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David pocketed his cell phone as he came back into the kitchen. “That was Walter, he’s got a lead on those break-ins.”
Emma looked up quickly from her dinner, her fork clanking down onto the plate. “Is it the Lost Boys?”
“They’re hardly boys anymore, but yes, it looks like it. He got a tip on the place they might hit tonight, but he’s gonna need back up. And we need to move fast.”
Killian watched his wife shoot out of her chair, her napkin falling to the floor at her feet. “Give me just a minute to get my stuff.”
“We need to move fast!” Neal shouted, repeating his father’s words and gesturing with his spoon at Henry. “Move fast, Henwy!”
“You got it, kiddo,” Henry agreed, dodging the spoon.
Before Emma could escape the table, Killian reached out and grabbed her hand. “Do you think this is the best idea, love?” he whispered.
Emma darted a quick glance at her parents, but they were talking to each other and Neal was still shouting at Henry; no one had heard. With a jerk of her head, she indicated that Killian should follow her out of the room. Standing up from the table, he trailed her out of the kitchen and past the stairs into the living room.
“I’m fine,” she said as soon as they were out of earshot.
“I know that, Swan, but don’t you think—”
“I think that there’s nothing wrong with me and I’d rather be... doing stuff right now.” She took his hand. “Okay?”
Nodding, he looked at the floor and didn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah, okay.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her ring finger, a habit he’d developed since she’d started wearing a wedding ring. “Just be careful.”
“I will.”
There was a flurry of activity as Emma and David left the house, already discussing strategy, and Henry carried Neal upstairs to play. Killian collapsed back into his seat at the kitchen table as Snow picked up her plate and carried it over to the sink, turning on the faucet to rinse it. “You two both seemed quiet tonight.”
Killian looked over to see if she was watching him, but her back was still turned. “Just tired is all,” he responded. He picked idly at the pasta still on his plate with his fork, but didn’t bring it to his mouth.
Back over at the table, Snow picked up Emma’s plate to give it the same treatment as her own, but instead she gave it a hard look, then compared it to Killian’s own half-eaten dinner. “And neither of you ate much.”
He glanced at her, but found he couldn’t meet her eyes for more than the briefest moment. Snow could look right into your soul if you gave her half a chance. Unable to think of an excuse for not eating, he just shrugged.
Snow abandoned the cleanup and sat back down. “Killian.”
“We’re… I’m fine.”
“Is it something with Henry?”
“Henry’s fine too.” There was a beat of silence, and then she stood again, taking another plate with her. “I can clean up, you don’t have to do that,” he told her.
“Nonsense, you cooked.” Left with nothing to do, Killian sat and stared hard at the grain of the table while his mother-in-law cleaned up from dinner. There was an itch behind his eyes, but he’d be damned if he was going to cry. He wanted to go somewhere, anywhere else than be in the uncomfortable silence of this kitchen, but he felt guilty abandoning Snow to the cleanup while he ran off to another part of the house. So he sat and stared at the table.
“You know, fights are normal, Killian, so don’t—”
“We aren’t fighting,” he said sharply and then instantly felt bad about it. “I mean I know, but that’s not… We aren’t fighting.”
Snow sat across from him in David’s seat. “Okay. I’m prying, I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen you like this. Or, not for a long time,” she amended.
Killian took a deep breath and let it out. “Emma didn’t want me to say anything.” He picked up his dinner knife and ran his thumb along the dull serration, letting it press into his skin. Finally he looked up at Snow. “She was with child. She miscarried.”
Snow gasped. “What? When?”
“A few days ago.” He held up his hand to placate her. “It was quite early, we’d known for barely a month.”
“Oh. Killian, I’m so sorry.” He could tell she was trying to get used to several ideas simultaneously, could see the thoughts colliding behind her eyes. “Was it… planned?”
He flushed and went back to playing with the knife.
“Sorry, that’s none of my business,” Snow said.
“No, it’s fine. We had decided to stop… preventing it? And she got pregnant almost immediately. We were joking that if she were that fertile, we were fortunate there was never an accident.” Snow sat silently, letting him talk. “It didn’t seem real, that just some lines on a piece of plastic can tell you something so … momentous.” He pressed his thumb into the knife blade again, watching his thumbnail turn white. “And then just as suddenly, she…” The itch behind his eyes redoubled, and he swallowed.
“It happens a lot, you know,” Snow said softly. “Early miscarriages are very common, and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong, or that you won’t be able to—”
“I know. That’s what Emma said. I just... I don’t know.”
“You’re sad.”
“Aye.”
They both heard Henry barreling down the stairs and they shifted in their seats, leaning apart. He rushed into the kitchen.
“Neal fell asleep watching videos on my iPad, so I put him to bed in the spare room,” he told them. “I was thinking I might go meet some friends?” he said, giving Killian a wide smile. Snow left the table and began bustling around over at the kitchen counter again.
“Henry, you know your mother doesn’t like you making plans on family dinner night. It’s one night a week at most—”
“Yeah, but Mom and Grandad aren’t here, so isn’t family dinner night, you know, over?”
Killian sighed. “Which friends?”
“Matt and Alex.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“Alex’s place, probably.”
“Is there going to be drinking?”
“No,” Henry said, and then, off of Killian’s raised eyebrow, “There isn’t!”
“If there is, what do you do?”
Now it was Henry’s turn to sigh. “Don’t drive the car under any circumstances. Call you to come pick me up, no matter what time it is,” he recited.
Killian held Henry’s gaze for a second. “Fine, go.”
“Yes! Thanks, Killian.” He grabbed his coat and shrugged it on, and then picked up his car keys from the table next to the front door. “Bye, Grandma.”
“Bye, Henry. Be safe,” she called as the front door slammed. “He’s excited to have that car,” she observed to Killian.
“The lad would drive it down to the end of the driveway to pick up the mail if I let him,” Killian said, his words somewhat muffled as he dragged his hand over his face.
“I don’t know when David will be back, so I should probably take Neal home.”
Killian was surprised to feel his stomach lurch at the thought of rattling around alone in their big house, waiting for Emma to return. “If he’s already asleep, you don’t have to disturb the boy. He can spend the night here and we can bring him home in the morning.”
Snow seemed to pick up on his desire not to be alone, so she nodded. “Do you want tea?” she asked, gesturing to the stove.
“Aye, thank you.”
They were both quiet as Snow went about the process of heating water and pulling down mugs from the cupboards. She deliberated over the boxes of tea before she deposited a chamomile tea bag in one mug for herself and a Lapsang souchong for Killian. He smiled at her thoughtfulness, that she remembered the type of tea he liked.
When she rejoined him at the table, blowing over top of her mug to cool it, she said, “If you want to talk about it, we can. Or if you would prefer to not talk about it, we can do that too.”
“I don’t know what else there is to say. It happened. Emma’s been quite tired, but otherwise she’s fine, physically.”
“And emotionally?”
He shrugged, smiling faintly. “You know. She puts on a brave face.”
Snow nodded, and they drank their tea in silence for a while.
Finally, Killian spoke again. “It wasn’t a big, grand decision, you know. When we first started talking about it, it was just a laugh, a tease about how I’d picked out this big house, I must’ve wanted to fill it.”
“Did you? I mean, is that what you were thinking?”
“I honestly wasn’t, not consciously. She’d mentioned a white-picket fence, and I know, that’s a metaphor. But it felt important, that the fence was real. I was so terrified for her then, when we were in Camelot. I mean, obviously I didn’t know how bad it was going to get, but at the time, I just … I wanted to do anything to save her. I hoped this house would save her. I didn’t care about anything else. I certainly wasn’t plotting to fill her with babies.
“So once all that was over and we were living here, she would tease me about it. And just sort of slowly, especially once we were married, the teasing turned into… I don’t know. A game of ‘what if’? Like when Henry was dating that Violet, she would say, ‘What if we had a daughter, would you let her have a boy over without us being in the house?’ Things like that. Then it became: Would she have my eyes? Would a son have her fair complexion? Would she be good at math? Would he like poetry? And very gradually it just became real. Not a joke, but a real thing in our future.
“Then one day, she was standing in the bathroom and holding that little…” He gestured vaguely. “That round thing with the pills in, you know. And she said, ‘What if I just throw these out?’ So I said, ‘What if you do?’ And she said, ‘I might get pregnant.’ And suddenly I realized I … Gods, I wanted that. I already know she’s a fantastic mother, but to get to see her with a baby, my baby, I just…” He looked up at Snow for the first time since all of those words had started spilling out of him, words that once they started he hadn’t been able to stop, and blushed. “Sorry.”
Snow reached over and gave his hand a brief squeeze. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.” Smirking at him, she added, “You know, I actually was already aware that you and my daughter sleep together.”
Killian snorted, but the mirth was short-lived. “Maybe it was selfish of me, wanting a child of my own.”
Snow looked startled. “Why on earth would you say that?”
“My father left us, sold me and my brother Liam into servitude when we were but young boys. I don’t exactly have good parenting in my lineage. Perhaps it’s best if I don’t get the opportunity to inflict myself on an impressionable child. I doubt I’d make a very good father.”
“Are you kidding me? That may be the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said.”
That was not the reaction he’d expected. “What?”
“Killian, have you seen yourself with Henry?” she said in a softer voice. “You’re already a good father.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“I’m not saying it to be kind, I’m saying it because it’s true. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You know, it might surprise you to hear this, but David and I look to you and Emma as examples on parenting a teenager. We’re still a few years away from it,” she said, gesturing upstairs to where her son was sleeping, “but since we missed out on all that with Emma, every stage for us is the first time. And you do such a fantastic job with Henry—”
“It’s Regina and Emma that deserve the credit for that.”
“And you, Killian.” She took his hand again. “I couldn’t be happier than you and Emma want to have a child, and I have absolutely no doubt that you will.”
When she left to go home, she hugged him; tight, strong arms around his midsection that he found enormously comforting. He didn’t remember what it felt like to have a mother, but he imagined it must have felt something like this, this warm faith that whatever his troubles were, she could take them away. That if she said something would happen, then it would.
---------
He awoke to Emma’s hand combing through his hair. “Hey, you,” she said. “Riveting TV?”
Realizing he’d dozed off on the sofa, the television flickering and droning, Killian sat up and clicked it off. “How’d it go?”
“Four arrests,” she said, her eyes sparkling with the accomplishment. “I’d have been home sooner, but it required a lot of paperwork.”
“No worries, love. Your mother stayed around for a while. Neal’s asleep upstairs, actually.”
“And Henry? I saw his car was gone.”
Killian glanced at the clock. “He’ll be back in the next half hour if he knows what’s good for him.” He took a good look at Emma. “You look exhausted, Swan.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Long night. Come to bed with me?”
“Always.” He followed her up the stairs, and they went about their bedtime routines in comfortable silence. As they got into bed, they both gravitated to the center, Emma curling into his chest, her pajama-clad legs tangling with his. For a few minutes they just breathed in tandem, and he thought she might already be asleep when she spoke.
“I didn’t think I’d ever want to have another baby,” Emma said. “There was so much pain associated with that time in my life, being pregnant and scared, going through childbirth alone, and then giving Henry up… For the longest time my mind would balk at even the concept of ever being pregnant again.”
Killian stroked her hair. “It’s absolutely fine if you’ve changed your mind, Emma.”
“No, that’s not—” She looked up at him. “Have you? Changed your mind?”
He kissed her forehead. “Just having you is more happiness than I ever thought I would have in this life, certainly more happiness than I deserve. It’s selfish to ask the universe for more.”
“Killian.”
He hesitated, studying the determined look in her eyes that said, tell me the truth. “I do want it. A child with you. But ultimately it’s your decision to make.”
Emma just rolled her eyes. “I haven’t changed my mind, I was just trying to explain that all of this is sort of … foreign to me. I think a lot of girls grow up just assuming they’ll be mothers some day, but that was never me. And once Henry found me, I figured that was it, getting to take part in raising him was my one shot at this whole thing. Being a parent.
“So I was just … I don’t know, even though we’d decided to let it happen, when I looked down at that stupid pregnancy test and saw that I was—”
“Speaking of which, how on earth does that work?” The concept of drug store pregnancy test still baffled him.
Emma pinched his shoulder. “What do I look like, a scientist? Just let me finish. When I saw that I was pregnant, even though I was the one that suggested doing it, I was actually surprised at how happy I was.”
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. “And so, we’ll try again.”
“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “Although not tonight, it’s still …” She gestured below her waist and made a disgusted face. “It’s like Carrie down there.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Yeah, be glad of that.”
The door downstairs slammed, and then the sound of Henry clomping up the stairs reached their ears. Emma rolled over and looked at the clock.
“Is he late?” Killian asked.
“Not enough to make a federal case out of,” she said as she snuggled into him again. “Anyway, yeah. I was happy. And now I’m really… this sucks, and although I certainly wouldn’t have wanted the whole town to know, it kind of sucks that no one knows why I’m sad.”
“I told your mother,” he blurted. “She knew something was wrong, and I…” He sighed. “I could say she got it out of me, but the truth is I needed to talk about it.”
Emma studied him for a beat. “Did it help?”
“It did,” he admitted, relieved that Emma wasn’t angry.
“Then it’s good that you told her.” She pressed her face to his chest, settling more into a comfortable position. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Killian closed his eyes, matching his breathing to hers again. “I think I’ve been so blissfully happy with you for so long, I was starting to believe that the happy ending we were granted meant that we wouldn’t have to suffer through anything bad ever again.”
Emma snorted softly. “That seems sort of unlikely when you think about it, doesn’t it?”
He laughed. “I suppose it does.”
“Silly pirate.” This time, when she lapsed into silence, he heard the unmistakable sound of her sleep-breathing soon after. Before too much longer, he joined her.