CPOV

"Just open the door. Just open the door and kindly ask where it is. Oh JUST DO IT!"

Celeste stood frozen in her spot right in front of the door to Mr. Gold's shop. Everyone knew what the old man was like, and how he basically controlled the town in his own special way during the curse. Obviously things had changed since everyone had gotten their lives back, but there still seemed to be an air of mystery around the store. When she finally swallowed her fears she grabbed the door knob and pushed the door open gently. Once the doorbell rang, she saw a mop of brown hair pop up from behind a glass counter top.

"Oh well, hello there. Can I help you with anything?" It was almost like Belle could read the desperation written across the young girl's face as Celeste edged closer to the desk. The fact that Belle was here instead of her husband had to be a good sign, right?

"Yes, I was just trying to find a few items that I lost after the um….the trip back here." Belle's smile began to falter a little bit as she moved from behind the counter closer to Celeste and nodded, "I'm afraid my husband doesn't have everything but…well we can try. What's the name?"

"Well you see, I'm kind of looking for someone else's items…..my mother's items. Mostly just a few papers, pictures, or something like that. Her name was Loretta Malcoff. She….she won't be able to pick them up herself." And there it was, the look. Mrs. Gold's eyes oozed that sympathy look, that look that practically begged Celeste to forgive Belle for making the girl relive the fact that her mother had died. Celeste hated that look more than anything. None of them knew Loretta, none of them knew what she was like before she got sick. Celeste would never understand how someone could feel sorry for someone they never knew.

Once Bella had pointed her in the right direction, Celeste spent the larger portion of the next hour combing through a rather large bookshelf hidden away in the corner of the antique store. Terrified that she would end up ruining anyone else's chances of reconnecting with family, she gently took each book and picture out of the shelf, realized it wasn't what she wanted, and carefully placed it back. At one point she almost wanted to give up hope, but her current situation must have been glaringly obvious to those around her because soon Belle walked over with a small china cup filled with warm tea.

"Wow umm thank you Mrs. Gold," Celeste murmured trying to sit down on the ground so she wouldn't worry about spilling the tea.

"Call me Belle sweetheart, and take as much time as you need." She reminded Celeste of her mother, kind and always so inviting to those she barely knew, but spending time in memory lane wasn't going to help Celeste find what she came here to get. It had been half way through the small cup of tea when a small black journal caught her eye. Down in the second to last shelf of the bookcase, one that she hadn't had the chance to comb through yet, sat a small black journal with something crudely written into the spine of the book. Setting the glass down behind her, Celeste carefully used two fingers to wiggle the journal out of its' small space. It took a little bit of work but soon the journal bent to her wishes and began to slowly slide out of the bookshelf and into the young girl's hands. Quickly turning the book so that the spine was facing her, she almost screamed when she noticed that the letters L.M. were carved into the side of the book. This had to be her mother's journal, or at least it might have some kind of information about her. She had barely started combing through the pages when she recognized the neat and slanted scrawl of her mother's handwriting; she'd remember that handwriting anywhere. Just as she thought that she had found all she could, a small piece of paper fell out of the middle of the book. Celeste was almost scared to flip it over, knowing in her mind what it very well could be. Gently flipping it over, a shiver ran up her spine as her guess became correct. Looking up at her from the picture was the same man that her mother had made her daughter promise to find, her father.

"Did you find it dear?" The voice made Celeste stand up quickly as she tried to put everything back together from her little game of detective. She grabbed the picture quickly and stuffed it into her pocket before the woman in front of her could make any kind of comment about it.

"Um yes…yeah I found my mother's journal. I think that's all I need though umm…..how much will this little book be? I mean, I don't have a lot of money but I cou-" The whole time she spoke, she tried to find the small amount of single dollar bills and pocket change that were always crudely stuffed into whatever pair of jeans she had worn that day. It wasn't too long into the search when she found Belle placing her hand on her shoulder and shooting her another one of those warm friendly smiles.

"Don't worry about. After all, if it was your mother's then you should have had it this whole time. If you need anything else just stop on by." Celeste would have taken the time to hug the woman right there if she hadn't been excited to get back to her room to read the journal. However, she didn't make it past the doorway of the store before her own excitement made her blind to the person trying to get into the antique shop and they collided with a big cracking sound as Celeste fell to the ground.

"Oh my gosh," she muttered, grabbing her journal that had fallen and the cane that must have been owned by the person she ran into, "I am so sorry…..sir." Of all the people to run into it had to be Mr. Gold. He stood there idly, gazing down at the girl as if she were some simple rain puddle that he had accidently stepped in on his way to work; she was just something else in his way.

"Maybe next time you'll watch where you're going miss?" She mumbled in agreement as she handed him his cane and went on to promise that this sort of thing would never happen again. As she met his eyes, something in the man before her changed. Celeste watched in terrified wonder as the color started to leave Mr. Gold's face, his eyes began to fill with what appeared to be anger and terror at the same time, and she could practically watch his lips press together into one thin line.

"And just who might you be?" he asked between gritted teeth as he continued to look at her up and down. Celeste did her best to avoid any sort of eye contact.

"Celeste Malcoff," she whispered, but as soon as the last name came out of her mouth it was as if he no longer held any interest in her, or the item from his shop that she possessed.

"It'd be a shame if Mr. Malcoff knew just how rude his daughter was out in public."

Get out of there now

Celeste did her best to get home without looking like she was panicking. The last thing she needed was for someone to try and stop her by asking if anything was wrong. After all, where would she even begin? Soon the small home came into view, but so did the rather large red truck that sat in the drive way. She didn't know why she was so nervous. After all, it was already past 5 and there was a large chance that he was already drunk and watching some kind of sports channel. However, she wasn't that lucky. Not even a minute after she entered the door, she greeted by a rough slap to the right side of her face. It wasn't too bad, she tried to whisper quietly to herself, it wasn't hard enough to cause a serious bruise.

"Where the hell have you been?" His voice was the one the one that filled all of her dreams. Her stepfather, Eric or Daniel as he had gone by before the curse, was already pretty sloppy. The half empty bottle of Jack Daniels that sat by his armchair told her that it wouldn't be too bad of a night. At least he hadn't finished off the bottle yet, it could be worse.

"I'm sorry sir, I had to go to the library for a project with Merida and a couple other people." The lies came so easy to her now, she would do anything she could to protect herself from any further torture.

"Well next time call, you idiot. Damnit you realize that if you get into any kind of trouble it comes back on me? You want to screw up our whole situation?!" He was off on another rant again. It always happened after she did something wrong, which was happening more often as time passed. As long as he had his alcohol, his hunting license, and his reputation as a somewhat decent father figure then nothing else really mattered. No one knew about his little hunting binges, the ones where he would disappear into the woods around the town for a week or two at a time. Celeste knew that another one of those trips would be coming up soon, but she also knew that he had found the money that she had been hiding for food and spent it all on new equipment. That had cost her a black eye and a lot of time away from school.

Once he was back in his armchair, Celeste was able to safely sneak away to her bedroom and lock the door behind her. It wasn't anything fancy, definitely not the kind of room that she envisioned for herself. The walls were a plain white and most of the furniture in the room, like the rest of the house, was falling apart. She had taken to sleeping on her mattress that now rested on the floor after she sold the bedframe for food money during Eric's last hunting binge. She told the men that worked in the scrap metal lot that it was an extra one her father had found in the house and they obviously didn't need it. However, there was a small box in the closet where all of her special items went into. Anything that made her happy, or reminded her of her mother went into that box and she would kill to keep it safe. Now she had one more addition to that box. She placed the small black journal on the top of the box and made her way over to bed carefully, Eric would freak if he woke up because she was making the floorboards squeak.

Safely on her bed, she pulled out what was now a crumbled up picture of a strange man. She studied the picture trying to figure out how in the world the two of them were related, but it didn't take much to realize why. They both shared the same very distinct jaw line, and now she also knew who to thank for her rather large eyebrows.

"I have to find you Killian," she murmured as she laid down with the picture next to her pillow, "you have to get me out of here."