Thank you all for your reviews and interest! I'm thinking we're about halfway through this at this point. This chapter involves a flashback, Mayor Mills, and David slowly starting to realize that he is remembering things involving a certain blonde who keeps cropping up in his life.

PART FOUR: 25 Years

One morning, he wakes in an empty bed and realizes that he no longer wants to be alone. He does not know what might have brought about this change of heart, but he is suddenly and desperately tired of the same routine. Over and over again, day in and day out, he wakes, makes coffee, teaches school, coaches football, comes home, grades papers and assignments, and falls into bed. Sometimes he goes for days without adult interaction beyond a hello in the hallways from a colleague.

Kathryn has long since moved across town, and he does not see her often. Occasionally they will run into each other at the supermarket, and they are always civil but distant, as good exes should be. He does not miss her.

But he misses someone. Someone, he thinks as he towels off after a cold shower, that he has been looking for for a long time, maybe since before his marriage to Kathryn. She has never been his other half, not if he is honest with himself, and sometimes he doesn't remember why he married her in the first place. She's a nice woman, a smart woman, but try as he might he cannot feel anything but complete and utter apathy towards her.

"What do you think?" he asks his reflection, crossing his bare arms over his chest. "Did you ever really love her?"

He doesn't have an answer to his own question. The one thing he does not understand is how he knows what it feels like to love if he never loved his wife.

It's all too confusing to think about this early in the morning, so he gets dressed and heads down the stairs.

There is a yellow bug parked outside his house when he leaves 20 minutes later, a stack of graded papers under one arm and the keys to his truck in the other. He pauses. Frowns. It's an unfamiliar car, and unfamiliar cars are few and far between in Storybrooke. He passes his truck, dropping the papers into the bed, and makes his way down the drive and out the gate, stopping in front of the bug. There is no one inside, but when he looks up the street a young woman is walking towards him with a paper cup of coffee in her hands.

"Hi," she says. She is pretty, with long blonde hair and large blue eyes. She is wearing a tan turtleneck under a red leather jacket, and it brings out her pale skin and pink cheeks. "Brisk out, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he says, a little warily. "Football season."

"Sorry about my bug," she says, gesturing at it with her free hand. "It's not in your way, is it?"

"No, no," he says, glancing back at his truck in the driveway. "Not at all. I was just surprised to see it, that's all. We don't get many visitors in Storybrooke."

"Oh, I've been here before," she says. "I'm looking for someone who might live here."

"Yeah? Who? I might be able to point you in the right direction." He is rapidly warming up to her, this young woman with a slightly melancholy air who has walked up to him with such confidence, a confidence that almost feels as if she knows him better than he knows her. Which is impossible, seeing as he's never met her before in his life.

She hesitates and takes a sip of her coffee. "His name is…James."

"Last name? We've got a few of those," David says. She shrugs.

"I don't know. My mom and I have been looking for him for a while. My dad," she adds. "He's my dad. I've never met him, but…" she pauses again, and a little smile wisps across her face. "He's around here somewhere."

David doesn't know exactly how to respond to this, so he just sticks out his hand. "Well, I hope you find him. I'm David, by the way. David Nolan."

"Hello, David," she says, but doesn't take his hand. He lowers it awkwardly, and though he's not sure what to make of her he feels a sudden warmth thrill through his stomach and up to his chest when she smiles at him softly. "I'm Emma."

He is coaching his team one crisp fall evening and thinking about the stack of papers he has to grade that evening when he notices a small girl standing on the edge of the field, watching him. He glances around for her parents, but the only adults around are himself and his assistant coach. He hands his clipboard full of plays and notes to his assistant and jogs towards her.

"Hello," he says when he's close enough to address her without shouting. "Where's your mommy, little lady?"

"She's not here," the little girl says obviously. She is a pretty little thing, with short, cropped blonde hair and blue eyes that take up half her face. David looks around again, fruitlessly, and then squats down in front of her. He's always been a sucker for kids, but he doesn't recognize her.

"What's your mommy's name?" he asks.

She looks up at him solemnly. "I'm not supposed to tell you that," she says.

"What?" he laughs a little and shrugs exaggeratedly. "How am I supposed to help you find her if I don't know who she is?"

"Oh, I know where she is."

"Oh yeah?" He stands and looks around again. "Is she coming back here?"

"Yes."

"Why'd she leave you here without anyone to play with?"

"Because she said you'd take care of me."

His heart skips a beat. He does not know this little girl, but he suddenly feels extraordinarily protective. He bends down to her level again and wishes he could take her hand or touch her head or something, but he knows there are laws and regulations against this sort of thing, and the last thing he wants is for Sheriff Graham to come breathing down his neck per order of the Madame Mayor for crossing the student-teacher boundaries.

"Did she now? How did your mommy know I could do that?"

The little girl smiles shyly at him. Her hands are tucked inside her pink jacket, and she lifts one shoulder in an imitation of his shrug. "She says she'll see you soon. You just hafta wait."

That hasn't answered his question, but he is more confused than ever. Before he can continue questioning her, however, a car pulls up on the street and Ruby, the waitress at Granny's Diner, steps out and starts towards them. David stands, watching her approach, and he knows that she's going to take this little princess to her mother and wants to take her to her mother himself.

"I'm here for the kid," Ruby says. She is chewing a stick of gum loudly and keeps popping it between her red lips. "Mom's ready to go."

"Yeah, who is her mom?" David asks.

Ruby shrugs and pops her gum again. "Beats me. Never seen her before. She came into the diner looking a mess—poor thing was an emotional wreck." Ruby doesn't look sympathetic. "All we could get out of her was that she'd left her daughter by the football field with the coach and would we go pick her up." She puts a hand on the little girl's shoulder. Her nails are long and cherry red just like her lipstick. "So here I am. Anything to keep the customers happy, you know? Come on, Emma."

As he watches the little girl walk away he cannot make sense of this puzzle, and he is oh so tempted to cancel the rest of practice and follow Ruby and the little blonde girl—Emma?—back to the diner to find this mystery mother. But as he half turns towards his truck he sees his assistant waving him over, and both the child and her mother fade slowly from his mind like frost warming on a windshield. By the time he has jogged back to his assistant to tell him he's cutting out of practice early to run to Granny's, he no longer remembers why.

He never sees the little girl again.

25 Years

David wakes with a start from a dream that he knows is no dream, but a memory. He has not thought of that little girl by the football field since the day he saw her there, pink jacket and blue eyes and full of confidence in his ability to take care of her. He has fallen asleep on the couch, something he has not done since the divorce was finalized, and he picks himself up with a groan, rubbing at a kink in his neck.

"Emma," he says slowly. "Her name was Emma."

Like the girl in the yellow bug from yesterday. Emma is not an uncommon name, but he thinks that it cannot be a coincidence. He does not really believe in coincidences, not really, and as he throws on clean jeans and a new shirt he wonders if that young woman is still in Storybrooke, if she stayed the night, if she has found her dad.

Something tells him she has.

But when he arrives at Granny's diner and asks after a blonde girl named Emma, Ruby shrugs and shakes her head.

"She left," she says. "Ate breakfast this morning and took off bright and early. Sorry, David."

"How long ago? How long?" His heart is suddenly aching, and he feels an urge to shout and scream and break something, because she is gone, and all he said yesterday was hope you find him and she could be in another state by now because he let her go.

Ruby is watching him with more than a little concern, and he realizes that his fists are white-knuckle clenched on the countertop, and he sounds more than a little frantic.

"Sorry," he says, and unclenches his fists with great effort. "Just didn't expect her to be gone already."

"You know her?" Ruby asks, leaning against the counter interestedly. Ruby has always been one for gossip.

"No. Well, yes, maybe. Listen, Ruby, do you remember a little girl about…oh, I don't know, twenty years ago…" but even as he starts to explain he hears how stupid the words sound, and Ruby is just watching him blankly. He sighs and turns to go. "Nevermind," he says. "Forget it. Thanks, Ruby."

He stops outside the diner and looks up and down the street, the frustration melting into a quiet sort of melancholy. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and starts off down the street towards his truck; it was a long shot, really, and it couldn't have been the same Emma. The odds were…well, fantastical. Impossible. Ridiculous that he would have even…

"Do watch where you're going, Mr. Nolan!"

He has almost run straight into Mayor Mills, and he stops short, blinking.

"Sorry, Madame Mayor," he says. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

"Obviously," she says. "Something on your mind?"

He considers telling her about Emma, but he has already convinced himself that he's crazy for even drawing the connection between the little girl in his dream and the young woman in the yellow bug looking for her father, so he generalizes and injects a healthy amount of self-deprecation into his voice.

"Chasing a dream," he says, and laughs, though it sounds slightly pathetic. "And a yellow bug."

"Sounds intriguing," she says, but she doesn't really sound intrigued at all. She is looking at him warily, and he is reminded again what a beautiful woman she really is, if only she would smile more and scowl at Storybooke a little less. "Well, I hope you find your dream, and your…yellow bug."

"Well, they're both long gone, but it can't hurt to hope," he says. He is looking over her head and squinting in the bright morning sunlight glancing off the front windshield of his truck, so he does not see her eyebrows crease at the word hope. "I'll find her."

"Her?"

He blinks again, looks back at the Mayor, who's face is suddenly tight.

"Oh, the young woman who was here yesterday," he says. "Emma, she said her name was. Emma."

I'd love to hear what you think!