Reset

Emma looked up at the half finished building, it was about twice the size of the Mayor’s house in both width and height and it consisted of a large concrete base and a lattice work of concrete pillars. Parts of the building had been covered with large opaque plastic sheets to protect the workers during bad weather which made it difficult to see inside.

Literally half of the building had lowered substantially into the ground causing large cracks to appear in the thick concrete base and the furthest end was listing dangerously down. Emma thought it looked like the very start of the Titanic sinking, the great ship had split in two but the pieces were not yet pulling away from each other.

“I have to go inside and look around,” the older man declared.

“No way, it’s too dangerous,” Emma shook her head.

“But I need to see what has happened,” Doc explained, “it could be the land we have built on or a faulty batch of concrete and we need to know.”

Emma knew he was right and slowly nodded as she looked at the building, “okay, what’s the best way to do this?”

“Alone,” he said with a determined nod, “I don’t know what shape the structure is in so it is best if I go alone so as not to disturb anything.”

Emma didn’t like that one bit but knew she had little option so she nodded and he carefully walked up the small hill towards where the crack in the concrete was and started to examine the problem before climbing up and entering the building.

She waited and regarded the building with a critical eye but as time went on she began to let her mind drift to her breakfast with Regina. For the first time in a long time she felt peaceful, with the Evil Queen of all people. She must have been utterly exhausted to fall asleep in Regina’s living room but she had to admit it was some great sleep, she felt so utterly relaxed and safe when she woke up. Right before the wild panic of waking up in Regina’s house and assuming she’d been drugged.

Her stomach growled at the thought of another of those delicious croissants and the probably homemade jam, she smiled despite the situation, who knew the older woman was so genuinely domestic. Sure Regina had always given that impression while she was Mayor but Emma had always thought that was part of the ingenious disguise, to be just another housewife, just another Mom. But it turned out that Regina really was insanely domestic, she baked, gardened, made jam, Grace’s little socks looked homemade. Somehow the thought comforted Emma more than in it confused her.

Doc appeared again and ran down towards the Sheriff, “there’s an underground stream!”

Emma raised her eyebrow, “did no one think to look for a river under where you were building?”

“Stream,” Doc corrected as if lowering the intensity of the body of water currently eating away at the newly laid foundation would somehow make it better.

“Stream,” Emma rolled her eyes, “so, what now?”

“We can’t build here,” Doc shook his head sadly, “we need to cordon this off to make it safe until we can properly demolish it.”

“How dangerous is it?” Emma asked.

Doc made a timid face, “it could all go any moment now.”

Emma blinked, “right,” she looked up, “and.. if it does?”

Doc showed Emma some scribbled mathematical formula on the blueprints, “I’ve calculated that, due to the location of the structure, it would only be the after shock wave that could potentially..”

“In English,” Emma interrupted.

“Nothing else will be effected,” he replied, “there will be a shockwave, like there was this morning, but that shouldn’t cause too much damage.”

“Shouldn’t cause too much damage, eh?” Emma looked at the man. She felt bad for taking her anger out on him but then he was supposed to be the brains of the operation.

He nodded quickly, “it’s not even a certainty that it will fall, it just might,” he added reassuringly.

“Great,” Emma said with false excitement as she turned and opened the trunk of the police cruiser and got out some warning tape, “you’re helping me to tape the area off,” she told him.

Chapter 26

Regina watched as Grace looked up from her activity mat on the floor and her unfocused eyes attempted to analyse the various, multi-coloured objects hanging above her head. Regina smiled at the memory of Henry doing similar things when the knock on the door told her that the object of her musings had just turned up.

She left the living room and opened the front door and smiled to the boy, “come in, Henry,” she said without hesitation and walked back towards the living room. Henry paused for a moment before following Regina into the house, he had again come over under the pretence of moving more items from the garage but it seemed that Regina had uncovered his poorly thought-out ruse.

Regina sat back in the armchair and glanced at Grace and gestured for Henry to sit on the sofa where there was a glass of apple juice and an almond croissant, his favourite, waiting for him.

Henry smiled and quickly sat down and asked, “did you feel that earthquake this morning?”