CHAPTER SIX

It wasn't until Jones upended the toolbox, its contents flying everywhere as he swore so loudly she could hear it from inside the cab, that Emma finally sighed and cracked open her door.

She hopped out and slammed the door after, crossing her arms and shivering at the chill, rounding the front of the rig. Not that it was that much warmer inside the cab, but at least there wasn't a piercing wind, cutting through her coat and hat like they were nothing, driving tiny specks of frigid rain into her flesh.

"Bloodsucking spawn of a pox-ridden pig!" Jones was roaring. "Toad-faced, pustule-ridden congealed pile of vomit!"

He bent to pick up a half-used roll of electric tape and pelted it across the road, still swearing. Emma was impressed at both the soaring arc of the throw and at the creativity of his oaths. She hoped he wouldn't need the tape at a future time.

He stood like a statue for a moment, breathing hard, hands clasped behind his head and his face fiery red with fury as he stared westwards down the road. "Uh," Emma said, not sure how to proceed.

They'd been merrily buzzing down Interstate 70 towards Kansas City, both quiet and retrospective in the miserable weather, when Jones had softly cursed, staring down at his feet as if something was wrong. Then the rig had swayed abruptly to one side, jolting back onto the road; his Bloody hell! had been quite a bit louder that time. There was a loud bang from below, which had made her scream a little, and before she had recovered her composure, Jones had pulled over, yanked up the parking brakes, and cut the engine before leaping from the truck. He'd been outside the rig for nearly an hour, fussing with machinery Emma couldn't even identify, much less offer to help with.

Now he whirled, dropping his arms and looking mildly embarrassed. He coughed, looking down at the scattered contents of the toolbox, anger seeming to fade. "Hey," he said. "Sorry, lass. I, ah… got a bit carried away, maybe."

Emma refrained from asking if he'd had any luck fixing the problem; that he'd failed was obvious. She shrugged and moved forward, kneeling down to pick up a few scattered spark plugs and wires. "No need to be sorry," she said finally. "So… what's next?"

He heaved a deep sigh, as if the world might end at that moment, and knelt with her to pick up more tools, throwing them back into the box a little more forcefully than necessary. "I think I have to call for a tow truck," he said, crestfallen.

Then the ire returned for a moment, and he sat back on his heels. "If only I could get my bloody hands on that no-good, thieving shit-stain back in Scranton who had the gall to charge me for brake inspection..." he muttered darkly, shaking his head.

"Is it the brakes, then?" Emma asked curiously. She'd helped him block the wheels earlier, but had gone back inside the rig while he rootled around under the engine compartment, readily accepting his curt excuse that he'd rather not have anyone in the way.

Jones looked up with thunderous brows, but they relaxed as he saw her genuine curiosity. "Yes, it is. I think I've totally lost compression," he explained gruffly. "I thought it was a minor air leak when I first felt it, and that we could just limp into town. But there's oil all over the crankcase, one of the piston linings has gone, and…"

He waved a gloved hand, sighing and hanging his head; he was wearing a heavy coat, but she could see his shoulders almost invisibly trembling with the cold. Emma could feel her own hands starting to go numb, and wished fervently she had any idea what he was talking about.

At last he sighed again, tossed a few more things back into the toolbox, then slapped it shut and rose with a grunt. "Well, anyway," he said unhappily, "the short and the long of it is, like I said, I'm going to have to call for a tow. I'm sorry, this is… it's never happened to me before."

With that brusque explanation, he shook his head and disappeared around the side of the rig to put the toolbox back. Emma rounded back to the passenger's door and got in, slamming the door and rubbing her hands together.

Jones got in, and to her surprise, turned the key to start the engine. At her noise of dismay, he turned, half-heartedly smiling. "It's just the brakes. The engine itself is all right, far as I can tell, so no need for us to freeze while we wait," he said with a shrug. "So long as we don't drive off anywhere…"

"Oh," Emma said, feeling stupid. "Right."

As he reached down to pull out his log book—to write down the incident, maybe?—Emma pulled out her phone to check the map. "There's… there's a repair place not too far away that says it takes semi trucks," she said cautiously. "Maybe fifteen, twenty miles away, close to the city?"

Jones looked up, and his face lightened ever so perceptibly. "Is there? Well, that's good news," he said, and went back to scribbling in the log book. He closed it, then pulled out his own phone, heaving a deep breath before reluctantly dialing. Emma could tell that he was far more grieved and angry than he was letting on, and wished again that she could think of something to say.

She turned away, watching out the window and pretending not to listen as he talked to someone on the other end; an employer, perhaps, or maybe just the same service place she'd seen. Emma pondered for a minute whether she should feel nervous: but what for? The weather outside might be disgusting, but Jones didn't seem perturbed by the actual idea of calling for a tow truck. No, she knew without even asking that he was desolate over the rig itself. This truck is his home, after all, she thought sadly. I should know what it feels like to have your home broken and taken away from you.

After a few minutes' talk, he hung up the phone and turned to her, jaw clenching briefly before speaking. "A tow's on its way," he said tonelessly, trying and failing to smile at her. "But it'll be late afternoon by the time we get there, because there's only a few places that take hazmat trailers and they're all on the other side of town. So my guess is that we'll probably have to leave her there until morning. Maybe we'll be holed up someplace with real beds tonight, eh?"

Emma was about to jokingly respond that she certainly wouldn't mind a featherbed; but then she thought better of it and just smiled back, not wanting to make him feel worse.

They'd been almost exclusively on the road since leaving Pittsburgh the day before, keeping on the road for nearly nine hours before stopping somewhere in eastern Illinois to refuel and stay at another truck stop until the wee hours of this morning. Jones hadn't said another word about that night outside his friend's house, much to Emma's relief. Possessed of a brand-new sleeping bag (which she had conveniently found for sale at the truck stop), she found herself liking the snug little top bunk, the inside of the cab quiet all night except for the occasional whish of traffic or babble of voices from outside. They'd both done laundry at the stop, too, so her coat and beanie smelled as fresh as the pillow and sheet in her bunk.

I sort of miss the man-smell, though, she thought, with guilt.

She had long since finished her second novel, and for the last couple hundred miles they had been listening to books on tape as they drove; Jones apparently had a few dozen on his phone at any given point. Now they sat in the gradually warming cab, listening to the same book they'd left off with. It was some kind of mystery, probably with a strange twist at the end.

Emma only half-listened to it, watching the wind whip the sleet and rain around outside the window, absently scanning the horizon for two truck headlights. A few vehicles had passed by, but a rig idling well off the side of the road obviously wasn't anything remarkable, because no one stopped.

They listened to the book for close to an hour before Jones suddenly sat up and slapped off the radio. He groaned, rubbing his hand briskly over his face, turning to her.

"I can't think in circles anymore, it's starting to hurt," he said ruefully. "Did you ever get that, lass? When you're worried about something, and you can't stop thinking about it?"

Emma snorted. "Yes, I have," she answered, refraining from adding that she had been doing it nonstop for the past three days. "The book's not doing me any good, either. Want to just… talk, instead?"

"Let's do," he said with relief; to her surprise, he leaned back in his seat and put a boot up against the dash. "Ask me something. No secrets in this rig."

She grinned at that, pursing her lips and thinking for a moment. "Never have I ever…" she began, putting up her hand with the fingers spread, and he chuckled.

There were a hundred questions she would really love to ask, but Emma felt it was better to settle for a relatively neutral topic. "How'd you get started driving?" she asked. "Obviously you like it now, but was it something you always wanted to do?"

Jones relaxed, rotating his seat slightly back and forth, looking for all the world like a bored child at a library. "Well, I suppose I was born into it," he said with a shrug. "I grew up with me old uncle, a mechanic. He was a horrible old man. Still is, I'm sure. But… well, he did more than my dad did, which was keep a roof over our heads and shoes on our feet. He ran a repair shop outside Kent, and I drove my first lorry when I was about eleven. Twelve, maybe."

Lorry. Emma hid a smile. She'd never heard anyone actually use that word aloud, just on British television.

Jones caught her expression, and smiled in return. "What?"

"Nothing," she said, waving a hand. "I just like listening to you talk, that's all."

It was Jones' turn to snort. "You'd be about the first," he joked. But he grew serious of a sudden, looking out the window. "Aye, I suppose I came by it honestly, though. My older brother, he was always wild about cars, too. He'd done a trade program and was driving and repairing armoured vehicles for the military, and talked me into enlisting once I'd finished school. Then it was my turn to go off and drive for the old bootnecks, barreling around Baghdad and Fallujah in Humvees and trucks and the like."

Emma raised her eyebrows, and he laughed, clarifying, "Sorry, 'bootnecks' – the Royal Marines."

Even though she'd already known—she had given him back the keychain shortly after they left Scranton—it still made Emma a little breathless to hear him say it aloud. "I see," she said thoughtfully. "Still not sure how that led to you driving a huge tractor-trailer around Midwestern America, though."

Jones smiled crookedly at her. "Yes, that. Let's just say it's hard enough to drive an American rig with one hand, love. Now picture me trying to do it with the stick on the left and the wheel on the right. I had the bug in me for driving, I just needed to find the right place to accommodate my, ah, peculiar talents."

He was perfectly unselfconscious about it, bright-eyed and calm, having stuck his arms out to demonstrate the difficulty of operating a right-hand-drive vehicle. "I see," Emma said, her mouth dry. She hesitated, then asked, "So that's where… when you were in the Royal Marines…?"

He opened his mouth, bemused, then shook his head. "No, sorry. I meant…." He laughed suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Didn't explain that very well, did I? No, I more or less came back from Iraq in one piece. Not a scratch on me, to look at. It was, er… an accident after that where I lost the hand."

Emma didn't miss the catch in his voice, the hesitation and slight stammer before he said accident. But she wasn't about to ask for more details.

"My…" he continued, then stopped. She had noticed his eyes creeping toward the keys dangling from the ignition, and they fixed briefly on the braided keychain. His throat bobbed, and he deliberately spoke with caution. "It was my brother who didn't come back in one piece."

Or at all, his tone said. Emma couldn't think of any helpful way to respond. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

Jones shrugged, twisting his seat back and forth again, offering her a sad smile. "Thanks, love. It's been fifteen years, so I suppose I've gotten some measure of closure. I just… sometimes it doesn't seem fair that after all the shit Liam got me through when we were younger, he lost his life to a bloody land mine while my arse sat safe in an LAV, watching it happen on a grainy little camera."

His voice had grown so low that she could barely hear it; and when he stopped, swallowing again, the whip of the wind outside seemed oppressively loud. Emma fumbled for a moment, then was struck with a moment of inspiration. "So you came all the way to the States and started driving here?" she inquired. "That must have taken a mountain of paperwork."

Jones' face brightened at the change in subject; she was glad of it. "You have no idea," he said darkly. "The idea of a British citizen, trying to get a visa to earn a CDL and drive bloody trucks? It was like I'd suggested riding a pink elephant across the border."

He grinned widely as she laughed. "But thanks to a friend with a good lawyer, it all worked out. And that was nearly ten years ago, so a bit easier than it would be today. I just got my citizenship papers a few weeks back," he added, with a hint of pride in his voice.

But regret, too, if Emma wasn't mistaken. She knew instinctively why. "Congratulations," she said warmly.

Jones nodded his thanks, a corner of his mouth still curled with pleasure. A short silence fell; Emma absently wondered what he would look like in uniform. She found it all too easy to imagine him standing tall and proper in camouflage battle dress and boots, perhaps with his arm slung around a companion and an easy grin on his face, hair sheared short and eyes alight with patriotic energy.

"So," she said abruptly, almost startling herself. "Your turn."

He stared at her, then blinked. "For…? Oh, to ask a question?" he asked, and she nodded in response. He removed his foot from the dashboard, sitting up straighter. The wind whistled powerfully past the corner of the truck, and Emma imagined (or did she?) that it rocked the cab slightly.

Jones seemed to be thinking deeply about his first question, forehead creased. "Well," he said, reasonably, "let's start with: did you grow up in Bangor?"

Emma shook her head. Her throat clenched, and her gut was beginning to roil at the thought of telling Jones—anyone, really—the tale of her stupid, worthless life. But she'd opened the door; he was just walking through it. "No," she answered, "and nor did I grow up in Maine. I'm from… all over, sort of. My parents gave me up as a baby, and I bounced around the foster system when I was a little kid."

Jones made a cautious little noise and nodded. She took a deep breath. "For awhile I was a bail bondsperson in New York, but I came to Maine a year or so ago. Settled in this little town called Storeybrooke, out on the water near that island preserve," she explained. "Pretty much the day I set foot over the town line, I made a bad enemy of the mayor—Regina Mills, this prissy, power-mad—" Bitch, she wanted to say, but that was too easy"—queen bee. Every time I turned around, she was getting me hauled into the sheriff's station or the magistrate's office for something."

Emma paused; nine times out of ten, Regina had been doing it because of something Emma said to Henry, but she wasn't sure if she could bear to tell that part of the story yet. Jones was just watching her, silent and intent, kindness on his face. Emma couldn't meet his eyes.

"So anyway," she continued, "finally the sheriff got fed up with it and made me a deputy. At least if I was out with him writing parking tickets or sitting in the station filing reports, he could keep an eye on me."

"That's a neat solution," Jones said quietly, smiling.

Emma nodded, but couldn't smile back at him. She swallowed, feeling tears prick at the corner of her vision, and looked out the window. "Well.. it worked for a good long while. Regina stopped messing with me, I could live my life. I was happy there. Happier than I'd probably ever been in my life," she admitted softly. "A couple of friends, a good job, and feeling like I belonged. And then… last week, it all ended. Graham d-died. Thirty-four years old, and he keeled over of a heart attack. At the sheriff's station, in my arms. We'd just…"

Her throat closed, and she could feel the hot tears begin to drip down her face. They had finally finished helping the animal shelter volunteers clear the nest of racoons out of the back shed, and had both been covered in dust and filth, laughing and red-faced and cracking jokes about David, who had spent every minute cursing the furry little squatters.

She cleared her throat now, sniffing. "Needless to say, Regina made sure everyone in town suspected I had a hand in his death," she said, her voice husky. "My landlord evicted me, Regina fired me, someone turned in a tip that there was 'evidence' in my apartment, something to do with Graham's medications… Finally, a friend w-who knew things… he told me that I would get arrested if I stayed. So there's the story of how you ran across me on the side of a Bangor highway. The end."

Abruptly Graham's face seemed to appear before her, smiling as he told her, "Thanks for your help, sweetheart," in that soft Irish lilt. The last thing he'd said to her before he died. Emma gritted her teeth, trying to stem back the sob that threatened to escape. Now his face appeared again, but this time, frozen in a torturous expression as he clutched his chest in agony, fighting for breath.

She sniffled, tears still streaking her cheeks, and let out a long breath, releasing the misery she had bottled up since fleeing the town. It wasn't fair! She hadn't even had proper time to grieve Graham: her friend; her boss; a sweet and hard-working man who had always believed in her and in Henry.

And poor Henry… he had loved Graham, too. Emma had found him at Granny's and tried to explain things to him: but he had already been told that his crazy birth mother had murdered the kind sheriff, and a regretful Ruby had hustled him away before Emma could get out half a dozen words.

At least he hadn't believed it. That much, Emma knew. You couldn't have, her son had said. She would never forget the sight of tears slipping down his face, his arms clutched around Ruby as he stared at Emma with confused eyes. I don't believe it, Mom!

Now there was a creak as her companion leaned forward, and she was started to suddenly feel a warm hand on hers. His calloused fingers folded over her hand with extraordinary gentleness. "I'm sorry, Emma," Jones murmured. "If I'd known…"

He trailed off, uncertain. But his voice was so soft and kind that it just made her cry harder. She automatically clutched his hand like a lifeline.

When she'd finally stopped sniffling long enough to look up, she realized that it was the first time he'd called her by her first name, rather than just "lass" or "love" or "Swan." He wasn't staring at her, precisely; his expression was too regretful and sympathetic to be called that. But with relief, she saw that he believed her, too.

"I didn't do it," she said anyway, her voice thick, and swiped some of the tears from her face.

Jones nodded, smiling faintly. "I know," he said simply. Then he frowned. "Did you walk from the coast all the way to Bangor?"

When she nodded in response, he let out a faint whistle. "No wonder you were so tired that first night on the road," he remarked incredulously.

He reached down to his left and snagged something out of a pocket on the door, offering it to her. She was astounded to see it was a small box of tissues, cylinder-shaped to fit in a cup holder.

"You really do have everything in here, don't you?" she asked, with a hysterical little laugh, and let go his hand to take a tissue and blow her nose, with a great honk that cleared her clogged sinuses. She supposed she should feel embarrassed, but somehow… she didn't.

Jones shrugged ruefully. He turned the little carboard tube over in his hand, tapping it gently on his knee. He seemed to be hesitating. "Spit it out," Emma said, and he started, looking at her with wide eyes. "If you have a question, ask it. I can't possibly feel any worse."

Well, okay. If he threw her out of the truck and told her to walk to Kansas City, she'd certainly feel worse. But she didn't think that was likely.

Jones sighed. "Well. Awhile back, you mentioned a son. I was just wondering… whether you had to leave him behind in Maine."

Her heart suddenly quickened its pace, thundering painfully against her ribs. Emma looked up to see guilt in his eyes. She'd felt the same way, asking about his hand.

"Yes, I did," she answered flatly, gritting her teeth. It was the second time she'd abandoned Henry: first when she gave him up for adoption as a baby, now again, eleven years later.

She wondered what he was doing there right now: reading a book? playing a video game? watching one of his favorite old movies, perhaps cheering on Fezzick and Inigo as they stormed the castle with Westley, or making those adorable pew! pew! noises as Luke Skywalker zoomed down the Death Star trench?

The tears didn't resurge, though, and she sat dry and cold, sick to her stomach at the knowledge that whatever Henry was doing, it was in Regina's house, in Regina's pet town, and under Regina's supervision.

"I hate that selfish yuppie bitch so much," Emma said softly, making Jones cough and clear his throat with surprise. She waved a hand, forcing herself to swallow the anger threatening to choke her. "Sorry. I'm… I lied. Maybe later," she said, knowing it sounded a bit pleading.

"Or maybe never," he said gently. "Sorry I asked."

Emma shook her head. "Don't be," she said tiredly. "Just… get a few beers in me first, okay?"