So Does This Make Us Both The Other Woman?

28. Absolutely Necessary (Mayor, Mother, Friend)

There had been a time when work had been all she'd done, when she'd buried herself in it for years and years and thought of little more. Since then, of course, she's found new priorities beyond city ordinances and flipping through paperwork, but work is still a refuge, a last mundanity in a life that's become far more engaging than it once had been, and she's surprised to discover how much she still enjoys it.

Emma is deep in the mines today, investigating reports of experimental witchcraft, and a lunch break is a lonely affair without her. It's been so long since Emma hasn't arrived in her office with a coffee in each hand that she pushes off her break until the late afternoon and hesitates at her desk, struggling to remember what it is that she'd done without Emma around.

Her cell phone rings and she snatches it up, grateful for a distraction. And then frowns, mildly surprised by the name on the screen. "Hello?"

"Regina." Belle's voice is calm, but there's a faint touch of panic lacing through it that puts Regina on edge. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm at the hospital with Mulan and Aurora and..."

"Roland," she breathes, her heart racing. Aurora is Roland's after-school sitter now, keeping an eye on him at the Merry Men's complex, and there's no other reason why she'd be called. "I'm on my way."

She's never been more grateful that all the major buildings in this town are so close to each other, that she can hurry out the door and stride down a couple of blocks to the hospital without wasting magic on it. Roland. Roland, who, a month ago, would have been sitting right in front of her in her office when she'd gotten that call. She's been keeping some faint distance between them since she'd ended things with Robin, too aware that someday Roland might in fact have a new mother who won't be her.

It had been Emma who'd pointed it out to her, a week before they'd first fallen into bed together. You can't make him dependent on you if you're not going to be with Robin, she'd said, sparing a wary glance toward Regina as though she hadn't been entirely sure that Regina was indeed finished with Robin. He deserves to know where he stands with you.

Determined to be a favourite aunt instead, she'd suggested that she stop picking him up after school and Robin had agreed. And now that foolish girl who watches him has put him in the hospital.

She channels her guilt into anger and determination, marching into the parking lot outside the emergency room's waiting area and stopping a train of cars in their tracks with only a scowl. The doors shoot open of their own accord, her magic forcing out her will unconsciously, and she pauses when she walks inside to calm herself.

She sees Belle almost immediately, pacing in the waiting room beside the emergency room doors. Aurora is sitting stiffly on a corner couch, Mulan just as stiff beside her, and Belle is bouncing the baby in her arms as she hurries over to Regina.

More fury rises through her at the sight of the princess on the couch, and she brushes past Belle to stalk toward Aurora. "What happened to him?"

Mulan's eyes narrow. "You will not speak to her that–"

"What. Happened." Her eyes are flashing and furious and Aurora stares up at her, chin lifted in regal defiance. She'd met the girl several times in the Enchanted Forest, yet another of Snow's princess friends, and she'd been struck by her fierce energy even through her prissiness, like the pampered princess Emma Swan would never have been. Aurora had been the kind of princess who wouldn't go down without a fight, and today she looks just as ready for conflict.

But the words that emerge are strained, tense, as she admits, "Belle was over. We were in the sitting room and I thought that Roland was playing in the next room, but I hadn't realized that the window was open. He climbed onto that...the ladder on the side of the building..."