Page 10 of The Right Kind of Wrong

“Have you been to Wild West Fest before?” she asked Maisie, unsure if she would even remember, so she added, “They have ponies and games to play, and there’s a big stage with music.”

Maisie adorably scratched at her little chin, deep in thought. She stuck her tongue out, thinking hard, before finally saying, “Maybe.”

Monroe nodded. That was good enough for her. “Well, we can do whatever you want today, okay?”

It’s not like she was trying to stop Maisie from feeling the deep, heavy thoughts about what had happened and how everything was changing since, of course, the articles she’d found on the internet didn’t encourage that, but she also didn’t want to let her niece stew in the misery of a life that had been upended, with nothing to do to help build new, positive memories.

At the corner of the park, there was a large banner that signaled the entry area, and she guided Maisie toward the steady throng of people heading in that direction.

It was a cloudless day, which didn’t bode well for Monroe’s sanity. She’d found a black tank top in her suitcase that she usually wore under a shirt, and a pair of black, thin jeans that would at least hold her sweat in instead of letting it drip down her legs all day.

Her height gave her an advantage to see where they were heading, and at almost five-ten, she could see over most of the women and all of the kids who were walking like cattle to their final destination of Wild West–inspired revelry.

She didn’t remember the sponsors from the past either. Local businesses now had signs affixed along the fence as they walked in, along with much larger signs looming across the park, identifying the main attractions. The stage was sponsored by a golf course, of all things. The beer tent—well, beer garden, if she was getting technical, since it was very clearly called that on the massive signs flanking the entrance to the covered tent—was sponsored by a company called Duvall Distribution. The pony ring, which was now an entire operation with at least half a dozen horses and a petting zoo, was sponsored by the local chamber of commerce.

In her decade away, capitalism had arrived at Cypress Falls in full force. She didn’t know why she was surprised.

Maybe because, in the time that she’d lived here, until she’d been eighteen, it had felt like the town was firmly rooted—or stuck—in the past. But nostalgia had become big business—she knew that easily from the work that she created for commercial production—and Cypress Falls was cashing in on it, too.

She doubted that Maisie would find her musings interesting, so she kept her thoughts to herself as they moved through the park, Monroe pointing at various sights to try and pique Maisie’s interest.

But Maisie seemed to have no desire to leave Monroe’s side, sticking close to her hip as she nodded at whatever Monroe mentioned without expressing any outright interest.

The only saving grace was that a lot of the people who’d be flooding the park later were currently posted up and down Main Street, where the parade would take place. She hoped that Maisie could be coaxed into something that made her happy before they both got overwhelmed by the amount of people in what would become too small of a space.

She glanced down at her watch. She figured they had about two hours until the sun, the crowds, and the drunken idiots became untenable.

“Do you want to ride one of the ponies?” Monroe asked, even though she didn’t exactly love the idea of animals being paraded around all day in the hot sun for the entertainment of children. Much like she felt about herself, really.

Except that showing up for Maisie was her choice. She looked at the pony pen, which was thankfully set up near a grove of trees so that there was shade for the animals, clocking the names listed on the fence encircling the makeshift ring.

She didn’t think that Jonathan the Pony would have chosen to spend his day like this, if given another option.

Maisie shook her head, her gaze wandering across the park. She clocked a person sitting at a long table under another stand of trees, with a chair set across from them.

Face painting! Yes, she could work with this. “Do you want to get your face painted?”

Big, blue eyes hit her, with the first gleam of excitement for the day. “Can they make me a tiger?”

If they couldn’t, Monroe definitely could, and she’d wrestle those face paints away from that volunteer and get into a Wild West tussle for the ages, just to keep the smile on Maisie’s face.

“Let’s go see.” She let Maisie lead her over to the woman, who, like most people in Cypress Falls, looked familiar. Monroe tried to place her but came up short. Whether they’d gone to school together or she’d gone to school with one of their siblings or some combination of the two, there were a lot of familiar faces here in town. Hell, some just saw the front door was open and strolled on in.

She hadn’t let herself think about the fact that Blake Bettencourt had literally wandered into her house two days ago like some fucked-up version of the town’s welcome wagon. Monroe hadn’t recognized her at first, but she also wasn’t exactly pleased with how she’d behaved, regardless of whether the reaction had been deserved or not.

It wasn’t her finest moment, but that felt like it was par for the course these days.

Still, who wandered into someone else’s house without being invited in? Probably, Monroe surmised, someone who’d never been told no in their life.

They’d been in the same grade in school, and throughout the years, Blake Bettencourt had been homecoming queen, prom queen, and held a slew of pageant titles that had been pushed on the girls of Cypress Falls from birth.

She was glad that it didn’t seem like Blake remembered who she was.

It’s not like Monroe wanted to be recognized either. Especially as the little sister of Dean Lockhart, the town’s resident troublemaker who now had a few decades to think about what a fucking idiot he was.

She didn’t have time to dwell on the frustration that flared through her when she thought about her brother because the woman turned her attention on Maisie, then on Monroe, her straight, white smile vibrant as she said, “And who do we have here?”

The woman’s drawl was soft, less pronounced than most of the people who’d lived in Cypress Falls for their whole lives. Monroe assumed her accent was much the same, if she still had one at all. She’d done her best once moving to New York to drop any trace of her roots, not wanting to give the art students she’d gone to school with any more ammunition against her.