Eighteen year old Emma sat across the table from her father, barely touching her bowl of spaghetti.
"What's the matter Sweetheart? Not hungry?" He asked, taking another spoonful for himself.
Emma smiled weakly. "Not really. Is it okay if I go to my room?"
Gold didn't look pleased, but he relented. "All right." He said with a sigh as he pushed back his chair and began stacking the dirty dishes.
When Emma went to her room he brought the dishes to the sink and as he waited for it to fill with hot water, he thought about her.
She had been an easy child for the most part. She never did anything crazy in her teens, but now suddenly she had been drifting apart from him. Always quiet, not the talkative Emma he knew and loved.
She hadn't participated in any controversial discussions like she normally did, and didn't want to help in the pawn shop.
This he found particularly troubling. Emma had always loved it at the pawn shop. Ever since she was little she loved to be there, looking at all his items, and when she got older she even began procuring her own collections. But all that had stopped a few weeks ago.
He turned off the water and squirted soap on a rag. He scrubbed the dishes, all the while wondering if it was something he did to make his daughter begin acting so strangely.
* () *
Emma sat at her desk, the lovely vintage cherry wood one her father had paid a fortune for. She leafed through some papers but finally just sat there. She looked at the pictures on her desk. One of her with Mary Margaret Blanchard when she was her teacher, one of her at the police station with her 8th grade class when Sheriff Graham had given a tour, and numerous pictures of her with her father. She stared intently at these pictures. It was something about them that made her feel uneasy. She just didn't know what it was.
In a moment though, it hit her. After all these years, none of the people in town seemed to age. But as soon as she realized this fact, something seemed to cloud her mind, and excuses were made for why everyone seemed to not age. And she left her bedroom thinking that she had been mistaken. She put on her slippers and padded downstairs to meet her father in the kitchen.
"Dad, can I talk to you for a second?"
Gold had just finished drying the last bowl and was putting it away. When he heard his daughters voice he whirled around.
"Yes. Yes of course." He said, and then not wanting to sound too eager he added, "Can it wait a moment for me to make tea?"
Emma sat at the table and nodded her head. She watched as her father put the tea pot on to boil and then put the tea leaves in the steeper.
It was a few minutes before he set a steaming cup of Irish breakfast tea in front of her.
He sat across from her and took a sip of his scorching brew.
"What's on your mind?"
Emma ran her finger around the rim of her cup.
"I just...wanted to apologize for the way I've been acting lately. I've been a little distant, and haven't exactly been treating you fairly."
He reached across the table and touched her hand. "It's alright sweetheart. Don't worry yourself."
"There's...one more thing." She said flitting her eyes up at her father who was sipping his tea.
"I'm just going to come out and say it. Why have you never seen anyone? I mean, dating. All these women bat there lashes at you and drop hints and you don't give them a thought. I don't think you realize that your smile is making a lot of women in this town crazy for you."
Gold laughed "I think you're seeing this with a romantics eye. Most people in town are scared of me, my dear. And not one of the women are attracted to me. Most of them are fawning over Sheriff Graham."
Emma bit her lip. "Actually a few of them have asked me personally if you were seeing anyone, told me to put in a good word for them... And you know they like you. So why don't you at least give them a chance?"
A sharp pain in his chest reminded him of the woman he lost. He still loved her and his heart ached for her as if she had only been gone since yesterday. He wasn't interested in any other women. He only desired her. But she was dead.
He turned away from his daughter. He had thought of telling her about his lost love many times, but decided that she was too young to understand. But now she was eighteen. More than capable of listening and understanding. With a deep breath, he began to tell her.
"Emma, I was in love once. Really, truly in love. She was a special kind of woman. One who saw through the disguise I put on, and she still loved me for me. But I couldn't believe that someone could ever love me as she did, and I shut her out even though I was in love with her. Before I had the chance to let her back into my life and tell her what I had been holding in. Tell her I loved her..."
He trailed off and looked away from Emma. He closed his eyes and said, "She died."
Tears gathered in Emma's blue eyes.
"Dad. I'm so sorry." She stood up and wrapped her arms around her father.
"I'm sure she knew that you loved her. When you love someone and they love you, you just... Know."
Gold was too distracted to wonder how his daughter knew this. He let her hug him while he remembered the beautiful women who was still very in love with. The woman that he lost, forever.
