A/N: This is the third story in a stories, the first is Objects in the Mirror are Closer than they Appear, and the second is A Moment Deferred. This story takes place roughly at the end of season 2 and season 3 but will not feature the Neverland plot. Emma and Regina's relationship is established but relatively early and fragile, Regina is at the beginning of her redemption path but far from complete. This story is currently rated T but will likely have a ratings increase in the future.

This story contains the characters Killian Jones and Robin of Locksley as they are seen in OUAT, but not in their current romantic stories. They are written as true as possible to their characters

Henry wanted this. It was his mother's birthday and she had always asked him what he wanted to do for her and the week before he had dropped the bombshell at breakfast before school. He wanted to take Regina to dinner for her birthday. A family dinner. With Emma and him ... and his grandparents.

No matter what kind of uneasy truce had come about between Regina and Snow, there was nothing about a Charming-Mills family dinner that Regina was looking forward to. Particularly on her own birthday.

Henry ran into the diner before them, and Regina stood outside staring at the door.

"If your mother hugs me there might be murder."

"You always threaten murder and it never comes," Emma said with a grin squeezing her hand.

"Don't question my evil persona right before I have to eat dinner with your mother." Regina put a hand on her stomach. They'd been dating for close to two months. Longer if you counted the secret dating. Longer if you counted the intermittent threats of murder and angry sex. Emma liked to count the sex. Regina thought attempted murder should really be a start over point.

"It'll be fine," Emma said reassuringly.

And much to her surprise it was. Henry sat between his mothers and Snow managed to carry on a decent conversation about horses and how much she missed riding. Driving wasn't the same.

"Well you finally got the last of the paint off that car of yours..." Regina observed as she sipped her glass of wine and Emma gave her a sharp look, recognizing trouble. Regina's sweet smile confirmed it.

"Yes, for some reason that paint was strangely difficult to get off." Snow raised an eyebrow.

"It was perfectly ordinary spray paint." Regina shrugged, admitting to the dirty deed without being pushed, which somehow took most of the malice out of it.

Snow actually managed a smile, "Really Regina? You couldn't come up with something better than 'Tramp'? You have a dirtier mouth than that."

Henry raised an eyebrow, "Wait, mom, you spray painted grandma's car?"

"With the word tramp." Snow repeated looking right at her former stepmother.

"Well all the other words I could think of while I was standing there I didn't want you driving around town with and my son seeing."

And for some reason that admission from the former Evil Queen made everyone at the table laugh. Perhaps the first real laugh they'd shared as a family.

Even David, who shook his head and sipped his beer. "I tried everything to get that paint off. It took me almost a year."

"I said it was ordinary spray paint." Regina said with a smile.

Emma knew that smile though. "Was?"

"I might have passed by the car on the way out to and from your parents loft while Henry was staying there and you and Snow were traipsing around the ruins of the Enchanted Forest.

Emma raised an eyebrow and looked over at Snow, "Did you traipse? I don't remember traipsing."

"Traipsing is something you learn at princess lessons," Regina said.

Snow grinned, "I skipped out on a lot of mine."

"Spoiled brat," Regina said glumly.

David shifted uncomfortably in his seat before his wife smiled back, "More like holy terror."

"Your mother's child," Regina said with a ambiguous expression but a smile that reached her eyes and made Emma grin.

Henry stared at the exchange, not sure what to make of it before settling back on his mother, "Wait, you spray painted Mary Margaret's car? When?"

"When she was about to set her up for murder," David tried to sound light but clearly wasn't entirely comfortable with the ease in which Snow and Regina were bonding over

"Oh come on David, you have to laugh at Mayor Mills, terror of the town, lurking in the shadows with a can of spray paint. It's a long way from the terror of realms." Mary Margret squeezed his hand.

"I could go back to plotting your destruction but I think Emma and Henry would object."

Emma laughed, "I would."

Regina gave a disappointed look that had been intended to be sulking but for some reason that was when everyone at the table lost it. She wasn't sure when it had happened but dinner with the Charmings wasn't the torture she expected.

The bell on the door rang as someone entered the diner and Regina glanced over at the outsider, Greg Mendell who stopped for a moment and seemed to stare right at her. There was something familiar about him but she could not put her finger on it. "I thought our visitor was supposed to be out of town by now."

"Whale cleared him but he's incredibly hard to nudge on his way without appearing that we are hiding something," David said quietly.

"Aren't we hiding something?" Henry asked.

Emma leaned over and whispered, "Of course we are but we wouldn't be very good at hiding it if he knew we were hiding it, would we?"

"I see," he said confidentially.

"He's watching us," Regina commented.

"Well we did just go from laughing to whispering when he entered the room. That's not at all suspicious," Emma pointed out.

"There is something about him," Regina said quietly.

"So mom, you promised you were going to teach me how to jump tomorrow."

Henry, with the attention span of the eleven year old that he was had shifted the subject, and Regina smiled. "Of course my little prince."

Jumping the next day had turned out to be more rail road ties on the ground rather than gates or fences like Henry imagined. Ever since he had seen his mother ride he had wanted to be able to do the same things and teaching him that you had to start small had never been one of Henry's strong suits.

Near the end of the riding lesson though she saw him again. Standing on a hillside, and somewhere n the back of her mind, Regina Mills mother's instinct told her that there was something very wrong about Greg Mendell.