A/N: If one wishes to divorce a spouse whose whereabouts are unknown, they can petition a judge for permission to serve by publication (publish the Summons or other document in a newspaper of general circulation in the area where the spouse or partner is likely to be) or posting (depending on the court's procedures, either the server or the court clerk posts the Summons or other document in a visible place designated for court notices at the courthouse).

Boomerangs is a thrift shop/vintage clothing chain with several stores in the Boston area.

While I'm not forgetting that Alaska has two time zones, most of the state is four hours behind Massachusetts, with only the Aleutian Islands one hour behind that.

Chapter Fourteen

"Oh, Henry!" Ms Blanchard looked up from her desk with a smile. "It's recess now. Shouldn't you be outside?"

Henry shook his head. "It's too noisy," he said. "Couldn't I read in here?" He held up the book meaningfully.

Ms Blanchard sighed. "I'm glad you're enjoying it, Henry, but…" She winced at the boy's pleading look and relented. "I guess it'd be okay, just this once." The broad smile on Henry's face made her own a bit wider. She went back to grading papers, glancing up every minute or two to check up on her student.

Henry sat, his eyes glued to the pages, which rustled slightly as he turned them. Ms Blanchard silently congratulated herself on how much happier he'd been these last few weeks. Then she remembered something. "Henry," she said, "I'm just going to run down to the office and pick up some copies. Will you be okay here for a couple of minutes?"

Henry looked up. "Sure!" he said.

"Okay. I should be back before the other kids come in," she said, already halfway to the door.

As soon as it closed behind her, Henry put the book aside. He opened the door again cautiously, and looked up and down the hallway. Reassured that it was empty, he carefully eased open the bottom left-hand drawer in Ms Blanchard's desk, wincing a bit at the slight creak. Nobody could hear it outside the room, he told himself. He knew it was true. He also knew he'd be in real trouble if he was caught.

He'd never been in real trouble before. At least, never in school. (Not doing his family tree homework didn't count. It wasn't like Ms Blanchard had called Regina or anything.) For a moment, he wondered whether anyone would remember anything about it a day later anyway.

Then he reached into the drawer, opened Ms Blanchard's purse, pulled out her wallet, opened it, and extracted the Visa he found inside.

By the time the bell rang and Ms Blanchard returned, seconds ahead of the rest of her students, Henry had closed the drawer, returned to his desk, and resumed reading—the card now safely ensconced in his pocket.

Neal was waiting when Emma got home. As she came in, he got up and ran into their small kitchen. She heard the microwave door slam, followed by a series of beeps. "Dinner will be on the table in a minute," he told her, coming back into the main room.

"Candlelight," Emma said, looking at the table. "Real tablecloth instead of disposable, real cutlery…"

"Real plates, too," Neal told her, as the smell of cinnamon wafted from the kitchen. "And I'll wash 'em, don't worry," he grinned, just as the microwave dinged.

He went back to the kitchen and Emma heard the microwave door open again, then close, and then came another series of beeps. A moment later, he returned, bearing an earthenware plate with a generous portion of…

Emma's jaw dropped. "I thought they retired the Cinnabon French toast!" she gaped, taking in the dish with its all its maple-cinnamon-mascarpone-syrupy glory.

"They did," Neal grinned. "But they agreed to make it up as a special order. Uh… sorry if the fruit looks messy, but I put it on myself just now." He shrugged. "I got them to put it in a separate container so it wouldn't get gross when I nuked the toast. Sauce too." The sliced strawberries and bananas did look a bit haphazard, and the banana was a little on the brown side, from having been cut some time ago, but Emma wasn't about to complain. The microwave dinged again, and he went to get his own meal—a short rib mac-and-cheese. "Good thing Victoria's Diner serves a 24-hour-breakfast, huh? I remembered how much you loved this."

"Yeah," Emma said, sitting down at the table a little nervously. "So… what's wrong?"

"Wrong?" Neal asked, a little too quickly. "Why should—?"

Emma gave him a hard look. "If you're going to try and tell me nothing's wrong, trust me, I won't need my superpower to know you're lying." Her frown fell away, replaced by worry. "What's happened?"

Neal sighed. "You know that guy, Scanlan, we've been trying to find for months?"

"Yeah?" Emma nodded. That one had even stymied her above-par talents.

"Well, there's been a break. We're pretty sure we know where he is."

Emma grinned. "It's about time! Wait. So, what's…?"

Neal pushed pasta around on his plate. "All signs are pointing to Alaska. And not some major city, like Nome or Juneau. No, he's the outdoorsy type, and even Alaska's not all that cold in early October. He cashed in travel points on an account I guess he didn't think we'd be looking at. To be fair, it was dormant for a few years; glad you showed me how to be thorough. But he used them on a car rental. And when we reached out to Avis and faxed them documentation, the agent who'd handled it remembered the guy saying something about heading up to Denali State Park. That's… over three hundred thousand acres of wilderness to comb through, if he wasn't deliberately planting a false trail. It's the best break we've got anyway; whether he went to Denali or not, we at least have a good idea which state he's in now. There are a couple of complications, though," he continued. "Law states that bounty hunters in Alaska need to work for a bondsperson in the state, but given how much ground there is to cover, Shaughnessy's contacted an office up there and they've agreed to hire me on contract for the duration." He gave Emma an apologetic smile. "They admitted that they don't have enough people to comb the area looking for this guy and considering the size of the Ponzi scheme this guy was running, they're agreeable to having a little extra help. Anyway, I'm flying to Fairbanks the day after tomorrow and I'll probably be there at least a week or two."

Emma nearly choked on her morsel of French toast. She swallowed, washed it down with a gulp of Coke and exclaimed, "B-but you'll miss…" She stopped. "Never mind."

"That's why I got you the French toast," Neal admitted. He sighed. "Babe, I know I'm gonna miss your birthday and I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you when I get back."

Emma took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, "but it better be with something extra special."

"Uh…" Neal hesitated. Then, a bit nervously, he asked, "Would a diamond ring be special enough? Because once I nab this guy, my cut of the bail bond is probably going to be enough for that."

Emma was silent and Neal was immediately sorry. "I didn't mean to…"

"No," Emma protested. "No, no, you didn't say anything wrong. I…" She took a breath. "I think that might be," she smiled a bit nervously, "just special enough."

Neal jumped up from his chair and came around to her seat. She clasped her arms about him and was about to apologize for the syrup on her fingers getting all over his shirt, but his lips were already pressed firmly on hers, and he was probably getting cheese sauce in her hair anyway and she didn't care about that any more than he did.

"So, you're okay with committing?" Neal grinned, when they'd pulled apart once more.

Emma smiled back. "You've stuck it out this long. I guess you're probably coming back. And… I don't think anything earth-shaking is likely to happen before you do…"

When he'd read his mother's letter, Henry had been so positive that she was the Emma from his book who was destined to break the curse. In the cold light of the next morning, however—or in the twilight of his latest session with Archie, anyway—he had to admit it seemed a little farfetched. There had to be thousands of Emmas out there.

But this Emma had said she'd been abandoned on the side of a highway.

Well, duh! If she'd been sent through an enchanted wardrobe as a newborn, she sure wouldn't remember it!

Okay, so there was a baby Emma in his book and his mother's name was also Emma. It could still be a coincidence. Archie had suggested as much. And talking about the curse hadn't got him anywhere, not that he'd expected it to, but he'd been hoping…

"Henry, I know living in a small town can be a little boring, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a curse."

Henry looked at the rectangle of plastic in his hand. It wasn't too late. He could probably slip it back into Ms Blanchard's purse as easily as he'd slipped it out with nobody the wiser. Once she noticed it was missing, though, once he used it, once she got the bill, if she guessed he'd been the one to take her card, he'd be in the biggest trouble he'd ever been in!

He sucked in his breath. "This had better be worth it," he muttered, switching on his computer and going back to the site he'd bookmarked a day earlier. This time, when the payment screen came up, he only hesitated for a moment before he keyed in the credit card information. He frowned for a moment when it asked for the CVV; he'd never heard of that before. A moment later, Google told him what it was and he'd flipped over Ms Blanchard's card to find the three-digit number on the back.

For several achingly-long moments, the webpage displayed only the single word, "Searching," followed by a series of dots that increased and decreased. And then, Henry's breath caught.

There was an Emma Swan on an adoption registry who had surrendered a baby boy for adoption ten years ago. But she wasn't in Arizona…

She was in Boston.

Regina had told him the story. How she'd wanted to adopt a baby and how when she'd finally been told that the agency had one for her, she'd practically jumped into her car and driven the four hours to Boston to…

Boston was only four hours away by car.

Henry's face fell. There was no way that he could drive a car all the way to Boston, or even out of Regina's driveway!

But if he could get out of Storybrooke, get as far as the next town, wherever that was, then maybe he could take a bus!

Neal zipped his duffle bag closed and headed into the living room. Emma was sitting at the computer, typing. Neal glanced over her shoulder. "Uh… I am coming back, you know," he said.

Startled, Emma gave an involuntary jump. Then she pretended he hadn't rattled her. "This is work-related," she said with grim satisfaction. "Ryan Kirkpatrick just took my bait."

"Refresh my memory?"

"Embezzler. Got out on bail; skipped out on his wife, who put up half the bond. And now, he's on a computer dating site. Real prince of a guy," she added sourly. "Julie Kirkpatrick was in the office last week. Lovely lady, didn't deserve this crap. It wasn't until he abandoned her and she went checking his home office for a clue that she found out he had an up-to-date profile on eHarmony. Now she's got another reason to find him: so she can serve him divorce papers."

Neal let out a low whistle. "If you don't track him down, she can still serve him by publication or posting, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Emma agreed. "But she wants to do it directly. Or see the photo when the process server does it. Not that I blame her. Anyway, she came back today. I sat down with her and she helped me create a profile of my own that makes me sound like his dream date. Looks like it worked. He wants to meet."

"And there's no chance you'll fall for him?" Neal deadpanned. "I mean, when you and I hooked up, I was a two-bit con-artist. Not to mention a car thief. Now, here you are playing for another criminal. I dunno, sounds like you have a type…"

"Yeah," Emma swatted him playfully. "Guys I go to jail for who end up delivering pizza to my workplace and hanging around for another seven years or so after that. Not white collar crooks who cheat on their wives."

"Okay, okay," Neal laughed. "So, when does it all go down?"

"You've been watching old detective movies again," Emma replied. "And… Let's just say, I'm going out on my birthday, after all."

The sun wasn't up yet when Henry tiptoed downstairs. He carried his shoes in one hand and a foldable scooter in the other. On his back, he carried his knapsack, the storybook safely within. He wasn't positive the scooter was a good idea. He'd never been outside Storybrooke since he'd come here and he wasn't sure if the seasons here were going to be the same once he crossed the town line. It was already cold enough to dress for winter in town, and while it hadn't started snowing yet, Henry had seen frost on the grass just the other morning.

In the vestibule, he set his bag and scooter down on the polished wooden floor, tensing at the faint click the metal scooter made as it touched the wood. When there was no sound from upstairs, he put on his shoes, got his coat and scarf from the closet, and put them on hastily. Then he quickly punched in the alarm code—his birthday numbers, which made it easy to remember—and once the light on the control box changed from red to green, grabbed his knapsack and scooter and carefully eased open the front door.

The streetlights were still on when he unfolded the scooter and pushed off down the street, turning left at the boarded-up library with its tower clock proclaiming the time incorrectly as 8:15, heading for the town line. He could see another light dusting of frost on the grassy lawns he passed, too. He was half-expecting there to be a barrier of some kind when he was getting close. Sheriff Graham's car parked horizontally across the road, or maybe, since everyone in town was from a fairy tale, the barrier keeping them all here would be too! He couldn't remember ever seeing the town line before, and he was half-hoping that there would be a thicket of briar or a hedge maze with a dragon in the middle (minotaurs were Greek mythology, and anyway, there weren't any in his book). But then, he rounded the bend and saw a green road sign, just like they had on the highways on TV, that read "Leaving Storybrooke."

It suddenly occurred to Henry that if his book was right and the Curse would 'bring down a terrible fate on any who sought to leave this new town in which they found themselves', then maybe he shouldn't be scootering toward it. Not if there was a chance of an ice patch on the pavement! He slowed, dismounted, and rather awkwardly picked up the scooter and walked the last fifty yards or so.

He tensed as he stepped carefully past the sign, alert for any kind of invisible force-field or booby trap. Nothing happened. Maybe the sign wasn't actually at the town line. Maybe it was a little in front of it. He took a few more steps and turned around. Now, he could see the back of that sign and, facing him across the opposite traffic lane, a white sign whose blue letters proclaimed, "Welcome to Storybrooke."

Hardly daring to believe he'd actually done it, Henry kept walking down the road, somewhat surprised to realize that the scenery didn't look appreciably different from what he was used to. It wasn't any warmer or colder either. After about twenty minutes he saw a sign with no words. Instead, there was only the number 172 encased in a square with a narrow black border. He wasn't sure what that meant, but before he could begin to piece it together, he heard a car horn behind him and instinctively stepped onto the grass beside the road.

The car passed and Henry's eyes widened. Every license plate he'd ever seen had a picture of a bird on a pine branch on its left and painted green grass along the bottom. This one had had… well… some sort of image on the right he hadn't been able to make out. But the number had been green, not the black he was used to. That meant that the car had to be from some other state! He'd done it! He'd left Storybrooke! Wait. If the car was from another state, did that mean that he was, too? After a moment, Henry rejected the idea. If a town that nobody was supposed to be able to leave had a sign at the border, a whole other state probably had one too. But he was out of Storybrooke. The road he was on had to go someplace. Sooner or later, he was going to hit a town or a city or something. It probably wouldn't be Boston, but hopefully, he'd be able to get there.

A bit after noon, an exhausted ten-year-old blearily scootered into Blue Hill, Maine. He walked into a convenience store to ask directions, wondering if the woman behind the counter was going to wonder why he wasn't in school. If she did, though, she kept her questions to herself and told the boy what he needed to know.

A few minutes later, Henry stood in front of the town hall, waiting for the Downeast Transportation commuter bus to Ellsworth. From there, he would take another bus to Bangor and transfer to yet another one, bound for Boston South. He looked down at his tickets once more, and curled his fingers tightly around the bus schedules. It sounded like a long trip, longer than he'd already come, but he had six Apollo bars and two bottles of Pepsi for the road and if that wasn't enough, he imagined that Ms Blanchard's credit card would come in handy when he needed more.

Emma's evening had not gone well. To be fair, she hadn't expected it to. Going out on a date—even to catch a bail-jumper, even when she'd only stayed long enough to make the collar,—just made her feel sleazy under most circumstances already. Being practically engaged, even when her fiancé was on board with it, just made it worse. Yeah, she'd caught the guy after a brief chase. And a dress that she could only hope would look as good as new after a dry cleaning; it had been a lucky find at Boomerangs and she doubted she'd be able to replace it with anything equally suitable on her budget.

She'd stopped off at a bakery on her way home and bought a cupcake so the night wouldn't be a total washout. They'd had a number of candles and other accessories hanging on the wall and impulsively, she'd picked up an assortment of star-shaped ones.

Back in her apartment, she set the cupcake on her counter, and dialed Neal's cellphone. She couldn't say she was overly surprised when it went to voice mail. It was four hours earlier in Alaska; he was probably out searching and had his phone turned off. Plus, cell phone coverage was spotty outside of the cities; she had no idea whether she could reach him if he was inside a state park.

Too bad. She really wanted to hear his voice, but even his voicemail just used the computerized, "The person you have dialed is not available. At the tone, please record your message." She hadn't left one, though she hoped he'd be able to call her tonight.

Sadly, she set a blue star candle into the cupcake, lit it, and rested her elbows on the counter, pillowing her head in her arms, with a sigh. "Another banner year," she murmured. And then, instantly, she shook her head. She wasn't that same lonely 'friendless orphan' she'd let Ryan Kirkpatrick think she was. Oh, she had been in the past, but that had been before Neal.

No, but tonight, it was her birthday and she was lonely. Maybe she could have let that date go on just a little bit longer, she thought wryly. No. The way it was going to end, she would have been on the hook for both meals. Still, celebrating a birthday alone wasn't fun and it would have been nice to have someone to share it with. Sighing, she closed her eyes and, not expecting anything but figuring she didn't have anything to lose by trying it, she blew out the candle and made a wish for…

The ring of her doorbell startled her. She wasn't expecting anyone. For a moment, she thought it might be Neal, home early to surprise her, but she doubted he'd caught his guy this quickly. Even if he had, it was a ten hour flight from Fairbanks to Boston and probably about the same from any other city in Alaska. And that was if it was a direct flight. Still, if he'd collared the perp yesterday, then maybe…

Yeah, but why would he ring the bell when he had a key?

Well, she'd never know who it was if she didn't open the door. She had a fleeting thought as she turned the handle that it might be one of the creeps she'd brought in, come for some payback and she wondered whether she shouldn't have grabbed her gun.

And then, she blinked down at the little boy in the navy blue woolen coat and the red-and-gray striped scarf. The clothes looked like quality and the kid didn't seem to be sick or starving. "Um…" She wondered if he was looking for the previous tenants, or if he'd meant to ring another apartment. She didn't know most of her neighbors, but maybe he was here for one of the ones she did. "Can I help you?"

"Are you Emma Swan?" the boy asked hopefully.

"Uh… Yeah," Emma replied, wondering what was going on. "Who are you?"

And then the kid smiled a crooked smile so achingly familiar that made her wish more than ever that Neal was here now. "M-my name is Henry," he said. "I'm your son."

A/N: The car Henry sees has New Hampshire plates.

I'm relying on Google Maps for Henry's route to Boston. The route would work today, but I'm not sure if the connections would have been the same in 2011. The City of Douglas website speculates that Storybrooke would be located somewhere in Hancock County on the Blue Hill Peninsula. While I obviously couldn't find Storybrooke on a map (darned, Dark Curse!) Blue Hill is roughly 35 miles from Bar Harbor and we can say that Storybrooke lies somewhere in between. When I asked Google Maps to find me a cycling route from Blue Hill to Bar Harbor, it suggested State Road 172. I'm assuming that pedestrians and scooters would also be able to use this road. If I'm wrong, then let's chalk Henry's success up to good luck and a curse that's ready to start breaking!