Chapter Twenty
Winter fell hard and fast, a sheet of ice coating the lake. Casey’s paintings from the previous year had been soft, with a delicate touch of snowfall that spread like a blanket, enveloping and warm. The cold could be forgiven if it was kind. She had been healing then and looking for the goodness in things. Bonnet had seemed a place of possibility. It had seemed the place for her.
This year, the canvases told a different story. The winter of her newer paintings had a dangerous edge lurking beneath the calm. The snow was treacherous, tinged with blue. The deer looked less startled than afraid, eking out a meager subsistence from the unforgiving land. Casey wouldn’t have said that she felt bitter, only that she was depicting the truth. This was the way things were.
Still, as
