"Till now threatened with its loss, he had never known how much of happiness depended on being first in interest and affection."
i.
"Did I miss anything important, Rosa?" It was a futile question, Grace was sure. The numbers wouldn't be any different. She glanced around her office, how the sunlight danced in every corner, and reminded herself that she was making the right choice, taking another way out.
"Important?" Rosa was breathless. "Didn't you hear? Didn't Mr. Em—I mean, you didn't hear?"
"Hear what?" Grace stayed still to be certain; the earth did not noticeably move under their feet.
"Jake Fairfax and Francesca Church are engaged! They have been this whole time. Since before they came here. It had to be a secret because she didn't know if her mother would cut her off or not."
It was strange, when your heart broke for someone else's heartbreak, after it had first broken for their love. She thought of Emmett, hands and eyes on Francesca, and wondered if she had had even enough integrity to break the news to him.
Likely not.
Likely, he had heard from someone gleeful or ignorant, someone who knew the news would hurt him, or someone who never thought that he could be hurt.
Grace stood up. "Wow. That…is pretty shocking." The words sounded stupid as they fell from her lips. But what else was there to say? Rosa was her friend, but that didn't mean she should know about the inner workings of Emmett's heart.
"It really is." Rosa shook her head. "Hey, I'm not even part of that crowd, but we hear things too. Highbury is a small town." She was watching Grace carefully.
Grace kept her expression neutral. It felt like a small town in this moment, much too small, even if she was perennially grateful that Rosa could call it her own. "I'm glad that there hasn't been anything relating to Caballero Fields," she said, choosing each word carefully. "I'll go run some errands now."
Rosa could see right through her, couldn't she? Rosa must know more than the rest of Highbury. Rosa must have suspected long ago—
Grace didn't walk to Hartfield; she drove. Exercise and fresh air be damned. It was only when she stood on the doorstep, hand poised to knock, that she wondered if Emmett would even want to see her.
I'll go if he doesn't want me, she thought desperately. And oh, Emmett's heart might belong to someone else, but he did always want to see Grace, didn't he?
The alternative was, quite simply, unbearable.
Mrs. Woodhouse opened the door. To see her up and around, greeting visitors, was a shock; the incongruity of it didn't help Grace's nerves. Had it really been only a week since Grace had found the paintings? Since she had let herself hope—
"Grace." The lines around Mrs. Woodhouse's mouth were deeper than usual. "You're back. It isn't even New Year's."
"Merry Christmas," Grace offered. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. "I…I just stopped by to see you…and to see Em—"
"Emmett's gone," Mrs. Woodhouse answered flatly, and she turned, leaving the door open behind her.
Gone? Like an arrow, like a bullet, and like neither of those things—it was only a word. Grace choked down her questions and followed Mrs. Woodhouse to the living room. "What—I mean, where did he go?"
Mrs. Woodhouse looked over her shoulder. She was more herself again, if only because she seemed to be on the verge of some agonized rant. "To Connecticut! He wasn't himself, Grace. He wasn't himself at all. Why would he want to go back East? You know it's cold there, this time of year…and he doesn't have any friends from college, none he ever talks about…I just don't know. I don't know what's gotten into him." She sank into a chair that was conveniently near.
Grace twisted her hands together. "I'm very sorry for intruding, Mrs. W." She bit her lip. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"No, no." Mrs. Woodhouse waved a hand. "I mean…you could let me know if you hear from him. He won't take any of my calls."
Perhaps Grace was supposed to insist. Perhaps she should have stayed. But her heart was thumping in her ears and all she wanted was to go home.
Well, that wasn't all she wanted.
She sat in her car, hands on the wheel, and prayed. It was so like him, to run from tragedy—but likely take it with him all the same. She wondered if he had talked to anyone before he left. Did Harry know? Noel must know—but had Emmett wanted to confide in someone who was so close to the situation?
And where did that leave Grace?
He didn't want to see you. He left before you came home. Once the thought was firmly there, it wouldn't leave. And after all, after all that she had done—why would Emmett want to be on the same coastline as Grace? So that she could lord his mistakes over him? So that she could say, if only you had thought this through?
Once again, her grim reckonings had only driven something further between them. And now he was alone, three thousand miles away, and she couldn't help him, because she had made clear that her help always came at a price.
At least this all made her feel that she had very little left to lose. Grace was dry-eyed as she drove. It was time to say goodbye to many things.
The Hawkins house was one that she had always thought heavy and ugly, framed though it was by rolling grounds. It was modern and sprawling, and Grace, who loved beautiful things though she did not make them, would have recoiled from it if she could. Instead she tipped her head back, eyes up, and listened to her own silence.
Three thousand miles.
Grace got out of the car. She walked with her shoulders back. If Marnie answered the door, she thought, that would just add a little more humiliation to the day.
Marnie didn't answer the door.
"Grace?" August's heavy eyebrows were halfway up his forehead.
"Hello, August," Grace said. We do what we must. There were tragedies that could not be run from. She knew that Emmett knew that, too. "There's something I'd like to discuss."
ii.
It has been met May. May when he left, after graduation—and May when he had first visited, with Mom and Noel, daring Mom to order him not to go so far away.
She had, and then he went anyway. At the time—at eighteen—he had been overcome by all the perverseness of rebellion borne of uncertainty. It was like whatever she wanted from him didn't end up being what he wanted at all.
He wasn't sure what he had thought he would find here, whether he would find the answer to loving Grace somewhere buried in the past, or whether he didn't deserve to be anywhere else but as far away from Grace and home as he could be.
This was the end of his journey: to be in gray-blue, when he had always dreamed of being golden.
Emmett was restless, but that signified nothing. All his life he had been running, towards or away, to whatever was missing, from whatever might be missed. He couldn't stay still, and he was beginning to think but he couldn't stay.
Connecticut, icy with winter, was no comfort. Snow on the ground, slush on the walkways. He tramped up the paved mall at the entrance of his old campus, hands in his pockets.
He had four missed calls from Mom. Four voicemails, too, all probably long and meandering. She was worried. He didn't think she should be. It wasn't that sort of trouble. It was nothing but his own fault.
The art gallery he'd liked best in four years was three floors up in the oldest hall—a pillared brick structure, with an actual cupola atop it. One appreciated a cupola when one saw it.
Emmett wasn't sure if it would be open, but the heavy door—iron handle sticky with frost—swung wide.
The steps echoed under his feet. The whole place seemed to hollow itself out around him—a cocoon of memory, void of members. There was nobody here to greet him. It struck home, even though he was as far from home as he could be.
There was none of his work in the gallery. It was filled with freshman projects. Some of them were good; some abysmal. He paused in front of an atrocious still life, smiling in spite of himself. Failure was universal, but someone had been proud of this all the same. The two, perhaps, could both exist.
His phone was ringing again.
Emmett looked down at it, because—
What if Grace—
It was a number he didn't know. He picked up.
"Hey."
"Emmett?"
"Speaking." Emmett cradled the phone on his shoulder and rubbed his hands together. Dammit, it was cold.
"It's Jake. Jake Fairfax."
Emmett figured that Jake Fairfax would be more awkward over the phone than in person, if such a thing were possible. But hey, life sucked anyway, didn't it? "Oh. Um, how's it going?"
"I heard you were in Connecticut."
One of the natural side effects of dramatic travel was that people found out about it, and likely drew their own conclusions therefrom. "Yeah," Emmett said. "Vacation."
"I'm very sorry," Jake said. He didn't sound stiff, for once. Just quiet. Maybe stiff and just quiet were closer than Emmett had been won't to give them credit for. "I think you got hurt."
Emmett shook his head. It was easier than speaking, but then he remembered that Jake couldn't see him. "I didn't get hurt," he said. And it was true. A little embarrassment at being hoodwinked wasn't the same as pain. He could see that, now. "But…I think I owe you an apology. For being—you know, for being a dick. At various, near-constant points."
Jake laughed. Actually laughed. It was a transformative sound, coming from him. "It wasn't a great situation. I wanted to own to my part of it, and I'm glad there was—less crossfire than I had thought."
He'd been so jealous of Jake. Jealous, because Jake was reserved and talented, someone for Grace to admire. And yet it turned out that Jake had never spared a thought like that for Grace, just as Emmett had soon realized that Francesca wasn't the one after all.
"Will you stay in California?" He was making small talk. With Jake Fairfax. Emmett paced through the echoing gallery again. Wonders never ceased.
"I don't think so, no," Jake answered. "I've got some gigs lined up in New York. And Frankie would like to see her mom again."
Leaving, then, just when Emmett realized a threat wasn't a threat at all. "I wish you both the best," he said. "Really, I do. I'm sorry if I made your life harder out here."
"I hope our paths cross again," Jake said, which was gracious of him. More gracious than Emmett ever seemed to manage. "Thanks for taking my call."
He stayed there, still, for a long time after he hung up. So Jake and Francesca would be happy. He found he didn't mind. Didn't mind at all that Jake would be relieved from suffering. Unlike Emmett, Jake hadn't deserved to suffer. He'd just pulled a number of bad straws from life.
Emmett, on the other hand, had been surrounded by fortune, and had appreciated none of it.
How long did he think that Grace would stay comfortably in his periphery—dependable, satisfying, absolute? He hadn't given enough thought or heart to how that relegated her to second place. How it wasn't fair to expect that her life would serve his.
He had been selfish, as his mother was selfish, and he had let it last and last, until there was no chance for a different ending. He had never earned the right to Grace's friendship, much less her love.
Perhaps he should stay in Connecticut forever.
He missed her. Grace. This, at last, was what it to meant to be in love—to have a heart so swallowed up by longing that the pain was only as unbearable as it was necessary. Once recognized, it could never be anything else but permanent.
And of this, he was truly sure.