i.
Sunlight fills the air around them like a cup, warm and white and blinding. Grace leans into it, takes a few steps down the sidewalk while the adults huddle together, poring over a map.
Mrs. Woodhouse calls, "One of you needs to hold Emmett's hand!"
"What a baby," Julia hisses, delighted.
Why Julia, at twelve, thinks it's funny to needle Emmett, at seven, is beyond Grace's understanding. She would like very much to tell Julia to shut it, but Mama's still within hearing distance.
"I'll hold his hand," Grace spits back, before Emmett can shatter into all the sharp-edged pieces of childhood indignation. Grace is nine; she knows better. Julia can't make her cry, and mostly, she doesn't try to.
"I don't need someone to hold my hand," he grumbles, but he doesn't let go.
Grace and Julia and Mama and Papa are only here because Mrs. Woodhouse didn't want Mr. Woodhouse to go away without her, and then she didn't want to stay at a hotel all day while he was working. Grace is fine with it, really. It's October. It's San Francisco. Highbury is less than two hours away, but they don't come here often. They don't go anywhere, often, because strawberries are a full-time job.
Knightley Fields isn't just a home, Papa always says. It's a way of life.
And that means that the next two days—a whole weekend, it's only Friday afternoon—feel like vacation. Grace breathes salt air and crab meat and French fries.
"I'm hungry," Emmett says. He needs a haircut. His hair curls around his forehead and ears. Julia has taken to calling him Goldilocks.
"I am too," Grace says. "But it's not dinner-time yet."
"Why not?"
"We don't eat until six."
"Maybe you don't," he huffs. "I get to eat whenever I want. I have a sensitive conspituion."
Grace doesn't laugh. She lifts her free hand and points. "There's the bridge."
Red-orange, slender yet immense, bracketing the mouth of the ocean between the lips of the hills.
Emmett draws in a breath. His fingers tighten around hers. He asks, "What's on the other side?"
ii.
"Remember that time we came here, when we were little?"
Grace lifts her hair in both hands, twisting it into something that won't allow strands to tangle in her eyes every five seconds. The wind off the water is brisk, but warm.
Julia, for all her love of…well, of attention, only wanted one attendant.
She'd said she didn't really like any of her friends that much, and thank God, Ike actually kept to himself a lot of the time.
"It's good that you like him," Grace had said, rather flatly. "Since you're marrying him."
And Julia had laughed!
They go to San Francisco because Julia swears she'll stick a fork in an eye—hers, or someone else's—if Mama hosts a bridal shower and serves strawberries. Julia and Grace drive to the edge of the bay and then board a ferry across it, because Julia is never happy to stay in one part of one place.
"Yes," Grace says now. "Yes, I remember." It's a memory tied up with the Woodhouses, and one Woodhouse most of all. Everything is still about Emmett, even though he's on the other side of the country. Even though he's left them.
"You know, that was the trip I realized I had a crush on Ike," Julia muses. "And he looked like such a dork! Still does, actually." But she's smiling, a real, sharp-white grin below her enormous sunglasses. Her ponytail is slicked back, no wayward tangles.
Grace sighs.
"It's a long time ago, now," she says, and leans into the breeze, into the Bay, into the way the water and the sky are different shades of open blue. This whole city makes her think of him, too, because it won't stand still—streets and people are patterned restlessly over its rollercoaster sprawl.
"I'm getting married in a week. Truly. What the hell." Julia turns to her, all business. "If you don't cry at my wedding, by the way, I'm not crying at yours."
"Deal," Grace says.
iii.
Grace wakes up late. Her hair is still wound in Emmett's hands. She tugs it free but stays, otherwise, where she is: her knuckles pressed lightly against his chest, the same even warmth over all their skin.
He blinks awake so quickly; there's an uncertainty about the way he sleeps, still, a restlessness that she knows only time will mend.
When he sees that she's so close, he smiles.
"Morning."
"It is."
"You are." He leans forward, kisses her, doesn't stop kissing her—Grace gives in.
Later, when they are climbing past the dense-branched trees, above the shimmer of fog that traces the corners of the city, higher, higher until at last they see the scarlet arms of the bridge, Grace tugs at his hand.
"Hey," she says. "This is it."
Emmett quirks a brow. "This is what?"
"The other side."