A minute later she heard the soft whoosh of the door opening. “Please don’t come in,” she said in a harsh warning.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

It was Michelle, and Casey couldn’t keep her feelings inside her any longer. “I’m not okay at all. I’m a raving bitch,” she said, then spilled nearly everything to the woman who was about to become part of her family.

Michelle listened calmly, her warm brown eyes fixed on Casey the entire time. “Now what?” she asked, holding out her hands helplessly.

“You need to apologize for the things you just said to him. And then you need to tell the truth,” Michelle said in a firm, but warm voice.

“Oh. It’s that simple?”

“No. It’s that hard. It will be incredibly hard to speak your truth, and to take ownership of the things you said to him. But isn’t it better than the alternative? Feeling crappy and keeping it all inside?”

Casey inhaled deeply, then breathed out. She did it again. The big breaths spread through her, cooling her jealousy, calming her angry heart. “Why do you have to be so wise about everything?”

Michelle smiled, and grasped Casey’s hand. “I’m not so wise. I’m just trying to help you see your way through. And look, I know it’s not easy to open up to someone you love. It can be incredibly scary. There was a time when I thought I had lost Jack from being too open with him. But it turns out being open was exactly what he needed, and what we both needed to have what we have. I wouldn’t be where I am today without having gone through that uncertainty. And I couldn’t be any happier to be where I am now,” she said, squeezing Casey’s hand in emphasis.

“But I don’t know what’s going to happen if I open up. I don’t know that I’m going to have the same thing you have.”

Michelle laughed. “Of course you don’t. And neither does he.”

“He might be pissed at me. I was a bit, how shall we say, bitchy to him. Just a teeny bit,” Casey said, a tiny smile creeping back on her face as she made fun of herself.

“I don’t think you’ve done anything that you can’t recover from.”

Another deep breath spread through her chest, fueling her with something other than the anger that had steered her wrong a few minutes ago. “I’m so glad you’re marrying my brother,” Casey said.

“Me too.” Michelle beamed, unable to contain a bright, shining smile.

“And you know,” she said, flashing a toothy grin and wiggling her eyebrows, “don’t forget I was kind of a matchmaker for the two of you. Hopefully that’ll keep you from being too mad at me for behaving terribly before your rehearsal dinner.”

“One, you did not behave badly. You behaved like a woman in love. And two, I will happily give you all the credit in the world. Jack is wonderful, and I know a lot of that is because he has you as his sister.”