The Divorce

Chapter 6

Emma had read her book the entire day and Regina had been busy with shopping for the rest of the week and had eventually picked up a book to read as well.

"Nice dinner. Thank you for cooking," Regina said as she twirled her fork in the spaghetti. She had to fight the urge to comment on the fact that Emma was cutting her spaghetti in the smallest pieces, to make it easier to eat. "And it's got vegetables. Yay for us."

Emma rolled her eyes as she put her fork in her mouth. She'd hoped for a good comeback, but when she'd swallowed her food, she still didn't know what to say in response to that.

"Have you ever.. thought of claiming full custody of the children?" Regina suddenly asked, taking Emma by surprise.

"No. Have you?"

Regina shook her head. "No, of course not. But I mean.. it would be very easy for you to get full custody, I suppose. You're the one that carried them," Regina explained.

Emma swallowed thickly and looked in utter confusion at Regina. "As much as we have our differences and fights, I'd never forbid you from seeing our children. They are as much yours as mine, despite who carried them. I wouldn't do it to the children either. Were you.. afraid I was going to do that?"

Regina shrugged. "Not really, until my mother recently reminded that you could easily do that. After I told her about our vegetable discussion. I'm sorry for that, by the way. I should have just let you do whatever you want. After all, you still somehow manage to keep an admirable figure"

Emma felt a blush creeping up for the second time that day, but she ignored it as well as she could. "Regina, I am never going to do that. I wished we didn't even have to share them. It pains me so much every time I drop them off."

"Me too," Regina agreed. "It's awful to get home to an empty house."

They looked each other in the eyes for a moment. It was very intense in some way and Emma had the strange feeling that Regina saw everything that was going on inside her mind, so she averted her eyes to her almost empty plate.

"I'm wondering.. are we using our time correctly or do we have certain obligations of your mother?" Emma inquired before she sipped her water.

Regina shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea. I think the main reason she put us here is to make sure we won't fight in front of the children anymore. Here, we can yell at each other as much as we'd like."

"Funnily enough, we haven't had a single discussion since we got here. Though it's just the two of us," Emma remarked and looked at her ex-wife. "Why is that?"

Regina shrugged again. "Maybe that's the reason it all went wrong in the first place," Regina said and ate some of her spaghetti.

"What do you mean?"

"Well.." Regina said, once she'd swallowed her food. She dabbed the corner of a mouth with her napkin and looked at Emma. "How do you see the last three or two years of our marriage, compared to the others?"

"Uh, I don't know.." Emma admitted and looked confused at Regina. "We were fighting constantly, the way I remembered it. About all kinds of things."

"But why.. after fifteen years of being happily together did that suddenly happen?" Regina asked. Emma didn't know if Regina knew the answer to that question, and whether she was just asking Emma to test her, but Emma had no idea what to respond to that.