Caffrey Envoy

Chapter 4 - Bonus Content

A/N: This chapter was written a few years after the rest of the story was originally posted. I'm going back and adding bonus content, with a goal of expanding the POVs to include more women.

Edmund and Irene Caffrey's home. January 16, 2004 - Friday night.

There was a moment of silence after Trent finished describing his conversation with Neal.

"Now that's over with, when do we visit Neal for ourselves?" Irene Caffrey asked, ever the beam of sunshine. She'd always been certain her grandson would find his way back to them.

"He asked for time to get used to the idea," Trent cautioned.

Henry's reaction was to ask, "Why didn't anyone tell me about the envoy plan?" He sounded affronted.

"And what would you have done if you'd known?" Edmund asked.

"Told Neal, of course," was the answer.

Edmund said, "And that's why I didn't confide in anyone other than Trent. The whole point was for it to be a surprise."

Like her son, Noelle would have preferred advance notice. There were things she'd never told Henry... It's not that she meant to keep him in the dark. She'd simply planned to wait until he was an adult. But he'd dropped out of their lives during college, heedless of her plans. And with Neal back in the picture, everything was different.

"I didn't realize you felt so much guilt about Neal staying with Meredith," Noelle said to Trent. After all, he didn't know... None of them knew... Meredith had called once a year, telling Noelle how things were going, and Noelle hadn't told anyone. She'd been shattered to hear that Neal had been abused and abducted by someone Meredith had been involved with.

Trent stood while talking to them, but now he slumped into a chair beside her. "Mostly I felt guilty about helping Robert win. I had no idea what was best for Neal." He shook his head. "If it makes you feel better, I talked to my wife this evening, posing the scenario, and she made it clear she wouldn't stand for anyone saying our kids would be better off with someone else. Just the thought of it had her yelling at me. I'm pretty sure that if we'd been married at the time, she'd have swayed me to the same decision I ended up making."

"But Meredith was in no state to take care of a child," Henry objected.

"That's easy to say now, boyo," Edmund answered. "She was sad, yes. Dejected, distracted, yes. But who wouldn't be? What right had we to make her even sadder by taking away her son?"

"You really didn't see it?" Henry asked his mom. "How seriously depressed she was? That it was more than just grief?"

"She's my twin. I looked at her and saw a reflection of myself. And that reflection... It made me think about how rocky my relationship was with your father. It took another decade for the divorce, but the writing was on the wall, and the thought of losing custody of you... The very idea gutted me, sweetie. I couldn't handle doing that to my sister."

Henry kept looking at her, expecting more.

"And I felt sorry for her," she continued. "I had an easier time than she did. I never had to deal with a miscarriage, never suffered the money challenges Meredith and James faced. Who was I to take away the one thing she had left? Besides..." Now she was skating on the edge of secrets that Neal needed to hear first.

"What?" Henry prompted.

"You were too young to remember how things were. Neal spent a lot of time with us, at our home in Baltimore. Meredith and James had issues, including the miscarriages, and..." Noelle paused to drink from the glass water beside her. "And the result was that sometimes Neal felt as much mine as Meredith's. You thought of him as a brother. When David offered to take Neal, meaning that we'd still get to see him occasionally... You can't imagine how much I wanted that. It was so tempting to agree with David."