v.
When Henry is seven he starts asking questions about her father.
"Why'd you name me after him, Momma?" He's kneeling on a stool in the kitchen, 'helping' her make breakfast.
She nearly slices her finger off instead of the onion and puts down the knife before answering him. She's deliberately spoken very rarely of her mother, there's too much anger and hurt and pain to talk about that- and she's never, ever, spoken of Leopold to him. But her father, she's spun him tales of adventure that only happened in her imagination, not exactly lying, but not exactly telling the truth. They did ride horses together when she was young.
"My father died and I was bereft -" she starts to tell the story, again.
"What's bare-ift, Momma?" Henry asks, brown eyes curious.
"I was very, very sad, Henry," She kisses his forehead and leans her left hip against the counter, "Very sad. He was very important to me and after he died I missed him constantly. He meant so much to me, that I named you, my little prince, after him."
He wrinkles his nose as she touches it, and asks, "He sanged that song to you, right, the one you sing to me at bedtime?"
"Yes," she smiles at him, trying to convey the actual depth of her feeling for him through her eyes and mouth, "He sangthat song to me. It's one of the few things that he taught me from his father's land, your great-grandfather, Xavier."
Henry turns and mulls this over, waiting for their omelettes and bacon to finish cooking before speaking again. "Did you have a Momma too, Momma?" He works it through in his head as he chews and swallows his bacon, "You have to have a Momma and Dad right? Did I have a Dad?"
She's been expecting this since his first question, but the seven minutes since has hardly been time enough to prepare anything and she still chokes on her eggs, but covers it quickly by drinking her coffee. She steadies herself with a quick hand pressed to her stomach; she's stared down the most evil people in the kingdoms, surely she can face one dark haired boy who holds her heart.
"My Mom," She swallows almost reflexively, even here she can't bring herself to call her that, "My Mother, she was a very hard worker, who worked very hard to help me succeed and -"
"Did she cook your eggs in the morning?" Henry interrupted again, shoveling his omelette into his mouth, "These are great, Momma, I love the red pepper flakes."
"No, she didn't cook them in the morning, she traveled for work a lot, my father is the one who made me eggs first." Her response is instantaneous and she knows there's no way to tell by looking at her how his questions are rocking her.
She eyes her son and then puts a hand on his fork , "Not so much in your mouth at once, Henry."
He grins up at her, eggs hanging between his missing front tooth, "But eef goot momma."
"And you know better than to talk with food in your mouth," She says reprovingly, but the smile turning up the corners of her mouth belies her words, "You don't have a Daddy like I did, Henry. You just have me."
His mouth is finally empty, and he points the fork at her, and makes a decent imitation of her, saying, "I'm Momma and that's all you need!"
'And you're Henry, and you're all I have.' she thinks, finally picking up her fork and cutting into her omelette. It had only taken her 3 weekends to find the perfect amount of flakes so that Henry would eat it, (the books she kept reading, said at this age Henry was supposed to be a picky eater, and he was definitely that. She had to scrape the pepper off her fish, and the pepper off her pot roast.)
" 'his is great, Momma," Henry declared, dropping his fork and rubbing his belly before turning his face up to beam at her, brown eyes lighting up happily. "Almost better than your pancakes!"
"Almost, oh yeah?" Regina asked, reaching for her coffee. "And what would you like to do with my free Saturday, Henry?"
"THE PARK!" He stood up quickly, before running out of the room, "Me and dino want to go to the park!"
"Then that park it is," she replied, also grinning. His unrestrained joy was beautiful to see, it leaked into the dark parts of her day and made it brighter. She leaned over and bopped him on the nose, "Anything my little Prince wants."