The gable tower Mrs. Potts affectionately called the west wing was quickly becoming Belle's favorite room in the over large house. Moe French had jumped at the chance to lease the pink Queen Anne when its owner passed away. Belle had never met Mr. Gold. His reputation was fearsome, but her brief encounter with his son painted a different picture. Neal Gold spoke of his father with a stilted reverence, the anecdotes he mentioned suggested that the two had loved each other dearly but weren't as close as they had once been. Belle wondered if Gold had blamed himself for the rift too.
Mr. Gold was proving to be a perfect mystery. His home was cluttered with antiques and oddities, but Mrs. Potts had confided that most of the objects in the living areas were expendable. When the mood struck him Gold would exchange one piece for another, selling the old in his shop. Only his tower remained untouched. Strictly speaking she wasn't supposed to go into the suite of rooms, but Mrs. Potts's phone call to Neal granted her clearance to use his father's personal library.
The treasures in Mr. Gold's sanctuary ranged from eclectic to the point of being out and out bizarre, Belle loved them. Ancient looking pottery was shelved next to vinyl albums and an original Mickey Mouse telephone. Mr. Gold's possessions were sacrosanct, Belle never touched the bulk of it even to dust. She had on one of her first visits tried to cover a macabre pair of puppets with a rugged old shawl, but when she saw the cloth crumpled on the floor boards she folded it neatly and decided it would be best to ignore them.
Belle couldn't put a name to the kinship she felt with the deceased Mr. Gold. She felt silly entertaining the notion, but she often felt like a guest that had arrived too late or early to be greeted by her host. Other times she felt as though they were in the same room, aware of each other while going about their own routines. Her father would have rolled his eyes at her over active imagination and Gaston would have called her crazy, only Mrs. Potts seemed to understand Belle's interest and showed her support by minding her own business. Kindred spirits came in all forms.
0 0 0
Gold watched the girl, at first with disdain but later with a feeling he couldn't quite define. His life was over, yet he remained. The pain in his leg was gone, but so was his ability to communicate and exert influence over those around him. He couldn't comfort his grieving son or stop his home from being let. He existed but not in any meaningful way. He hated the portly upstart that defaced the parlor's fireplace with a flat screen tv and bathroom bottles of Old Spice. It was his daughter that sent him into a rage though, trespassing in his favorite rooms. It amused and annoyed him to watch her try to convince herself that she had somehow knocked over the tea cup she'd abandoned on his ottoman. The crash he hoped for was a mere clink, the cup had chipped not shattered. His message was only half received.
Once he realized her intention wasn't to turn his library into a glorified closet or a yoga studio he allowed himself to become comfortable with her presence. She was a beautiful girl, a woman really but he would have been nearly twenty years her senior even if he wasn't dead. Alabaster skin and tumbling auburn curls, she had the clearest blue eyes he had ever seen. This Belle French was an introvert at the core, but she genuinely loved people. He wasn't sure when he picked up the habit of listening to her phone calls, but he couldn't deny himself the insight into her character. Belle was a problem solver, she seemed to have patience and advice for every person she let in her life. She stayed with her father to keep an eye on his blood pressure and make sure he didn't get too lonely. Belle never realized how many people quietly depended on her, and they never saw the nagging doubts that plagued her more often than she would even admit to herself. None of them ever chose to notice her discomfort with the brainless git her father kept trying to shove in her direction either.
He shamelessly envied the people in her life, he had always wanted someone with her brand of strength and bravery in his corner. He wished he could offer her what little there was of his. She spent a great deal of her time out and about, but he liked to think the highlight of her day was the hours she spent nestled in his library. Her taste in literature was not what he expected, she devoured his selection of gothic novels and even his collection on Elizabethan politics. Her favorites though, the ones she chose on bad days when her eyes were red rimed and her customary smile absent were tales of adventure. He used to comfort himself with RLS and Kippling too.
It was on one such day that the wall between them shifted somehow. The gable had always been a place of silence and contemplation. She read or daydreamed and he watched. He suspected that she wasn't unaware of his presence, or maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part. The sound of her voice was unexpected and the fact that her words were addressed to him was astounding. He had only ever listened in on her interactions with others, his name on her lips was a delight. It was the first time he felt he truly existed in his strange new existence.
"Mr. Gold, you are there aren't you? You have to be. I wouldn't disturb you, but I made the mistake of mentioning you to Papa. I didn't tell him you're still here of course. I just asked a question about what he knew of you before-" Gold didn't know why the discomfort in her voice troubled him as much as it did. "He thinks I've developed an obsession, I'm not sure he's wrong. The thing is Mr. Gold, I know you're here and I suppose I should be scared but I'm not. So if you're going to be here and if I know it, can't I at least know YOU. You were a complex layered man, do you think you could help me unravel the mystery?"
Gold wondered how he would have responded if he had met her in life. He was well known for his tendency to push others away, it had been one of his defining characteristics. Still, if given the opportunity he could imagine curling himself around her like a vine. There would never be a chance for that though, and he didn't know how to communicate with her apart from breaking knick-knacks.
"I don't even know your first name. You never told Mrs. Potts, every document I've seen in the town archives has you listed as 'Mr. Gold'. So does your obituary. You must have been very lonely, Mr. Gold." She paused for a moment, clearly questioning the wisdom of having a conversation with the empty air. "I suppose your son would know, but it feels inappropriate to ask when he's grieving and I'm merely curious. You are here. You have to be, I've felt you. You watch over me, and I know I didn't chip that cup. I was nowhere near it."
She favored that cup, he'd assumed she was trying to protect the rest of the set.
"I'm not crazy, I'm not imagining things. Please help me prove it. Could you help me find your name?" She sounded so timid, it wasn't like her at all. Gold wondered what her buffoon of a father could have said to make her doubt herself so much.
There was nothing Gold could do. Not when she laughed at herself and said she was an idiot. Not when her laughter turned to tears. He couldn't answer her or hold her, all he could do was watch. But maybe... Gold had acquired most of his books as an adult from dealers and private auction houses. The oldest book in his collection, or rather the one he had own the longest was a paperback edition of Peter Pan. He wasn't sure if he kept the thing because it was his father's last gift to him, or as a reminder that his father went searching for his Neverland not long after giving it to him. At that moment though he was grateful for the token and his father's policy on names marking ownership.
It took every ounce of concentration and power Gold possessed to fling the book from its place on the shelf. Watching Belle's body jump in surprise was well worth the effort. Her smile as she searched over yellowed flyleaf for the scrawled signature on a nine year old boy almost made him feel alive again.
"Adam Rumford Gold," she read. "It's nice to meet you Rum."