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managed to dig up a lot about her life in a very short period of time. He knew that Henry had been born in Phoenix; he knew where she’d lived since then. He knew about her trouble with the law. Not quite everything, but plenty. Emma shuddered. This was exactly why she didn’t like small towns.
    “Here you go.”
    Emma looked up. The same girl from the inn, the one who’d been arguing with her grandmother, stood beside her table, smiling. She had a cup of hot cocoa and set it on the table.
    Emma looked at her name tag: Ruby.
    “Thanks, Ruby, but I didn’t order this,” Emma said.
    “I know,” said Ruby. She smiled, cocked her head. Emma was impressed by the brightness of her lipstick’s red; it was almost incandescent. “You have an admirer.”
    Emma turned to look across the room and saw Sheriff Graham seated at a booth. He was sipping coffee and reading the paper as well.
    She got up and stormed over to him, carrying the cocoa.
    “Ah. You decided to stay, did you?” he said pleasantly.
    Emma just stared.
    “Would you like to join me?” Graham said. He motioned for her to sit.
    “Look, dude. The cocoa is a nice gesture. And it’s impressive that you were able to guess that I like cinnamon on my chocolate—not many people do—but I’m not here to flirt. So thanks but no thanks, Sheriff.” She slammed the cocoa down on his table.
    “I didn’t send that,” he said. He shrugged, looking at her innocently.
    “I did,” came a voice.
    It was Henry. He was in the next booth, down so low that she hadn’t been able to see him. “I like cinnamon, too,” he added. “Hi. I’m glad you stayed.”
    “Henry, what are you doing here?” Emma asked. “Don’t you have school?”
    “Yeah, I’m going right now,” Henry said. “Will you walk me there?”
    Emma sighed and gave an apologetic look to Graham. He smiled kindly in return and went back to the paper. There was something about the sheriff that she liked. Sure, he was under Regina’s thumb, but he seemed to be his own person. He was also somewhat handsome. Somewhat.
    She nodded her good-bye.
    Henry led Emma out of the diner.
    “I seriously can’t believe you stayed!” Henry said, once they were outside. “This is gonna work.” He was excited. Emma smiled.
    “Your mom would have preferred it if I’d left, I think,” she said. “It’s very unlike me to have stayed.”
    “That’s because she’s the Evil Queen.”
    Emma frowned. He did seem to have a rich inner life, but she couldn’t help but think of what Regina had said back in her room. He was seeing a shrink, for God’s sake. What if there was something really wrong with him? Was it the right thing to just go along with it? She didn’t know. She would have to talk to Archie.
    “Explain it to me,” Emma said, deciding that she would rather talk to him about something he was enthusiastic about than scold him for making things up.
    “What? The curse?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “What’s it all about?”
    “Okay, yeah,” Henry said, getting excited as he talked more about it. “So you and me have to break it. That’s our job. And step one of the operation is ‘identification.’ ” He looked up at her knowingly. “The whole operation is called Operation Cobra.”
    Emma listened dutifully as Henry explained the curse. All the people of Storybrooke—“Everyone!”—came from another land. Fairy Tale Land. They had been happy there, and they lived with different identities. And then, in order to punish Snow White and Prince Charming for wronging her, the Evil Queen decided to put a curse on the whole land. A curse that meant nobody could be happy. This curse transported everyone who lived in Fairy Tale Land to this place, their world, onEarth, which was a land without magic. No one could leave, time did not move, and no one was aware of what had happened. They all had amnesia, and they’d all been stuck here for twenty-eight years, living the same days over and over again.