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Her adult life has been spent catching men who play games, and her lonely childhood and fraught adolescence saw her falling, often, to game-pieces. What all this means, now, is that she should have a read on Gold. Her edges are dull—that’s the maddening part.
He shouldn’t be so many steps ahead.
She presses her knuckles against her mouth, hating him. Hating that he knows about Graham’s jacket. Hating that she hadn’t thought of Graham, today, until she believed herself alone. Graham and Gold, Regina and Henry.
The way that hope and hurt seem painted in dashes along the quiet streets.
It’s all a muddle in this tiny town. New York and Boston, as it turns out, have nothing on the complexity of a few rows of houses; a dense, lush forest; the sound of the sea.
He makes a superlative enemy, said Regina, grinning like a cat.
And still: that moment was the closest they’d had to being two women—knowing, together, what a man’s anger could do.
Emma goes back to Mary Margaret’s. She showers until the steam blurs her eyes. She sleeps on the daybed with her feet against the vined metal footboard. She rests her arm against her eyes, pressing deep against their sockets.
What is grief, if not knowledge of missed opportunities?
How is Henry seeing her mugshot—seeing the miserable circumstances of his birth—not the worst thing that’s happened this week?
And why, when they told her she won, did she let herself feel so…
Happy?
You belong here, whispers the son she never thought she’d see again.
You belong here, Mary Margaret telegraphs with her bright, hope-painted eyes.
Even pain can make you belong; can forge memory. Emma doesn’t know what she wants, but she knows what she’s chosen—
Or perhaps, more accurately, what’s chosen her.
She has a long winding dream that is no more than a road, at first. Then it’s a grove of red trees, their roots invisible because she’s flying through them. She’s afraid what the forest will show her. She wakes up before she finds out.
“Toaster still works,” Mary Margaret says, upbeat. “Just needed a gentle touch.”
“Glad you could provide one,” Emma says. There’s cinnamon toast this morning, and a bowl of strawberries that blushes almost unbelievably red.
“Takes all kinds.” Mary Margaret’s voice is too sincere, now, to be talking only of kitchen appliances.
“Too early,” Emma tells her dryly, reaching for a coffee-mug. “Although, not too early for me hurry my ass up and get to work.”
“You have a lot of responsibility now,” Mary Margaret agrees gravely. “Crime stops with you.”
Emma permits herself a smile.
The sheriff’s office is empty. Mr. Gold isn’t lurking in the shadows. Graham isn’t smiling behind his desk. Emma wraps both hands around the back of her neck, elbows pointed out defensively.
She breathes like she’s just resurfaced, like the sea and the forest and the rows of houses have all come crashing into one.