Page 1 of The Right Kind of Wrong

CHAPTER ONE

Where the hell was her suitcase?

Monroe pushed back a tangle of dark hair before shoving aside piles of clothing in the walk-in closet. In the almost two years since she’d moved into one of Sylvia’s guest bedrooms, she still hadn’t fully unpacked.

She tried to think back, even as her jumbled mind bounced through what felt like every thought she’d ever had. Taking a deep breath, she braced her hand hard against the doorframe, trying to find stability.

Any sense of feeling like her world wasn’t falling out from underneath her was hard to come by, and she wondered if she was leaving nailed indents in the two-hundred-year-old wood that made up the sprawling estate she’d called home, in total, for the last six years.

Sylvia hadn’t followed her after she’d gotten the news that was going to upend her whole life. They’d been in the second-floor studio, where Monroe’d been working on her latest painting. But Monroe knew, especially where Sylvia was involved, her solitude had an expiration point. One that was ticking closer with each passing second.

She pulled out a different bag than the one she was looking for and quickly cast it to the side. The call had come an hour ago, but Maisie had already been in the foster care system for the last forty-eight hours.

Information sharing was slow between the Texas federal prison system, her hometown, and the Department of Family and Protective Services. She knew this from experience.

The trill of the social worker’s voice rang in her ears, and she replayed the conversation for the dozenth time since they’d hung up the phone.

Her mom was dead. A heart attack at forty-eight. She couldn’t think too deeply about that part because whenever she came close to accepting the truth in the woman’s words, it made her insides hollow out with an emptiness that stole her breath.

Monroe shook her head, as though that would reset her brain.

She could fall apart later.

Right now, Maisie, her five-year-old niece, was in the care of the state of Texas.

Care was a generous term to use. She knew that, unfortunately, from her own experience as well.

It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been back home in almost two years. Her idiot brother was in prison. Where Maisie’s mom was holed up was anyone’s guess.

And Monroe’s mom was . . . gone.

There was no one else who would come for Maisie if she didn’t.

Where was her fucking bag?

The last time that she’d needed it, she’d been—well, she couldn’t exactly remember the last time that she’d been on a trip. Maybe the gallery opening in Los Angeles that Sylvia had dragged her to late last year?

She shook her head, remembering the way Sylvia had trotted her around the industrial, lifeless building in the Arts District with a possessive hand on her back. Monroe had just finished her own gallery show in New York, the third of her young career. When she’d been told about the trip, it had been framed as some sort of celebratory gift, given the success of Monroe’s own show. But deep down, she knew that wasn’t the case.

Sylvia was a social sponge, and she lived for the praise that came with being in proximity to those who had the talent she herself didn’t possess.

Monroe shouldn’t be dwelling on any of this right now. Except that thinking about it felt more like some kind of self-preservation mechanism than anything else. For as fucked up as her life was, it was what had become normal to her.

Whatever waited for her in the next hours and days and, god, who knew how much longer was going to be anything but normal.

She let out an exasperated but triumphant groan when she spotted her suitcase, shoved into the corner of the closet. It sat just past the tennis bag; Monroe hated tennis, but Sylvia had insisted that she learn, saying it was a necessary skill to pick up in order to move through the world.

Monroe couldn’t have disagreed more. Balancing a checkbook was a necessary skill. Cooking was a necessary skill. Communication was a necessary skill. Hitting a ball on a court that changed sizes depending on the number of players with words for numbers in scoring was not important for her to know, and she would die on that hill. It also didn’t help that it made her thighs chafe like no one’s business.

So her expensive rackets and all of the accoutrements that went with them—of which there were many—languished in the walk-in closet that was as big as her childhood bedroom.

For the first few years after she’d moved into Sylvia’s sprawling mansion, tucked about an hour outside of New York City, she’d gone along with it. She’d told herself that Sylvia was exposing her to a life that she would have never known otherwise. Country clubs. Private viewings at some of the most exclusive galleries in the city. Catered dinners for holidays instead of throwing together different cans of things until they resembled something that fit thematically with the holiday.

She was sure that at no point in Sylvia’s life had she ever eaten anything with the words “Jell-O” and “salad” in the same sentence.

As though her ex-girlfriend-turned-art-patron could feel Monroe pulling even further away, Sylvia appeared in the doorway, hovering like a specter. Even though Sylvia didn’t teach classes in the summer, she was immaculately dressed in a bespoke designer outfit that looked uncomfortable as all hell, complete with high heels. Monroe would know. She had her very own haute couture wardrobe, though she only wore those pieces to gallery events.

Sylvia was twenty years Monroe’s senior, and Monroe had been captivated by so many parts of her the first time she’d sat in one of her classes at school. Her grace. Her poise. Her confidence that, in every space she walked into, she belonged. That, even though Sylvia came from old East Coast money, she chose to work as a professor, guiding young talent and helping them reach their full potential.