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After she and Henry left the park, the rest of the day was an elaborate pantomime. When Mary Margaret said “Emma” for the third time, Emma turned and said “Sorry, what?” and remembered to pay attention to what her mother was saying. When David came to stand next to her, she remembered to blink so her father wouldn’t be unnerved by the way she stared, unfocused, into nothingness. Emma had the surreal sensation of looking down at herself and pulling strings attached to her limbs to make herself moved. She nearly broke into a hysterical fit of laughter when she realized August would’ve resented the metaphor.
It was only later that night, after Henry had gone to bed and the others had left, that Emma could settle back into herself. Which, unfortunately, was a mistake. The current that had been waiting all day to pull her under would wait no longer. She managed to keep her head above water until she made it out to her little, yellow Volkswagen and closed the driver’s side door behind her. Here, she was well and truly alone. Here, no one would intrude or overhear. Here, there was nothing to keep her from being dragged out to sea.
She could barely see the backseat as she crawled into it for all the tears swimming in her eyes. She pressed herself through the narrow gap between the two captain’s chairs and curled up into a tight ball in the narrow space in the back, pressing her face into the fabric of the backrest. She took a deep, shuddering breath, breathing in the lingering smells of 15 years, and released the breath in a strangled gasp. Her last tenuous threads of control snapped and her whole body contorted with violent sobbing. Her tears and loud, stuttering cries both were absorbed into the seat fabric, staining it.
She didn’t look up into the review mirror to see the extent of the ugliness of her weeping. She knew her eyes would be swollen and bloodshot and wet, her face red and blotchy, her nose running. Grief never did look good on her.
Finally, hyperventilation made it impossible for her to catch her breath, and she forced her breathing to slow into a more natural rhythm. Once she could breathe again, however, her thoughts caught up with her. Neal sitting up in this same backseat, warning her not to run the stop sign. Neal in the driver’s seat, grinning like a fool, leaning over to hand her the swan charm he’d stolen from the gas station. Neal in the driver’s seat saying, “Tallahassee, baby.”
Neal in her arms saying “Go find Tallahassee. Even if it’s without me.”
“How?” she shouted. “How am I supposed to do that now that you’re…you’re…” Her voice broke, and with it so did the momentary anger. “Tallahassee was ours, Neal,” Emma whispered into the dark. “How am I supposed to find Tallahassee without you?”
It was more than just grief that clenched her heart, it was guilt, and gratitude, and love. She had said it just that afternoon: They had been happy once. Even though they wouldn’t’ve been able to get that back, they could’ve been happy again, as parents, as family, as friends.
Exhaustion rose up to meet her, having wrung out the last of her energy in the car. Right before she fell into uneasy sleep, the last words on her lips were, “I was wrong, Neal…it’s not easier.”
***
The next morning she woke to a metallic clicking sound against the glass of the side window. Emma groaned. Her head ached, and the wickedly bright morning sun was not helping the matter. The contorted position she was in felt all too familiar: She’d spent the night in the bug. Why, though? She hadn’t done that in years. The tapping came again. Emma forced one eye open and was rewarded with the sight of a brilliantly gleaming metal hook tapping against the window.
Really, she thought. Any excuse.
This time the tapping didn’t stop, but after a moment, Hook was peering in the window next to the spot he was tapping. When he saw that she was awake, the tapping finally stopped. “You coming out, love?”
Good question. Was she? And it all came rushing back. Why she slept in the car, why her head ached, why she was considering refusing to leave the car. Instead she leaned over the driver’s seat and pulled the lock up. Unfortunately, before settling back into the back seat, she caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror. She looked like hell. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was a tangled mess from sleeping awkwardly in the car, and it was apparent that she had spent the night crying because her eyes were puffy and red and ringed with smudged mascara.
Fortunately, when he climbed into the driver’s seat, Emma noticed that Hook didn’t look much better. His hair was disheveled, there were curious lines patterning his face, as if he’d just woken up from using something particularly uncomfortable as a pillow, and he wore the same red rimmed proof of how he’d spent his night as she did.
Emma didn’t say anything, she just waited for Hook to explain what he was doing out here, looking for her.
“Henry was looking for you,” he said, and Emma’s heart sank. “The boy said you weren’t in your room, and so he came knocking on my door…he feared something had happened to you.”
Emma was pretty sure it wasn’t Henry who was worried something had happened to her. She sighed and ran her index finger underneath one of her eyes, trying to wipe away the mascara. From the way Hook raised his eyebrow, she was pretty sure she’d made it worse instead. “I’m fine. I just slept in the car.”
“Don’t you think it would’ve been appropriate to let your boy know where you were?”
She did think that, in fact, and guilt had her scowling at the messenger. “I didn’t exactly…mean to sleep out here,” Emma said. “It just, sort of, happened.”
Hook looked at her, assessing her answer, before nodding in acceptance. They were both quiet for several moments. “Why your vehicle?” The question was so very Hook: Expertly understated. Why did you choose here to grieve? What about this place comforts you? Why did you seek refuge in it?
The words left Emma’s lips before she could think to stop them. “This was our home,” she said.
Hook’s brows furrowed in confusion.
Emma rolled her neck back and forth hearing it crack. She was stalling. “Back then, we were little more than petty thieves. We had practically nothing to our names but this car. Even it wasn’t ours. It was stolen too. But this car was our home, me and…and Neal.”
Hook’s eyes widened slightly before he gave a terse nod. “I’ll go let Henry know that you’re safe and order us some breakfast. Join us when you feel like it, Swan.”
Emma managed a snort. “I look awful.”
Hook gave her a half-hearted smile. “Pretty sure we all do, love.”
“True.”
Hook met her eyes for a long moment, but this time he didn’t wait until she turned away. Instead he turned to climb out of the car.
“Hook,” Emma said. He turned around to look at her, one eyebrow predictably raised. “Order me a coffee.”
That, for some reason, brought a genuine smile to his lip. “Aye, love, that I will.”
***
Emma sat there in the backseat of the car for a long time. She didn’t start crying again, although she was sure that last night wouldn’t be an isolated incident. She wasn’t even thinking about anything in particular. She just kept hearing Neal, over and over, telling her to find Tallahassee. This time, no anger sparked to life at the thought. Neither did the overwhelming sense of helplessness that had followed. If she had to name the emotion that settled in her chest, she might have gone with ‘resignation.’
“Fine, Neal,” she said. “You win.” She wasn’t any good at things like this, things like trust or happiness, but because he had asked, she supposed she had to try, didn’t she?
Emma climbed into the front seat and pulled down the visor. The mirror was clouded with dust, because she was pretty sure that the last time she’d cleaned the car was long before they’d moved to New York and it had sat in storage for basically a year straight. She used her sleeve to wipe the mirror clean-ish, and took stock of the damage. She was, without a doubt, a wreck. Emma attempted to finger-comb her hair, with dubious success, and grabbed a hair-tie from the glove box instead. With her hair up in a passable ponytail, that left the makeup under her eyes to deal with. Her clothes couldn’t be helped, and her eyes likely needed a hot shower and time. The makeup, though, she could manage. She licked her index finger, ran it under her right eye, and wiped the makeup that came away onto her jeans. She repeated the process until most of the makeup was on her jeans instead of her eye, though it didn’t help the blotchiness, and then started in on the left eye.
There, she thought. Good enough. She took a deep, steadying breath and exited the car. After all, her coffee would be getting cold.