The diner bell was too loud and Daniel had been in Storybrooke for six days and every public door in town had a bell that was too loud and he was beginning to think the loudness was intentional, a curse-design feature, the particular loudness of a bell designed to announce strangers.
He was still a stranger.
He was going to be a stranger until the curse broke, and the curse wasn’t going to break until Emma Swan kissed Henry Mills on the forehead, and that wasn’t his business and wasn’t his lane and he wasn’t going to get involved.
Granny’s was warm and smelled of bacon and coffee and the coffee was still wrong but the wrongness had become familiar, the way all wrongnesses become familiar if you live with them long enough.
He sat at the counter.
The counter had chrome trim and the chrome was slightly tarnished and the tarnish was probably part of the curse, and he was developing a habit of attributing every small flaw to the curse, and the habit wasn’t helpful but it was also not stoppable.
Mrs.
Hennessey waved him over from a booth by the window.
She was sitting alone with a cup of tea and a plate of toast and her hip was propped on a cushion she had brought from home, the particular cushion of a woman who had learned to make her own comfort.
He moved to her booth and sat across from her and she poured him coffee from her own pot without asking if he wanted any.
“You look like you need it,” she said.
“You always look like you need it.
Dan-the-cannery, always in the rain, always on his feet.
You should sit more.” “I sit,” he said.
“I sit on the steps.” “The steps are not sitting.
The steps are waiting.
There’s a difference.” She buttered her toast with the precision of a woman who had been buttering toast for sixty years and had opinions about it.
“You know Mrs.
Beasley?” The name meant nothing to him and also it meant something.
The cursed-extra memory supplied an image: a thin woman with basil pots on her porch, a woman who had lost her husband to the mines before the mines closed, a woman with a son who was twenty-two and had joined up.
“I don’t,” he said.
“You will.
She’s two blocks over.
Got a letter yesterday.
Not a good letter.
Her son.
Deployment.” Mrs.
Hennessey said the word the way a woman who had lived through wars said the word, which was to say flatly, without drama, as if deployment was a weather system that passed through every few years and took the young men with it.
The hum under his sternum stirred.
It was a small stir, a quarter-note of attention, the particular attention of a counterparty that had heard a word it recognized.
Deploy.
A wish waiting to be shaped.
A deal waiting to be closed.
He did not want to close it.
The hum did not care what he wanted.
“You know her son?” Mrs.
Hennessey asked, watching his face with the particular attention of an old woman who read faces the way other people read newspapers.
“I don’t think so.” “Tommy.
Tommy Beasley.
Good kid.
Fixed my screen door last summer without being asked.
The kind of kid who does things without being asked, which is the best kind.” She stirred her tea slowly, the spoon making small circles against the porcelain.
“He’s in a bad place now.
The letter didn’t say where, but you can tell from the way she’s holding herself.
When a mother gets a letter and you don’t see her at the diner the next day, the letter was not a good letter.
You don’t need to read it to know.” Daniel looked at his coffee.
The coffee surface was still, a dark mirror, and in the dark mirror he could see the reflection of the diner ceiling, and the ceiling was stained in one corner, a water stain in the shape of a country he couldn’t name.
“What would help her?” he asked, and the asking was a test.
He wanted to know if he could help without the kit.
He wanted to know if ordinary human kindness was still an option.
“Nothing helps a mother whose son is in a war zone,” Mrs.
Hennessey said.
“You can bring her food.
You can sit with her.
You can let her talk about him.
But the thing she really wants — the thing that would make her sleep at night — you can’t give her.
Nobody can.” She looked at him over the rim of her teacup.
“Unless you know something I don’t.” The hum was very still.
The hum was the particular still of a counterparty that had just been handed a perfect setup.
Daniel did not take the setup.
He drank his coffee and said, “I don’t know anything.
I just seal lids on applesauce.” “Mm,” Mrs.
Hennessey said.
The mm was the mm of an old woman who didn’t believe a single word of what he had just said but was too polite to call him a liar in a public diner.
“Well.
When you figure out what you do know, you let me know.
I’m here every morning at eight.
Eight-fifteen if my hip is acting up.
Today it’s acting up.” “I noticed the cushion.” “I bring it from home.
Granny doesn’t mind.
Granny doesn’t mind anything as long as you tip.” She pointed at his cup with her spoon.
“That’s your third coffee.
You should eat something.
Men who drink coffee without eating are men who are trying to stay awake for a reason they won’t talk about.” “I’ll eat later.” “You’ll eat now.” She waved at Granny, and Granny came over with the particular speed of a woman who had been summoned by an old friend, and Mrs.
Hennessey ordered eggs for Daniel without asking him what kind of eggs he wanted, and the eggs arrived five minutes later with toast and a side of bacon, and Daniel ate the eggs because Mrs.
Hennessey was watching him with the particular attention of a woman who was going to make sure he finished every bite.
Graham came through the door and the bell was too loud for him too, and the bell announced him, and every head in the diner looked up and every head looked down again except Daniel’s, and Daniel’s head stayed looking long enough to meet Graham’s eyes, and Graham’s eyes held for one beat, two beats, the length of a man who was trying to remember why a cannery worker’s face felt like a thing he should know.
Daniel looked away first.
He always looked away first.
Looking away first was the strategy of a man who had something to hide, and he had a lot to hide, and he wasn’t good at hiding it, and Graham was a sheriff with a hunter’s instincts under the curse, and the hunter’s instincts were still there even if the hunter’s memories weren’t.
“The sheriff’s a good man,” Mrs.
Hennessey said, watching Daniel watch the counter.
“Too quiet.
The quiet ones carry things.
You’re quiet too.
What do you carry?” “Rent,” Daniel said.
“Due Friday.” She laughed.
Her laugh was a short laugh, a bark, the laugh of a woman who had been alive long enough to appreciate a deflection.
“You carry more than rent.
But you’ll tell me when you’re ready.” Granny brought eggs to the next booth and the eggs were hot and Granny was efficient and Mrs.
Hennessey poured more coffee and the diner hummed with the particular hum of a small-town morning, a dozen conversations at low volume, a dozen cursed lives intersecting in ways they didn’t understand.
Daniel listened.
He learned three names by listening: Father Bell, who had lost a parishioner; Cal Penney, who had lost a bet and owed a man at the Rabbit Hole; Mrs.
Beasley again, whose son’s deployment letter had come and who hadn’t come to the diner this morning, and everyone knew why, and no one said why.
The hum stirred again at the word deployment.
He filed the feeling.
He would not act on it.
He was not going to act on it.
The hum didn’t care what he wasn’t going to do.
He finished his coffee.
He left a tip that was too large, the particular too-large tip of a man who had come from a place where tips mattered, and Granny noticed and didn’t comment, and Mrs.
Hennessey noticed and commented with her eyebrows, and Graham at the counter didn’t notice because Graham was looking at the door, and the door was opening, and a woman with short dark hair and a badge came in, and it was Emma Swan, and Daniel was already standing, already moving toward the door, already gone before Emma could look at him and try to place his face the way Graham had been trying to place his face for six days.
But Emma looked at him anyway.
It was a glance, a half-glance, the glance of a sheriff’s deputy who was scanning a room out of habit and not out of suspicion.
Her eyes passed over his face and moved on and then came back, a double-take that was almost imperceptible, the particular double-take of a woman whose instincts were better than her memory.
She frowned.
The frown was small and quick and gone, but Daniel saw it, and the hum under his sternum saw it, and the hum filed the frown under a category Daniel could feel but not access.
“Emma,” Graham said from the counter, and Emma’s attention shifted to her boss, and Daniel was out the door before the attention could shift back.
The bell was too loud for his exit the way it was too loud for everything.
The sidewalk was cold.
The November light was thin.
He walked three blocks to the laundromat without looking back, and his hands were shaking, and the shaking wasn’t from the cold.
He had just walked past the woman who was going to break the curse.
The Savior.
The daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming.
The mother of Henry Mills, the boy who would figure out the truth before anyone else.
Emma Swan had looked at him and her instincts had flagged him as wrong, and the flagging was a danger he hadn’t accounted for.
Graham’s attention was a hummingbird.
Emma’s attention was a spotlight.
He could not afford a spotlight.
He walked back to the laundromat in the thin November light.
The hum was a steady note, a waiting note, the note of a counterparty that had noted three pressure points in one morning and was cataloguing them carefully.
Mrs.
Beasley’s son and his deployment letter.
Cal Penney’s gambling debt.
Father Bell’s lost parishioner.
The town was full of wants, full of wishes waiting to be shaped, and the hum was a ledger of pressure points, and the ledger was growing, and Daniel was the pen.
He climbed the stairs.
He sat on the floor.
He wrote on the inside of the coat: “Mrs.
Beasley.
Deployment letter.
Son 22.” Then, because the hum was pressing gently, the particular press of a counterparty suggesting an addition: “Tommy.
Fixed screen door.
Good kid.” He thought about the wish he could make.
He could wish Tommy Beasley safe.
He could shape the sentence — I’d like Mrs.
Beasley’s son to come home unharmed, and pay the price, whatever the price was.
A shoelace was the price for held rain.
What was the price for a soldier’s life?
A finger?
A memory?
A year off his own life?
The kit did not publish its rates.
The kit charged what it wanted and informed him afterward, and the informing was the receipt, and the receipt was final.
He did not make the wish.
He told himself he was being prudent.
He told himself he was waiting to understand the rules better.
The truth was simpler and uglier: he was afraid of what the price would be.
The truth was that he wasn’t a good man.
The truth was that he was a man who had held rain for an hour for an old woman with a bad hip, and that was a small goodness, and small goodnesses were easy.
A soldier’s life was not small.
A soldier’s life was large, and large goodnesses cost large prices, and he wasn’t ready to pay large prices.
The hum hummed approval.
He did not want its approval.
He was going to get it anyway.