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Just outside the colonial house-turned-hotel where Grant had chosen to live out the devastating weeks after Casey’s announcement of divorce, an enormous Christmas tree had fallen to the ground and cast its tinsel and bulbs across the sidewalk. Casey blinked down at it, reminded of long ago when she’d watched a hunter drag a deer through the woods. The tree looked defeated. Above, the downtown Bar Harbor speaker system spat and crackled with Bing Crosby Christmas tunes.
Casey ducked into the warmth of the hotel and smiled at the receptionist.
“Hi there,” she greeted Casey with a smile. “Welcome to Bar Harbor.”
“Hello.” Casey’s gloved hands gripped the edge of the desk. “I wonder if you could inform Grant Griffin that I’m here? I need to speak with him.”
The receptionist’s eyes widened. “That guy is the biggest drama we’ve had at this hotel since I started.”
Casey cocked her head as the receptionist brought her piece of gum from one corner of her mouth to the other.
“But he just left a few minutes ago,” the receptionist said.
Casey’s heart sank. “Did he say where he was going?”
“He usually walks out by the docks at night,” the receptionist told her. “Kind of freaky that he does that. It’s so dark down there.”
But before the receptionist could finish her sentence, Casey ran out the door and fled as quickly as she could, her boots tracing little lines through the recently-fallen snow. The run was no more than a quarter of a mile, but it might as well have been a marathon. When she reached the edge of the boardwalk, she collapsed forward and gripped her knees. It was a sure thing that her cheeks were fire engine red.
It was long past dark and eerily quiet on the boardwalk. The dock wood creaked against the rush of the waves, and only three or four boats lingered, latched with aging rope. It took Casey a moment to adjust to the black, but slowly she found the outline of the boardwalk out in the distance and its attached docks. And a moment later, the moon sprung out from beneath a fluff of clouds, illuminating everything.
Only fifty feet away, Grant stood— that sturdy Montana cowboy, misplaced here on the rocky coastline of Maine. He had shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and his lips were slightly parted as he took in the splendor of Frenchman Bay before him. He’d spoken so frequently of majestic mountains and glorious oceans and purple plains of majesty, the adoration of an American man who believed, above all, in his country. Casey’s heart surged with love for him.
In a million little specific ways, she could still feel that same twenty-something cowboy in the man down the dock. The moment he’d marched into Quintin Griffin’s old dining room, her soul had screamed a resounding YES, one she hadn’t been able to ignore, despite her consistent fight for her career and her future. Perhaps that had been the universe, piping up to say, “Wait a minute, Casey. Maybe there’s more to this whole life thing than you thought.”
As though Grant could hear her anxious, swirling thoughts, he suddenly turned rightward to face her. His face erupted with shock. Casey shivered so immensely that she couldn’t move her feet forward.
He intuitively sensed it. He would have to be the one to come forward.
She’d already run herself silly from the hotel to the docks. The exhaustion overwhelmed her. Could she possibly say everything she desperately needed to say? Could she take back all the horrific, sharp-edged words she’d already spewed? She’d served him divorce papers, for goodness sake.
Divorce papers. To Grant. The love of her life.
Grant rushed toward her so that the chilly wind from Frenchman Bay swept through his thick black hair. When he reached her, he stopped short as his cerulean eyes widened. After a long, pregnant pause, he finally breathed, “Casey? What are you doing here?”
Casey nodded as her stomach swelled with sorrow. “Hi, Grant. I think I’ve made a mistake, but I need you to clarify a few things first?”
“Oh,” was all he said.
A single tear traced down Casey’s cheek, which she immediately flicked off.
“I didn’t have an affair,” he told her firmly, as though he wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.
Casey nodded again. “I know that, now.”
Grant licked his lips, which Casey wanted to scold him for. It was far too cold; they would immediately chap.
“I hate what’s happened to us, Casey,” Grant lamented. “I hate that we’ve fallen apart like this. We have too much history for this to happen.”
Casey’s eyes continued to well with tears. Every muscle within her urged her forward to collapse into Grant’s arms. Again, she reminded herself that she wasn’t Heather Harvey; she wasn’t prone to such emotions and didn’t give them so much power. At least, that’s what she wanted to believe about herself.
“Will you come have a drink with me at the hotel?” Grant asked finally.
Casey’s throat tightened.
“I have so many things I want to say to you, but I don’t want to do them here in the cold,” Grant told her.
Casey squeezed her eyes shut as Grant traced an arm around her shoulder and guided her back toward his hotel. They walked in silence, for what on earth could they possibly say on the street as the Christmas crowds whirled around them? Grant nodded toward the fallen Christmas tree and said, “They really go all-out with Christmas here, don’t they? About one hundred times more than Portland.”
To this, Casey looked up at him and replied, “I hate to admit I’ve fallen in love with Christmas in Bar Harbor. It’s truly a magical place, and I now understand why my father and uncle loved it here so much.”
When they entered the bar within the hotel, there were five hotel guests, many of whom traveled alone and nursed light beers as they texted on their phones. Grant rapped the bar counter with his knuckles and greeted the bartender warmly. “Looks like tonight picked up since I left,” he said, referring to the surroundings.
“A big rush,” the bartender joked. His eyes sparkled toward Casey. “What can I get you two?”
Casey ordered a glass of white wine while Grant stuck with beer. Grant then led her toward the back window, where they sat facing one another as a candle flickered between them. Grant splayed his hands across the table as he drummed up some idea of what to say.
“I don’t know where to start in all of this.”
“Maybe you could start with Alyssa Limperis,” Casey suggested.
Grant bristled slightly, but his eyes didn’t stray from hers. She supposed this was a good sign.
“Quintin was always such a pillar of that community,” Grant began. “Helping people out when they needed it, lending money, which he had in spades, at least for a while. A few years before Frankie died, Alyssa’s long-time fiancé died of cancer. As Quintin explained, he and Alyssa got to talking one night at the bar about their losses, about their grief, and they couldn’t shut up. He said it was the real love he’d never managed to have with Henrietta.”
Casey’s eyes turned toward the table. She had witnessed the chilly dynamic between Henrietta and Quintin countless times; she’d always blamed Quintin for it, as she’d felt him to be sinisterly old-fashioned. Henrietta’s place had, and always would be, in the kitchen.
“He never wanted to divorce Henrietta, especially not after what their family went through,” Grant carried on. “And the trauma of his bad marriage and the loss of Frankie led him to drink and gamble exponentially, it seemed like.”
“This must have also been around the time that your work picked up,” Casey pointed out, remembering.
“Yes. It was,” Grant affirmed. “And I managed to stop by Montana quite a lot.”
“I remember sometimes that it was a surprise to me when I learned you were there,” Casey said softly. “And I ached with worry that you regretted ever moving with me to Maine.”
Grant’s face cracked open with sorrow. “No. I never regretted that. Not once.” He brought his hands out on either side of him, gesturing to the bar, which seemed to represent the great world of Maine that they’d built together after all these years. It was laughably simplistic. “You, Melody, and Donnie were my world. I just always felt— felt so guilty about leaving Quintin behind. I missed him. I missed it all. And after all the things he’d done to protect me.”
Casey nodded somberly. Silence fell between them as the weight of his words shifted between them.
“Now that Alyssa has these babies, what will Quintin do?” Casey asked.
Grant’s eyes were far away. “I don’t know. I’ve told both of them that I can’t keep giving so much money. They understand, but I just don’t know what’s next.”
“Three little kids brought into the world like that,” Casey murmured.
“Oh, but they’re just the greatest little kids, Casey,” Grant countered.
Casey’s heart lifted. She’d forgotten this about Grant: that he could often be the sunniest optimist. She coated her tongue with wine.
“I called your secretary when I couldn’t reach you on the night before Thanksgiving,” she said finally. “And she told me that you had a number of secrets. Lives I could never understand. It shook me to my core.”
Grant’s lips parted in surprise. “Gosh, Casey, I guess I didn’t tell you. It was all so awkward when it happened... But Stacy tried to make a move on me a few months back. I told her no, of course. I’d never insinuated that we were anything more than employer and employee. We couldn’t work together after that. I’ve kind of done my own secretarial work since then, as I haven’t had the time to find anyone else to fill the role. I guess that was her way of settling the score with me.”
Jealousy surged through Casey. That beautiful, blonde, early-thirty-something had been after her husband.
But this jealousy joined with gratefulness for what she had. Grant had stayed true to his promise to love Casey and only Casey, forever.
“I know the bank account was dishonest,” Grant admitted now, his voice low and gruff. “It’s just that, over the past five years of my career, I’ve tried and tried to prove to you that I’m good enough for you, that I’m good at my job. That I’m a prosperous life partner. Helping out my brother in that way seemed weak. I wasn’t sure how to approach you about it. It should never have come to that, and I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.” He then pointed to his eye with a heavy sigh. “I guess now you can guess where that black eye came from. Quintin was rowdy; he didn’t want to leave the bar and go home. My mere suggestion that we call a cab made him flash his wicked right-hook my way.”
“Oh my gosh,” Casey breathed.
Grant splayed his hand over hers, now. This touch felt so genuine, so intimate. It was almost as though they were lying next to each other in bed, rather than in this foreign hotel.
“I have so much to think about,” Casey said finally as her heart performed cartwheels across her diaphragm.
Grant removed his hand then. They continued to gaze at one another with wonder.
“I understand,” he murmured.
“But stay in Bar Harbor. Please,” Casey offered tentatively.
“There’s nowhere else on earth I’d rather be,” he told her.