and Ellen."

"Okay. I can see their point."

Neal had been sitting, and now he stood to pace. "In the letter, she mentioned that reading about the things I was doing inspired her to be more adventurous. She thought she deserved a vacation and was planning to take a road trip." He ran a hand through his hair. "Annina told me that Meredith had been living in New Hampshire, and her accident happened on her way back from a resort in upstate New York. I never realized she was so close."

"Did the letter give you any closure?" Sara asked.

"Sort of?" Neal stopped pacing and stood at the windows to the balcony, watching the rain fall. "It made me hopeful that she wanted to be more like the woman my family remembers. But at the same time I feel guilty that my letter may have inspired a scenario that led to her death." Lightning flashed, followed several seconds later by distant thunder. "It really helps being able to talk about this with you."

#

In her flat, Sara also watched rain streaming down. "I wish I were there in person," she said, glancing toward her laptop and the resume she'd been updating. Before she'd returned to London, she'd had a conversation with Henry about the possible outsourcing at Sterling-Bosch. He agreed to act as a reference if needed, proving he didn't hold a grudge over her resignation. "In fact..." she trailed off. She didn't want to get in the habit of keeping secrets from Neal, but this hardly seemed the right moment to burden him with worry about her career.

But of course he'd heard the hesitation and realized she had something on her mind. "Anything wrong in London?"

Instead of telling him about the rumors at Sterling-Bosch, she focused on a revelation she'd experienced on the flight home. "Not exactly. It's more a matter of how right things felt when I was with you last weekend. Being on an international assignment has been exciting, and I'm glad I've had this experience, but it's starting to lose its appeal."

"It would be amazing to live in the same city again. Or at least the same continent."

"Agreed." She smiled. "I can tell you were a thief from an early age, because Baby Bear stole my heart." She paused as he groan-growled again.

"You've fallen for Baby Bear?"

"Let's say I've fallen for the man who would share that nickname with me in front of his family. I found it irresistible."

She realized that she was facing a fork in the road she'd been traveling the last couple of years, with one path leading back to New York and Neal. Sara wanted to take that path.

###

After he'd given more thought to the letter, Neal decided to call Noelle.

"I wish I could have seen it," Noelle said. "I don't suppose the Marshals would be willing to send Meredith's letter to Baltimore."

"I doubt it. Annina made it sound like it's going into a vault here in New York. What would you be looking for if you could see it?"

"The handwriting," Noelle said immediately.

"You think it's a forgery?" The idea shocked Neal.

"No, but handwriting can give insight into a person's state of mind."

"Now that you mention it, I'm surprised it was handwritten. Maybe she didn't trust the contents to a computer that could be hacked. From what I recall, I'd guess she wrote multiple drafts as she thought over what to say. The version I saw had neat, crisp handwriting, with nothing crossed out."

Noelle was silent a moment before asking, "How did she sign it?"

"MB." Neal paused. "I assumed it was for Meredith Bennett, but now that you ask, that doesn't seem right. She divorced him. Why not sign it MC for Meredith Caffrey?"

"She knows you've reconnected with the Caffreys, including your grandparents." Noelle sounded thoughtful. "It would be safe for her to assume you know about the Baby Bear nickname. When Irene dubbed you that, Meredith pointed out that her own initials could stand for Mama Bear."

"Do you think that's what she meant by MB?"

"It's my best guess," Noelle said. "It could have been an extra attempt to reach out to you in a very personal way, showing that she still had maternal feelings toward you."

Then the conversation turned to something less pleasant. The family had assumed that eventually Meredith's body would be sent to D.C. to be buried in the family plot, but that wasn't to be. After the autopsy, she had been cremated. Annina told Neal this evening that the Marshals would return her remains in an urn, which the family could inter if they wished. Noelle offered to discuss it with her parents, who would be bitterly disappointed. Morbid as it seemed to Neal, his grandparents had been looking forward to seeing her body. He supposed it tied back to what Sara had said about her own mother's funeral, how seeing her mom in the casket had made it seem more real and final. Everyone had their own way of saying goodbye, he supposed.

Neal shrugged it off. The wake and the letter gave him all the closure he needed. But since his grandparents wanted to see Meredith, maybe he could help by giving them a picture of her. It wouldn't be precise, not after all the years that had passed since he'd last seen her, so he'd go with charcoal. He'd capture her spirit, focusing on mood more than details of her face. Because she'd visited a ski resort before her death, he drew the background based on the Lynx resort he and Peter had visited for a case last year.

Several hours later, as Neal put away his art supplies, a stray thought occurred to him. He'd teased Peter Burke on multiple occasions about being a Polar Bear because of his love of cold weather. The initials PB also stood for Papa Bear.

Neal and Peter had different views on the idea of destiny, but surely anyone had to agree that Peter was meant to be a father figure. Now that El and Peter were talking about having a baby, it was practically Neal's duty to point out the Papa Bear connection.

Wanting to thank her for that inspiration, Neal raised a glass of wine in a toast to Meredith. "Goodbye, Mama Bear," he said to the drawing of her.

And suddenly he felt a wave of grief for the woman who had thought of herself as his Mama Bear.

"You're gone. You're really gone," he said as he wiped away the tears he'd thought weren't in him.

A/N: This story has been in our series outline for a long time, and I'm both glad and relieved to have written it. I drafted parts of it during the anniversary of my own mother's death & funeral, and writing about the characters' grief helped me.

The "You're gone" line is inspired by the White Collar finale, where Peter says, "He's gone" to Mozzie and later says "You're free" to Neal.

Thanks to Silbrith for suggesting the Neva river and Hermitage museum. I made up the museum displays to suit the story. The case at the Lynx resort is featured in Silbrith's story The Dreamer. 

The next story in the Caffrey Conversation series is The Shark of Soho by Silbrith. 

The next chapter contains what they saw in the DVD extras.