Chapter Fifteen - Emma

I step into the bedroom as soon as Henry opens the door. It's the only way to keep myself from chickening out and dodging this horrible responsibility. I have to tell him the truth now. Even if it is getting late. Even if today has already felt like the longest day ever.

"Is Regina here?" I ask, looking around.

"Er … no?" Henry says, following me into his own room. "She's out for a walk."

Okay. That calms me down a bit. At least I don't have to find a way to pull Henry aside without Regina getting in the way. Her little evening stroll will be her last chance to enjoy the grounds, so I hope she makes the most of it. She trips and twists her ankle. Whatever.

"Listen, Henry," I say gently, "there's something I need to tell you."

"Okay … what, mom?"

"I think you should sit down for this."

with a confused frown, he obliges, perching on the end of one of the double beds. He smooths out the slightly wrinkled sheets beneath him. I notice that the duvet on the other bed is also rumpled up and that some of Regina's clothes are folded on top of the pillow. Is she not even sharing a bed with him? Fucking hell. How hasn't he spotted the signs?

I try to suppress my anger towards Regina. Now is a time for calmness. I remain standing in the middle of the room, shifting from foot to foot. I wring my hands. I am not exactly nailing the strong and confident yet open and approachable body language I'd been going for, at least I am not storming off in search of a murder weapon.

"What's this about, mom?" Henry asks.

Oh, this is sad. Maybe being angry would be easier than letting my heart break for the fiftieth time tonight. My poor son really has no idea what's been going on. I have to be extremely careful about how I approach this. Sensitive and tactful. Ease into it slowly.

"Regina's a gold-digger!" I blurt out!

Silence. Henry's mouth falls slightly ajar, and his eyebrows draw together in confusion, and he … Oh. He stays just like that. Completely still. Like a computer buffering.

It is not a great start. I lost control because of how badly I've been trying to keep everything together. It's frustrating. If I was going to slip up and come out with the most shocking information right off the bat, I should have at least told him about the two-timing texts first. I guess the gold-digging thing has been on my mind for longer, so that's what slipped out when I didn't know where to start. Now I'll have to wait for at least a little while to tell him about the cheating because I can't deliver info like that as a one-two punch. He's already got enough to process. His facial expressions are only just coming out unstuck again, his eyes starting to move around the room as if he might find an explanation for all this madness somewhere in the air.

"I …"

"Don't say anything yet!" I hold my hands up to stop him. "I'm sorry that came out too bluntly, and I know it's overwhelming. You deserve to know the truth. Will you hear me out? Please. There's more. There's a lot. Just let me say everything I need to say, and then you can talk. Okay?"

He looks unsure. Unable or unwilling to trust me. He keeps searching around for his invisible answers, looking everywhere but at my face. Eventually, he seems to realize he can't work this out on his own. He nods.

I launch right into it, talking as quickly but gently as possible. "Some of this will sound irrelevant or silly, but it all adds up to something, so bear with me. On Monday, when you two got here and took a tour of the house, I overhead you were offering her money and her accepting it right away. Obviously, you already know that happened, but you didn't seem to know that it was weird. Maybe you're too close to it, too tied up in this dynamic that you guys have. I am not trying to judge you or anything. It's lovely that you're so generous and giving, but it is not lovely that she's so … taking. I don't think it's at all typical how eager she was to accept the cash and how she started listing everything she could buy with it. I was concerned, so I started keeping an eye on her. If she knew I was on to her because she was awkward and jumpy around me, and she even tried to avoid me on Tuesday. That didn't work out for long, so she started trying to charm me instead. She's been trying to charm everyone.

"Right …?" he says, sounding dazed.

"It's not just the charm offensive," I say quickly, wanting to get all this out sharpish so that the horrible talking bit can come to an end, and I can get on with comforting my son. "Listen. Regina is very interested in our house. Excessively so. I have seen her face light up when she sees original features and Grandpa's vintage pieces and "designer wallpaper." She keeps asking where everything is from and how much it costs. And asked all about our cars on Monday. And on Tuesday she asked you for jewelry! I overheard that, too. She made herself sound all flirty and playful, and she asked you to give her a new necklace since you're doing so well at work. That isn't normal, Henry. I am sorry, but she shouldn't be using you like that, and she shouldn't be so intensely interested in your profits at work. It's … these are all red flags, Henry. And I understand why you haven't seen them for what they are. I totally get it. You're not looking out for them. You're in love."

"I'm …"

"Please. There's one more thing. An even worse thing. You need to hear it. You … she … Regina …" I feel myself out of steam, slowing down as I approach the final horrible hurdle. Ideally, I would keep this last piece of information myself even longer, as I am still not keen on hitting him with a double whammy, but I've realized now that it's probably best to lay it all out for him to process in one go, as awful as it will be.

"Mom?"

Deep breath. "I think she's cheating on you, Henry. I saw a text on her phone that was too romantic to be from a friend. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

I look closely at his face. He's so confused. I can literally see him trying to digest all this information and work out what to do with it. I even spot the exact moment that he accepts his relationship is over. His face slackens, and his shoulders loosen.

And he laughs.

A proper laugh. A guffaw. Head thrown back and everything.

I stare at him. Is he deranged? Is this a trauma response? Should I be calling a doctor?

He keeps on laughing hard on the bed, fell over on the bed.

"Mom. Oh no, no," he shakes his head, trying to compose himself. "No, Regina is not cheating on me, mom. She is not a gold-digger." He snorts at this, but then his smile fades. He stares at his feet. Fidgets on the bed. "Look, mom. I really want to keep this a secret. I didn't want to embarrass myself, but no, none of what you said is possible because she's not my girlfriend."

The poor boy's denial is even worse than I expected; he's so blinded by …

Wait.

"What?!"

He nods. "We are not actually together. She can't be dating me for my money because she is not really dating me. We are just friends, and she's my boss, in fact. We met through work, well through friends." He cringes, "Our whole relationship is fake."

"I …"

I think I'd better sit down for this.

I sink down onto the chaise longue. I ask only one thing I think to ask.

"What?!"

I am still trying to process everything Henry just told me.

"So … Regina seemed fake, because she was faking a relationship with you."

"Yes," Henry confirms.

"That's why it seemed like she wasn't really in love."

"Yes."

"And why it felt like she was lying."

"Yes.

"And hiding something."

"Yes."

I flop backward, rubbing my forehead.

"Yes," Henry agrees, placing his own head in his hands.

I understand why he's so exhausted. I have been asking for a lot of clarification. Why did Regina joke about Henry giving her a necklace? She's fucking joking. Why did Henry give Regina a Christmas bonus? She was joking, yet again, because in fact, she's the boss. I can definitely see how answering my questions has become wearing.

"Why did she …?" I start, and Henry peeks at me through his fingers. He is covering up as much of his face as possible. Hiding a pink complexion and a sheepish look and …

Oh. I realize suddenly that he isn't tired from answering all my questions.

He's embarrassed.

I suppose you would be if you'd just admitted to pretending to have a girlfriend.

"You're really telling the truth, aren't you?"

"I am," he says, "yes, mom."

I rub my forehead some more.

Henry drops his hands and stands up, "I have proof." He starts crossing the room before I can tell him I'm already convinced. He opens the top drawer of the nightstand and pulls out a jumbled pile of paper, and notebooks, and post-its. "Regina and I made notes about one another the night we arrived. We wanted to make sure we had all our facts straight so our relationship would seem believable."

He spreads them out for me across the chaise longue. There is an A4 page dedicated to how they met. Five months ago, at a coffee shop, Henry spilled a latte all over Regina's suit. This last detail has been crossed out and then written in again. They must have disagreed over it. One of them didn't think the clumsy-girl-meet-cute thing was realistic. I think I know which one of them it was.

"Henry." I brush the notes to one side and look at my son in a way I hope conveys kindness and encouragement with minimal judgment. "Why did you do this?"

He sits back down at the end of his bed. Eyes trained on his feet again. Cheeks still blazing, "other than wanting to give Regina somewhere nice to go for Christmas. I was fed up of being asked when I was going to find myself a girlfriend. I'm fed up with being single in this family. Every time I talk to Grandma and Grandpa, they want to know whether I have finally found some nice woman to settle down with. It's always made me feel like I was lagging or like I was disappointing you all. I didn't want to be a let-down anymore. I didn't want to field their questions for another year and give you all the wrong answers yet again. It was stupid, I know. And pathetic. I want to impress grandparents, you, and everyone. I wanted to live up to their idea of what I should be."

For once in my life, I am stunned into silence. My son, how could I make my son feel this way? "I know this is weird to do, but I get why you did it. I am sorry, Henry. I didn't realize you felt this way. Why didn't you come to me about this before?"

Henry looks up to me.

First, he shrugs, "I don't know. You and the grandparents and everyone seem so perfect. I … Belle and Mr. Gold fit so perfectly into their idea of perfection. Grandma is the Mayor of Storybrooke, and Grandpa is with his successful long-generation business. You are doing so well lately with your bail bondsperson business. I've always been the odd one out."

"You've always been the cool one! You've always been above it all. You're a fantastic person, Henry. You have a great, extraordinary job, and you are friends with the boss! Grandma would grill you about finding a wife, and you'd shrug and make some clever joke about it, and she'd leave you alone. I never got how you could do that. And I'm over here, obsessing over how I can make myself good enough for my parents."

Shit. That hurts my heart. I tell Henry so much, and I should have … I tell him that I never felt good enough either and that I genuinely thought I was the only one. We say words to the same effect back and forth and back again. We lean close together, hunching over like he was kid trying to tell scary stories over a campfire with dad. We talk some of the times in our lives that we've felt less than. Like let-down.

It's strange to discover that Henry has felt just how I've felt all these years. My golden son, eager to prove himself. This is my fault; I shouldn't make my son feel this way. He's far beyond that, "listen, Henry, I am proud of you, always have. Okay kid?"

He silently nods then smiles at me.

It turns out I was the blind fool because I thought I was coming up to Henry's room tonight to blow his mind with a truth he was foolishly blind.

I was so wrong about everything.

I was wrong about Regina.

I apologize to Henry again for misreading the situation he was in with his fake girlfriend and thinking he was a gullible idiot.

"That's okay, mom," he says, "but you didn't say the idiot bit out loud."

I grimace at him. He glares at me. We both burst out laughing. There is no confusion or apparent derangement this time. Just a shared silly giggle. Two people, two peas in a pod, we both are enjoying our inside joke. We understood each other.

I am looking at the jumbled pile of notes again, dropping the pages onto the floor when I'm done with them. The info about Regina is especially interesting because it confirms so much of what I already knew about her. She was telling me the truth because I'm the mother of Henry.

I was right to like her.

I push the notes away, marking the official end of my spying. I now know that Henry's fake girlfriend is as genuine, and engaging, and quirky as she seemed when we were in town. No further evidence is required. Anything else I want to learn about Regina Mills, I want to learn by chatting to the woman herself.

Except one thing.

There's just one last thing I don't understand.

"Henry, why is she here for Christmas instead of at home? Surely she would want to be with her real boyfriend for the holidays? And he can't be too pleased about her shacking up with you for the week?"

He pursues his lips, hiding a smile. "Regina doesn't have a boyfriend."

"She ..? Yeah, she does. Taylor or someone. I saw that text from him, remember?"

"I remember, but I promise you, Regina doesn't have a boyfriend. She's single. She had nowhere to be this Christmas, so I invited her here to pose as my girlfriend. Win-win. End of story."

"But the text? Taylor?"

Henry sighs, "Taylor is Regina life-long friend, and Dianella is Regina's ex. They are not together anymore. It isn't for me to talk about the specifics, but I can guarantee you that they are over. Dianella has been sending some texts, but Regina has been ignoring them all. She's done with her."

She's …

Her?

Oh … when I shot him a look.

I don't think Henry meant to say that. His eyes opened wide, and his mouth has clamped shut, which means it's true.

Regina likes women.

I sit calmly with this news, letting it sink in. strangely, my gaydar failed to pick up on her, but being queer is no big revelation anymore, especially not after all tonight's surprises. I shrug.

Oh, who am I kidding? I leap out of my seat and land in the pile of post-its.

I have to see Regina right away. We have so much in common! So much to talk about! People have often joked that I get overexcited about making friends with other queer people, and I've never denied it. I need to connect. Regina … I sigh again. I have a million and one questions for Regina, and I clearly cannot be trusted to work any of the answers out for myself because I am the newly crowned queen of jumping to the wrong conclusions and staying there. I need help with understanding the truth. I need to hear it all from her.

I need to apologize!

I have to tell her, that's the main thing. Regina never deserved my harsh judgments and conclusion-jumping. Even if I only made my misgivings known by asking a few prying questions and dishing out some dirty looks, I need her to know how sorry I am for getting it so wrong. I spring on my toes, feeling like I've downed ten espresso shots. Or eat a car battery.

"I need to see her!" I tell Henry. "I owe her a massive apology. And maybe a high-five."

I run out of the room.

Out in the hallway, I grind to a halt. I need to slow down. I need to take a moment before I go racing off into the night to find the woman I loathed up until a few minutes ago. I should make any judgements towards her because any friend of Henry's is always good people. He believes good in everyone. He believes that he can redeem an evil being. He's … he has the heart of the believer.

I need to take off my jumper, that's what I need to do. It's still damp and smelly, and I can't have that. I also need to check my hair looks okay. Maybe a spritz on a little body spray. And then I need to race into the night to find Regina.