Wasn't planning on updating so soon, but I figured since it's the holiday season I'll be nice. So y'all don't have to beg :P
Chapter 19
Emma's family immediately backed away from Graham. In a matter of seconds, he'd gone from being a hero to a murderer.
"What exactly do you mean?" James said slowly, going into protective father mode. "You have thirty seconds to explain before I kick your sorry ass." It was kind of funny how similar he was to Emma when they got mad. He shoved Graham up against the wall, seconds away from punching him. "Talk. Now." Fury lined his usually handsome features, and he spat angrily as he talked, staring Graham down.
And so Graham launched into his story, leaving out no details. He described everything; from how he'd driven to Granny's to pick up coffee to how he'd found himself at the station with no memory of what had happened in between. When he finished, Emma's family's faces turned from being shocked and disgusted to very confused.
"That doesn't make any sense." Snow said, pondering over his story. "You said that you don't remember anything after leaving Granny's."
"Exactly." Graham nodded. "I've gone over this for the last four hours. Maybe I subconsciously did this and then blocked it out?"
"No!" Henry shouted. "You wouldn't! You love my mom. You wouldn't kill her."
"Henry…" As badly as Graham wanted this to be true, the evidence pointed otherwise.
"Henry's right." James insisted, sounding a lot less angry now. "There's something else at play here."
"So you said you blacked out and woke up at the station…" Henry said thoughtfully. "This sort of sounds like what happened to Grandpa after he woke up from his coma."
"Right." James snapped his fingers. "And according to Snow, I went to the troll bridge which was where my subconscious wanted me to go."
"So you're saying that my subconscious wanted to kill Emma?" Graham was more confused than ever.
"No. That doesn't make any sense either." Snow said firmly before Graham could protest. "You wouldn't do that to her."
"It almost sounds as though it wasn't you." Henry thought aloud.
"But it was." Graham argued. "I was the one who attacked her. I was the one who fought with her. I was the one who shot her. I was the one who found the gun in my hand."
Everyone fell silent at this.
"You know what? I'm just going to go turn myself in." Graham stood up, determined.
"No! You can't." Henry grabbed onto Graham's sleeve.
"Henry's right." Snow said as she blocked Graham from leaving. "You can't until we get to the bottom of this."
"What's the point? It was me. I did this to her."
They knew there was no point in arguing, for the evidence did ultimately make Graham look guilty. But they couldn't just let Graham turn himself in.
"At the very least, stay until Emma's out of surgery." Snow suggested, employing a different tactic to get him to stay. "It's the right thing to do."
Graham knew it would be useless to argue, so he agreed, sitting back in his chair. The four of them sat in the waiting room for the next several hours. The surgery seemed endless. Snow and James got up multiple times for coffee, while Henry entertained himself with his book of fairy tales and cell phone.
It grew later and later. Gradually, the waiting room became empty, leaving only the four of them there, sitting in worried silence. Henry curled up against his grandmother and fell asleep.
"Do you want me to take Henry home?" Graham offered. He was trying to be as nice as possible to make up for what he'd done. "Cuz of school tomorrow and all."
Snow nodded. She barely seemed to hear him. "Sure."
Graham stood up and scooped up Henry in his arms, fumbling in his pocket for his car keys. Suddenly, something occurred to him.
"I think I left my car at the station." He'd ridden with Emma in the ambulance to the hospital.
"Ok." James nodded. "I'll take him back then." Henry was transferred from Graham to James.
"Do you want a ride back to your car?" Emma's father offered. Graham nodded, feeling guilty that Emma's family was still so nice to him.
The ride to the station was silent. From the stiff way James held himself, Graham could tell that he was sick with worry, for Emma had been in surgery for a really long time. Luckily, they arrived at the station fairly quickly, mostly due to the fact that it was late and hardly anybody was out at night. Storybrooke was a small town.
Graham closed the door to the car, making sure to not wake up Henry. "Thanks for the ride." He scanned the station's parking lot for his car, but it wasn't there.
"What's wrong?" James asked, for Graham was just standing there staring at the mostly empty parking lot.
"My car's not there." Graham muttered. The growing realization that something was very, very wrong seemed to paralyze him. He got back into James's car.
"So how did you get back here after Granny's?" James asked.
"I don't know. All I know is that I took my car there."
Both men looked at each other. They knew that the station was pretty far from Granny's, and no one in their right mind would just walk there, especially in the cold. They decided to drive to Granny's, and sure enough, there was Graham's car. The coffee and donuts were still sitting on the icy pavement next to the front door, where Graham had placed it when he dropped his keys.
"So if I went back to the station to, um, you know," Graham began. "How did I go back to the station? It's like three miles."
They fell silent. This was a new piece in the puzzle, yet neither of them knew how it connected.
"Even if you'd blacked out, your subconscious would have taken your car. It's the rational thing to do." James reasoned.
"Maybe I got a ride with someone." Graham suggested.
"I know." James said. "We can go back to the station and look at the security camera footage. Maybe that'll have some answers."
With renewed purpose, they drove rapidly back to the station, where Graham quickly retrieved all of the camera footage from that day and his laptop. He tried not to look at the huge pool of dried blood that still stained the floor near Emma's desk. They really needed to get someone to clean that up.
He climbed back into James's car, where they quickly turned on the laptop and inserted the disc. "Come, on, come on, come on." He muttered as he hit Play. Slowly, a grainy image began to play on the screen.
"Ok, so I left Granny's at around 9 pm." Graham remembered. He fast forwarded to the correct time. Sure enough, there was an on screen Graham, climbing into his car and driving away.
"I remember waiting for fifteen minutes there, plus the half an hour it took to drive there and back, I've been back no later than 9:45." The Hunstman deduced.
"And this should show if you got a ride from someone else, and if so whom." James added.
They watched the footage to see if this matched their predictions. However, 9:45 passed by and there was no sign of anyone in the parking lot. 10 pm, 10:15, time passed and still no one showed up.
"Around what time did you find yourself back at the station?"
"Um…like 10:30?" Graham guessed. "Yeah, something like that."
"Which meant that everything happened before 10:30…" James was saying, but was interrupted.
"Look!" Graham pointed a finger at a blurry image on the screen. The time stamp in the corner read 10:22 pm.
"What's that?" Both men frowned at the screen in concentration. In dim light of the parking lot, it looked like a giant black cloud.
Graham paused the footage and zoomed in to get a better look. "Can't tell." He hit play, pausing after each second to see if the image cleared up. Slowly, the cloud receded to reveal Graham.
"That looks like you." James said, stating the obvious.
"Yeah. And magic." Graham said. There were only two people they knew in Storybrooke who still had magic.
"Whoa. Hold up." James pointed at the screen. "What does that look like to you?"
"Huh?" Graham stared at his on screen self. "Me?"
"No." James zoomed in even more onto the pixilated image of Graham's face. "That look. Who does that remind you of?"
The color drained out of their faces as they slowly realized that Graham's smile looked eerily identical to a certain someone they knew.
Regina.
Author's note: I know you hate it when I end a ch w a cliffhanger. So review if you want the next ch. It's literally sitting on my comp waiting to be posted but I won't update till I get some reviews.