A/N: I'm very happy to say that I am pursuing agent representation for Fixing on the Hour. I am not putting In What Direction on hiatus, but I need to give it some extra thought now that I'm moving forward. However, I really enjoy genderbending Jane Austen, it seems, so here's my take on Emma. Very grateful to anyone who wants to go along for the ride.
"Handsome, clever, rich, and with a happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence."
i.
"I tried to call you three times this morning," Julia said. At best, Julia's impatience was thinly veiled. After three missed calls, she didn't bother veiling it at all.
Grace rolled her shoulders back, imagining that her spine was accordion-like, unfolding and realigning. "I've been in the fields all morning."
"Great. La abeja, like always."
Grace rolled her eyes at the nickname, but Julia wasn't there to see. "It's harvest season."
"It's harvest season half the year. You have the run of the place—isn't it time you put your feet up on the desk?"
"I am at my desk." Grace ran a hand over the beveled mahogany. Square, white-framed windows looked westwards—the workers were moving, ant-like, down the rows. Beyond that line of brush-yellow hills, the ocean would be glittering in the noon sun.
Until a year ago, it had been her father's view.
Julia huffed a little, then railed onwards. "You've almost made me forget why I was calling."
"Why are you calling?"
"Trying to get ahead of the local gossip from a hundred miles away. Noel Taylor is moving back to Santa Cruz."
Grace swallowed. "Why?"
"He got married. Is getting married. I don't know—Ike never tells me anything useful."
Grace said, "Good for him." Her left shoulder still felt knotted and tense.
"So…" Julia dragged out the word as only a sister could. "That means Emmett is coming back to Highbury."
Grace had spent the past decade repeatedly telling Julia that she had no intention of admiring, dating, or more to the point, marrying Emmett Woodhouse, without effect. She didn't bother repeating herself. "I think he would have anyway."
"Maybe, maybe not. But he texted Ike this morning."
Grace said, "Mrs. Woodhouse will be happy."
"Will you be happy?"
"Of course." Grace stood up, rubbed her neck, smiled a smile that Julia couldn't see. "We all miss him. Highbury isn't the same without Emmett."
Nothing was the same without Emmett.
"Hmm," Julia murmured. She sounded satisfied. "Well, Ike and I are going to Phoenix to see Mom and Dad next weekend, but I'm sure we'll make it up at some point, all family-reunion like."
"You know how I love parties," Grace interposed dryly. "How's my nephew?"
"He cries a lot."
"He's a baby."
"Still."
"Kiss him for me," Grace said, and sighed. "I should go. This bookkeeping isn't going to do itself."
Julia let her go. And Grace tried to let something else go, but she couldn't, quite. The house felt very empty and quiet around her—outside she could hear the irrigators, the trucks, the low chatter, but the rooms around were brightly, impersonally tomb-like.
She whistled for Paco; he came padding down the hallway with his tongue lolling. Grace scratched between his ears.
"Emmett," she said, to see if Paco would remember. "Emmett." His ears twitched, but it was too hot for him to do much of anything. He flopped down at her feet and bellowed out a contented sigh.
Grace leaned back in her chair.
Yes, Emmett. Back from four years of school in Connecticut, with precious few holidays in between. If there was anyone Anna Woodhouse trusted to look after her most beloved son—Ike had been born first, then played second fiddle all his life—it was Noel Taylor, aspiring philosopher and known entity.
Noel Taylor was pleasant enough. A little weak in the chin, though, and it showed in his character. Grace had always thought him unequal to the task of managing Emmett, especially at college.
Emmett's chin was decidedly stubborn.
"I suppose it's lucky that Noel didn't get it in his head to leave Connecticut any earlier," she said aloud to Paco. "Because then Emmett would have been left alone, and that would never do."
She had seen Emmett several times in those years. But in the last two, he hadn't been home at all when she was in Highbury. The last time she'd seen him was at Ike and Julia's wedding, a June before last.
Sibling to sibling. She, maid of honor—he, best man. Of course. Ike would never consider asking anyone else.
Emmett loved his brother as the sun might favor a lesser star, which was to say that he thought of him very little. Then again, Emmett thought very little of anyone but Emmett. Grace had known that since she was six. He had been an intolerable four-year-old, and yet she had never been parted from him for more than a day until he went away.
He had looked older at the wedding. All of twenty, but with the beginnings of surer angles in his face, dark brows above green eyes, sandy hair much sleeker than it had been in tousled childhood.
They had danced, and Grace had not known what it had meant. Then Emmett said goodnight, and made some joke about her truly being his sister now, after all these years, and—sister, that was all that stayed after he had gone.
Emmett went back to study in New England and two months later, Grace's parents announced that they were retiring to Arizona. Tired of the strawberry empire. Tired of what little winter northern California had to offer.
Cabellero Fields had been Knightley Fields two years ago—an Anglicization of their name that Grace had never understood. When her father handed over the keys to the kingdom, she told him she was done with pretending. He had knit his brow and talked about marketability, but he had still gone to Phoenix and left her in command.
Command she had, and did, and would. Grace put aside thoughts of Emmett Woodhouse—sisterly thoughts or not—and went back out to the fields.
Rosa Martinez greeted her with a wave and handed her an extra basket. "I thought you were doing the books," she said, in careful English.
Grace switched to Spanish, knowing it was easier. "Julia called," she explained. "The books couldn't measure up after that."
Rosa laughed—Julia was well-known to the workers who had been with the Fields for years—and they fell into a rhythm of picking and talking. Busy though they were, the flood of tourists wouldn't start for a bit. Highbury was still something of a hidden gem.
"Mr. Emmett is coming back," Rosa said, starting a new row. Grace wondered how everyone knew.
"Yes," she said. "The town can run again, with the prince returned. I'll tell the mayor."
"He probably knows," Rosa pointed out, and they both laughed.
Yet the bookkeeping, as promised, did not do itself. Grace leaned over her laptop screen, bleary-eyed in the gray of darkness. She had one of those sun-headaches—had one almost every day. They all did.
She was twenty-four, she was queen of all she surveyed—if what she surveyed were the western fields. But Grace had never cared much about title.
She cared about people, and the harvest, and she cared for—
Well, of course she cared for Emmett.
She wondered off-handedly why she hadn't just texted him more. She didn't like to text; it was the old soul in her—but somehow she'd allowed the distance to rob her of the companionship of her best friend. It just seemed silly, now.
Paco curled up on the floor beside her bed and Grace watched the curtains billow in the breeze. Tomorrow would be another day in Highbury—and so would the day after that.
ii.
"You can never go away again."
Emmett threw an arm around his mother's shoulders and laughed. "Why would I? I'm college educated, now—and it turns out I didn't care that much about it."
"Didn't care about it?" Her brow creased with worry.
"Well…" Emmett decided it wouldn't be particularly kind to her ruffled nerves to completely dismiss the usefulness of four years of Ivy League. "It was an interesting experiment."
"You didn't need to go to school to learn art," Mom said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "You knew everything about it already. And the winters must be so cold there."
"I lost every fingertip to frostbite," Emmett agreed cheerfully. "Made it impossible to sketch anymore. But here I am again—no, Mom, I was kidding…fingertips and all—and I think Highbury really is better than any other place in the world."
"It needs you." She broke away from him and bustled around. "You must be starving."
"Yup." But he cast his gaze restlessly around the room. Same old room, long and hall-like, windows facing west, too many sofas. Three, in fact. "Have you seen much of Grace lately?"
"We hardly see her at all anymore," Mom fretted, which Emmett imagined meant that Grace came about once or twice a day. "She's so busy. Working in the fields. When her father ran Knightley Fields, he didn't waste his time doing the picking."
He wanted to see Grace, very badly indeed. But Emmett knew better than to ever look desperate over anything. He flung himself on the nearest sofa and shut his eyes, cat-like.
He'd driven rather leisurely around Highbury before he'd returned exactly home—had to. Mom wouldn't want him out of her sight for another week at least. It was a relief to see that nearly nothing had changed.
But Noel would be married.
Emmett was terribly selfish, with good reason—he had a rather remarkable self to look after. He liked his friends close, his enemies managed, and to have Noel forging off on his own, after he'd been like a right-hand man the past four years in Connecticut—
But, well. There was some comfort even in parting. Emmett smiled; he had done his part, and done it well.
"You look happy," Mom was saying. "But a little flushed."
He opened his eyes, she was looking down at him, very intently.
"I'm not getting sick, Mom. Promise." Better head that off at the pass. "So, the Cabelleros left Grace alone with the farm? Why?"
"They were tired. Moved to Arizona." Mom grimaced. "So hot there, you know. Can't be good for their health." She fanned herself demonstratively. "And not much thought given to their old friends—who knows when they'll be back. I hear they handed everything over to Grace. And you know she's always been so good and wise, but that is a little much for twenty-four."
"She is twenty-four, isn't she?" Emmett stared meditatively at the long mirror hanging opposite him. He waggled his eyebrows at his own reflection.
"Yes. Twenty-four."
"Hmm." Grace always seemed ageless. She was older than him, of course—but was that sixteen to his fourteen, or twenty-one to his still adolescent nineteen? Or farther back—eight to six, or six to four?
He stood up. Did it matter? "Ask her over for dinner," he said.
"She probably won't come."
Emmett disregarded this. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Yes, Grace's number was here though he never called it—why hadn't he called her?
No point in thinking of that now. He dialed.
Grace didn't pick up. Her voicemail message was calm and deliberate. He realized it had been a while since he'd even heard her voice.
"Grace, it's Em. I'm back. Come to dinner. We're having—" he paused and gave Mom a questioning glance—"Salmon? Salmon. You know. Healthy-like."
When he hung up, he shut his eyes again. He was tired, after all.
"Should I have come to your graduation?"
"No—no. I didn't walk, remember? Waste of time."
He hadn't walked because he didn't want her—want anyone—to feel that they had to fly across the country to him. He didn't want to see who and how many assembled, to learn whether anyone would really have come or not.
Selfishness was a family trait.