Sorry it's been a while - the holidays and everything. We're near the end of this (obviously - 28 years is now!); I'm thinking one or two more chapters. Thanks for all of your reviews and attention!

PART SEVEN: 28 Years

The yellow bug is parked outside the Mayor's house. It is half hidden in the shade of the hedge, so David almost misses it when he glances in the rearview mirror (luck? chance? fate?). He hits the brakes and pulls a u-turn in the middle of the street, waving apologetically at an irate Mr. Gold who had just stepped off the curb. His tires spin on the gravel, and his heart has leapt into his chest.

How could she be here? Now, today, on the very day he has decided to leave town without an extra shirt, a toothbrush, food for the road, nothing, to find her? He has set off on a wild goose chase, but the goose has come to him (as strange as that sounds in his own head, he cannot help but laugh out loud and pound the steering wheel with one palm).

David throws his truck into neutral, yanks on the parking brake, and nearly leaves his keys turned in the ignition in his haste. He is halfway up the walk towards the big white mansion when he slows, realizing that he cannot simply barge into the Mayor's house and demand to see her out-of-town visitor simply because he feels he must.

So though it nearly kills him he backs down the walk again and returns to his truck, where he begins to pace up and down the length of the bed, eyes flickering from the Mayor's front door to the houses across the street to the clear blue morning sky and back.

And as he waits and paces, his heart slowly begins to resume its usual rate. He takes a deep breath or two and loosens his fists, straightens his shirt, runs a hand through his thick, cropped brown hair, and settles down to wait.

Ten minutes later, David is done waiting. He does not feel rushed or frantic, but he is done sitting outside next to an empty yellow bug waiting for Emma to emerge from her conference with Mayor Mills. He is filled with a calm certainty that the best thing in the world for him to do at this point is to knock on that front door despite how rude or impatient it might seem.

So with that same resolve that propelled him into his truck that morning, he sets off up the walk. This time he is only a few steps from the front door when it opens.

A woman is standing in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her. She is beautiful, with short black hair that frames high, prominent cheekbones and soft, full lips. She is staring at him with huge gray eyes, lips slightly parted, and her shoulders are rigid and tense.

"Hi," he says. "I'm looking for the Mayor…or, more accurately, the young woman who I think…is probably in there with her. Unless this is your car?" he gestures behind him limply at the yellow bug, suddenly realizing that he might be an idiot. Emma's bug isn't the only yellow one in the world. "It is, isn't it? I'm sorry, I was looking for someone else."

He is tempted to stay and talk to her anyway, just because she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and she is still staring at him like she knows him even though he knows he would remember her. But his drive to find Emma is just slightly stronger than his desire to flirt with a gorgeous woman, and so he wavers for a moment on the path before turning to head back to his truck with his cheeks burning in slight embarrassment at his own irrationality.

But then the woman stops him with a single word.

"David."

He turns back to her, because he knows her voice. And it's stupid, and foolish, because how could he know her voice when he has never met her? But his heart has leapt in his chest, and there are…yes, there are tingles running up and down his spine. If he was embarrassed before, he certainly is now, now that he's acting like a teenage boy who can't keep a handle on his hormones.

"Yeah," he says, and he is trying to play it cool and hoping he is succeeding. "Have we met?"

"Yes," she says, and takes a step towards him, towards the few steps that lead down the sidewalk. "Yes, once. A few years ago, here in Storybrooke. I was with Emma…with the girl you're trying to find."

He narrows his eyes at her, trying to place her, and then it clicks.

"Yes," he says, and he cannot stop a grin from exploding onto his face. "On the sidewalk. I asked if you needed help…"

"And we turned you down," she finishes, and smiles back at him with a soft, tentative smile that completely melts his heart.

"And did he…did the man you were looking for, did he come around?" he asks. He remembers that night on the bridge now too, with Emma, when she had told him that her sister (this woman in front of him, then) had found a man she'd been looking for but found him changed, different, and how it had broken her heart.

He wants her to say no, that he never changed, that she gave up on him and her heart is free and unbroken (the possibility that the man might have been a brother or father or friend instead of a lover never crosses his mind) so that he can ask her to go to dinner with him.

But she just smiles again, and her eyes are suddenly glistening with tears though she does not seem particularly sad. "He will," she says. "He's very, very, very close."

"Oh," he says, and stuffs his hands in his pockets. "That's good. That's…I'm glad. Congratulations." Congratulations? Really?

She laughs. "Thank you."

He scuffs one boot slowly along the concrete. He does not know where to look, because he wants to look at her but knows he should not stare. "So. Is Emma…did Emma come with you? I'd love to see her if she's around."

"She's...busy. With the Mayor." The woman glances over her shoulder into the house, and shadows cross her face. "But you're welcome to wait for her. Their conversation shouldn't last too much longer."

"Uh, sure, I'll wait," David says, because he does still want to see Emma very badly, and he is also hoping that this woman will wait with him. As if she heard his wish, she steps gracefully down the front steps and settles down on the top one with her hands clasped around one knee perched on the bottom stair. She just looks at him, and he takes this as an invitation to join her on the steps.

Sitting this close to her almost makes him forget about Emma entirely. She smells sweet and flowery, like spring, like woods on a warm day or gardens at twilight. (He knows he is waxing poetic in his own head but he cannot help it. Something about her invites the poetic.)

"So," he says. "How do you and Emma know Mayor Mills?"

"Mind if I explain that when Emma's done speaking with her? We have a very…complicated past."

He grins at her, but she seems entirely serious and he doesn't mind a little mystery. "Sure. Sure, why not. So, you know my name, but I don't know yours. What can I call you?"

She sends him a quick sideways smile. "Mind if I wait on that one too? Oh, it'll all make sense soon, I promise. You just have to be patient for just a little longer."

"I'll wait as long as it takes," he says sincerely. For some reason this makes her eyes flood with tears, and she clasps her hands tightly in her lap and blinks them away fiercely. He feels instantly awful.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"Don't be sorry, Charming!" she cries, and then claps one head over her mouth in almost comic shock. Her eyes are huge and luminous over her hand, and he wants to laugh and cry and kiss her all at once.

"Charming?" he asks (the fourth option is to talk and keep her talking, which is better than laughing or crying but not as good as kissing). "Do I sense sarcasm, or did I just get a rather dashing nickname?"

They hear her boots clicking on the marble floor just before her voice floats out the open door. Emma's words echo loudly in the open marble entry, and she sounds pissed. "She won't tell me anything, Mom. And I can't make her talk, not without…"

David rises just as she emerges from the house. She stops short at the sight of him, and her mouth drops open.

"David," she says. "I…wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Emma," he says. "I saw your bug and thought I'd stop…"

"Hold on, you remember who I am?" She blinks at him, and her eyes are flickering between him and the woman next to him who has slowly risen to her feet too.

"Yes, of course I do," he says.

Her eyes fill inexplicably with tears, but she looks more confused than anything. "But…the curse…how was it…was it just because I'm here?" she looks at the other woman, who is shaking her head vigorously.

"No, no, Emma, he doesn't remember…not like that. Not like that."

"Like what?" He half laughs because he is more confused than Emma looks, and something that Emma said is just clicking in his brain. "Wait, Mom? You're her mother?"

"It's complicated," the dark-haired woman says. "So complicated. We'll try to explain, I promise, but it's not going to be easy…"

"Hey, I've got all day," David says, crossing his arms. "What am I not supposed to remember?"

"Me," Emma says. "But maybe the curse is so close to being broken that he's starting to…"

"Wait, hang on, curse? What's all this about a curse?"

He wants to listen to them, to hear their explanations, and he is more open than he thinks he should be with this talk of curses and mothers who look no older than their daughters and women who think he has memories he shouldn't. So he stands there in the front yard of Mayor Mill's house and waits, and the two women are staring at him and then at each other, and he knows that he is on the verge of something that is going to change his entire life forever.

"David," the woman who is not Emma (he really wishes he knew her name) says finally. She is watching him with a mixture of hope and hesitation, and he gives her his full attention because he has never seen anything more endearing. "David, do you…do you believe in magic?"

No, would have been his gut reaction twelve months ago, but after the last year of confusion and strange dreams he's open to anything. "Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. Why?"

"Maybe we shouldn't do this here," Emma interrupts, and he shoots her a look that makes her eyebrows raise to her hairline. "Well, you've got the disappointed daddy look down," she says as she passes him on her way down the stairs. "That's a start."

"A start? A start to what?"

"Let's go someplace more private," Emma says over her shoulder. "And safe."

"Safe from what?"

He's already sick of hearing himself ask questions, but the woman next to him is starting to follow Emma down the sidewalk, and she is begging him with her big, gray eyes to come with them, to trust her, to suspend his disbelief. So he follows them both down the walk and out onto the street, hoping that if he asks enough questions, they might just start giving him answers.

"Regina isn't exactly happy with us right now," Emma says. She is tossing her keys up and down in her palm and glancing from her bug to David's truck. "It might be a little cramped in my car…"

"I can drive," David volunteers immediately. "Is there someplace in particular you want to go?"

He is getting a little short-tempered with their elusiveness, but he remembers his manners and opens the passenger door for them both (he is pleased when the dark-haired woman gets in first and scoots over towards the middle of the bench seat). He jogs around the cab, hops in the driver's seat, and glances over at them. "Where am I going?"

"The toll bridge," the woman in the middle says softly. "Let's go to the toll bridge."

"Toll bridge it is," he says, and throws the car in gear.

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