"Can you tell me about him?"
Emma doesn't pick up on the subject change at first, doesn't even look up from her filing because the question seems so innocuous. Just Henry pushing forward on the Operation Cobra front. Probably "Sub-mission: Gingerbread House" or something.
"I don't know anything yet."
"…Not their father. Mine."
Oh. Oh. She's completely thrown, and kind of annoyed at herself for being so. Because, really, isn't it more surprising that he hasn't asked until now? Hell, Regina had gone there practically the second Emma walked through her front door.
And if she'd managed to find her mother, wouldn't she also want to know about her dad?
Would she? If she met her mom and the woman was a disappointment, a fuck up, had had her in jail … would she want to know if her dad had been even worse? Or would she want the luxury of believing she had one parent worth looking up to? The luxury of … well, a lie.
No. She hates lies.
She hates lies, she hates being lied to, and she hates the one liar who has ever gotten a big lie past her. Who made her think he loved her. Who sent her to prison. Who fathered her son.
Henry hates being lied to, too. True, Regina actually isn't lying to him, but he's so convinced she is, and it's pretty obvious how the kid feels about that.
So … the truth?
But he's only ten, part of her whispers, and she wavers.
Then Henry, who must be reading something into her silence, gives her a look that she can only describe as … brave. Able to take it. The truth.
She takes a breath. Right, then. Quick and clean.
"He was a thief, Henry. A liar, a bad guy, and he … He broke my heart. He was the reason I went to jail..." She has to pause here to get herself under control.
"He was the reason I couldn't keep you."
There's a look on his face for a second that breaks her heart, and convinces her that she made a mistake. But it's gone almost at once, replaced by … maybe not acceptance, but the promise to get there. To handle the badness.
It's an expression she knows well and it kills her. She's probably spent half her life with that look on her face and she hates seeing it on her kid's. What was she thinking?
"After I'd gotten out of jail, the only job I could get was at this twenty-four hour diner just off of the interstate," she blurts out.
Henry looks up, curious.
"There was this guy training to be a fireman. He always got the worst shifts, so he'd come in and order coffee and pie and sit at the counter. And always complain that we didn't sell pumpkin pie. But he always came back the next night anyway."
Henry's face has left "curious" and moved on to "slightly confused."
"We hung out a few times outside of work and … life happened. And then I found out that he died saving a family from a burning apartment building."
The kid's now obviously completely lost.
"I wish …" she tries to explain. "I wish I could have given you him as a father."
Henry blinks. "A … dead guy?"
Okay, not where she was trying to go with this. "No, a hero. Like in your book," and she nods to the ever-present tome, currently hanging out on one of the sheriff station's desks. "You … you deserve to have someone like that."
And then he tells her he does have someone like that, and gives her a hug, and she has to make some excuse about a breakthrough in the case so she can run out before he sees her tears.
She's glad she told him the truth.
