Miles To Go

Chapter Five

Henry was quiet as they ate dry cereal in the kitchen, the milk already having turned since the power was still out. Even though he had seen Regina, and had likely purposely eavesdropped on their brief conversation outside, Emma knew he was wondering just who she was and the question was right there on the tip of his tongue.

All his life, she never once told him about Regina, never once mentioned her or what they had together before he was born. Even the times she talked to Ruby about her, she made sure that Henry was never around to overhear those conversations. She still wasn't sure how to explain who Regina Mills was and that at one time she had been in love with the older woman that had changed her life completely in a short span of a few months that they had been together. She never planned to tell him about Regina, but now it felt like it was going to be more work avoiding his so far unasked questions than to find a way to explain about Regina and the history they shared.

Explaining Regina to Henry also meant explaining how he ended up being, how she ended up sleeping with Neal that night she made the biggest mistake of her life. Even thinking back to it, the details were so hazy in her mind even eleven years later. All she remembered was following Ruby to Jefferson's for another party in an attempt to cheer herself up after she and Regina had been fighting all afternoon. And all she remembered after that first drink was feeling far too dizzy, too drunk too soon, and being introduced to Neal before things fell apart in her mind.

It hadn't been until shortly before she found out she was pregnant and word got back to Neal, whom she hadn't seen or spoken to since they'd woken up together in one of the bedrooms at Jefferson's other residence, that it was confirmed they'd both been drugged that night. It didn't make any of it any better and for a long time she hated that something like that had happened to her. It didn't matter if she'd been drugged or not, the fact was she had betrayed Regina, cheated on her even if it wasn't from her own free will.

She had tried to get in touch with Regina once she'd found out from Neal what had happened to both of them that night, but Regina had changed her number and by the time she worked up the courage to go to her apartment, she had moved out of there, long gone from the city according to the man that answered the door. She wanted to look for Regina even after that, thinking if she just explained to her what had happened that maybe, just maybe she'd find a way to forgive her, but that all had changed when she found out she was pregnant nearly two months later.

It didn't matter anymore. That was the past and her choice to have Henry was one she hadn't given into easily. She knew then that having a baby would change her entire life and she knew that being so young and a single mother, her life was going to be as hard as it ever would be, but she couldn't just get rid of him because he'd been conceived in a very unconventional way. She didn't have it in her heart to put a child through the life she'd had or not give it a chance to have a life at all.

Her mind was racing and it had been since she watched Regina drive away after Henry had made his presence known. What she wouldn't have given to know what was going through Regina's mind that moment she saw Henry. What was she thinking? Did she think that after things ended between them that Emma had gone to Neal?

She thought of all the letters she'd written to Regina while she'd been pregnant with Henry, the first few of them she'd actually had sent in hopes that there was a forwarding address and they'd reach her, one way or another, but they were sent back to her after a few weeks, a return to sender stamped on the envelope. It didn't stop her from writing another dozen letters, ones she sealed up in envelopes with Regina's initials and buried in one of the shoeboxes she kept in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

Letters that still sat there, untouched, years later. Letters that would never be sent and never read. Letters she'd never forget writing, begging Regina to forgive her, to take her back, and professing her love for her over and over again.