She was running late…and today was not the day to be late. She had found two records of compasses that Mr. Gold had sold before the curse broke and though she didn't know who the people were exactly, Ruby said that she did and they'd made a plan before she went home yesterday. Ruby, ever the true friend, promised to take the morning off and the pair of them would locate the sold compasses to see if either of them were the Declinatio de Adpeto. If they were she would hope that whoever had bought them would allow her to use them and with any luck she'd be one step closer to finding Neal by the end of the day.

She should have been on her way to the shop five minutes ago, but she'd gotten sidetracked, just as she had yesterday. She'd gone to this jewelry box every day since he'd been gone, every day since she remembered and plucked a simple gold band out of the mess and placed it on her finger, the right, not the left. She'd started doing it when he was in Neverland because it reminded her of him, of the gold ring that he wore on the identical finger, but today she found herself staring down at it, remembering the strange encounter she'd had yesterday…and a conversation they'd once had under night's cloak of darkness.

The woman's comment had thrown her. It had hit her as if she'd been punched in the gut. She'd been expecting to have to tell people that he was dead, to have to explain to herself that despite what she felt he wasn't coming back for her, but she hadn't expected to explain to someone that the future she'd once envisioned with him was dead as well.

Mrs. Gold. Belle Gold. Funny how a simple name could make her gut twist into knots. Her father's name here was Moe French and Lacey's memories of how the world worked told her that her name here should be Belle French, Rumple had as much as told her so the night he returned from Neverland, but in all honesty she'd never actually thought of herself as having a last name, a family name. In her mind a family name required a person to have a family, something her father hadn't tried to give her in Storybrooke. He'd tried to take her memories away from her! Thinking of herself as Belle French only left a sour taste in her mouth. The world might see her as Belle French, but to him...to herself, she was Belle. Just Belle and nothing more. But Belle Gold. Belle Gold! She'd told him she wanted the name but never actually tried it on! And it felt...it felt...right.

It felt right. It sounded right. They never had anything official, no paper work, no vows, no announcements, but they'd never needed it in her opinion. She was walking around now as if she was a widow, no one objected to the way she'd been staying in his house, or at the shop, or using the car as if it belonged to her. She wasn't Belle Gold, but she felt like she may as well have been.

She stared down at the ring she was spinning around on her finger and shook her head. The ring could stay, he hadn't given it to her, but it was a memorial to what would have been. That future was dead. It had died before it even got the chance to live, he'd taken it with him. The only future she had now was one without him, she didn't know how she was going to survive it, but for now she knew where it had to begin. Neal. Neal was what she had left and sitting here staring at the ring she had on her finger wasn't going to get her any closer to him. She'd wasted enough time, she was late, and she needed to find that compass!

So she found the names of the people that she and Ruby needed to locate today, grabbed her bag, opened the door, and-

"David!" she breathed, nearly running into the man standing on her porch, his arm raised as if he'd been about to knock on the door. Not once since she'd lived in this house had anyone visited, then this week she'd gotten visits from both Ruby and David?! And Mary Margaret, apparently. She wasn't on the porch but she could see David's red truck parked on the street, still running with Mary Margaret inside. She was talking on the phone with someone but also watching the two of them with careful eyes. No, not them. The empty space behind her, the house's hallway. But it wasn't like Ruby's curiosity at never having seen the house before. It was something more than that. Something she couldn't identify, something that made her nervous and need to look behind her to make sure no one was standing behind her. It was empty. What was going on?

"What?" she sighed looking back at David, who was just as surprised as she was, but his look was quickly fading into worry. "What's going on?" she asked eagerly. Neal. Had someone found him?! Did they know where he was?! "Is Neal-"

"No!" David gasped, "no, nothing like that." Her heart should have slowed down knowing that everything was alright but it didn't, not when she caught David glancing around her as Mary Margaret was, into the empty house as if he kept expecting to see someone standing there behind her. That wasn't normal!

"What's going on?" she asked, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind her. The constant gazing inside their home was making her uneasy. They'd both liked a private life and she didn't want to put it on unnecessary display for them now!

"Um..." David gave a long sigh, and glanced around the porch, as if he'd find the words he was supposed to say written down for him somewhere. "Granny told us you were living here now."

And that didn't answer her question. It told her that they were looking for her and who exactly had informed them that she was there, but it didn't answer why they'd come to the house in the first place, or why they would have been looking for her. And the way he was averting his eyes, looking around, and trying to come up with answers that didn't tell her what she needed to know told her something very important. He was avoiding telling her something. Why would he come to her house, why would he be looking for her but not want to tell her why? What was going on?

"Why are you here, exactly?" she asked as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm just..." he shook his head as his eyes widened a bit with fear, "I'm just checking on you." He was a bad liar, or a really poor planner for not thinking that she would ask these questions and have answers ready for her. Fortunately she was an expert at sniffing out lies and she knew the look required to get them to shift into truths. It was simply a stare. An unnerving, questioning stare that told the liar she didn't believe a word that they'd said. If it worked on a man like Rumpelstiltskin, then someone like David didn't stand a chance and after a few seconds of exchanged glances he gave a sigh of surrender. "Have you had any visitors lately?"

Visitors? He'd come all this way to ask if anyone had visited her? "Besides you and Ruby? No one," she concluded feeling more confused than anything. "Why?"

"No one has stopped by, come looking for you, no one has been in the house or the store while you haven't been there?"

"No," she answered her stomach beginning to tighten. She didn't like the direction this conversation was taking and she certainly didn't like that he wasn't answering her one most basic question. "Why?" she repeated. "What's going on?"

"Have you been to the shop yet today?"

"No. No, I haven't. I was just on my way out and I'd appreciate if you'd tell me-"

But before she could finish the sentence David's phone rang and reached too eagerly into his pocket to grab it.

"Emma," he sighed, almost relieved, then turned and began walking back to his parked truck. "No, we're all clear here," she heard him say. "Hook should still be waiting at the shop. Did you find anything at the..."

But what Emma was looking for or where she was searching she never found out because the sound of the slamming door cut him off, leaving her without any indication of what was really going on.

Her mind tried to pick apart his words, to figure out what she could as she watched the red truck drive off into the distance as though it was completely normal. David and Mary Margaret had come to "check" on her, to see if she'd had any visitors. Emma was also searching for something at some unknown location. And Hook was…she felt her eyes widen as she tripped over an unsettling fact. Hook was supposed to be waiting at "the shop." His shop? Hers?!

No!

Suddenly that feeling of over protection overwhelmed her. She'd worked on the same side as the pirate while they were dealing with Pan, but that felt like a lifetime ago. There had been extenuating circumstances then and in all honesty it wasn't as if they'd really had to work together! She still hadn't forgotten the time that he'd robbed from them when he'd shot her, especially now, knowing just how little they'd had left after that. They might not have been actively trying to kill each other, but she knew that Hook was the last person that he'd want anywhere near his shop…especially unsupervised.

So she turned to lock the door behind her and sped off down the street after David and Mary Margaret, to the store, hoping that she was wrong that David had been talking about some other "store". But as she stopped at one of the two red lights the small town featured, her phone suddenly let out a chirp, the one that reminded her she had a text message. It was from Ruby, and the words made her blood run cold. Mary Margaret called me. I assume the search for today is postponed. Do you need to talk? There was no doubt in her mind. There was something going on and the "store" that David had been talking about was hers. The black duster the pirate still insisted on wearing as he spoke with David and Mary Margaret made that abundantly clear.

"What is going on?!" she asked when she finally parked the car and marched over to the small group.

David stepped forward and opened his mouth to say something when she heard Emma call out from behind her, "The store, we need you to open it!" She turned to see the woman hurrying toward her, looking desperate, just as her father had.

"Why?" she questioned, angrily. She was really getting sick of asking this question.

"Emma, did you check the cabin?" Mary Margaret asked as her jaw dropped.

"The cabin?" There was only one cabin that she knew of in town. Their cabin. That's where she'd been! "You were at the cabin too?!"

"It was empty," Emma went on as if she hadn't said anything. "Hook?"

Hook motioned to the door behind his back. "If there is anyone inside they are being incredibly still." The cabin. The house. The store. She felt an irritated anger rise somewhere in the pit of her stomach, it was the place that she usually managed to contain Lacey's emotions, but as they continued to talk over her, not with her or even at her, she felt her control slip away. No memories, no Neal, no Rumpelstiltskin, no answers...she could feel it all boiling over at once. What was going on and why the hell wasn't anyone telling her what she wanted to know?!

"Stop!" she yelled as their conversation suddenly veered toward why Mary Margaret was with David instead of at home. Her sudden outburst managed to quiet them, making them look at her as if they'd only just remembered that she was there. Her jaw clenched as she looked around the small group of people surrounding her. She was tired. Tired of not finding Neal. Tired of not knowing what was happening. Tired of always being the last to know anything. And tired of everyone lying to her when clearly there was something happening that concerned her! "I'm not going to open that door," she stated clearly, "until somebody tells me what is happening! Why were you at my house? At our cabin?! What…who are you looking for?!" she amended, recalling that David had inquired not about an object but about visitors.

No. Not visitors, just a visitor. Which meant they weren't just looking for anyone, but someone specific. She watched as everyone around her began to exchange glances with each other again nervously, once again wondering what to say to her. "Belle," David breathed stepping forward, his face softening with something like guilt and sympathy. "Please, we're going to let you know-"

"But we need you to let us into Gold's first," Emma insisted. She opened her mouth to object, to say that wasn't the deal that they'd made when she was suddenly struck by how much that would have sounded like him, making deals. She'd learned once long ago from him that when it came to the greater good the promise of information was better than nothing. And with the determination on their face, she felt her resistance waver. They weren't going to tell her anything standing here on the street and if there was something in the shop then it was better they check it out before someone got hurt. Until she opened the door, this was a losing battle.

With an unhappy sigh she turned, unlocked the door, pushed it open, and stood back as Emma and David drew their guns and Hook his sword as they marched inside...leaving her standing angrily outside.

Something's going on in Storybrooke...do you know what it is because Belle obviously doesn't! I guess she'll just have to wait a chapter to figure it out.

Thank you to Onlyinyourdreams77, Meredith Pechta, Sara K M, Deweymay, and Katido for your reviews of the last chapter. Glad to know everyone enjoyed that in a terrible way. It's painful to all of us so let's all be miserable Rumbellers together! Peace and Happy Reading!