Chapter One

Regina stands at her window sitting high on a hill, overlooking the city of Boston, seeing everything and nothing at the same time. Her eyes slowly focus on her reflection. Her face. The one she sees every day in the mirror, her own yet so unfamiliar. There is something gnaws at her, a hunger there that hasn't been there before. Before her daughter was born almost two weeks ago now. Before she looked down as the doctor handed her the small bundle, and felt as though a piece of her heart was missing.

The hunger to remember.

There is a small mewing sound from across the hall, and she goes to it. Glancing at the clock next to her bed, she recalls it's been two hours since she fed her, and the baby should be ready to nurse again. Reaching in, she takes her from her crib and sits in a large overstuffed wingback chair. She gazes down at her daughter and strokes her soft cheek, the cherub face turns toward her finger. Regina's fingertips run over her soft sandy hair and not for the first time wonders if the girl inherited the light hair from her father.

Oh, how she wishes she could remember.

She can recall bits and pieces but they are small, fleeting things. The sound of the ambulance siren and in the distance she hears her name being called, and it's familiar but panicked, almost desperate. It's a man's voice, and she tries to open her eyes because she knows his voice anywhere, she thinks, and his name is on her lips, and leaves in a whisper before her vision swims and she knows no more. Before the blackness takes her and she is not able to remember the man or his name.

What she can remember is waking up, almost seven months prior, in a dimly lit hospital room in Boston. The doctors told her she had been in an accident. That her memory loss may return after a while.

But it hasn't.

Truthfully, she's not sure it ever will. The only remnants of her past were packed away in two suitcases and a purse. Clothes, and a very substantial amount of money secured away in a bank account in the name of one Regina Mills. She knew her name, at least. But to her dismay, there was nothing, absolutely nothing to help her uncover her life before the wreck. No police reports are ever filed. No local pleas for a missing person. It appears nobody is searching for her, either.

She's tried hiring private investigators, but it always ends the same. Always leads her down the same familiar trail. Born in Boston, an only child to parents who both passed on five years ago, leaving behind the home she now lives in, and she is conveniently surrounded by all new neighbors that don't ever recall meeting her or her parents. The woman she was appeared to keep to herself, no known family or friends, making it that much harder to comb through the details.

It's almost as if she never really existed.

She leans down and kisses the downy head, and her senses fill with her daughter. The tiny girl locked forever into Regina's heart. She holds her face close to the baby's head and inhales time and time again. She can't ever get enough of her.

As her stomach fills, the baby's eyes close and she is lost in the bliss of a full tummy. She pulls her long dark hair that's fallen over her shoulder back, and throwing a small towel in it's place, Regina lifts her up gently and pats her back. She closes her eyes, and wonders if she can ever be enough for her daughter, in this place where she apparently has lived all her life, but feels like a complete stranger.

She can hardly accept herself that she knows nothing of her baby's father, so how can she expect a child to do so? She knows there is someone. Obviously, her daughter is proof enough of that, but where is he? For months and months, Regina wondered if he was searching for her, just as she was for him. Perhaps, he lives in another town, and maybe, just maybe, he is the reason she left Boston in the first place? Was she on her way back from seeing him?

There is no record of her ever being married, in any state, she knows. She's checked. At least she knows for certain that she is not divorced or widowed, which is even more frustrating than it is a relief because it just means she has no trail to follow. Nothing that can lead her to the father of her precious baby girl, and there is something, she can't explain it, but there is something that she feels when she looks down at her daughter and thinks of him. A pull on her heart, and she doesn't know what it means, but she is overwhelmed with the sense that he is out there. So she just lets herself feel and hopes one day she'll wake up and remember.

The silence of the house is shattered by a knock on the door downstairs.

Regina reluctantly places her tiny daughter back in her crib, stroking her head gently and tucking a blanket around her, making sure she's settled before she goes to answer the door.

Tying her robe, she heads downstairs, wondering who it could be. Her one and only friend, Natalie, who she met in Lamaze class is on vacation with her family, and she doesn't think she's expecting any deliveries today. She has been doing an awful lot of shopping online, and it's so much more convenient than packing up a newborn. Not with Amazon Prime and free two day delivery.

Opening the door, she smiles at the man who stands there. "Hello, can I help you?"

She watches his face as his eyes grow wide, and he sucks in a breath. Her smile fades as she notices the tears that gather in his eyes. She does not recognize him, but she can see a million emotions vying for dominance across his kind face. His eyes taking her in, and searching hers, for what she's not sure, but when he starts to take a step forward she takes one back and he stops himself.

"Regina," he breathes, it's a broken breath, and his voice does something to her. Something familiar. So she opens the door a bit wider.

"Do… do I know you?" she asks, a bit breathlessly herself. Could it be, after so long someone is finally trying to find her?

He bites his lip, and he nods. "You do, milady," he tells her, and smiles gently, reassuringly, even as a few tears fall from his eyes, and it's those eyes that have her attention. That draws her to open the door a bit wider, to take a small step closer to him. "I've been searching for you for so long."

I don't own the characters but this crazy idea is all mine.