Gold felt a small surge of pride as he showed Miss French the wedding dress in the back room of his shop. It wasn't his most valuable acquisition from the recent estate sale but it was the most charming.

Miss French gasped when she saw it. "It's like something out of a fairy tale," she said.

Gold nodded. "It's vintage, from the fifties, but it has a timeless quality, doesn't it?" The bodice was tight with an off the shoulders neckline. There was beadwork in in gold and pearl running across the top and on the short sleeves with a full, ball gown skirt.

"Timeless," Miss French repeated. "Yes, that's exactly it. I'm surprised they could part with it."

Gold shrugged. "It belonged to the Montagues. They had three sons, no daughters. None of the granddaughters inherited Mrs. Montague's small build. I don't imagine there are many women who could wear it." Although, Miss French was certainly one of them, he thought, perhaps the only one in Storybrooke.

"The Montagues," Miss French repeated, trying to place the name. She'd lived in Storybrooke for a year, now, but she was still sorting out some of the local clans. "I don't think I've met them."

"No reason you should have. Roy and Julia Montague spent the past few winters with one of their sons down in Florida. This last summer, they stayed on. I think travel was getting to be a bit much for them." He looked at the dress a bit wistfully. "Theirs was quite the love story. High school sweethearts, their parents opposed the match. When Roy was drafted into the Korean War right after graduation, there were people who said Julia's father, Mr. Chapel, had somehow arranged it, trying to get him sent into exile, as it were." He chuckled. Simple things like fact and probability had never slowed down gossip in Storybrooke, as he should know. He lost track of the number of crimes and nefarious goings-on people laid at his feet. Gold had a sharp respect for his way around a contract, but some of the stories made him out to be almost godlike in his omniscience—not that he didn't use that reputation to his advantage.

"He came back in one piece," Gold went on. "The same can't be said for Julia. She caught polio in 1952, during the last outbreak. It left her lame in one leg." Gold had spent his childhood on the unforgiving streets of Glasgow. He knew how hard it could be to be seen as weak or damaged. Maine of sixty years ago might have been kinder in some ways, but he had no illusions about the hurdles young Julia would have faced, even if it came with kindness. Pity, he knew, could be even more crushing than cruelty. He looked down at his own, damaged leg. At least cruelty never left you confused about who your enemies were.

"She'd thought he'd want to break things off with her," Gold went on. "It made him angry, so I'm told, the one time he was angry with her in their entire marriage, if you believe the gossips."

He gave the dress a critical look. "Wide skirts were the fashion, then, but there was also a practical choice. It was made to hide her leg brace." He shifted his weight slightly on his cane. "I'm told she was quite self-conscious about it.

"I saw a picture of their wedding," he added. "It's quite true about their families. You can see them all glaring at each other in the background. But, I doubt Roy and Julia even noticed. They only had eyes for each other."

"That's a beautiful story," Miss French said. She looked at the dress wistfully.

Miss French was lovely even at the worst of times but, at moments like this, Gold was overwhelmed with how beautiful she was.

Not for me, he reminded himself.

They were friends—perhaps even good friends. They met sometimes over lunch or had discussions about books when he browsed through the library. They liked similar movies, and he'd even taken her with him to see a couple plays in Portland.

But, there were fifteen years between them. Anyone looking at them would think it was even more. Miss French looked closer to twenty than thirty. As for Gold, when he'd explained the significance of some of a couple items Roy Montague must have brought back from Korea, he was asked if he'd served in the war, despite not even being born when it ended.

No, Miss French was certainly not for him.

He'd known that even before they had lunch today. She'd apologized and said that she couldn't make their planned movie night this week. An old friend from college, Greg Gaston, was coming into town.

Gold, listening carefully (he always did but he especially when Miss French was talking) had heard the slight catch in her voice before she said "friend." Her father was also coming to visit and wanted them to go out to dinner together.

A dinner with her father and with an old friend who was more than a friend. Gold had felt a surge of panic. He had known it was only a matter of time before Miss French faded out of his life. She would find a better job and leave town or find someone more worthy of her time. His only comfort was that fools were rather thick on the ground in Storybrooke but intelligence wasn't.

Or that's what he told himself when he tried not to wonder how long it would be before Miss French finally accepted the advances of one of the younger men he'd seen trying to attract her notice, lilke Keith Notting or Will Scarlet. But, she'd never paid them much mind. Was this the reason why? An old friend from college, a man her age and who her father approved of (Gold had met Moe French once when he came to town. The man had given him a puzzled, disdainful look when they ran into each other on the street and Miss French had introduced them).

In a foolish burst of panic, Gold had told Miss French about the dress and a few other items from the estate sale and asked for a chance to show them to her. To his surprise, she'd agreed.

He tried to think how to prolong this moment. "There's a book, here," he told her. "A copy of Shakespeare's sonnets. From the inscription, I think Mr. Montague must have given it to her before he went to war. He asked her to read one each week and write to him what she thought about it. She had notes written all over it."

Miss French picked up the book and looked through it. "Acidic paper," she said, looking over the yellowed pages. "I'm surprised it's lasted this long." She stopped on one entry near the end of the book. Probably one of the poems to the Dark Lady, Gold thought. He remembered one at random.

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torments me. . . .

"Oh," Miss French said. "Someone should save these. Didn't her sons realize what they were?"

Gold shrugged again. The sons had picked out a few favorites from the old books. They'd kept a pristine, gilt-edged, leather-bound copy of the sonnets but tossed this aside, to be sold en masse with a box of others. "They didn't strike me as overly sentimental. I don't think it mattered to them."

It wasn't the right thing to say to a librarian. Miss French looked downright militant for a moment. She swallowed it down. "Do you think they have the letters?" she asked. "The ones she wrote him? And, he must have written her back."

At college, she'd had a job in archives. It was the bits and pieces of daily life that had fascinated her, diaries and letters, the hints of daily life from old lists and notes. Of course, she wanted those letters. "They might. Or they might be lost. It's been over sixty years." Not everyone had Miss French's love of the past.

"I suppose so." Miss French held the book close. "May I borrow this?" she asked. "Just to make a copy."

"You can keep it," he said.

"Oh, I couldn't—"

"You value it for what's inside," he said. "If I tried to sell it, most people would only see a worn out book that had been written all over. It's better off with you."

"Thank you," she said, her eyes glowing. "I'll take good care of it." She looked at the dress again. "It's a beautiful story," she said. "High school sweethearts, there are lots of those. Staying in love through difficult times, through letters and . . . words." She gave Gold a look he couldn't interpret. "When I was in high school, we read Cyrano de Bergerac. I didn't understand it, then, how someone could fall in love through words. Now, I don't think there's any other way you can fall in love. How else can you know who someone really is?"

Gold swallowed, thinking of all the time he'd spent with Miss French, the discussions they'd had, the passionate light that came into her eyes when she talked about the things that really mattered to her.

Like now.

Greg Gaston, he told himself. Her friend since college. The man her father approved of. "Your friend who's coming to visit, I suppose you've written to him?"

"What?" Miss French seemed surprised he'd even asked. Of course, she was. It was obvious wasn't it. "I suppose. We've emailed each other." She grimaced slightly. "And my father makes sure I know what's happening with him."

Ah. Interfering fathers. Gold knew a bit about those. But, it sounded even more serious than Gold had thought. Whatever was bringing Gaston up here, Miss French apparently wanted her father close at hand. "I suppose you're looking forward to seeing him."

Miss French gave him another, inscrutable look. "I don't. . . ." She turned away, unable to put into words whatever it was she was feeling. Gold felt his heart in throat.

Yes, this was it, the beginning of the end. Miss French would see her handsome friend (Gold had no doubt he was handsome), and he would ask Miss French whatever question had brought him to the back-of-beyond Maine. Miss French would answer, and they would go off together, leaving him behind.

As was only right, he reminded himself.

Miss French looked at the dress again, her eyes sad and wistful. "How much?" she asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"The dress," Miss French said. "It's so beautiful, and it's such a lovely story. Even if I never. . . . How much?"

A dress. A wedding dress. She was buying a wedding dress.

It was vintage. There might not be many people in Storybrooke who could even fit into it—Miss French might be the only one—but he had connections with several shops in Boston and a couple in New York who would give him a good price for it.

But, he'd seen how Miss French looked at it.

He named a price, about one tenth of what he'd been thinking of.

"Is that all?" she asked. "I wouldn't think—"

She would look beautiful in it, he thought. A princess. "Sometimes, vintage just means old," Gold said. Rather like me. "The size makes it harder to sell." Thought not in a city of millions, like Boston or New York. "You'd be doing me a favor."

She started to protest. He stopped her before she could start. "Please. It would mean a great deal to me. Please."

That was how he sold a wedding dress to Belle French and how he watched her walk out of his store. He expected he would see her again before she moved on and left. But, in his heart, he was already saying goodbye.