"Mom, you really can't have Henry's teacher's car booted just because you don't like her. Besides, who doesn't like Mary Margaret Blanchard?"
Emma asked with a teasing grin over her coffee at Granny's. She'd been in town for a few months and started to settle into a routine, which included coffee with her mom after sending Henry off on the school bus. Miss. Blanchard, Mary Margaret, Emma had to remind herself, had been teaching at Storybrooke's elementary school as long as she could remember. And there was something reassuring about knowing that Henry would have the same school teachers she had. She'd always known Regina disliked Miss. Blanchard. Part of her-the small mean part of her that made her a good trial attorney-always enjoyed seeing how easily her mother could push the teacher around. Like some sort of mouse caught with cheese. Or maybe that was Regina.
As a child she hadn't really seen it. How terrifically mean her mother could be. Mostly because Regina had tried so hard to keep that from her. When she was a teenager it had caused no small amount of rebellion including a terrifying row practically in the middle of main street that you are pretty sure the town still talks about. Nothing much changed in Storybrooke and things like that stuck in people's minds.
"Miss. Blanchard was illegally parked. I simply called parking enforcement to make sure they were doing their job like a good mayor."
She shook her head. Her mother had been mayor as long as she could remember, and she was good at it. The town ran like Regina's own home. Clock work. Orderly. A little chaos caused by Emma didn't seem to ruffle her because it meant she just had something else to do with her hands. "She was three inches over the line. I'm reasonably sure they had other things to do."
She tilted her head. "Or is this about Graham too?"
That had been, hands down, the strangest fight she'd ever had. Because Graham had kissed her. Not that she minded Graham's kissing in an objective sense. He was a very handsome man, and sweet, but he was feverish, not in his right mind, and not to mention her mother's lover. If she'd thought that had cooled since she caught them sneaking out of Granny's when she was sixteen and finishing her after school job the look on her mother's face two days ago had been enough to disabuse her of that notion. It wasn't jealously, not of Graham exactly, or of her. Some mix of the dark rage that she rarely saw in her mother except around Mary Margaret Blanchard of all people.
Regina put on her politicians face smile. "It's not about Sheriff Graham. You work with him closely, feelings are bound to develop."
Emma reached across to touch her hand. "I don't have feelings for Graham and I'm certainly not about to steal my mother's boyfriend. Even if the dating pool in this town is pretty shallow."
Regina's face softened, and the soft smile of her childhood reappeared again.
"I'm sure there is some prince charming in this town for you, Emma."
"I'd settle for a baron responsible or a lord unafraid of commitment. Do those exist in this town, Mom?"
"Only in stories, Emma."
Mary Margaret Blanchard shifted nervously while she waited. She always managed the volunteers to man the Miner's Day booths, but Emma Mills had offered to help, and Mayor Mills had insisted. Because the mayor could never deny her daughter anything. Not that Mary Margaret had minded that so much when she was a 4th grader in her class, but she'd been a rather bratty teenage bully. The kind that children become when they know they can get away with anything. Well mostly anything. When Regina Mills was angry with her daughter it was a sight to behold.
People in town still talked about that weekend the mayor caught her daughter under the bleachers with the captain of the football team. But a bully turned a lawyer wasn't high on her list of people she wanted to spend a great deal of time with. Even if Henry was one of her best students.
The blond in the nicely tailored suit came through the diner's door, but the smile wasn't what she expected. More Henry than the teenager she remembered. "Miss. Blanchard, I'm sorry I'm late. I got stuck at work."
"I didn't know we had that much crime to keep you busy."
"Crime, no, paperwork yes. I sometimes wonder if paperwork was some curse designed by an evil witch to punish us all." The easy smile wasn't what Mary Margaret expected. Maybe Emma Mills had grown up to be something more than her mother's daughter.
"Shall we get started?"