Author's Note: It never fails to boggle my mind how awesome you all are. Thank you so much for the reviews and favorites and alerts! I hope you enjoy this next part, and I apologize if "High Hopes" ends up stuck in your head. If it's any consolation, it's been stuck in mine for days. ;)

Emma watched with barely concealed mirth as her father and her son talked over one another, both exuberantly offering to tell the first story. The mild look of panic on Snow's face told Emma that she couldn't decide which one she should allow to talk first. Deciding to give her mother a break, Emma spoke up over the both of them, "I'm telling the first story."

All three members of her family turned to her with identical looks of surprise.

Her offer to tell the first story wasn't entirely altruistic, of course. She had figured that getting her story out of the way would allow her to relax enough to appreciate everyone else's stories. Now that she had her family's full attention, however, she was questioning the wisdom of that decision. The whole telling stories thing? Not generally on the top of Emma's list of Fun Things To Do.

Henry made a move to snuggle up with Emma again and then stopped, glancing at Snow. He clearly wanted to comfort his sick mother but didn't dare go against his grandmother's wishes. I feel you, kid, Emma thought. She wanted nothing more than to get up from this damn couch and go about her day as usual but the mere thought of the argument doing so would cause was exhausting.

"So, um, what do you want to know?" she asked somewhat uncomfortably.

"Anything you want to tell us," David replied softly.

Sighing quietly, she wracked her brain for a story to tell. Most of Emma's childhood was … not dark, necessarily, but not full of puppies and kittens, either. Some of the foster families were actually quite nice but for one reason or another, she never stayed with the nice ones very long. Or maybe her time with them just seemed so short when compared with the time spent with the not so nice ones. Either way, she had a whole bunch of painful memories and comparatively few good ones.

She didn't want to tell her family about the painful ones, of course. Not right now, not when she was sick and they weren't really prepared for it. Besides, Henry wanted this little exercise to be fun. "I could tell you about the time I accidentally joined chorus class," she said eventually, giving a tiny shrug.

Henry's eyes lit up with excitement. "You like to sing?"

Oh, no. She was nipping this in the bud as fast as she could. "Not at all," she admitted, smiling to let him down gently, "hence the 'accidentally.'"

Snow raised her eyebrows and grinned at her daughter. "This sounds like something I need to hear."

A glance at David proved he was just as interested as his wife, and Henry … well, the kid was practically bouncing up and down in anticipation. Apparently, this was indeed the story she was going to tell. "Okay. I was in fifth grade–"

"So you were my age," Henry interrupted.

"Yes," Emma said, smiling at the dreamy look in his eye as he regarded her. Was he now trying to picture her as a little girl his own age? "If we got to school before the first bell we had to wait outside on the playground. They'd have us line up at the first bell and then they'd let us in at the second."

"Schools do that to avoid having a bunch of kids running through the school without proper supervision," Snow broke in. When she realized everyone had looked at her with amused grins on their faces, her cheeks flushed a light shade of pink. "I was a teacher for twenty-eight years. These are the kinds of things you pick up after a while."

"I guess so," Emma chuckled, then sneezed into her elbow. Clearly, the decongestant had started to kick in. Snow handed Emma a box of tissues. "Thank you. I always got to school really early because both my foster parents had to get to work. I didn't mind because I liked having the time to play before school. One morning it was cold ... like, really cold. I was in a hand-me-down winter coat that was too big for me and I didn't have gloves because someone had stolen them from my coat pockets. My foster father thought I'd lost them and didn't want to admit it, so he refused to buy me another pair. He said it would teach me to have respect for my belongings or something like that."

Emma pretended not to notice the horrified looks on her parents' faces at the thought of their baby girl suffering through a Maine winter in improper outerwear. "The chorus met during music classes each week, but it also met before school in the cafeteria for any student who wanted to get in some extra practice. That morning, I went to chorus class. It was the only way I could think of to get warm."

She paused, feeling another sneeze coming on. After a moment, the feeling just disappeared, making her wonder where those sneezes went when that happened. Did they just disappear into the ether, kind of like traffic jams that clear up out of the blue?

"That was a pretty smart idea," David smiled.

Emma smiled back. "The music teacher had the third- and fourth-graders doing a bunch of kids' songs. The one I remember them working on most was Frank Sinatra's 'High Hopes.'"

"I think I know that song!" Henry exclaimed. "That's the one about the ant moving a plant and the ram punching a hole in a dam, right?"

"Yep," Emma replied, unable to hide her grin at her son's enthusiasm. "How the hell do you know Sinatra?"

He shrugged. "It was on a tape of kids' songs my mom bought me when I was little. I never knew who sang it. "

It was then that Emma realized she liked hearing the nice things Regina had done for Henry. Those nice things didn't make everything else okay – not by a long shot – at least Henry did have some good memories of growing up with Regina. "She had the fifth- and six-graders doing songs that were a little more complex. The day I crashed the class, she started them on 'The Rose' by Bette Midler."

"I know that one," Snow said with a gentle smile.

"I don't," Henry frowned.

Oh, nice try, kid, Emma thought with a smirk. "I'm not singing it for you, so get that thought out of your little head right now."

Henry's lower lip jutted out, turning his frown into a pout. Emma had to look away before he had the chance to give her the full-on puppy dog eyes. She was most emphatically not singing, today or ever. "Anyway, I thought the song was pretty, so I kept going back to chorus in the mornings just to hear it. I never sang, though … I just listened. A couple weeks later, the teacher kept me after the first bell and asked why I kept coming even though I didn't participate. I admitted I liked the song, and with sudden understanding, she said, 'The first time we played it, I thought I saw tears in your eyes.'"

Tears were beginning to gather in her mother's eyes, and her father had grasped Snow's hand. Aw, why the hell had Emma thought this story would be all right to tell? Maybe she should stop, but she was too far into it now. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that. "She knew a little bit about my situation. All the teachers did. It was a small school and I started about a month into the year, so I kind of stood out to them, I guess. Anyway, she told me that the song was true. That love starts with something small and blossoms into something huge and wonderful. And she said that someday I'd have it and then I'd understand."

Emma looked up to find that Snow's tears had spilled over and David now looked choked up as well. Defying his grandmother's orders, Henry threw himself across the sofa and cuddled up next to Emma. He latched onto her hand, raised her arm, and draped it around his shoulders. "She was right, you know," he murmured as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "You do have love now."

"I know, Henry," she whispered, squeezing his shoulders a little tighter. She met her parents' eyes before giving them both a tiny smile. "I know."

She held onto her son for a long beat before letting him go and inhaling deeply through her nose. Well, as deeply as she could inhale through her nose, which, admittedly, was not very deeply at all. Henry let out a quiet laugh at her little groan and sat up straight. He didn't go back to the other end of the sofa, choosing instead to remain tucked up against his mother. Snow sighed but allowed the contact.

Emma cleared her throat, trying to find some way to get this story back on comfortable ground. "After we talked a little bit more, I asked her if she was going to rat me out for not participating. She said I was welcome in class for as long as I wanted to keep coming."

David smiled at her. "Did you ever end up singing anything?"

"Yeah," Emma admitted sheepishly. "It seems that chorus classes exist to prepare students for, you know, concerts. Participation at the concert counted as a test grade, so it was either go and sing or take a zero. Taking a zero in chorus because I didn't like to sing seemed stupid, so I sang. After the concert, the music teacher told me I had a pretty voice and she wished I would sing more. I told her she was lucky she got that much."

Snow raised her eyebrows at her daughter. "I'm surprised she let you get away with talking to her like that."

"I wasn't mean about it," Emma shrugged. "I think my sass amused her."

David chuckled. "I'm sure it did."

"Is that sarcasm?" Emma asked with a mock affronted look.

"Not at all. Your sass is delightful." He winked, causing Emma to smile back despite herself.

"I still don't know that song," Henry said after a moment of silence had passed. "The one you liked in your class, I mean."

"And I'm still not singing it for you," Emma reminded him. Henry wrinkled his nose in disappointment. "If you want to get me my phone, I'll try to find a video of it. That's all you're going to get, kid. Take it or leave it."

Since he was obviously not going to trick Emma into singing, Henry got up from the couch and set off in search of Emma's phone. "I'm sorry," she murmured to her parents when he was out of earshot. "I remembered that story being funnier than it was."

"There's no need to apologize, Emma," Snow assured her. She exchanged a glance with her husband, who nodded at her. "When Charming said we want to know, he didn't mean just the funny things. We want to hear everything. We want to know how you became the lovely, wonderful, amazing woman sitting in front of us."

Well, damn it, now Emma's eyes were welling up. This wasn't fair! She was sick! How could she be expected to keep her emotions in proper check when she felt this rotten? This was another thing she needed to nip in the bud. Right now. "Noted. Now someone else needs to tell a story that's actually funny because I'm sick and I say so."

"But I thought you weren't sick," David teased.

"If it'll get me something, damn straight I'm sick."

"I can tell a funny story," Henry said as he ran back to the couch with Emma's phone in hand, "but I want to hear the song first."

Emma sighed as she took her phone from his hand. "You better make us laugh a lot, kid, because I failed quite miserably in that department."

"And what if I don't?" Henry challenged, grinning.

"There will be consequences," Emma replied without looking up from her phone.

"What kind of consequences?"

"Tickle consequences," David broke in, making Emma grin.

Henry gasped in mock horror. "No! Not tickle consequences!"

"Then you'd better be stand-up-comedy funny, kid," Emma replied. She started the video she'd found and handed the phone over to her son.

"Tickle consequences aren't just for Henry," David said, his little wink at Snow betraying the solemnity of his voice. "Tickle consequences are for everyone."

Emma arched a brow at her father. "I'm only saying this once, just to give you fair warning: everyone who has ever tried to tickle me has ended up with my elbow in their face."

Snow burst out laughing. "Why on earth does that not surprise me?"