"How did you meet him?" Snow asked her that afternoon over their lunch break at Granny's.

"We stole the same car," she said simply, shrugging and continuing to chew her salad.

"You what?" Snow asked, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead.

"It's not too hard, I can teach you how if you want," Emma said, mopping up some ketchup with a fry. She popped it in her mouth and looked up to see Snow, her mouth agape, staring back at her.

"I was fresh out of the system," Emma said defensively, wiping her hands together so that a few crumbs fell onto her plate. "I didn't have any place to stay and I spent the summer sleeping in the park but then it started to get cold, and the men around started to get too comfortable with the young blonde teen living on the streets, so I needed to find somewhere else to stay."

Snow remembered her first night in the woods, how cold it had been. She had not really ever spoken with Emma about how she had grown up. Back when she was just her best friend, Mary Margaret had been happy to accept the fact that Emma had grown up in the foster system, whatever vague and distant terrors that meant, and that she didn't like to talk much about her past. Now, as her mother, she felt a whole new need to delve into her daughter's upbringing a bit more.

"Why were you living on the street?" Snow asked, trying to keep a light air in her tone, but her voice seeped with a dampness of maternal concern that did not go unnoticed by her daughter. Emma was never one to get into an emotional conversation.

"The point is that I should have known better than to date a guy who I met asleep in a stolen car," she said evasively. "Won't make that mistake twice."

"But why…?" Snow persisted, but Emma cut her off.

"Trust me," she said in a low voice, looking not at her mother but into her coffee, "you do not want to know how I ended up living on the street."

"But I do, Emma," Snow prodded, leaning forward. How could she make her daughter understand how much she wanted to know every little detail she had missed? "I want to know everything about you."

"Yeah, well," Emma sighed, leaning back against the cushion of the booth, "I don't really want to talk about it, so why don't we switch the subject. How's the ball coming along?"

"It's coming along fine, date set for two weeks from now, but nice try," Snow sighed. "My attention is not so easily subverted. Now let's get back to..."

"Who was Graham?" Emma blurted out, her voice low. She took her eyes from the rim of her mug to meet Snow's, who had stopped mid-sentence.

"Emma," Snow started softly, but Emma sensed the condescension in her voice and continued before she could deter her from reiterating the question.

"I know he's gone and I know I – we can't get him back, but still it's really been bugging me, not knowing. Who was he? Back in your land? Which – which character?"

"Do you really want to know," Snow asked, a hesitation lingering sadly in her eyes.

"Yes, I really do," Emma insisted. Snow took a long breath before answering.

"He was the huntsman."

Emma sat in silence for a moment, her eyes locked with her mother, piecing together what she remembered of the stories she had heard as a child. She blinked.

"As in the huntsman who…"

"Regina sent into the woods to kill me," Snow confirmed, her head tilted sympathetically to the side.

"Right," Emma said, her mind still processing.

"He spared my life, Emma," Snow said kindly. "I think he was actually beginning to remember our past lives before he died. He came to me and started talking about how we had known each other in another life."

"He did remember," Emma told her, looking back up at her. "Right before he died, he kissed me and then he said, 'I remember'. And then… Regina killed him." She looked up at Snow. "How?"

"Regina took his heart as punishment for letting me keep mine," Snow said, failing to keep warm pools of water from dampening her eyes. "She must have kept it somewhere here. I'm so sorry, Emma, I know how much you cared about him." Snow reached over the table to grab her daughter's hand, but Emma pulled it away and dug it into her pocket.

"I didn't," she said stubbornly, pulling out a twenty-dollar bill from her pocket and tossing it on the table. She did not meet her mother's eyes. "It was just a fling, that's all. I was just curious. I gotta get back to the station."

Snow watched her daughter turn and walk for the door, and her heart melted a bit. For the pain she had experienced all her life and her inability to accept she had felt it because it was so strong. When Emma got to the door, however, she halted, her hand resting on the knob. She turned back to Snow, and there was a realization forming in her eyes.

"She must have kept it somewhere here," she whispered, repeating what Snow had just said. "That night, we… the graveyard…" She locked eyes with her mother. "I think I know where we can find Regina."