Neal leaves Mr. Gold's... his father's shop in a daze. He never expected to see his father again. The fact that he's here in Storybrooke blows Neal's mind. With all the people on the planet, what are the odds of him picking the town that his father lives in by chance? It's as if it's magic.
He shakes his head, remembering what his father told him. He designed whatever spell he'd used to get himself here so it would ensure the two of them were reunited. He wonders how that worked. Did the spell somehow affect the map he and Emma thought brought them here by chance or had it brought his father to a place where he would eventually come? How long had his father and Isabella lived in this world? They must have been here for years since they were well known and he knows Gold owns half the town. Neal wonders how his father afforded that and shakes his head. Back in his world, his father could spin straw into gold and he could have conjured money when he came to this world, as the Blue Fairy had conjured money for Neal.
That's when he remembers Isabella's father. She told him he was once a king, but now he was in this world too. Neal figures he must have somehow followed his daughter and Rumplestiltskin to this world and ended up stranded here. Then, he kidnapped his daughter to try to get her away from Neal's father. Neal wonders if Belle's father was involved in the other kidnapping attempt back in their own world when several inconsistencies began to occur to him.
Emma told him that Mr. Gold was able to get Ashley's funds back from Lucy by using the horrible reputation he'd developed before he met his wife, but if Gold and Isabella came here together then Lucy couldn't have known his father before he met Isabella.
Then the little things that had begun to bother him start to come back to him. Not once in the entire time he's been in Storybrooke has he seen one delivery truck, yet the stores are always full of merchandise. His schedule changes, so sometimes he's on night patrol, making the fact that he never sees a single truck almost inconceivable. Then there's the fact that to his knowledge no tourists ever passes through town. Not everyone would have heard the rumors about the toxic waste, so there should be some people vacationing in this peaceful town. Neal starts to get a very bad feeling about what exactly his father is hiding from him, when someone calls out to him. He turns around to see Archie Hopper walking toward him.
"Hello Neal," the doctor greets him. "You look troubled. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"As a matter of fact, yes, I could use someone to talk to," Neal says.
"Why don't we go to my office?" Archie suggests.
"Sure thing," Neal agrees.
A few minutes later, they are in Dr. Hopper's office. Neal has talked with the doctor only once before, two days after the shoot-out to see how he was coping.
"You have a nice office," Neal comments, the last time they spoke was in the police station.
"Thanks," Archie says. "Before you tell me what's on your mind, I'd like to apologize."
"Apologize for what?" Neal asks, confused.
"When you first came to town, I thought Emma was a con-artist out to rob Mary Margaret," Archie says.
"What!" Neal asks, both shocked and worried.
"I'm sorry," Archie says, "but you have to admit that an orphan with the same name and birthday as Mary Margaret's daughter coming to town the night before the anniversary of her daughter's kidnapping is pretty suspicious."
"I see your point," Neal says. "I probably would have thought the same thing. To be honest, before we came here, we did have to resort to shoplifting to survive. I tried to find work, but with my lack of education, it wasn't always easy. We were basically living in that car."
"I kind of figured as much," Archie says.
"You're not upset about a sheriff's deputy being a former thief?" Neal asks, worried he may have revealed too much.
"To tell the truth I'm a former thief myself," Archie says. "My parents were con-artists. They traveled from place to place, cheating people out of their money. They made me help them in their cons, until one day I finally got tired of it. I ran away from them and eventually become a therapist."
"I see," Neal says. "If it weren't for Emma, I would probably still be living alone in that car. I'd resigned myself to being homeless before I meet her, but I felt she deserved better. I vowed that we would pick a place, settle down, and I'd find a real job to support her. Then just before we came here, we found the lost dog of a millionaire and she gave us a ten thousand dollar check. I took that as a sign that I made the right decision and someone was looking out for us."
"Someone was looking out for us too, considering you saved the mayor's life immediately after arriving in town," Archie says. "I just learned what you and Emma did for Ashley and Sean. That was a truly kind act. It makes me feel like a heel for all the nasty things I thought about you and I felt I just had to apologize. After all, I'd lived a less than honorable life myself before coming to Storybrooke."
"No problem," Neal says.
"Now that we've cleared the air, would you care to tell me what's on your mind?" Archie asks. "From the look on your face, it's something serious."
"Well I decided to go to Mr. Gold's shop to buy a present for Alexandra," Neal begins.
"Who's Alexandra?" Archie interrupts.
"That's what Ashley named her daughter," Neal says. "She and Sean made Emma and me her godparents, so I wanted to get something for her."
"I didn't know they named you the godparents," Archie says. "Though it makes sense, considering they wouldn't be back together or have the child, if it wasn't for you."
"Anyway I decided to go to Mr. Gold's shop," Neal says. "It's where I got Emma's birthday present on our first day in town. Isabella helped me with the present because Mr. Gold was out. Until I went into his shop today, I had never even run into him, which is odd."
"So you met Mr. Gold today for the first time?" Archie asks. "Did something happen between the two of you?"
"I didn't meet him today," Neal says. "I just saw him in town for the first time. It turns out he's my father, the one who abandoned me when I was fourteen."
"Richard Gold is your father?" Archie asks, completely shocked.
"Yes," Neal says, wincing. For the first time he realizes, that the name his father picked out for himself is the same one that his dead mentor from New York had. He knows it can't have been intentional on his father's part, but wonders if the universe is having a good laugh at his expense. "Neither of us knew. I changed my name after leaving home, and it appears Gold did too."
"I never knew Gold had a son," Archie says. "Does Isabella know about you?"
"Yes, my father told her about me," Neal says.
"Was your father married before Isabella?" Archie asks, curiously.
"Yes. My father married my mother when they were both young," Neal answers, "but they started having problems around the time I was born. She left us when I was seven and my father raised me by himself."
"How did your mother leaving make you feel?" Archie asks.
"I didn't learn that she left us until I was fourteen," Neal says. "My father told me she had died."
"That must have been tough," Archie says. "How did you feel when you found out she left?"
"I felt devastated and betrayed," Neal says. "Not by my father, but by my mother. She left me without even a word of goodbye. My father raised me by himself and he did a good job, but then he changed."
"How so?" Archie asks.
"We were poor all our lives, but shortly after I turned fourteen he gained..." Neal says, pausing to think how he can phrase this without making it seem like he's crazy. "...an unexpected inheritance and he became obsessed with gaining more money and power. He devoted himself to making more and more money, becoming more ruthless in the process. Finally, I had enough and he promised to change. We were going to leave home and start over somewhere else, but at the last second he changed his mind and didn't come with me."
"Why didn't you ever go back?" Archie asks.
"It's complicated," Neal says, not willing to say anything that would make him sound insane. "Anyway, my father told me he's been searching for me since I left with no luck."
"How did being reunited with him feel?" Archie asks.
"I was shocked. I couldn't believe it when I first saw him," Neal says. "Then I got angry at him for abandoning me. I probably would have hit him if Isabella hadn't been there, but then she started talking to me, told me how they met, and fell in love and I felt the anger leave me. Emma and I have been friends with Isabella since the first week we arrived in town and she's really been helping me with my studies and pretending to help Emma."
"Pretending to help Emma?" Archie asks.
"Emma doesn't really need the help," Neal says. "She's been trying to hide it from me, but she studied really hard at school. I know she could pass the test right now if she wanted to, but she wants to wait and have both of us take it at the same time, so I'm going along with it for now."
"For now?" Archie asks.
"Before we take the test, I plan to tell her I know what she's doing," Neal explains. "I have a sneaking suspicion that she might try to get a lower score than she deserves on purpose to make me feel better and I don't want that."
"Okay," Archie says, "but let's get back to your father."
"Well if I didn't know Isabella, I would go out of my way to avoid my father in the future," Neal says. "I'm still angry at him for abandoning me, but I've heard Isabella talking about him for the past month and after seeing how he acted around her, I feel conflicted."
"Do you want to forgive him?" Archie asks.
"I want to," Neal says, quietly. "When I saw him today, he wasn't the cruel man I remembered from our last few months together, he was the kind man from my childhood, but I can tell that there's something he isn't telling me."
"And what do you think he's hiding from you?" Archie asks.
"I don't know," Neal says. "Can I ask you a question? When did he first move to Storybrooke?"
"He's been in Storybrooke for as long as I can remember," Archie answers, and then it's his turn to look troubled. "For some reason whenever I try to think of my past lately, my memories seem hazy."
Hearing those words, Neal begins to worry. He decides he has to find out what's going on in this town soon.
Before Neal can further his thoughts, his cell phone rings. "Hello," he answers.
"Neal, this is Amelia," Amelia says. "I was just at the hospital bringing Ashley some baby things and I saw Emma being taken to an examination room. She didn't look so good."
"What?" Neal asks. "I was with her a few hours ago and she seemed fine. I'll be right there."
Neal runs out of the office without even saying goodbye to Archie.
In his office, Albert Spencer chuckles as he processes the information he gathered from the listening devices he hid in Emma's apartment. He's known things are wrong in Storybrooke for a while now. It began the day someone kidnapped the mayor's daughter. He woke up, the same as he always did, but for some reason something just didn't feel right to him. His memories all felt like fakes.
When he found out that someone had taken Mary's daughter from her, he laughed. His hatred for her is one of the few things that feel real. He was glad her daughter was gone, but had to work hard to hide this fact, since he didn't want anyone to think he was involved. With her husband in a coma and her daughter gone, he thought Mary's spirit would break, but instead she re-devoted herself to her work, using it to hide from her pain.
Then, he decided to kill her husband, thinking that his loss would finally push her over the edge. He went to David's hospital room, intending to kill him and make it look like he died of his previous injuries, but when he set eyes on him, he couldn't bring himself to do it. It felt as if David was someone he cared for, so he left him alone.
He finally decided to kill the wretched Mary herself and hired Roger to do it. After Mary's death, he planned to take back his rightful place as mayor, since being in power felt right to him too. Roger injured the mayor, but she didn't die. Then the next day, something strange happened. It was as if someone had pushed a reset button and everyone thought that the kidnapping of the mayor's daughter had just happened.
It was then that he started to pay more attention to the things around him. For one there was a girl, Ashley Boyd, who was perpetually nine months pregnant and no one seemed to notice. Then there was the fact that no one ever seemed to enter or leave Storybrooke, and the only supposed outsiders to enter were the same ones every time. He noticed that the FBI agents sent to investigate the kidnapping were the same as the EPA agents who investigated the toxic spill claims and the postal deliverymen.
He tried to leave Storybrooke, but some unknown force stopped him. He tried to alter when he had Mary killed, but Roger would just ignore his requests as if he never made them. It was as if someone had trapped Storybrooke in a set script and no one could alter it. He seemed to be the only one who noticed any of this, and if there was anyone else who did, they were keeping it to themselves.
This happened year after year for eighteen years, until Emma and Neal came to town. He saw that there was an instant bond between Emma and Mary. He quickly learned that Emma was eighteen years old and had the same birthday as Mary's daughter. He quickly realized that Emma Swan must be Mary's daughter, but just to be sure, he managed to acquire some hair from both of them and had DNA tests done.
It was as he suspected they were indeed mother and daughter. He feels that this Emma Swan is the key to both breaking whatever curse has befallen this town and him finally taking down Mary Margaret. He made sure to bug any place where Emma and Mary Margaret might be in hopes of finally learning what was going on, and today fate had rewarded his persistence. They had finally realized that they are related, but the talk of Mary being Snow White had thrown him. He only knows he hates that name with the same intensity that he hates Mary Margaret, so there must be some truth to it.
He now realizes that not only has something or someone trapped them in a town they can't leave, but that everyone's memories are indeed fakes and he knows that Emma has the power to restore them and that she is pregnant. He laughs to himself. Now he can complete his revenge. He will force Emma to restore his true memories and when she has, he will kill her in front of her mother. Then, he'll gain total control of Storybrooke and finally have his revenge on Mary Margaret, whoever she really is.