Federal Building, Manhattan, NY. January 11, 2005. Tuesday evening.

When Peter walked back to his desk after the last meeting of the day, Diana was the only person left in the bullpen. She called out his name when she saw him, and he paused at her desk.

"Big plans for your birthday?" she asked.

"No. El's still with the Shooting Stars family. We'll probably go out for dinner when she's done and call it a night."

Diana stood up and reached for her coat. "Yeah, that sounds like my kind of birthday. Neal asked me to give you this." She pulled a postcard out of her coat pocket.

The picture on the front of the card was The Starry Night by Van Gogh. On the other side was a message. Time for Tuesday Tails!

Because of the team lunch, they'd skipped Tuesday Tails this week, or so Peter thought. Apparently it had simply been postponed to the evening. Peter grabbed his coat, locked up his office, and dialed Neal's cell phone as he waited for the elevator. "Tuesday Tails?" he said when Neal answered.

"Usually you're too busy to participate. Since El's preoccupied at the moment, we wanted to give you something fun to do." Neal named an intersection and said, "That's your starting point."

Peter took a cab to the location Neal specified. Within a minute he spotted Neal's fedora, and started tailing him. Barely a block into the chase, he heard a familiar voice call his name. Peter turned around to see his boss. "Mind if I join you?" Hughes asked.

"You want to join a round of Tuesday Tails?" Peter kept following Neal, and Hughes walked beside him.

"When Caffrey ran his plan by me, it struck me that I've never had a chance to participate. You've been bragging about the things your team has learned through this exercise. I assume you'll mention it in the team's accomplishments for last year?"

"I've encouraged Neal to list it; he should get credit for the idea in his annual review. This way." Peter opened the door to a pub, and they walked toward the back exit, barely keeping the fedora in view as they dodged servers with platters of food and drinks.

"This is giving me an appreciation of his skills," Hughes said as they left the pub. Neal was nowhere in sight. "Where'd he go?"

Peter barely caught the door before it closed behind them. "Back inside. He must have slipped into one of the booths."

Sure enough, they saw Neal slide out of a booth and walk toward the front entrance.

"How'd he find an empty booth?" Hughes asked. "This place is packed."

As they reached the booth, someone else slid out. "Peter. You just missed Neal," Jones said.

"Yeah." Peter pressed forward, with Hughes and Jones in his wake. Every few minutes they ran into another member of the White Collar team, until Peter felt like they had a parade chasing after Neal. "He's like the Pied Piper," he muttered.

Diana chuckled. "Having fun, boss?"

"It's about to get fun," he promised. He'd seen the pattern in Neal's path. In order to arrange all of these encounters with team members, he must have planned a fairly straightforward route, and Peter took a gamble. Instead of keeping Neal in sight, he took a shortcut through an alley, and finally he was ahead of Neal. Peter stepped in front of him and swiped the fedora off his head. "Got you!"

"About time," Neal said. He took back the hat. "We're nearly there."

"What's our destination? I thought you might be heading toward the Met, since that postcard was a Van Gogh."

Neal wouldn't say, but they turned a corner and Peter could see the Museum of Natural History. "Starry Night," Peter said. "We're going to the planetarium?"

"Elizabeth spent the day taking the Shooting Stars family to do things the kids enjoyed. Now it's Stella's turn. She loves stargazing."

"She's got good taste," Peter said. When they arrived at the planetarium, the White Collar team sat behind Stella's family. El and June were also with the family.

Moments after they were seated, Marcus from Shooting Stars stepped forward to welcome everyone. He spoke about the foundation's work and then said a science expert would describe the constellations prominent in the January night sky.

A woman walked up to take the microphone from him, and she beamed at the audience. Peter nearly laughed out loud. They'd brought his mom down for a birthday surprise. He'd bet his dad was there, too. "Were you in on this?" Peter asked Neal.

Neal shushed him.

"Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here. My name's Betty Burke. I'm retired now, but I was a science teacher in Albany for many years, and I loved watching the stars with my youngest son."

Peter listened as his mother talked about the stars. She shared myths behind the constellations, interspersing the stories with scientific details about stars and the Milky Way Galaxy.

"I wish she'd been my teacher," Neal said when she finished and the applause died down. "I guess in a way she was, because she taught you, and then you took me stargazing at your cabin."

Elizabeth stepped to the podium and told the audience that there were treats waiting for them.

"That's Emil, isn't it?" Peter asked, getting glimpses of June's chef as they stood in line.

"That's right," Neal confirmed. "He baked the cake for your birthday, but he said the Creole meal for Stella's family wasn't complete without beignets."

"Those are like doughnuts, right?"

"When Emil makes them, they're like heaven."

Once Peter got his hands on the beignets, he had to agree. "El and I need to take a vacation to New Orleans," he told Neal. "She'll be into the history, and I'll go along for the food." Peter's parents were across the room and he wanted to talk to them, but Tony's voice stopped him.

"Agent Burke?"

"Yes. Did you have more questions for me?"

The boy shook his head. "No. I just wanted to say thanks."

"It was my pleasure. So, are you doing okay? I mean, with your mom..."

Tony shrugged. "Not really."

"I'm glad you're being honest about that." Thinking back to his missteps with his cousins, Peter added, "A lot of people are going to be uncomfortable around you, because they don't know what to say. It doesn't mean they aren't still your friends. Let them know when you want to be quiet, and when you want to talk about your mom, or when you want to talk about something else. Help them help you. Does that make sense?"

Tony nodded.

"What's your preference now?" Peter asked.

"I'd like to talk about something else."

"You had a lot of questions for Peter and his agents today," Neal said. "I'm curious what got you interested in the FBI in the first place."

"When my mom got arrested, I was mad at the cops. 'Cause they took her away and locked her up someplace we couldn't see her. And then she got arrested again and I was still mad at the cops, plus I was mad at her. My dad told me to stop being mad. He said for her second arrest she was caught up in an FBI sting. She wasn't a suspect and they would've let her go, only one of the agents saw she was in bad shape. Instead of sending her to prison, he took her to a place that helped her so she'd stop using drugs. After that she was better, and Dad said that agent was a hero."

"Yes, he was," agreed Neal. "He sounds a lot like Peter, actually."

Tony glanced from Neal to Peter and back again. "Did he save someone?"

"Me," Neal said. "He saw that —"

"Are you ready for dinner?" El interrupted. She'd walked over with Stella and Evie. June, Emil, Henry, Angela, and Peter's parents were making their way over. "We have reservations at an Italian restaurant."

Although Peter wanted to hear the rest of what Neal had to say, his stomach was all in favor of a change of venue for the story. "Emil gets a break from cooking for us?"

"This time a friend of mine from the CIA is doing the honors," Emil explained.

Tony looked stunned, and he wasn't the only one. "The CIA?" the boy asked.

The chef chuckled. "Culinary Institute of America. My friend is opening a new restaurant next week, and this week he's training his staff and preparing them for opening night. They've been practicing on friends and family, and tonight it's our turn. We'll have the restaurant to ourselves. He's set it up family-style for us."

"Do they have pizza?" Tony asked.

"Yes," Emil promised. "I checked."

The limo and a couple of taxis took the group to the restaurant. As soon as they were seated, it felt like a family gathering. The pizza was mouthwateringly good, and there was also a rustic lasagna, portobello ravioli, potato gnocchi, and a hearty seafood stew served with fragrant loaves of rosemary bread.

After consuming several slices of pizza, Tony said, "You were going to tell me a story about Peter being a hero."

"A story?" Evie piped up. "Neal tells good stories."

"Oh, well I..." Neal looked befuddled, and Peter had to smile. As a con artist the young man had gotten good at spinning stories, but his audience usually consisted of adults and strangers. Now he had two children and Peter's parents eagerly awaiting a tale.

Evie slid down from her chair and walked over to Henry, who was sitting beside Neal. Confident of her welcome, she climbed onto his lap.

Henry made a token protest. "Shouldn't you be sitting on Neal's lap?"

"Then I wouldn't be able to see him, silly."

"Evie!" her mother protested.

"It's okay," Henry assured her. But then he scowled down at Evie. "Don't you dare touch my tiramisu," he added in a mock-threatening voice.

She picked up a fork and reached toward the dessert in front of Henry.

"Evie!" Stella repeated.

"Mine!" Henry declared, taking a massive forkful out of the dessert before Evie could reach it. The custard filling was in danger of falling off the fork, and Henry draped a napkin over Evie's head to keep any spills out of her hair when he brought the heaping forkful to his mouth. He pulled the napkin away in time for everyone to see she was again attempting to steal a bite of the dessert. "Oh no you don't!"

She squealed with laughter, and the diners laughed along. A waiter brought a plate with a small portion of tiramisu. "For the signorina," he said.

Evie tilted her head back to look up at Henry. "Mine?"

"All yours. Unless I beat you to it!" He moved his fork toward her plate.

"Mine!" she said, and pushed her plate closer to Neal.

"Can we call a truce?" Neal asked.

Henry nodded.

"Truce?" Evie repeated.

"It means you'll stop fighting and behave yourselves."

Evie giggled and nodded.

Neal looked more composed now. He and Henry had run cons together when Neal was still in his teens, and they made a good team. Peter was certain Henry had initiated the teasing with Evie to give Neal time to prepare the story Tony had requested.

"As it happens, there's a related story that Peter started asking for a year ago, and his birthday seems like a good occasion to finally tell it."

"Christmas 2003?" Peter asked.

"That's right," Neal confirmed. "Once upon a time there was a boy who decided he didn't need family or anyone else, and he left home."

"You, in other words," interjected Henry.

"Could've been you, but yeah, this time it was me." Neal took a sip of water, looking around the table. Peter could guess he was considering how much he could share of a rather complicated family history that included being raised in WITSEC. "There'd been a lot of turmoil in my family. After my parents divorced my mom took me away and I didn't see the rest of my family for so long I couldn't even remember what they looked like."

Evie and Tony looked across the table at each other, eyes wide.

"I didn't have had a lot of family around when I was growing up, but we made a new family. There was a neighbor who was like an aunt. And of course there's Henry. He's my best friend and felt like a brother almost as soon as we met. Sometimes we'd tell people he was my big brother. That was kind of a fantasy of ours. Anyway, my last year of high school I got really mad at my mom and I decided I didn't need a family anymore. I ran away, but my family wasn't going to let me go. My mom asked for help, and Henry said he'd look for me."

"Did he find you?" Evie asked.

"Yep," Henry said. "Didn't take long at all."

"Yeah, he found me, but I was stubborn. I was willing to hang out with him, but I didn't want to rely on anyone else. The problem was, he disagreed. He wanted me to reconnect with the family my mom had left behind. Didn't matter how much I argued with him. He was certain he was right. You know how big brothers are." He said this to Evie, who nodded in agreement.

"Big brother was right," Henry muttered.

"First he introduced me to an uncle, and that was a bad idea. This uncle pretended to like us, but really he was mean. He tricked me and sent me away, all alone. And it turned out that I missed my best friend even if he was annoying a lot of the time. While I was on my own I sort of got into trouble."

"Sort of," Peter repeated. Thefts, forgeries, cons. The people at the table who knew Neal chuckled.

"I kept getting in deeper, and I thought it was too late to turn things around. To make things even worse, there was an FBI agent looking for me, and he was very tenacious." Neal glanced at Evie, and seeing her puzzled expression explained, "He wouldn't give up."

"Was it Peter?" Tony asked.

"That's right. I didn't make it easy for him to help me. I was working with bad people and started to believe I was bad, too. Well, one day I agreed to work with a particularly bad guy. I didn't know at first how bad he was, but soon I realized this was one scary dude. He hurt people who didn't do things his way. And who else do you think showed up?"

"Peter," Tony said.

"That's right. Even though I thought Peter wanted to arrest me, I didn't want him to be hurt by the scary guy. And I sure didn't want the scary guy to hurt me, so I helped Peter stop him. Peter arrested the bad guy and then told me that I was still a good guy."

Evie reached across to pat his hand. "You are a good guy."

"Thanks. I wasn't convinced at the time, but I wanted to be a good guy. Or... Well, I wanted to be like Peter, and he's a good guy. He told me that if I continued helping him stop the bad guys, I could be forgiven for most of the mistakes I'd made when I thought I was bad."

"Most?" Peter repeated.

"Stop interrupting, Peter. I'm trying to explain how you were a hero."

"It's taking a heroic effort to stay quiet," Peter complained.

Henry raised a wine glass. "I'll drink to that. When do we get back to the heroic best friend?"

"No one said you were a hero," Neal objected. "So, as I was saying, Peter arranged for me to make a fresh start, and offered me a job as a consultant at the FBI. These days I can take my bad experiences and use them for good, and he keeps reminding me that I can be good."

"You are good," Peter said. He agreed with Evie on that score. In Hawaii, Neal admitted to worrying he wasn't reformed enough, and Peter was on a campaign to keep telling Neal that he'd earned the white hat of the traditional good guys. Maybe he needed a white fedora to remind him?

"So he helped me escape the bad guys. And he actually cares that I succeed. Sounds pretty heroic, right?"

Tony nodded.

"And the Christmas story?" Peter prompted.

"Christmas story!" Evie said.

"When Henry heard that I'd settled down and gotten a real job, he showed up and tried to convince me again that I should get to know more of my family. Finally he wore me down and I agreed to his plan, but I was nervous about it. I didn't tell anyone at work what I was going to do over the holidays, and that annoyed Peter. That was so much fun that I kept refusing to answer Peter's questions about my Christmas vacation, and he kept trying more ways to trick me into telling him. I think he's figured out most of it by now, but I've never told him the story."

"I'm all ears," said Peter.

###

Neal told a carefully worded tale about Henry enticing Neal into meeting his grandparents. The day after Christmas they went to the grandparents' house. Neal glossed over breaking into the house while his grandparents were away.

Henry was referred to throughout as a best friend who acted like a big brother, giving the impression they'd grown up together, as the truth was not only confusing but also something they'd agreed not to reveal due to Neal's situation as a runaway from WITSEC. In reality, Henry hadn't needed to do any research, because Edmund and Irene Caffrey were his grandparents, too.

Neal did describe meeting his cousin Angela. It seemed Henry had already been telling her about Neal, and she was so eager to meet her cousin that she jumped the gun and arrived before Henry was ready. As Peter had already guessed, they bonded over a love of music and a big part of their first day together was making plans to stop Masterson Music from cheating singers.

There was a lot Peter read between the lines, and he vowed to get the full story. Looking at El, he could tell she had the same idea. Neal could expect an invitation to dinner at their house soon. Since Peter and El both knew about Neal's past, including his time in WITSEC, he'd have no excuse to leave out the details when it was just the three of them.

"And that's how Henry reconnected me with part of my family," Neal concluded. "I thought I was better off as a loner, but now I can't imagine not having them in my life. The support of family — and of friends who seem like family — makes me stronger."

Peter heartily approved of Neal's comment. The kid still had a lot of lone wolf tendencies, but at least he acknowledged the advantages of having a pack.

"That was the first Christmas after we lost my dad," Angela said. "I learned that people leave your life, but new people enter, and you need to appreciate them while you have them. I'm glad to have Neal back."

Evie was getting sleepy, and Stella decided it was time to take her children to their hotel. "Thank you all so much," she said as she lifted Evie. "I knew we'd meet kind people and do special things, but I had no idea you could make me so happy. You can't imagine what a difference you've made for us today."

Tony walked over to shake Peter's hand. "Thanks, Agent Burke."

Peter reached into his breast pocket for a business card. "If you want to talk, give me a call. I'll admit I'm often away from my phone when I'm working cases, but if you leave a message I'll get back to you, I promise."

Suddenly Tony hugged him, and then he dashed over to where his mother was waiting.

"Bye." Evie's voice was heavy with sleep, but she waved until the family was out of sight.

Neal, Henry, and Angela were the next to leave. They shared a cab and it sounded like they were going to spend the rest of the night reminiscing and arguing about who had been the mastermind in the Masterson Music sting.

Emil disappeared into the kitchen, and June pulled El aside. That left Peter with his parents.

"I hope Stella and her kids will be all right," Betty said.

Peter looked at his mother. "Me, too. Do you have a minute to talk?"

"Of course." She sat down at the table, and Peter sat beside her. "What's on your mind?"

"My fourteenth birthday."

"I'd nearly given up hope you'd ever be willing to talk about that."

"That was kind of the problem. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. Not to you, not to my cousins."

Peter's father pulled up a chair. "Can I join in?" They nodded and Luke sat down. "We thought we were doing you a favor, keeping you in the dark about how serious your aunt's illness was. You were young, and there was Christmas and your birthday, and we didn't want to ruin those for you."

"But that left you unprepared," Betty said. "If we'd talked to you about it in advance, you might have been... well, I don't want to say you'd have been comfortable with it all. It's not comfortable to have a death in the family. But maybe less uncomfortable."

"Since we didn't talk about it beforehand, it seemed like you thought we shouldn't talk about it later," Luke added. "Looking back, I wish we'd handled it differently."

"It's a tough call," Peter said. "In your shoes, I probably would have done the same thing."

Betty reached out and held Peter's hand. "After that you didn't want birthday parties anymore, not like the parties we used to have. I've worried for a long time that we ruined your birthday forever."

"No," Peter insisted. "It made me feel differently about it, but you didn't ruin it. The older I got, the more I appreciated a chance to rest and loaf around."

"That's true, but you're holding something back," Luke said. He was the quietest member of the family, but he had observational skills Peter had learned to emulate.

Peter's first reaction was to say it was hard to explain, but he realized that it was simpler than he used to think. Meeting Stella and her kids had brought clarity. "Having seen what my cousins went through, it felt important to spend my birthday at home with my family, appreciating that I had a home and a family. I didn't want the distraction of traveling someplace or being in a crowd of strangers." He squeezed his mother's hand. "And starting with my fourteenth birthday, each time I've blown out the candles on my cake, my wish was for my parents to live long and healthy lives."

El walked up as Betty was wiping her eyes. "Ready to go home?"

Peter looked up to see June was already on her way out with Emil. "Will we learn what happens with Stella?"

"Probably not," El said. "Shooting Stars warned me that they guard each family's privacy, and therefore they can't give us updates. But there is reason for hope. When Stella heard that June's husband died from a similar condition, she opened up to June about this morning's conversation with the specialist. There's an experimental treatment that she's a candidate for, and it's had a high success rate. June's going to talk to the Shooting Stars foundation about a fundraiser to help with the medical expenses. It's likely Stella will have several more years of making memories with her kids."

"Not a fairy-tale ending," Betty said, "but better than I expected."

They pulled on their coats and walked outside. The owner of the restaurant had hailed a cab for them, and Peter thanked him again for the meal. "Can we just make a reservation to come back here every year on my birthday?"

"Not scared off?" The chef gestured at his Japanese features. "I worried people wouldn't take me seriously as the owner and executive chef of an Italian restaurant."

"It's the best Italian meal I've ever had, and I used to haunt Little Italy every weekend when I first moved to New York."

"Thanks." The chef shook Peter's hand. "I keep hearing my mother in the back of my head, asking why I couldn't open a nice sushi restaurant like my sister."

Peter made a face. He'd never understood the appeal of sushi.

The chef chuckled. "I hope you'll come back before your next birthday."

"We will," El promised. On the drive to Brooklyn she sat in the backseat, between Peter and Luke and she patted her husband's arm. "I hope this wasn't too much of a downer for your birthday."

Peter put an arm around her. "You arranged for me to spend time doing things I love, eating things I love, and being with people I love. That's my recipe for a happy birthday. The lesson I'm taking from today is to appreciate all of those things, and to tell you how much I appreciate you. Love you, hon." He kissed her and whispered, "Next year, just a mystery and lasagna?"

She chuckled. "Isn't next year your fortieth birthday?"

"Oh, I've been meaning to talk to you about that," Betty said, from the front seat of the cab. "I have some ideas."

Peter groaned. "Dad, a little help?"

Luke smiled at him. "It's also Joe's fiftieth coming up. Maybe you can distract everyone with plans for your brother's party."

"I'll talk to Neal. He's an expert at distraction."

El leaned against her husband and laughed. "Remember, we're a year and a half away from Henry's thirtieth birthday. Neal might want to practice birthday surprises and party ideas on you as he plans for that event."

"Maybe I can strike a deal with Henry. If he helps rein in Neal with regard to my birthday, maybe I can return the favor." Already he saw the flaw in that idea. "Henry probably wants an outrageous party, right? This is all Joe's fault. He married Noelle, and now I'm related by marriage to wild party people like Neal and Henry."

The laughter continued, and Peter had to join in. Between school and work commitments, Neal wasn't exactly a party animal, and Henry seemed to be settling down, too. Peter didn't have to worry about an outrageous fortieth birthday bash, right?

A/N: Are you as disappointed as Peter that you didn't get to hear the details of Neal's adventures breaking into his grandparents' home? Then I have good news for you — those adventures are described in more detail in the next chapter.

Of course I had to write a story about Peter's fortieth birthday, and it will be posted soon.

In case you were wondering, I've been purposefully vague about exactly what disease Byron and Stella had, and the same holds true with Peter's aunt. My hope is that readers who've lost loved ones to various illnesses can imagine those are the illnesses in my stories, and can identify with the characters who are coping with the resulting loss. Or you if you're at a stage where certain diseases are a trigger for you, you can imagine it's something else.