Chapter Sixteen

They were over the state line into Maine and driving past Ogunquit, when Henry slapped his forehead. "Oh, no!" he exclaimed.

Emma glanced over at him. "What's wrong, kid?" she asked.

Henry sighed. "I forgot my scooter on the bus to Boston. I had it in the overhead compartment with my knapsack and I—"

"—grabbed your knapsack when you hit the terminal and left the scooter?" Emma finished. "It happens. South Station Bus Terminal should have a lost and found. When I get back, I'll give them a call and if someone turned it in, I can pick it up and send it to you."

Henry blinked. "You're going back?"

"Uh… yeah," Emma said with some surprise. "I-I mean, I hope I get to see you again. Maybe your father and I can both come up for a visit sometime soon. But I don't think your mother's going to be thrilled about having me move in with you guys."

"There's a bed and breakfast in town," Henry said quickly. "You packed an overnight bag anyway."

"Yeah, because it's going to be after midnight when I get you home and I'm not going to drive more than four hours straight in one direction, then turn around and drive another four or five hours in the other one without getting a few hours' sleep first. But I'm not sticking around much after that. I mean, I've got a life in Boston and a job and rent and bills and…"

"Couldn't you stay for a few days anyway?" Henry pleaded.

Emma glanced at him again and looked away with a sigh. He had his father's puppy dog eyes when he wanted her to give in. She should have shot him down. She was an adult with responsibilities. She couldn't just…

Well, technically, she had flexible hours. And if Storybrooke had a place where she could rent a laptop, she could probably work on skip traces even from there. And if they needed her to hunt someone down, she could always drive back then. And meanwhile, she could take the time to get to know her kid better. But to just decide to stay for a few days, just like that…

I didn't used to be this settled, she thought to herself. Time was when I'd just start walking or hop on a bus if I needed a change of scenery. Her years in Miami and Boston had changed that. Maybe she shouldn't have let them. There was something to be said for spontaneity. She sighed again. "We'll see."

Maybe she only imagined hearing an excited 'Yes!' under her son's breath.

There were no road signs for Storybrooke. At first, Emma wasn't surprised. You expected there to be signs telling you that you were 200 miles away from Baltimore or 75 miles from New York. There was nothing out of the ordinary about not seeing a mention of Storybrooke when you weren't practically on top of it.

"You want to turn here," Henry said.

"What?" Emma blinked. Had she somehow missed the sign?

"Stop the car," Henry said urgently.

There weren't any cars on this stretch of road. Emma pulled over to the shoulder. "Kid? What's goi—?"

Henry had his seatbelt off and the door open before she'd come to a full stop. He practically tumbled out and made a bee-line for the barrier fence that bordered the highway. Emma turned off the motor and followed.

"I didn't know if I'd be able to get back," Henry said, and now Emma could see something blowing in the night. If she hadn't been driving slowly, looking for a sign, they might have whipped past it. "The town's under a curse. People can't usually enter or leave. If I couldn't get back in, I wanted to make sure I knew where it was, so…"

He reached out and tugged on what Emma realized now was a sweater. She raised an eyebrow when she saw the crest. "Your school uniform? Aren't those sort of expensive?"

"Yeah, but I figured it'd probably be night when we came back and," he held up the sweater so its embroidered crest was clearly visible, "white thread shows up better in your headlights. Besides, if you didn't bring me, I'd miss school anyway. Oops." He winced as a bit of wool caught on the wire, pulling a doubled strand out behind it. Emma reached over and unsnagged it. "Thanks. Anyway, take the left fork."

"You sure about this kid?" Emma asked dubiously. "I don't know this area, like at all. And it's night. And there isn't much light to see by. Maybe I should turn around and find us a motel and we'll drive back in the morning."

Henry shook his head. "I'm sure. And there won't be any motels unless we go back to Blue Hill."

"That's only about ten minutes by car."

Henry blinked. "It took me forever to get there on my scooter!" he exclaimed. "Are you sure?"

"Cars go faster, remember?" Emma smiled. "Even forty-year-old Volkswagens."

"Then we're only about two minutes away from Storybrooke," Henry said decisively. "Come on."

Henry's mother had probably reported him missing by now. If they were stopped by police, it was probably going to look better if she was driving toward his home than doubling back away from it. "You're the boss kid," she said. Then she wondered whether she'd seriously just told a ten-year-old that he was calling the shots.

Henry just grinned.

Emma's doubts about their route faded as she beheld the bright white sign whose blue letters proudly welcomed her to Storybrooke. She continued down the road, as widely-spaced farm houses yielded to a gas station facing several boarded-over stalls and a placard announcing that the farmers market was now closed for the season, but would be back after Memorial Day.

Street lamps appeared, illuminating fields that shifted gradually to large grassy yards, which shrank the closer they got to town. Finally, Emma turned onto a main street. "Okay, kid," she said. "How about an address?"

Henry kept his eyes straight ahead. "Forty-four Not Telling You Street."

Emma skidded to a stop in the middle of the road and flung her door open wide as she clambered out. Henry followed suit. "Look," she snapped, "it's been a long night and it's almost…" Her gaze fell on the clock face on the tower up the street and her voice trailed off. "Eight-fifteen?" she finished incredulously.

Henry nodded. "That clock hasn't moved my whole life," he said. "Time's frozen here."

"Excuse me?"

"The Evil Queen did it with her curse," Henry insisted. "She sent everyone from the Enchanted Forest here."

Maybe he wasn't troubled. Maybe he just had an active fantasy life and her superpower was busted. Playing along, she sighed. "Okay. The Evil Queen sent a bunch of fairy tale characters here."

Henry nodded. "Yeah, and now they're trapped."

Emma groaned. "Frozen in time, trapped in Storybrooke Maine. That's what you're going with?"

As Henry protested that he was telling her the truth, and elaborated on his story, she heard a man's voice calling his name. She looked up and Henry looked back over his shoulder as a bespectacled man with a large Dalmatian hurried up.

"Henry!" The man exclaimed once more. "What are you doing here? Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine, Archie," Henry said quickly.

'Archie' looked at Emma and smiled. "Who's this?"

Emma smiled back. "Just someone trying to give him a ride home."

"She's my mom, Archie," Henry announced.

Surprise registered on the man's face but he recovered quickly. "Oh," he said. "I see."

"You know where he lives?"

"Yeah, sure," Archie replied. "Just, ah, right up on Mifflin Street. The mayor's house is the biggest one on the block."

Emma whirled on Henry. "You're the mayor's kid?" In her mind, she was swearing. She did not want to be accused of abducting the mayor's kid. She took a calming breath. She was bringing him back. It would be fine. But the mayor's—

Henry swallowed hard. "Uh… maybe?"

Emma groaned.

Her thoughts were churning as she drove the few hundred yards to the mayor's front door. Clearly, when she'd said that her son had issues, she'd been more on the mark than she'd realized. Henry was in therapy; he'd skipped out on a session to come find her. She shouldn't feel guilty about that, but she did, a little.

And Henry was convinced that the 'Evil Queen' had laid a curse on the town and that his psychiatrist was Jiminy Cricket! Pinocchio wasn't even a fairy tale really, was it? Although she wasn't sure what to think about Jiminy's—Archie's!—going on about how lying was giving into your dark side. Were shrinks supposed to talk that way? Maybe they were; it wasn't like Emma had a whole lot of experience with them. Social workers and guidance counsellors and nurses who claimed to be acting with your best interests in mind, sure, but that wasn't the same thing.

Why pay someone a hundred dollars an hour to tell you what's wrong with you, when everyone you know will be happy to do it for free? The old joke surfaced in her mind and a tiny smile flickered on her face for an instant, but she didn't really feel like laughing. This evening had been a whirlwind and despite four-plus hours in the car, she didn't feel as though she'd truly caught her breath once since Henry had turned up. Or since Ryan Kirkpatrick had flipped the table in the restaurant into her lap and (hopefully not) ruined her dress.

Part of her wanted to pull back over to the curb and spend a couple of hours getting to know her son better. Except that for all he'd wanted to meet her, he'd spent most of the ride engrossed in his book. In fact, she'd seen him finish it and immediately start reading again from the beginning! Did he want to get to know her, or had he sized her up in the first thirty seconds and decided he was better off at home after all?

She pulled up to the front door.

And now, Henry turned to her and there was no mistaking the fear in his eyes. "Please," he whispered, "don't take me back there."

Despite herself, Emma felt a pang. "I have to," she said. "I'm sure your mom's worried sick."

"You're my mom!" Henry said. "She's evil!" Still, he got out of the car when Emma opened the door and fell into step beside her as they started up the walk.

"Evil?" Emma echoed. "That's a little extreme, isn't it? Besides, aren't stepmothers supposed to be wicked?"

"She's evil," Henry repeated. "And she doesn't love me. She just pretends to."

Emma's face fell. "Kid," she said sadly, "I'm sure that's not true."

They were halfway up the walk when the door of the house opened and a dark-haired woman hurried out. Framed in the doorway behind her, Emma could see a bearded man wearing a leather jacket with a sheriff's star pinned over his breast. "Henry!" the woman exclaimed, pulling the boy into a hug. "Henry, are you okay? Where have you been?" She looked up at Emma. "What happened?"

Henry struggled out of his mother's embrace. "I found my real mom!" he snapped. Then he ran into the house without a backwards glance.

The woman favored Emma with a dismayed look. "You're Henry's birth mother?" she managed.

Emma gave her an uneasy smile. "Uh… hi…"

The sheriff cleared his throat. "I'll just go check on the lad," he said with an accent that Emma thought she recognized as Irish. An Irish sheriff in a small town in Maine…? "…Make sure he's all right," he continued. Then he headed into the house, leaving Emma alone with the other woman.

"Regina Mills," the woman introduced herself with a slightly-forced smile and an extended hand.

"Emma Swan," Emma returned, clasping it.

"Well," Regina said, "How would you like a glass of the best apple cider you ever tasted?"

Emma thought for a moment. "Got anything stronger?"

About an hour later, Emma's head was reeling as she got behind the wheel. Henry's mother was… definitely something. What, she didn't know, but something. Not evil, obviously. Henry's imagination was really going overboard on that one. But Regina had been, well, ostensibly friendly, but Emma had picked up on the veiled hostility.

Maybe she was just nervous about Emma's arrival. She'd asked outright whether she needed to be worried about her or Henry's father. Emma hadn't seen the point of antagonizing the other woman. Regina had clearly been rattled by Henry's escapade and hadn't seemed to calm down much after the sheriff had reassured her that he was fine. What good would it have done to say, "We've been looking for him for more than seven years and the adoption was never legal anyway"? Instead, when Regina had asked about Neal's whereabouts, Emma had opted for a misleading truth and replied only that he was in Alaska, without bothering to mention that he'd be back in a week or so.

"Do I need to be worried about you?" Regina had pressed, and Emma had swallowed and opted for another half-truth.

"Not now. When he turned up on my doorstep, I wanted to make sure he was okay here, but I can see that he is."

Regina had smiled a bit at that and taken it as an opportunity to spell out the challenges inherent in combining single motherhood with running a town.

He hadn't told her about the fairytale book. The book he'd barely put down in the car and Regina didn't seem to know he had it. Was he hiding it from her, or was Regina less involved in Henry's life than she wanted Emma to believe? Emma wasn't certain, but it had been the first real red flag of the encounter.

I don't think that makes me evil, do you?

That wasn't necessarily a red flag, Emma told herself. Henry might not have told Regina about the book necessarily, but maybe Emma wasn't the only person whom he'd told that his mother was evil. And if Regina had overheard, or if word had got back to her, then that could expl—

Her gaze fell on the passenger seat. Henry had left the book behind. "Sneaky bastard," Emma murmured. Naturally. He's my bastard. And Neal's. Still smiling, she pulled her attention back to the road and started. Was that a…

WOLF!

In the instant that it took her mind to process what she was seeing, she was already swerving to avoid hitting it. The car's rear wheels hit the base of the Welcome to Storybrooke sign. For a split-second that seemed to last forever, she saw the sign toppling toward her in slow motion. Then it hit the roof of her car and she pitched forward, banging her head on the steering wheel hard enough to black out.

Neal wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a good night's sleep. It wasn't even ten o'clock, but he'd been up since 6AM and although he wasn't a stranger to waking up when it was still dark, he wasn't used to a sun that rose after nine.

Funny. When he'd been a teenager, it had never bothered him that time in Neverland had sometimes appeared to flow at Pan's whim. True, there had been neither clocks to keep track of the hours, nor calendars for the days, but it seemed to him that some of their bonfire dances had gone on for days. (Pan had divided them into crews and had each perform for the others in turn, but there were generally more than a half-dozen crews, and to Neal's recollection, it had been commonplace for each to have upwards of a dozen turns in a night.) Similarly, when Pan had taken it into his head that the boys should hunt pirates until sundown, the sun had taken an inordinately long time to set. At the time, Neal had never questioned it. Not out loud, anyway. Neverland was Pan's kingdom and it followed his laws. Even when he changed them.

Neal hadn't thought about those days in years, but now, after a day spent trekking through Denali National Park with nothing to show for it, the old memories were surfacing. He'd lost cell phone reception about three miles past the entrance, just when he'd been driving past the sled dog kennels. Fortunately, his phone's GPS still worked, and while the tracking skills he'd acquired under Pan might have been a bit rusty, they were all coming back to him.

He'd spent the daylight hours walking the trails, keeping an eye on the sky and knowing that he needed to be back in his rented car and on the main road out of the park before it got too dark to see what he was doing. Thus far, while he'd encountered a number of hikers, his quarry had eluded him. Maybe the guy had been trying to send any pursuers on a wild goose chase when he'd told the Avis clerk where he was headed. Maybe. But Neal knew he'd still comb the area until he was certain.

It was a hundred and twenty miles back to Fairbanks, and after a full day outdoors, he'd been only too eager to get back to his hotel. It wasn't until he'd had dinner and the aforementioned shower that he realized that today was Emma's birthday. And he hadn't called her.

He reached for his phone and saw that he had a phone message and several texts. He swallowed hard. Emma wasn't the kind to rage or sulk if he forgot a date, but he knew she'd been disappointed that he wasn't going to be there to celebrate with her. Without looking at the texts or playing back the message, he called. Nobody picked up. Funny. It wasn't that late. He remembered that she'd made plans for the evening, but—oh for… He'd forgotten that it was four hours later in Boston! She was asleep! He left her an apologetic voice message. Only then did he look at the texts.

A moment later he was calling her phone again. "Come on, Emma," he murmured. "Pick up! Pick up!"

On Sheriff Graham Humboldt's desk, a cellphone vibrated. The sheriff noticed, but though he quickly jotted down the number that flashed on the screen, he let it pass unanswered.

His gaze traveled to the holding cells where two occupants now slept. As though one of them knew that he was being watched, he sat up crossly. "Oh, terrific. Here again."

Graham smiled. "You do make a habit of this, don't you? Is it the mattress you prefer," he tossed a plastic-wrapped muffin expertly through the bars, which the prisoner caught, "or is it the free breakfast?"

The prisoner made a rude gesture. Then he unwrapped the muffin. "Bran?" he snapped. "Were they out of blueberry?"

"You know, Leroy," Graham replied, "the idea is for you not to want to end up here every evening. If you want a blueberry muffin for breakfast, might I suggest you avoid getting drunk and disorderly the night before? Then you can go out and buy whichever variety your heart desires, yes?"

As he finished speaking, a balding man who might have been in his early sixties hurried in. "The Mother Superior, she tells me you have Leroy here," he said.

"That's right."

"Well, the convent, he needs a new roof. That's a two-man job and Leroy, he and me we're supposed to start today. Could I ask you, please, to release him?"

Graham sighed. "I suppose so. I'll just need a moment to draft up an appearance notice first."

The cell phone vibrated again and Leroy groaned.

"Shut that damned thing off willya?" he demanded. "My head's about to explode."

"It'll stop in a second," Graham called back. "Now let me see where I put that form."

"Come on, Emma," Neal muttered. "Pick up. Pick up!" He put his phone down with a groan. Damn it!

"Okay," he said aloud. "Okay, stay calm. She found our kid. Or our kid found her. She's driving him back to his adoptive family, and she's right. This isn't the Enchanted Forest and we can't just keep him. And even back there, kidnapping was a thing," he added. Although blood still generally trumped upbringing. Unless the foster family had wealth or power.

He tried Emma's cell again. When she still didn't answer, he flung the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall and landed on the thick pile carpet.

It was four hours later in Boston. Or Maine. Emma was probably asleep. She'd call him when she woke up and they'd talk and they'd figure out where to go from here.

Unless that destiny August had told him about one night in Portland was at hand and Emma was on her way to break a curse…

"And if she does, then one day soon, my father's going to turn up on our doorstep," Neal muttered. They'd have to move. They'd have to pick up and head out and keep going and hope he wouldn't track them down. Only they couldn't go on the run if they had a kid with them. And how the hell was he supposed to explain any of this to Emma?

He could just cut and run now. Get a head start before the curse broke and… He couldn't just abandon Emma that way. And he wanted to meet his son. And maybe, his showing up now had nothing to do with the Curse. August said that Emma was going to break the curse when she was twenty-eight. I didn't think that meant it was going to happen on her birthday! He'd been hoping it wouldn't happen at all!

He picked up his phone from the floor. It seemed undamaged, apart from a small chip in one corner—which might have been there from before. He turned it on and opened MapQuest. There was no Storybrooke in Maine. There was no Storybrook, Story Brook, or any other variation on the name that he could think of. At least, not in the US; there was a "Storybrook Medical Clinic" in Brampton, Ontario. He didn't think Emma was driving to Canada, though.

"Maybe it's just the name of a neighborhood not an official town," he said. Maybe Emma had misheard or misunderstood or there was some weird spelling. And just because MapQuest couldn't find a place didn't mean it was… hidden under some sort of magical cloaking spell, did it?

Why the hell was he stuck in Alaska right now? He wanted to get to Emma. He wanted to meet his son. He wanted to get them as far away from Maine as he possibly could! But right now, he had no idea if Emma had even made it that far and even if she had… he had no idea how he was supposed to find a town that wasn't on a map.

He wasn't a drinking man, but he kind of thought he wanted to start. He grabbed his wallet, got in the elevator and took it down to the ground floor where the hotel bar awaited. By the time he stepped inside, though, he realized that first, the situation called for clear thinking: something he wouldn't have if he got lit. Second? He wasn't sure if he'd had a real drink since Neverland. Pan had given him elderflower wine to loosen his tongue. Later, he'd wondered whether it had been only alcohol, or whether Pan had slipped something else into the cup, but if it had just been the wine, then he probably didn't want to start spilling his life story to strangers in a bar if he didn't want to wake up in some nice safe place with padding on the walls. Instead, he ordered a club soda and a plate of potato skins and tried to figure out what he was going to do next.