We introduce Henry. Also, Mayor Mills has decided to make an appearance, and the David/Kathryn business ends (thank goodness).
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PART THREE: 21 Years
He wakes in an empty bed. It has been empty for, oh, hardly remembers, but perhaps several weeks, or maybe a few months. Kathryn is rooming at Granny's for the time being and he cannot say he misses her. He should, he knows, and some part of him does, deep down, but he thinks it is more that he misses how they used to be long ago than that he misses her.
He has memories of being very, very happily married, so happily married that his chest aches just thinking of it, but none of the memories are clear, and when they come to him (as they are now, lying here alone in his and Kathryn's bed, staring at the ceiling on a Saturday morning) they are more impressions and sensations than images and voices, like a dream long forgotten.
David closes his eyes, and the memories tug at the edges of his mind, sharper and more insistent than they have been in a long while. He grips handfuls of blanket in both fists, as if the rough, tactile sensation of flannel against his rough palms will sharpen the memories.
Female laughter. A large, spacious room with a bay window. Dark, curly hair tangled in his fingers. More laughter.
He opens his eyes, frustrated and a little embarrassed. Is he remembering a dream, or his marriage to Kathryn? He doesn't remember her ever having dark hair, and he is sure they have never had a bay window. How strange.
He rolls out of bed and the memories trickle away as he dresses and pads barefoot downstairs to fix himself a bowl of cereal.
Twenty minutes later he is sliding into the cab of his truck and starting the engine. There is no school, no football practice until early afternoon, and his truck has been making unnatural rattling noises that he is determined to fix himself (high school teachers' salary doesn't lend him much leeway as far as truck repairs go, especially not with highly-probably divorce fees looming in his near future).
"Good morning, Mr. Nolan."
He is on his back under his truck, but he peers out from behind the front tire to see a pair of black pumps and the long legs belonging to Mayor Mills parked a foot or two away. He edges out from under the truck and grabs a rag to wipe away the grease from his right hand. He sees immediately that it is pointless.
"Sorry, Mayor, I'd shake your hand, but…" he waves his blackened hand in the air and she smiles and shakes her head.
"No need for formalities. I was just wondering if you'd seen Henry."
"Henry?" Oh, yes, the Mayor's beloved dog. A slightly mischievous but fairly loveable beagle with a tendency to wander off at inconvenient times.
"Oh, no…" Mayor Mills brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes and looks out across the street. "I'll find him. Sorry to interrupt your work."
"No trouble. Sure you don't want help? I'd be happy to."
She pauses and looks him in the eyes. He tries his best to look sincere. He's not the biggest fan of the way Mayor Mills runs the town, but she is a good friend of Kathryn's and he knows it'll be to his advantage to make a good impression on his soon-to-be ex-wife's circle of confidants if the divorce proceedings get heated. Besides, he likes her dog, quirky little habits and all.
Mayor Mills apparently decides he's trustworthy, because she finally sighs and nods. "Thank you. I'd appreciate it. Just give me a call if he turns up, okay?"
"Sure." David scrubs fruitlessly at his hands as he watches her walk away, gives up, tosses the rag in the back of the truck, and heads off in the opposite direction.
He is walking down the sidewalk wondering where to begin his search when he sees something strange and unexpected.
This strange and unexpected something is a young woman, probably in her early twenties, walking down the sidewalk towards him. She is wearing a brown leather jacket and her long blonde hair is pulled up in a ponytail at the crown of her head. She is wearing glasses and leather boots, and she is a complete stranger.
Strangers aren't something Storybrooke is used to seeing, and so when she gets close enough David acts on instinct (impulse) and smiles at her. "Hi," he says. "Beautiful day."
She smiles back, a little tentatively, and nods. "Gorgeous."
"I'm David," he says, and holds out a hand before remembering that it's stained yellow and gray and black with engine oil. She glances at it and he withdraws it quickly. "Sorry. I won't make you shake that."
She laughs, and he thinks oddly for a moment that her laugh is familiar, but then the moment is gone and he has forgotten about it.
"Are you new here?" he asks, surprised at his boldness, but he has never been one to reign in his curiosity. "Storybrooke doesn't get many visitors."
"Yeah, I can tell," she says, glancing up the street. "Sleepy little place, isn't it?"
"You could say that," he says. "Not a whole lot happens here."
"Yeah, I can see that." She gives him a quick up-and-down, but it's not so much checking him out as taking him in. Something warm flares in his chest.
"Sorry, I didn't catch your name," he says, and she bites her lip and grins a little.
"I didn't give it." She pauses. "It's Emma. My name is Emma."
Emma is 21, a college student on break from Boston, and when she hears that David is looking for a dog she volunteers to help him look.
"I'm good at finding things," she says, and he agrees to let her tag along.
"So, what brings you to Storybrooke?" he asks. She stuffs her hands in her back jeans pockets and shrugs.
"Just out for a drive. I have a thing for small towns tucked away in the middle of nowhere."
"Well, you hit the jackpot with this small town," he says. "It's about as nowhere as you can get."
"No kidding." But she doesn't seem to mind it—she is taking it all in, in fact, and the way she examines every house, every shop, every street corner, is like she's trying to commit it all to memory.
"So, where are you from originally?" David asks. Having a conversation with her is like pulling teeth, but he feels strangely drawn to her, and he has not felt so relaxed since Kathryn moved out (whenever that was).
Emma shrugs. "Here and there. My mom and I move around a lot."
"Just you and her?"
She nods. "Yep. Always just been the two of us. My dad…left…when I was a baby."
"I'm sorry." And he genuinely is. No girl should lose her father, he thinks, and no woman should lose her husband or lover or whatever he was. Instinct tells him to reach out and touch her shoulder, her arm, but he catches himself in time and shoves his hands in his jacket pockets instead. "I bet he regrets that now."
Emma is quiet for a moment. "He didn't want to leave," she says finally, and looks him in the eyes. Her stare is intense, like she's trying to tell him something without words. "He had to. That's…that's kind of what I'm doing, here. Looking for him."
"And…you think he's in Storybrooke?" He doesn't want to sound skeptical, but Storybrooke isn't really the place that missing fathers retire to when they're done being family men.
Emma smiles but doesn't respond. She looks out across the street (they have nearly reached the ocean now) and shields her eyes against the glare of the sun on the water. "Hey, is that the dog you're looking for?"
He shields his eyes too and looks out at the old playground near the water's edge. A small brown shape is pattering around in the sand by the swings, and he grins. "That's him. Good eye."
"I told you…I'm good at finding things."
Emma is only in town for a few hours, but he manages to convince her to let him buy her lunch at Granny's before she heads out to thank her for helping him find Henry. They sit across a table from each other and David has to stop himself from staring at her. Something about this young woman is so familiar, and he has finally placed what that something was he felt when she was talking about her father—he had wanted to protect her. She does not seem the type of woman to need protecting, but nevertheless he wants to and he does not know why.
"So," he says when their food arrives (they ordered the exact same dish, which made them laugh and made David feel warm and comfortable). "How long have you been looking for your father?"
Emma chews on a french fry reflectively and washes it down with a swallow of water. "My whole life, I guess," she says slowly. "My mom and I are always looking. Sometimes we get close to finding him. Every few years we think maybe, just maybe, we have…but it's never quite him. Not yet. So we keep waiting. Someday we'll turn around and he'll be right there, right where he's always been."
This is the most she's said to him yet, and he doesn't want her to lose momentum. "What makes you so sure you'll find him?"
Emma's lip twitches. "Hope. We have hope we will."
"Hope…hope can be a powerful thing," he says, and though he's not sure where the words came from, they feel good.
"My mom says the same thing." She is watching him, practically dissecting him with her gaze, and he stares back at her solidly until she realizes what she's doing and looks away with a blush.
"Sorry," she says. "You look a little like him, you know. My dad. Old pictures."
"Oh," David says. "Handsome guy, then."
She looks up, startled, and then laughs. He likes making her laugh.
When she stands up to leave, he insists on walking her to her car. She walks him out to the curb and down a few streets to where she's parked a little yellow bug in front of a meter. She fishes for her keys in one jeans pocket and then looks at him as if she's about to say something. Her mouth opens, closes, and opens again.
"Thanks for lunch," she says, though he's 99% certain that's not what she set out to say.
"Thanks for the help with Henry," he says. "Mayor Mills was thrilled."
Emma's lips drop into a slight frown—she had been quiet when they'd dropped Henry off at the Mansion…hadn't said a word in fact, though Mayor Mills had thanked her warmly several times. He doesn't think they have ever met, but he can tell that Emma does not like the Mayor in the slightest, which both intrigues and bothers him.
"Glad to help," she says.
"Hey, if you're ever in town again, feel free to stop by," he says impulsively as she gets into her car. Everything he's done today seems to have been done by impulse. "Maybe I can return the favor and help you look for your father."
She smiles, but he sees tears glinting in her big blue eyes and that need, that need to protect her surges wild and powerful inside him. "Thanks," she says. "I might take you up on that."
And then she closes the door and starts the engine, and he steps back and watches her drive away.
He goes home and tinkers with his truck for a few minutes, and then goes inside to call his lawyer.
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