Peter's parents' home, Albany, New York. Saturday afternoon. March 19, 2005.

With only one phone in the cabin, located in the open concept first floor, it was no surprise that Neal didn't find the privacy to call back until Saturday afternoon. He filled Peter in on what they'd been doing.

Before Peter responded, he had to ask, "Neal, do you remember the name of the bar in St. Louis? The one where we met with that crew of thieves?"

"Yeah, Shirts and Skins. Why?"

"And the leader of that crew was named?"

"Roland Villiers. Peter, it's not like you to forget..." It didn't take Neal long to catch up. "Worried that I'm Henry?"

"We've gotta come up with a code phrase so I can be sure who I'm talking to. How many times did you call me yesterday?"

"Once. How many times did you think I called?"

"I was pretty sure it was Henry the second time. He probably hit redial to find out who you'd called and then tried to fake it. Did my story about Barclay having fleas get into his head?"

"Oh. That explains what was up with him. Yeah. I gotta hand it to you. That was a simple but brilliant move."

"Like I told you, simple can be powerful." Peter had gone out to the back porch to take the call. Elizabeth and Betty had gone shopping, and Luke had been watching a basketball game on TV. Now Luke opened the sliding door and sat on a chair next to Peter. The game must be over.

"Anyway, it's clear that Henry conspired to take charge of this vacation, getting me here and arranging activities, but I can't figure out his end goal. Like Angela said, he has an agenda he's ticking off, but I don't know why. And he's taking photos like crazy. Says he's going to add them to the album you gave me at Christmas."

Peter chuckled. "I'm surprised the camera survived the dunking in the lake."

Neal drew a sharp breath. "He didn't bring it to the lake. It's the only time he hasn't had it with him. Do you think he overturned the boat on purpose?"

"You weren't exaggerating, the rowboat really flipped completely over?"

"Upside down, yeah. Dumped all three of us in the lake."

At the comment about the rowboat flipping over, Luke stopped watching the birds flocking at the feeders and turned his attention to Peter, who nodded at his father and said to Neal, "That's about as stable a rowboat as you can get. I flipped it over once, to dunk my brother, and I had to put a lot of effort into it. It's hard to believe someone as knowledgeable about boats as Henry would flip it accidentally."

When the call was over, Luke said, "What's going on up at the cabin?"

If this had been a case at the FBI, by now Peter would want to talk it through with someone in the office. It wouldn't hurt to get a second opinion now. He didn't share his theories about what Henry was up to or why. He simply described what the cousins had been doing since arriving at the cabin.

Luke listened quietly for the most part. When Peter mentioned the board games the cousins had played Thursday and Friday night, Luke commented, "Those were your favorites."

Peter nodded in acknowledgement. He'd enjoyed those games as a kid. That's why they were always stocked in the cabin. They'd replaced the games many times over the years as pieces wore out or got lost. The boxes had looked new again on Thursday. "This morning they watched cartoons." He listed the ones Neal had mentioned.

"Saturday morning cartoons," Luke said. "Those were the ones you always watched. Every Saturday you were down in the basement, watching Speed Racer and those others."

"Yeah, those are good memories."

"I could tell. I looked out the window when I went to the kitchen for coffee, and you were smiling as you listened to Neal telling you about it."

Finally it clicked. Peter thought he knew what Henry was trying to achieve, even if he didn't know why.

"Betty's in on it," Luke commented. "She's had a lot of phone calls with Henry these last couple of months. I figure she's the one who told him what your favorites were."

"Did you take those games and DVDs up to the cabin with you on Thursday?"

"Yep. Your mom ordered them online a month ago, at least."

"And Henry asked you to leave Barclay at the cabin?"

Luke nodded. "He wanted a dog there, and you didn't have space in your car to bring Satchmo along."

It didn't take long to confirm his theory once the women got home. Peter said he needed to run something by them, and they sat in the breakfast room while he laid out what he'd discovered. When he reached the end he said, "Mom, why is Henry taking his cousins through a greatest hits of my childhood?"

Betty smiled. "If you were to ask Henry, he'd say it's complicated."

"Trademark Henry response."

"Yes, well I've been talking to him a lot." Betty laid a hand over his. "You always had Joe. It would be hard for you to imagine what it's like to be an only child."

"All three of them are only children," Peter said. "Well, at least that's how they were raised." Of course it was more complicated than that, but Betty was right. Each of them had been raised alone.

"It wasn't so hard for Henry and Angela. They had each other and bunches of cousins on their non-Caffrey sides of their families, but Neal..." She stopped short of mentioning WITSEC and how that had isolated Neal. "Well, his childhood was far from what it should have been."

She didn't know half of it, and it wasn't Peter's secret to share, so he stayed focused on the present. "I get it. Henry wants all of them, Neal especially, to relive the childhood they should have had. But why use my childhood as his model? Was that your idea?"

"No. Peter, don't you see? What seems boring and ordinary to us, it looks magical to Neal. Your life is an ideal for him, a picket fence fantasy. If you asked him what he thinks childhood should be like, he'd say yours."

Elizabeth nodded. "And Henry knows you're like a father to Neal, but you lack the usual shared experiences of a father and son. This way, you have more in common."

"Why keep it secret, though?" Luke asked. "Seems to me Peter is the expert on his own childhood. Why not ask him about it when Henry planned all this?"

"I'd disagree with you there," Betty said. "Kids forget a lot and aren't very objective. I'd say their parents are the experts on their childhood."

"I see your point," said Peter, "but Dad's right, too. Why keep me in the dark? That was intentional, right? He told each of you not to tell me what he had planned."

Both Betty and Elizabeth indicated he was right. El added, "He mentioned that you see each other at work every day and Neal might notice if you were hiding something from him."

"Possible," Peter said.

"You still think there's something more," El said.

"Yeah. It's never that simple. Not with Henry."

Burke family cabin, upstate New York. Saturday evening.

In the evening the cousins built a campfire and did some stargazing. "That's Perseus," Neal said. He shrugged at Angela. "Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Bootes, and Perseus. That's the extent of my expertise with constellations. Those are the ones Peter pointed out last time we were here. He's the expert."

Angela pointed out a few more she recognized, and Henry opened a bag of marshmallows to start roasting.

Neal's mind kept going back to the fact that Peter was the expert on stargazing. How many times had Peter come to mind while they were doing stuff on Henry's agenda? When they played Clue, Neal had guessed that had probably been a game Peter loved. And those cartoons. Speed Racer made him think of Peter's propensity for driving too fast.

Was it a coincidence? Naturally the Burke family cabin would be filled with reminders of Peter and all the other Burkes who had spent so much time here over the decades. There weren't a lot of coincidences, though, not when Henry planned things. He'd have considered the implications of being here and doing these things. It was like the goal was for Neal to have more in common with Peter.

"I know why we're here," Neal said.

"Is this a theological insight?" Henry asked.

"No, it's a Henry-psychological-mind-game insight. You brought us here to relive moments of Peter's childhood."

Henry shrugged. "You like coming here because it makes you feel like a member of the Burke family. I'm just facilitating that. Over Christmas, Betty told me about some of their family trips to the cabin, and that provided me with plenty of activities to choose from."

Angela sat back and stared at Henry. "It's that simple? It's never that simple with you. There has to be more."

"She's right. If that's all you were up to, why not tell us from the beginning? There's no need to keep that a secret."

"No?" Henry prompted. "Tell me, now that you've figured it out, how do you feel?"

Neal and Angela glanced at each other.

"Feeling clever, right? You figured it out on your own, no help from me." Henry blew on a perfectly roasted marshmallow to cool it, then popped it in his mouth.

"No help from you," Neal concurred, "but not alone. Angela helped."

"Nice bit of bonding there, with the two of you trying to figure out what your wiser older cousin was up to."

"I wouldn't say wiser, old man," Angela objected.

Ignoring her, Henry added, "And Peter helped. He's running a parallel investigation in Albany, of course. What could be more fun than that?"

"Solving a mystery with Peter," Neal said. "That's what you wanted me to do."

"That's your birthday gift to Neal, isn't it?" Angela asked. "A mystery. Clues. Suspects who'd been seen conferring with you. That's kind of brilliant."

Henry smiled proudly.

"I mean, it's still annoying as hell," Angela continued. "The way you manipulated us all. Making us keep secrets from Neal."

"But in the end you had fun," Henry said. "The hikes, the picnics, the games and cartoons. You loved every minute of it."

"I'd have loved it even more if I didn't have the guilt of hiding things from Neal."

"And the rowboat," Neal added. "Don't forget that. Peter figured out you tipped it on purpose, because it had taken a lot of effort to tip it when he wanted to dunk his brother."

"You did that on purpose?" Angela asked.

"You have no proof of that," Henry protested. "That's pure conjecture."

"Anyway, Peter already got in a little revenge for us." Neal explained about psyching Henry into thinking he had fleas.

Angela stopped glowering at Henry and was giggling by the time Neal finished the story and Henry complained about what he'd endured. She started roasting a marshmallow and said, "I guess I'll forgive you. Let's start over. No more agendas or copying what others have done here. We're three cousins roasting marshmallows over the fire." She smiled. In the flickering light of the fire her expression looked slightly evil. "Time for ghost stories."

"No!" said Henry. "No way."

"Why not?" asked Neal.

Now Angela looked smug. "Ghost stories freak him out. Once our parents took us on a camping trip together. The ghost stories started, and he got more uncomfortable by the minute."

"Then I told a ghost story that scared you silly," Henry countered. "By the end you were hiding behind your dad."

"I loved every minute of it. You're the one who had nightmares."

"That must have been quite a story," Neal said. "Do you remember any of it?"

"No!" Henry said again.

"It's been so long." Angela thought back. "It was about a boy who lived in a haunted house. Only he didn't know it was haunted. He kept seeing a younger boy who knew his way around and acted like he lived there, but of course that couldn't be. At first he thought it was a real kid messing with him. Then he realized no one else could see this visitor, and he thought it was an imaginary friend. But one day he described this friend to his mom and she started crying and said he was dead..." She trailed off, looking up at Henry with wide eyes. "Oh, I never realized."

"The ghost was me?" Neal asked.

Henry took a deep breath. "After the Marshals took you and your mom away, we were supposed to forget about you. I was young enough, they probably assumed I'd forget if they just stopped talking about you. But sometimes I'd have these dreams, or even walking around the house something would trigger a memory of your last visit. I was certain they were real memories, and not my imagination, but it was weird that no one else seemed to remember you. One time when I told Mom about those memories, she cried. I had started thinking you had to be a ghost. I spun this theory that I'd had a baby brother who died in a tragic accident that was so horrific no one would talk about it. When I figured out you were alive in WITSEC, it was a huge relief. You weren't dead, and I wasn't out of my mind for remembering you."

Neal thought back to a comment Henry had made when he'd broken his arm last year and the painkillers had kicked in. "You said I'd haunted you. I didn't realize you meant... you know..."

Angela cleared her throat. "I propose a new family tradition. No ghost stories. When we roast marshmallows around a campfire, we will tell vampire stories. I'll start with one of my childhood favorites: Bunnicula."