A Caffrey Christmas Carol

Unified Theory of Fiction

Burke Townhouse, Brooklyn, NY. Early Friday morning. December 16, 2005.

Peter reached for the sugar bowl, and his wife pushed his hand away. It was a game they played whenever they had oatmeal for breakfast. "Add raisins if you want more flavor," she said this time.

He reached for the raisins. "So you still want to keep me healthy?" he teased, kicking off a long-running joke.

Elizabeth nodded. "I want an eventful retirement one day, and that means you need to stay healthy enough to go on adventures together."

Discussing those adventures helped him ignore how bland the oatmeal was, even with raisins. She mentioned visiting France, especially the beaches and art museums. He suggested heading north from there, to see old Viking villages and to watch the northern lights.

Compromise and variety, those were keys to their marriage. Plus openness, of course.

Elizabeth's phone beeped to let her know she had a text message, and she bit her lip. Normally they had a policy of silencing their phones when they had meals together, but her event planning business was booming right now with holiday parties. The threat of an ice storm on Sunday had many clients anxious about plans for next week.

Peter grinned. "One spoonful of sugar in exchange for you reading that message."

"Deal," she said, grabbing her phone. It beeped again while she was reading, and she didn't even notice what a heaping spoonful of sugar Peter managed to balance before pouring it into his oatmeal. She huffed out an impatient breath. "A client thinks the furnace is malfunctioning at one of our venues for next week. I need to get over there to assess the situation and discuss alternate locations." She stopped staring at her phone and looked at Peter. "Can you take Satchmo to his appointment at the V-E-T this morning for his annual checkup?" They'd taken to spelling out vet because hearing the word made their Labrador hide. "I can pick him up in the afternoon, but I need to deal with this." She was already standing up and carrying her breakfast dishes to the kitchen.

It was on the tip of Peter's tongue to suggest rescheduling the appointment, but in fact things were slow at the Bureau. Many team members were taking the next two weeks as vacation, and therefore they weren't picking up new cases. Yesterday the bullpen had reminded him of that Christmas poem about the night before Christmas, because not an agent was stirring. "Yeah," he agreed. "I'll call the office and get someone else to lead the morning briefing."

He ate one last bite of his oatmeal to hide his smile. El was up to something. She hadn't forgotten to silence her phone this morning. She'd been expecting that text and then concentrated on her phone so she wouldn't look at Peter and start laughing. The lack of actually scrolling through her messages had given her away.

White Collar Division, Manhattan, NY.

"Surprise!"

Neal didn't have much experience with surprise parties, but he was certain this one hadn't been a surprise. It wasn't just that Peter would have seen the cake and balloons as soon as he entered the bullpen and looked up at the glass-walled conference room — it was also that Peter and Elizabeth didn't have a lot of practice keeping secrets from each other. Her job had been to make sure Peter came in late, so they'd have time to set up the party decorations. Neal could have told Jones that bringing El into the surprise was a weakness in the plan, but he decided to stay quiet about it. Peter probably enjoyed figuring out the team's secret in advance.

"You knew, didn't you?" Neal asked as he handed Peter a glass of ginger ale.

Peter shrugged. "The fact that yesterday absolutely no one commented on my two-year anniversary as the leader of this team made me suspicious. The best explanation was that someone decided Friday would be a better day for a celebration than a Thursday."