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Casey hadn’t seen Grant in the flesh in many months. Here he stood— all six foot three of him, his shoulders broad, with those sterling blue eyes and that handsome, crooked smile. He held a large bouquet of autumn flowers in his hands, edged with sunflowers. Everything about this moment seemed perfect, save for one thing.
Grant had a black eye.
Casey placed a hand over her heart as she gaped at him. Maine weather, ever a finicky thing, had kicked up a snowstorm, and big dollops of snow flattened themselves across his cheeks and forehead as the wind rushed up off Frenchman Bay. His black eye was particularly dark, proof that whoever had swung at him had really wanted to hurt him.
Was this part of the “secret” the secretary, Stacy, had insinuated?
“Hi,” Grant rasped, his voice gruff but timid.
Casey had no words. She stumbled back and pressed a finger against her lips before gesturing over toward the sleeping bodies of Donnie, Melody, and Nate. Grant tip-toed in with the flowers at his side. He closed the door against the rush of the wind and followed Casey into the kitchen. There, she closed the kitchen door. She slapped a hand on the counter as her rage that had bubbled for days within her sprung to the surface.
“What the hell, Grant?” She held her voice to only a whisper. It was laced with frustration and anger.
Grant’s lips parted with shock. He placed the bouquet next to the stovetop and pressed his palms together. Casey felt like a person at one of his stupid business presentations. She didn’t want to be sold anything she didn’t need.
“You’ve had your phone off all day. You didn’t answer me last night, nor did you call me back. You told me multiple times you’d be here for Thanksgiving, and I passed along that information to your children.”
Grant’s cheeks flushed, which contrasted his black eye strangely. He glanced toward the bay window as though someone over there might have an appropriate answer for him. Unfortunately for him, it was just the two of them: husband and wife, finally facing off.
She took a step closer to him. “And this black eye? What the hell, Grant?”
Grant placed a hand over his cheek as he sighed heavily. “I haven’t had the chance to look at it all day. I’ve been traveling for hours to try to get here in time.”
“In time? In time for what, Grant?” Casey gestured around the kitchen, with its half-eaten apple pie on the counter and its scattering of dirty forks in the sink. “We ate dinner at one. We always eat dinner at one. I don’t know if you’ve paid attention to the past, oh, twenty-five years of Thanksgiving? But that’s been the way Thanksgiving rolls from the way I remember it.”
Grant gaped at her as his shoulders sagged. “I know, Casey. I get it. All I wanted was to be here today.”
Casey could hardly believe her ears. “Then you should have been here yesterday or the day before yesterday. Most of the family arrived on Saturday, Grant. We’ve had non-stop family activities since then, all without you. And you know what? Until right now, all I wanted was for you to be here with me and your children. I wanted you to be here and remind me that everything will always be all right between us. But you know what I figured out today, Grant? I figured out that nothing is okay. Nothing’s even a little bit okay between us. And the sooner I accept that the sooner I can move on to the next phase of my life.”
Grant’s lips parted in shock at her words. Casey relished this, albeit slightly, as her heart felt so bruised. The only thing she could think of was to hurt the person who’d hurt her so much, even though she knew how childish it was.
“Please, Casey. Don’t you think you owe me at least a few minutes to explain?” Grant pleaded softly.
Casey’s heart hammered in her chest. She shook her head almost violently, making her dark hair waft around her ears. “I can’t, Grant. I can’t take it. I can’t take another night alone, just hoping you’ll come back. I need some peace. And I’ve found it here in Bar Harbor with my sisters. We’ve built a whole world for ourselves here, out of the wreckage that our father left for us.”
“What are you talking about?” Grant demanded.
Casey might have laughed had she had the strength. Within this conversation, she realized everything she hadn’t told Grant about the past few months. There was only so much you could translate over phone and text. The crater between them was as large as the Grand Canyon. “Communication difficulties” hardly covered it. It was now as though they spoke different languages.
“I think it’s about time we looked into divorce lawyers,” Casey said firmly.
Grant’s jaw dropped. He stumbled back toward the kitchen door as the air around them tightened. He shook his head ever-so-slightly. “You can’t be serious, Casey. You’re just angry.”
If there was ever a wrong time to tell Casey Harvey that she was “just angry,” it was this time. Casey pointed a firm finger toward the door and said, “I need you out of this house this instant, Grant. I want to work exclusively through lawyers from here on out. I suppose that shouldn’t be so difficult for you since you find it pretty damn difficult to call me even every few days.”
“I have so much to say, Casey... So much.”
“Tell your lawyer,” Casey boomed. “And get the hell off our property.”
Slowly, Grant walked through the kitchen door and made his way down the hallway and back into the snow-filled night. Casey remained in the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest as whatever car he’d brought revved its engine in the driveway. A moment later, Donnie, Grant’s son, appeared in the kitchen to retrieve a glass of water. It was like seeing Grant’s ghost. He yawned and said, “Did you hear something outside?”
Casey said she hadn’t. She told him to go back to sleep.
“Only if you do, Mom. You look tired,” Donnie told her.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you never to say that to a woman?” Casey remarked sharply.
Donnie sipped his water and grumbled sleepily. In another moment, he disappeared back into the hallway and allowed Casey to stew in her anger and her shame. How foolish she’d been to ever fall in love with that ruffian cowboy from Montana. She’d always assumed herself to be more intelligent than that, with none of the quivering emotion of her other sisters.
Now, she saw herself for what she truly was: here in Bar Harbor, jobless and soon-to-be-divorced. She felt like her world had just fallen apart. She collapsed at the kitchen table and bent her spine so that her forehead plastered itself across the shine of the table. That night, Bar Harbor would take on nine inches of snow within only two hours. But that’s the thing about snowfall: it’s quiet, unnoticeable until the sun splays across it and illuminates its glory.