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The parcel had come to the wrong place. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The parcel had come to the correct place, but it had come to the wrong person.
Belle was still staring at the box a good five minutes after she had come home from work to find it sitting outside her apartment.
She couldn’t deny that the address was definitely hers, so the box had definitely come to the right place.
She was not, however, the Baeden Gold to whom it had been addressed.
Now, normally if Belle received post that had come to her address but not her name, she would do one of two things. She would shred it without opening it, or she would scribble ‘not known at this address, return to sender’ all over it and post it again.
The parcel, however, was a rather sizeable parcel, and as she picked it up to bring it into the apartment, she found that it was really quite heavy. Now, option A was obviously out of the question, and given its size and weight, Belle really didn’t fancy lugging it down to the post office.
She was going to have to do something with it. Baeden Gold would probably be expecting his parcel, especially since Christmas was coming and the parcel was likely to be related to the holiday. She certainly couldn’t just keep the parcel and hope that the Baeden Gold in question would come by and collect it. Given its size and weight and the postage markings on it, whoever had sent the parcel had spent quite a lot on getting it sent, and Belle really wanted it to get to the correct recipient. It had been sent with love and care: it was well-wrapped, and the address was printed neatly by hand. As she set it down on the kitchen table, she saw the return address. There was no name. Well, there wasn’t a name that could help her. The sender had identified themselves as ‘Papa’.
Oh. Oh dear.
Belle could put together a very clear picture of what was going on. A father estranged from his child had sent gifts for Christmas, and they had come to the child’s address too late, after someone else had already re-rented the apartment.
Belle’s brow furrowed. She’d been living here for almost six months; surely that was enough time for a new address to have been communicated to Baeden’s father. Unless they didn’t want their new address to be known by said father for whatever reason.
Belle sat down at the kitchen table, wishing that she knew what to do. Returning to sender would be the best option, but at the same time, she couldn’t get the vision of this unknown man getting his child’s Christmas presents back, and the vision of the child not receiving any Christmas presents from their father, out of her head.
She had to get these presents to this child. Returning to sender would be useless, because Papa Gold - no, that sounded horribly wrong, she needed another way to identify him. Mr Gold, that would do. Because Mr Gold would not have sent the parcel to the wrong address if he had known the correct one.
Belle didn’t know the correct address any better than Mr Gold did, but at least she had a better chance of finding out.
She grabbed her phone and dialled the letting agency. Naturally, it was out of their office hours, but she left a message.
“Hi, this is Belle French from apartment sixteen, I was wondering if you had a forwarding address for the previous tenants? I’ve received a parcel for them. Thanks.”
She hung up and leaned back in the chair; there was nothing more that she could do until morning now. Well, except wonder what the box contained. She’d never open it, but having come into unexpected custody of it, she couldn’t help but imagine. How old was Baeden? What kind of toys did he like? She picked up the box again and shook it very gently, but the weight distribution didn’t change. Whatever it was, it was packed in tightly.
It felt like books. Working in the library, Belle was used to handling boxes of books, and she knew how much they weighed for how little room they took up. This could very well be a box of books.
What books were they? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Picture books? More likely to be picture books; if Baeden was still young enough for his father to be Papa to him, then he probably wasn’t reading Lord of the Rings yet.
The box stayed on her kitchen table overnight, but Belle’s dreams were full of unknown children separated from their fathers and their Christmas presents.
When she checked her emails next morning, there was a message from the letting agency waiting for her with the forwarding address.
Unfortunately, the name that went with the forwarding address was not Baeden Gold.
Well, of course it wasn’t going to be Baeden Gold. If his papa was still sending him Christmas presents then he was hardly old enough to have the lease in his own name.
The name was Milah Cassidy.
Belle looked at it hard for a moment. If Baeden’s father was no longer part of the family unit, then it made sense that his mother might have gone back to her maiden name. Or maybe they had never been married in the first place, and she had never been Milah Gold.
Or maybe Milah Cassidy was entirely unrelated and was just another person who had lived in the apartment, like Belle.
She glared at the box. It was just an ordinary box wrapped in brown paper and sealed with parcel tape; it should not have been causing so many problems. Still, she was determined to get to the bottom of it all, and she was even more determined that Baeden Gold was going to get his books from his papa.
She thought for a moment, and then the solution struck her. There was still a good couple of weeks before Christmas, after all, and she had the return address.
Belle grabbed a sheet of paper and pen and sat down at the table, the box seeming to watch her as she wrote.
Dear Mr Gold (I assume that’s your name from the box)
My name is Belle French and I’ve lived in Apartment Sixteen, Riverside Mansions for the past six months. I’m currently in possession of a parcel that you sent here addressed to a Baeden Gold, who again, from the box, I’m assuming is your son.
I take it from the fact that you sent the box here that you don’t have Baeden’s current address.
I have a forwarding address for the tenant who lived here before me. Please forgive me for not passing this to you for security reasons. I am happy to forward the parcel on your behalf, however, to avoid the same thing happening to someone else as has happened to me, could you please confirm that Baeden is resident with a Ms Milah Cassidy.
Many thanks, Belle French.
She added her phone number - it would be a bit difficult to get the parcel delivered in time if she had to rely on snail mail for all future correspondence - and sealed the envelope.
All she could do now was wait and see.
X
The call came three days later, out of the blue, on her lunch break. When she saw that it was an unknown number, Belle pounced on it and answer after two and a half rings.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Miss Belle French?”
“Speaking.”
“Hello, this is Raymond Gold. I, erm, I got your letter about Bae’s parcel.”
“Hello, Mr Gold.”
For some reason her heart was beating very hard in her chest, and Belle could not for the life of her work out why. Maybe it was his voice, soft and Scottish and nervous, as if he didn’t like making phone calls.
“Milah is Bae’s mother, Cassidy’s her maiden name. I… Do you really have the parcel? I mean, obviously you do, or you wouldn’t have my address… I can’t believe she didn’t tell me she’d moved. No, actually, I can, it’s the kind of thing she’d do…” He tailed off, and Belle could almost feel his embarrassment down the phone. “I’m not weird or dangerous, I swear, we just had a very acrimonious divorce. I won’t ask for the new address or anything, but could you please send it on? I need Bae to know that I’m still around, that I still love him, no matter what his mother might have said.”
The poor man, it sounded like he was at the very end of his rope. Whilst Belle couldn’t vouch for him not being weird or dangerous, she could certainly help to make sure that his son didn’t go without his parcel.
“Of course. I’ll let you know when it’s gone.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for taking the time to do this, rather than just returning it to sender.”
“You’re very welcome, Mr Gold. Thanks for calling.”
She could sense his desperation, and she dreaded to think what he might have done had the parcel arrived on his own doorstep again.
“Thank you.”
They said their goodbyes, and Belle went to get the parcel on the next - and hopefully final - leg of its journey.
She had expected that to be the end of it. She sent a text to Mr Gold’s number to tell him that the parcel had been sent, and she thought that would be it.
But it wasn’t.
Gold replied thanking her again, and then, without even realising it, Belle was having a complete text-based conversation with a man she’d never met, had only spoken to once, and had only found out existed in passing thanks to a misdirected parcel.
She told him what she did, and why she loved being a librarian so much, and she asked if the parcel had contained books because it felt like it did.
He told her that yes, it had books in, because Bae was a voracious and precocious reader for his five years, and that reading bedtime stories was the thing he missed most. He told her about Bae, about himself, about how and why his relationship had ended. Belle told him about her parents, her own heartbreaks, her own loneliness.
Even though he was a stranger, Belle felt that she really knew him, that he was a kindred spirit. They were both lonely, and whilst Gold was painfully aware of his isolation, Belle’s own state only weighed heavy upon her in the moments like this, when she felt that the only person who understood her was hundreds of miles away in a remote corner of Maine.
She had not expected to find a friend as a result of that parcel, but she had definitely found one.
She was surprised when, a week after his first call, Gold called her again. They had been exchanging messages several times a day, but they had not spoken to each other since the initial call.
He was so changed. His voice was still soft and still Scottish and still shy, but it was energised now; there was less desperation in it.
“Bae got his parcel!” he exclaimed happily. “He called me! Everything’s going to be all right!”
Belle felt a huge swell of happiness burst through her veins at the news.
“I’m so glad, Rum, that’s great news.”
All the same, she felt a little sad that they would probably no longer be exchanging messages after this call, and she was so very glad when, half an hour after hanging up, her phone pinged, and their communication continued.
They kept going back and forth throughout the Christmas period. The messaging became almost like a ritual, and Belle found herself counting Rum Gold amongst her closest friends, despite the fact she had no idea what he looked like.
She found out what he looked like four months after their first interaction. The first tentative signs of spring were just about showing, and the chill in the air was no longer as biting cold as it had been all over winter. It was a day to be positive, and there was a spring in Belle’s step as she answered her doorbell.
It became rather a perplexed step when she found a middle-aged man with short greying hair outside, a small boy hanging onto his hand.
“Erm, hi.” The man gave an awkward wave, and Belle recognised his voice immediately. “I should have warned you before, and it’s horribly bad manners just turning up like this, but since I knew your address, and I was in the area anyway… I’m Rum Gold, and this is Bae, and we just wanted to come and thank you in person.”
“Thanks for sending my parcel!” Bae piped up.
“I… You’re very welcome. Would you like to come in for some tea, or hot cocoa?”
“Yes!” Bae said.
“No, we can’t I’m afraid,” Rum said. “We’ve got to get to a meeting. But… maybe we could meet tomorrow? We’ll still be in town.” He paused. “I’m getting full custody of Bae; he’s coming home to Storybrooke with me. We’re signing the final paperwork today.”
“It’s going to be great!” Bae certainly seemed very happy at the prospect of being with his dad again, and Belle was so relieved that everything had turned out for the best.
“Tomorrow would be perfect.” Belle smiled. “I’m so happy that everything worked out for you.”
“Well, I couldn’t have done it without you.” Rum had gone rather pink around the ears. “If it hadn’t been for talking with you so much, I would never have got the courage to start the proceedings. So, the cocoa is definitely on me tomorrow.” He paused. “I hope that we can continue talking, even after this is over?”
Belle nodded. “We definitely can. It’s been great to meet you in person at last. And… I really hope that tomorrow won’t be the last time?”
Rum smiled. “It certainly doesn’t have to be. You know where I live, after all.”
“And you definitely know where I live.”
They both laughed. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with the prospect of it becoming so much more. And it had all started with one innocuous parcel.