Chapter Text
Regina
December in Maine is colder than it is in the Enchanted Forest. Regina pulls her coat closer around her as she walks to her office, refusing to believe that there is something personal in the way the wind slices through her layers and reaches into her bones. Ever since they had returned to this world of Storybrooke — a world where Henry has no memories of her, where he has grown taller, different — the world itself feels cruel, as though determined to cut her off from everything and everyone that might give her reason to live.
No matter what else happens, she’s missed nearly 10% of his life. A year is forever when you are talking about a child growing up, and any moments she has with him now are stolen, covered in a politeness that encases everything like ice. Where he shakes her hand instead of hugs her, where he looks right through her as though she doesn’t exist at all. All the years they’ve spent together, and all of it vanished in an instant. It’s foolish, but it reminds her of how Cora used to tell her that everyone would forget about her, that she would never amount to anything if she kept making the choices that she did.
She’s in a world that she never thought she would see again — a miracle, by all accounts, a miracle that she’s back here, in this town where she’d found the first lasting echoes of happiness — and all she knows is this pervasive sense of loss. She feels as though she’s drowning on dry land. It’s torture, and that she did it herself - that she allowed him to leave, that she built new memories for him and his other mother, ones where he had never known her at all - doesn’t touch the feeling.
What’s worse is that it’s clear to her that she’s alone in this feeling. The rest of Storybrooke seems relieved that they are back in their town, as though they feel like they’re coming home. Snow White might complain about the loss of her kingdom, but Regina suspects that she is secretly glad to be in a world with modern medicine and prenatal scans and ultrasounds that work like magic, seeing through the veils to what is hidden and proclaiming that the child is a boy. And instead of being upset about the change in weather — instead of feeling it reach into them like chilling fingers — there seems to be a collective feeling that it’s a time for celebration. Regina sees subtle indications of the season everywhere: a wreath on a door, a glimpse of pine needles through a window. There are lights everywhere — even if few people have strewn them all around their houses like she’s seen in movies, it feels like the world is somehow lit more brightly.
There’s garish decorations, too. When Regina passes by the diner, she sees Ruby struggling to put up some kind of tacky blinking candy cane decoration that’s as big as the sandwich board. The wolf-girl — woefully underdressed as always, as though she doesn’t remember she doesn’t have fur to keep her warm — flashes her a quick smile as she passes.
“Merry Christmas, Madame Mayor.”
It’s strange to see the town take to the idea of Christmas. There hadn’t really been holidays in the Enchanted Forest, not among people for whom gods and forest spirits and their festivals were so often a real thing. There were celebrations, of course — birthdays, coronations, victories in battle — but in Regina’s memory they were miserable affairs, a venue for social climbing more than merriment. When she was a child, they’d been full of Cora’s expectations for how she should act or dress. The celebrations at Leopold’s court were similarly awful, and she’d attended perfunctorily, pretending to join in the general happiness until she realized that no one noticed her absence.
She’d had no hopes for holidays after casting the curse and had barely noticed the ones of this world — they were there to provide some added stress, nothing more. They were days for people to think that they should have the day off from work but they couldn’t, to worry about pleasing others with presents, about cooking large meals, about family members to impress. They were a time to bring up long-buried resentments, to be disappointed because the presents were never, ever the right ones. There were a thousand headaches related to the holidays, and once she’d realized that she’d let them exist to add to the general unhappiness. Christmas was a day where Miss Blanchard’s ever-present smile seemed a little sadder, as she hung up decorations in the classroom and at the hospital where she volunteered at the bedside of a coma patient, waiting for a resurrection that would never come. As she looked at the children and their parents and went home to her drafty apartment to sit and wonder why she was so alone, what was wrong with her.
It was something, it was part of the curse, but it was something Regina had barely noticed, just like how you might not notice a slightly darker rain cloud in the middle of a storm.
For herself, Regina had watched the movies of this world, and noticed how happy everyone had seemed to be, and wondered only where her happy ending was, if it would be like that.
Henry had changed all of that for her. If there was one thing that books and media were clear on, Christmas was a special day for children, so she had dutifully ordered Graham to bring in a tree, then hesitatingly decorated it with ribbons only. Ornaments were memories, for the most part, and she had so little that she wanted to remember. But when Henry’s eyes grew wide and round and he giggled out of pure joy at the decorations, a fat toddler-arm reaching out for a pine-needled branch, she had realized that Christmas could be something like magic. In fact, in a land without magic, it seemed like one of the few sources of magic that she could make for him.
He helped her bake. Regina planted the adoring, oh-so-curious boy on the kitchen island while she let the house fill with the smells of gingerbread. She introduced him to the magic of the oven, to the way soft dough turned brown and firm, and wondered what he would say if she told him there was a house made of gingerbread once, and a witch there, which she would never ever let him be caught by. She brought what she could find of her own childhood — the tastes of dark chocolate and marzipan and honeycomb and cherries — and took notice of which ones Henry liked, and insisted that they be available to him at school as well. She commissioned a peasant to create some cut-out designs — reminders of another life mixed with what she thought were pure fantasy - and they’d made sugar cookies (soo-gah , Henry had agreed happily) of snowmen and Santas and elves and her apple tree and covered them with frosting. And all through it her heart had beat with emotion she hadn’t known she could feel as he found wonder after wonder in the smallest bits of Christmas.
She’d been uncertain, the first year, with the paranoia of a new parent mixed with the trepidation of someone in a new land. She’d waited by the fireplace the entire first few nights next to the plate of sugar cookies and milk that they’d left out with a poker in her hands, feeling ridiculous but also wondering if Santa Clause was real, and that she would need to give him a stern lecture about withholding presents from Henry if he wasn’t. That was before she realized that the only magic in this world is what she could bring to it, in Henry’s smile when he spotted a bit of tinsel, in the laughter and joy that had filled her house and her heart for the first time in a very long time, maybe forever.
They were wonderful, they were beautiful memories from the time before Henry began to dislike and suspect her of all the wrongdoing that she had never done in this world. She’d still tried to make it special for him, even when he stopped talking to her and disappeared into his room to read his comics or — she discovered later — that book, with a look on his face that said “you can’t buy me.”
And then he’d disappeared even farther, and brought back Emma, and then… well. Now they were here, and he wasn’t just Emma’s, he had no memory of his first mother at all.
Which had been her choice — to give them both happy memories, a happy ending, to keep him safe even if it wasn’t with her. But it didn’t prevent the Christmas spirit all around her from feeling like a slap in the face, as the hole in her heart widened from losing her son forever.
Archie passes with Pongo and sticks up an enthusiastic hand. "Merry Christmas!" he chirps, while Regina pretends not to hear him. He doesn’t seem to take it personally, bounding past with the dog, irrepressible joy in every movement of his legs.
It’s strange to be accepted, to have these casual reminders of belonging even as she feels the need to draw into herself. It wasn’t clear what had happened — why Storybrooke was back, why they were cursed again — but it wasn’t the same as the first time. No one remembered what had happened during the year — Regina strongly suspects that she doesn’t even want to know; there’s something fettering about Storybrooke that seems to keep her in check, and herself, in the other land, without Henry… she doesn’t want to think about it. Yet people have warmed to her now. A delegation had even come to her house asking her to be the mayor again. No one seemed to have the stomach for another election, and when she had tried to schedule one it was hinted to her that they had had one, probably, in the Enchanted Forest, and she let it go even though there was no reason to think that and elections for a cursed town wouldn’t even be held in another world.
She doesn’t actually mind. If anyone could run this strange, cursed town then it’s her, and she feels responsible for it, in a way. It reminds her of putting together the rooftops on the gingerbread houses that she and Henry had done, making everything clean and work correctly and just so, and she’d loved to guide his hand and she’d loved the crookedness of it, somewhere she probably still has pictures or even the houses themselves, since everything seems to have been restored, or…
She sighs. And walks faster through the winter morning, the bracing cold.
At least she had met him. For all that she had been worried about it, for all that it seemed to be a terrible idea, something she couldn’t bear, Emma had been right. And some part of her keeps looking for reasons to run into him, to follow him from afar, to make sure he is safe, and although a lot of that is because of this new crisis, she knows a lot of it was just what she was going to do, anyway. Until they could make him remember. She refuses to think further than that, to wonder what would happen in a few weeks, a month. When either this would be fixed or it wouldn’t, and either Henry would go back to New York or he would stay, somehow.
It makes her feel frantic inside, this deep twisting feeling that she has to stay with him. It makes her want to beg Emma for anything, any chance to be near them, anything she would allow. If Emma allows it then Henry would surely accept it too, and then she would be there, would be nearby.
This way lies madness, and yet she has been mad, so often. The whispers of insanity aren’t something she fears any longer. It feels like her destiny, like coming home, even as the rest of the world finds a reason to celebrate being alive.
As before, she’s alone now in her large house, and amidst all of the bustle of the holidays, all she can really do is go through the motions of celebration. Even with the new threat, something has settled in her with being able to see Henry again, knowing he is alive, knowing that they are in the same town, that she would almost certainly see him again.
She reaches City Hall and takes in a breath before going inside. It’s bitterly cold, too cold for snow. It had rained a few days before, and the ground is frozen, but nothing snow-like yet, no miracle from the sky.
Routine has always saved her. In the weeks after the first curse breaking, when she lived in virtual exile in her mansion, viewed by all with suspicion, she lived on nothing but the empty trappings of a life — waking up, doing her hair, putting on makeup, waiting for the knock at the door from a boy that would never come. Now she has the smallest semblance of hope, like a flickering match against the cold darkness. It has been a miracle to see him even once, when she thought he was lost forever.
Hope has never been kind to her, but when she opens the door to her office, a Christmas wreath her own monument to her memories, she cannot stop herself from wishing that she could believe.
Henry
“That’s a bagel?”
Henry frowns as he looks into the wilted paper bag, a single stale-looking sesame bagel staring back up at him. He looks over at Mom, and she shrugs slightly impatiently.
“Sorry, kid, we’re not in New York any more.” She places a cup of cocoa on the table next to him. “But hey, I got you this too, because I am Supermom.”
She looks exhausted, and he can tell that she’s been up all night, which is normal — bail bondspeople don’t keep regular hours, after all. But she’s also distracted, in a deep way, down to her core, and that’s not normal.
“I’m pretty sure it’s regular moms that bring their children breakfast in the morning,” he says. Or make it, actually. He turns the bag upside down and grabs the bagel. It’s unsliced, with no cream cheese, and he pushes his chair back to go get a knife from the silverware drawer.
Something passes over her face that’s too quick for him to grasp, but then she just sets her mouth and sips her coffee. She pulls her phone out of her jacket and starts scrolling through it.
There’s something wrong, deeply wrong. Mom’s always loved making breakfast on days when it’s the two of them: omelets with fresh spinach and mushrooms from the farmer’s market, buckwheat pancakes with real maple syrup, fresh-toasted sourdough with fancy preserves that have a French name Henry doesn’t even know how to pronounce. And okay, none of those farmer’s markets or specialty food places are here , not in this strange small Maine town where Mom is working some mysterious case, but that doesn’t explain why she thinks it’s fine to grab something from the run-down diner down the street. Henry half expects her to toss half a pop tart at him next, shooting him an incredulous look if he says anything to her about how it isn’t toasted.
It’s not normal. Even when she’s distracted with her work — even the times she’s come home dressed to the nines from fake dates in wine bars, or stinking of beer and cigarette smoke if the guy isn’t as highbrow — she’s always taken the time to check in on him, make sure he’s okay and has everything he needs. Now it’s like she can hardly look at him, like all her mental energy is focused elsewhere. Like if anything he’s the distraction.
Nothing’s affected Mom like this before, and all he can think is that it must be really bad for her to shut down so much. He wonders if he pushed her too hard with Walsh. He’s the first boyfriend she’d had since he was born, and he’s not sure why she said no — maybe the guy just didn’t phrase it right — but it’s obviously really important to her.
Maybe he didn’t push her enough.
He gets a plate and a knife and some cream cheese and heads back over to the table, thinking as he smears it around the bagel. He has Walsh’s number. He’d found it in Mom’s phone and added it a while ago. Maybe he should call him.
“I was thinking maybe you’d like to go fishing with Leroy today?”
He looks at her in disbelief. “Leroy, the drunk janitor who was at Granny’s at nine in the morning?” When people are usually fishing, he doesn’t say. Not that he knows all that much about fishing, but he somehow has the feeling that the man isn’t what he seems to be.
“Yeah,” she says. “What do you think?”
He wants to say yes just to ease the look on her face, smooth over some of her worried lines, but he wonders what would happen if he pushes her. She’s taught him how to read people, how to know when they’re lying, how to check for the way their eye muscles twitch and their eyebrows lift imperceptibly and the way they flush without noticing.
He’s not Mom, but he’s getting there.
“Actually,” he says. “I think I’ll go to the library. Mrs. Nolan took me there the other day.”
“Oh,” she says. “Great, yeah. Lots of good books there. Watch out for the lower levels.”
“And then figure out what to do about holidays,” he says. “I think there’s enough room for a tree here? Do the Nolans celebrate Christmas?” He’s still not sure why they’re staying with them. Mom had never even mentioned having cellmates before, much less one that she somehow followed from Phoenix to Maine.
It’s probably not something that she wants to relive, and he can’t really blame her, but the other weird thing is that this isn’t the first time Mom has been in this apartment. There’s too much familiarity in how she moves in the space, how she seems to feel entitled to it, even though they’re guests in the home of someone that they haven’t seen in at least twelve years, since he’s never met them before at all.
It’s really, really odd. And Mom is pretending for some reason that it’s not.
Mom blinks at him as though she’s trying to filter what he’s saying through multiple layers, and he wonders just how tired is she. “Uh,” she says. “That’s a good question, Henry, I’m not sure if we’ve ever talked about it.”
That doesn’t make sense either. Christmas has always been important to them, so he doesn’t understand at all how she doesn’t know whether or not Mrs. Nolan celebrates.
“But we have to do something,” he insists, and he feels ridiculous to make a big deal out of Christmas, like he’s 8 years old, but he really wants her to remember who she is. “It’s tradition. I know you’re really busy with the case, but you’ve never let that get in the way before.”
He has a whole lot of other arguments, but they die when he sees the look on her face and it takes him a second to realize what it is. Panic. Mom’s panicked about something, and he has no idea what. She looks scared to fucking death, actually, and he has no idea why.
It’s a moment he’s been leading up towards for days, ever since they came to this town — or even before that, ever since that greasy-looking guy had shown up and Mom had said he was a client and that they were going to Maine — but something is suddenly very clear to him.
Mom’s in trouble, and it’s up to him to figure out how to save her.
Walsh, he thinks. This feels like grown-up stuff. He needs to get her away from here, back to something normal.
“It’s okay,” he says, when it becomes clear that she doesn’t know what to say, and is just sitting there swallowing like she’s a fish caught out of water. “We can figure it out later. And if you want me to, I can go fishing instead.” Maybe Leroy would have some answers to what’s going on in this town, why Mom’s so distracted she can’t remember he doesn’t like sesame.
“No,” she says. “That’s fine, Henry. You can go to the library. Just…” and she trails off before she actually says be careful, but he hears it anyway, and it strikes something in him that makes him afraid too. Because it’s the way she acted when he was four and trying to cross the street in Boston. She’s left him alone for a long time now, and she’s never told him to be careful, and that’s New York, that’s not… this small Maine town. Which is seeming more and more like something out of a Stephen King novel. He resolves to go look those up too, maybe that’s the sort of research he needs.
“You be careful too,” he says, and actually reaches for her hand, and some of the dark circles around her eyes seem to lighten as she jolts and then smiles at him.
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “Just… lots to figure out, you know.”
“Yeah,” he says, and wants to say more, because everything is screaming in him that this is bad, Mom needs help, but his instincts are telling him that if he keeps pushing her then she’s going to panic and do something and he’s not ready for that. He needs help. He needs Walsh.
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Get some sleep if you can.”
“Can’t." Mom polishes off the coffee and prepares to head out, forgetting to put on deodorant or brush her teeth again. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay,” he says, and then he watches her leave, shoving her hands in an ugly red jacket he doesn’t actually remember ever seeing her wear before.
He glances at his phone lock screen, which he’s changed to a picture of them last Christmas next to the tree, the gingerbread house that they’d put together, then unlocks the phone and finds Walsh’s number.
It’s a weird town, but it’s the time of year for miracles, and Henry is nothing if not a believer.
Walsh isn’t answering his phone.
Henry starts small, just a text asking how he was doing and mentioning that Mom had taken a case in Maine and he was along for the ride, just in case Walsh tried to show up at the apartment.
He lets that sit for a couple of hours, as he charges his video game console and snoops a little around the Nolans’ apartment. Mr. Nolan — David, as he insisted, looking pained that Henry would call him something so formal — is working in the sheriff’s office, and Mary Margaret is out also. He isn’t sure what it is that she does. They’d mentioned vaguely that she was a teacher, and sometimes seem to think that she still is one? Although all she seems to do is sit around reading pregnancy books, and when he asked once if she was on maternity leave she’d looked at him as though she didn’t understand the phrase before cautiously saying yes.
Everything about this town is so strange. It’s like it’s hardly even a real town, like it’s just pretending to be one, like something out of one of his video games. And like they’ve somehow corrupted Mom too.
The apartment is pretty innocuous, though, if unilluminating, and when he leaves to go to the library he notes the complete lack of traffic and wonders what exactly Mom thinks he should be careful about.
He can’t think of anything else to text that wouldn’t come across as weird and desperate, so he calls as he walks, removing the glove on his left hand — it’s so cold here, so much colder than New York — to press the number. It goes straight to voicemail, and as Henry hears the cheerful voice of the one normal person in his life, there’s a sinking feeling in his stomach.
There’s no good reason for anyone in New York to not have their cell phone charged and available.
Maybe he’d gone out of town. Maybe he’d been so devastated by Mom saying no to him that he’d disappeared — after all, isn’t that what Mom had done? This weird trip to Storybrooke didn’t seem like a coincidence.
Or maybe it’s not even that she said no but that they broke up. Henry can’t imagine exactly what could have happened that would make Mom break up over an inopportune proposal, but he guesses it’s possible. Or maybe Walsh took it really badly. Maybe Mom was even afraid of him and that’s why they left so suddenly afterwards. Although that didn’t explain why Walsh’s phone was off.
Even though Henry feels like there’s a rational explanation, he also has the nagging sense that there is something else going on. And that maybe it has something to do with that weird guy who acted like he knew Henry, acted like he was a pirate.
Henry knows that there are tricks like that — pretending that someone was an old friend, mind games to put people at ease before they deceived them. Mom’s told him about them, which means it’s even weirder that they seem to be working on her — she didn’t seem to like this guy, who she’d said was a “client” — and yet she’d gone with him anyway. A whole entire car ride while the guy sat incredibly awkwardly like he didn’t know how to position himself in a car seat, which Henry didn’t even think was possible until he had seen it for himself. Who didn’t know the words to any of the music that Mom had put on and had made some weird comments about the radio until Mom had shushed him with a pointed look.
Henry kicks at the ground in frustration and tries to remember everything Mom had ever taught him about how to find people. His phone doesn't have data here, but he can use the computer at the library to get the number for Walsh’s store, maybe even find his address. Maybe somehow Walsh has blocked Henry’s number — not sure why he would have, but it’s possible.
Then he should talk to the police.
“Computers?” The young woman at the library reception looks at Henry with the kind of confused look that he is rapidly finding both very familiar and infuriating. She speaks with an Australian accent.
Pretty cosmopolitan for rural Maine, thinks Henry, but he’s too tired to really worry about it. If he tried to tally up all the things that were weird about this town he would be here forever, and surely some of them don’t mean anything.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any computers here.”
It had never occurred to him that a library wouldn’t have computers, but he guesses that this isn’t New York, as Mom would say. As though he didn’t grow up in Massachusetts.
“Okay,” he says. “Um, is there anywhere else in town I can use a computer?”
“Well, you can use mine, I think,” says the woman. She smiles at him in a way that seems overly kind, almost maternal. “We use it mostly for checking books in and out, but it can go online.”
“Great,” says Henry.
The woman looks at him expectantly, fingers poised on the keyboard.
“So what do you want to look up?”
“I’m looking for the owner of a furniture store in New York,” says Henry. “It’s called The Wizard of Oak.”
“A wizard of oak,” the woman muses. She taps a finger absent-mindedly on a stack of books next to her before moving her hands back to the keyboard. “There’s actually a lot more magical resonance in cedar.”
Like that’s a normal thing to say.
“Never mind,” she says. “Yes, it’s in Brooklyn,”
“Right, that’s the one." Finally he seems to be getting somewhere. “Is there a phone number?
“Yes,” she says. “Do you want me to call?”
“No, that’s okay,” Henry starts to say, then stops. “Actually, could you? I think they might recognize me and it’s possible they won’t want to tell me anything. Because the owner proposed to my mom and she said no, so I’m not sure he wants anything to do with me.”
“I’m sure that’s not it,” says the woman, even more kindly than before. It sounds like you silly boy and makes him want to scream. “But of course, I’ll call.”
She taps out the number on her cell phone. “What should I say?”
“Just say that you’re looking to buy an end table and you’re wondering if they do deliveries after 5pm,” says Henry. “And then when they say no or it’s not enough notice, ask if you can speak to the owner. It’s Tuesday, he should be working.”
“Wow,” she says. “You have this whole thing planned out.”
“It’s from my mom,” he says. “She’s really good at investigation and stuff.”
“It’s like one of your operations,” says the woman, and she smiles at him with a little too much fondness. He freezes.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I mean, it’s like a secret operation. Hang on.” The rest of her explanation disappears as she listens intently to the phone.
“Yes, I’m calling to purchase an end table?” She clears her throat. “I mean, an end table,” she adds, no longer ending it with a question. “But I need to have it delivered today, when I get home at six.” She listens. “Well, can I talk to the manager? Or the owner, I mean?”
She hangs up a few minutes later and gives Henry a sheepish look. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It seems he’s not in. Maybe he went out of town, to get away from it all. Were he and your mom dating for a long time?”
“Eight months,” says Henry. “So yeah, I thought it was a long time. It was just us my whole life, and this was the first real boyfriend she’s ever had. I was worried that she freaked out and that they just needed to talk about it, but now I’m worried that he’s dead or something.”
“I’m sure he’s all right."
“You can’t know that, though,” he says. “How could you know that?”
She taps the side of the desk and looks at him like she's just gotten a brilliant idea. The entire thing looks like a performance, although he's not sure who it's for. “You know what I do when I can’t make sense of things,” she says. “I read a book. Here, like this one.”
She reaches behind the counter and pulls out an enormous book, something suited to a coffee table. He’s not even sure it would fit on a shelf. It’s brown and has the intricate lettering “Once Upon a Time” on it.
“I think maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for here.” She looks pleased, like she’s given him something extremely special.
Henry looks at it dismissively and with a rising sense of panic that no one in this entire town seems sane.
“Fairy tales?” There’s a lot more he could say, but politeness makes him just nod. “Thanks.”
“They give hope in times of trouble,” she says. “I think it’s something you could use. You never know, you might just find what you’re looking for there.”
“Uh huh,” he says. “In the meantime, where’s the sheriff’s station? I think maybe I should notify the police.”
“Doesn’t he live in New York?” She looks at him quizzically. “Shouldn’t you call the police there?”
“Probably,” he agrees. “If you give me the non-emergency number for New York I can call on the way. But maybe, I don’t know… the police here can help speed things along, or something.”
She looks vaguely disappointed, although he has no idea why. “It’s in City Hall,” she says. “You can’t miss it, the big building on main street with the apple tree. It’s the mayor’s, you know.”
Henry can’t imagine why she would think he is interested in apple trees or the mayor or fairy tales. Small towns are weird, and he can’t wait to get back to New York. “Thanks.”
“Don’t you want the book?” she calls after him.
“It’s a library book, right?” he says. “And I don’t have a library card.”
“Oh, that’s not importan-” she starts, but he’s already opening the door, escaping as quickly as he can into the cold December air.
Two hours later, Henry’s head is pounding. Mr. Nolan had been excited to see him, but his face had turned into the same sort of blank puzzled look that so many people had when he mentioned Walsh and how he was missing. He’d dutifully taken down all the information about Walsh and agreed that it looked strange and promised to contact the New York police, and yet… and yet… Henry doesn’t believe him. The police in New York hadn't been helpful either, especially when he admitted that he was the son of the guy's girlfriend and they'd probably broken up.
He sits on the bench outside of the sheriff’s office and stares at his phone, at the text he sent to Walsh’s number.
Hi, it’s Henry Swan. Just wanted to let you know that my mom got an urgent case in Maine so we’re out of town at the moment. We’ll be gone for a couple of days but she said she’d love to see you over Christmas.
It might just be that the service here kind of sucks, but it still shows as not even read.
He thumbs over to a different contact.
“Mom,” he says. “We need to talk about something important.”
“What is it?”
She sounds so worried, so suddenly awake.
“Are you okay? Did anything happen? Are you all right?”
It’s nice to hear her care about something normal, even if it seems completely out of proportion to the situation and the level of danger he’s actually in, where he’s sitting peacefully in the lobby of City Hall. “I’m fine,” he says. “It’s Walsh. I’ve been trying to call him, and he’s not answering his phone. I think he’s disappeared.”
“Wait… what?” Mom sounds completely disoriented. “Why did you call Walsh?”
“That’s not important right now,” he says. “The thing is, it’s like he’s vanished off the face of the earth. Mom — did something happen? Where is he?”
“Henry,” says Mom. “I promise you, you don’t have to worry about Walsh.”
He feels his stomach tie into knots.
“What’s going on?” he asks. “Why can’t you tell me what we’re doing here?”
“I will, just — seriously, don’t worry about Walsh. It’ll all be okay, I promise. I’m sorry, kid, I have to go right now. Go straight home, okay?”
“Why?” he says. “What is happening, what is there to be afraid of?” But she’s already hung up and he’s talking to dead air and he wants to shout in frustration.
Then he decides to actually do it, because what the hell.
“FUCK!”
It reverberates in the marble hallway.
It makes him feel better, a little, even though it also makes him feel really immature. Because fuck all of this. Fuck being twelve years old and completely dismissed by every single adult. People are disappearing, no one is talking to him, the entire world seems full of secrets and he's somehow the only one who sees it.
"Fuck this," he says again, and makes a fist, digging his nails into the palm of his hand. If only he were an adult.
There’s footsteps on the stairs behind him and he feels a twinge of embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Nolan, I’m just worried about where he is — I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
When Mr. Nolan doesn’t say anything, he turns around and then stops. “Oh,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize anyone else was here.”
Mayor Mills is standing at the foot of the stairs and staring at him in a way that he feels like he should find unsettling, but somehow he doesn’t. It's a little like how she'd looked at him at the diner — like he reminds her of somebody, maybe. She looks kind of wide-eyed and intent, but not in a way that makes him feel like she’s laughing at him or going to lie to him. “Sorry,” he says again. “I don’t… I don’t really know what I was thinking.”
“That’s all right.” She seems to find her voice, though she doesn’t move any closer to him. Which he supposes is fair; his voice is dropping and maybe he scared her. “Are you — are you okay? Who is it you’re worried about?”
He’s not in the mood, at all, to deal with any more well-meaning but useless adults, but there’s something in her voice that sounds a little different somehow.
“My mom’s boyfriend,” he says. “I don’t know. He’s probably just out of town.”
“It sounds like you’re worried it’s more than that.”
He shrugs helplessly. “It’s just… my mom’s been really weird ever since he proposed to her. And now he’s disappeared, like he’s not at work and he’s not answering his phone, and I can’t find anyone who’s seen him and my mom doesn’t care at all. I just called her and she just told me to drop it. And that doesn’t make any sense, because they were going to get married.” He sits back down, slumping against the side of the wall.
The mayor eyes him in a way that makes him wonder if she’s going to complain about his posture, then sits next to him on the bench.
“Did you like him that much?” Her tone feels gentle, and it's surprisingly soothing.
“He was okay. That’s not the important part. He made her happy, and that’s all I care about.”
“I see.”
He looks over at her. She looks like there are a lot of things that she wants to say but she isn’t sure what they are. “What?” he asks. “No advice? No telling me how I should go fishing or explaining that people get locked up for banditry or suggesting that I read fairy tales? No insisting that I’m crazy?”
It doesn’t make any sense, but she seems to flinch. “No,” she says. “I don’t think you’re crazy.” She hesitates. “Have people been telling you that you are?”
“Not in so many words,” he says. He kicks at the table leg in frustration. “It’s just that nothing makes sense here. I feel like everyone is keeping something from me, and my mom most of all.”
“I’m sure she has her reasons.”
He scoffs. “You’re just like her.” They’re separated by at least two feet, but he can definitely feel her stiffen. “Sorry,” he mumbles again. “I’m not usually like this, I swear.”
“Like what?”
He shrugs, a nonverbal I-don’t-know .
“I mean I don’t usually yell or insult people,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
She smiles a little. “I’ve been known to yell too, you know. Or throw things, even. When I’m upset, and it sounds like you have reasons to be.”
“It’s just annoying because no one is listening,” he says, digging his nails into the side of his jeans. “And there is seriously something deeply wrong with this town. Do you feel it too?”
She gives him an odd look. “I’m the mayor,” she says, and there’s a strange cadence to her words, something kind of slow and wondering. “If there were something wrong with the town, wouldn’t you think it was my fault?”
He apprises her. “Nah,” he says. “My mom taught me how to read people, you know.”
“Did she?”
“Yes,” he says. “Things like how you can tell when people are lying. She calls it a superpower, but it’s really just body language and microexpressions. Movement around the eyes, muscles pinched around the lips, eyebrow movement. Things like that.” He takes another look. “You haven’t lied to me one single time since you sat down. And I can’t say that for anybody else. Including my mom.”
“Sometimes people lie for good reasons, Henry."
“I don’t care about reasons,” he says. “I want the truth.”
“And you’ll have it,” she says. “I promise you. Look at me.”
He looks, then gives a huge sigh and leans back against the wall again. “He’s still missing, though. It's not like that fixes anything.”
“Tell me about this Walsh,” she says. “What would you say to him, if you could talk to him?”
“I’m not sure." He thinks. “I’d ask him to talk to my mom. I’d say that I’m sure whatever she said, she didn’t mean it.”
“‘Whatever she said’? You think they had a fight?”
“I’m not sure, just - he proposed to her, and it didn’t go well.”
The mayor looks startled. “So they aren’t engaged?”
“Not technically,” says Henry. “But she wanted to be, I know it. But it’s not really about that,” he continues. “It’s more that she just really really needs someone to talk to, and she doesn’t exactly have friends. So he’s the only one that she’s close to. I mean besides me, and she’s not listening to me. So whatever went on with them I feel like is something they should just get past, because that’s what true love is like and she needs help right now.”
“What do you mean she needs help?”
“She hasn’t been sleeping,” he says. “She says that she’s working, and I’m sure some of the time she is, but I think she’s also just finding it hard to sleep. And she can hardly look at me, sometimes. She wears different clothes and she doesn’t cook like she used to and she looks kind of... haunted. I think there’s something wrong with this town,” he says fiercely. “I think we need to get out of here. Am I right?”
“This town?” The mayor gets up and looks outside the window. “It is unusual, you’re right. And your mother I think is going through some… changes. It’s probably a big adjustment for her, coming back here.”
“But this is just a case,” he says, shaking his head.
“That’s what she said,” says the mayor softly. “But that might not be true.”
Henry feels another surge of frustration well up inside him. “I don’t understand why she would lie to me. Why everyone is lying to me. What do you know about my mom?”
“Henry,” she says. “I promise, I won’t lie to you. But there are some things that it’s not my place to tell you. I can tell you that I knew your mother for some time, and that I thought I’d never see her again.” She pauses. “It sounds to me that you’re mostly worried about your mom, not so much her boyfriend.”
“I just want her to be happy,” he says. “I don’t care about Walsh. I don’t understand what she’s going through but it’s really strange and if she won’t talk to me then she needs to talk to someone, and Walsh is the only person I could think of, but he’s gone.”
“What about the Nolans?” asks the mayor. “You’re staying with them, after all.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But, I don’t know. They don’t even celebrate Christmas, maybe. You’ve at least got a wreath on your office.” He nods over to it.
“I’ve always loved Christmas." She sits down again and takes his hand. It’s cold, as though she’s been outside, and trembles slightly in his. “Henry, I can’t promise that I’ll find this Walsh, but I can promise that I’ll talk to your mother. Is that okay?”
He looks at his hand and the way that hers has grasped his. She’s hanging on like everything he says is important, like he’s a quest-giver in a video game and she wants to be the hero to solve this problem.
“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”
She squeezes his hand briefly, then removes it. Her smile is wide and warm and takes him aback a little; he’s never seen it before. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You listened,” he says. “Trust me, that’s a rare commodity in this town.”
“As I’ve gotten older, the the more I’ve learned that relationships between mothers and sons can be tricky. I know your mother is doing her best.”
“Oh yeah, do you have a son?”
She freezes, and he abruptly feels terrible.
“No,” she says finally, and there’s sorrow in her entire face, all the microexpressions around her eyes and mouth and eyebrows. And something else… “But I had a son,” she amends, and he ducks his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She brushes at her face briefly; he hadn’t seen any tears, and now none will fall. “Don’t be.” She smiles again, a little sadder than before. “I think you just called your mother, yes? And she won’t be back for a while?” At his nod, she continues. “I was just about to head home to make dinner. Are you… are you busy?”
He thinks for a moment. He could go back to the Nolans, with their soft eyes and glances around him while they sit and don’t talk about his mom or anything else important. He could go back to the library, or to the diner — pretty much the town's entire social center — or lose himself in video games.
Or he could go with this woman who seems to like him, who doesn’t seem to be subtly mocking him the way so many people do, like they’re waiting for him to get something. Who seems to be willing to see him exactly where he is, and help as much as she can.
“No,” he says. “I’m not busy.”