Page 20 of The Right Kind of Wrong

“I really do love it here.” The forlorn tone in Blake’s voice cut at Monroe, a strange emptiness hollowing out her own stomach.

Weirdly enough, it felt a lot like homesickness, but for what, she didn’t know.

It made no sense. She was in her hometown. She didn’t love New York—or, at least, she didn’t love Sylvia’s opulent home and its surrounding property in Connecticut. Really, though, she also didn’t feel especially drawn to the busyness of the city, even though it felt like that was exactly what an artist drawing inspiration from the world should want.

Monroe wasn’t sure when Blake had stood up, only that she was no longer sitting. She held her empty bottle in her hand. “I’m going to get to bed. Early day tomorrow.”

Blinking, Monroe dragged herself back to the present. “Yeah, got it. Maisie goes back to daycare tomorrow, so me too,” she added, not sure why she was sharing this information.

A thoughtful look crossed Blake’s face. “I hope that I didn’t scare her too much. I’m really sorry about that.”

Coming back into herself, Monroe stood up, too. This unexpected social call was the first time that she’d really turned her brain off since coming back to Cypress Falls, and it was a little jarring to feel dropped right back into the middle of the chaos that was her life.

Maisie, asleep inside, would be up at seven at the latest, ready to head back to daycare. It would be Monroe’s first time in almost two weeks without a little, mercurial shadow.

She wasn’t sure what she would do, except catch up on sleep.

It wasn’t until Blake cleared her throat that Monroe realized she’d turned inward again, lost in her thoughts. “She’s going through a tough time right now,” Monroe explained. “I promise it had nothing to do with you.”

Blake nodded. “Okay. Well, now that we’ve officially reintroduced ourselves, let me know if there’s anything that I can ever do to be neighborly."

She was already across the porch, and by the time Monroe answered, “Will do,” in a slight drawl, surprising herself, Blake was bounding down the steps.

Blake disappeared through the tree line with a wave, and Monroe took one last look around the yard before she headed back inside.

She’d tackle tomorrow when it came.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The heat wave that hadn’t let up this week meant there was no shortage of cars unexpectedly needing service at Gumby’s.

The shop was set up at the edge of town, a large building with three bays that had been filled from open to close since Monday.

It was Thursday now, and if Blake didn’t leave soon, she’d be late to teach her first dance class of the day. And five-year-olds—not to mention their parents—weren’t known for their patience.

She scratched the end of a pen against her forehead, trying to make sense of the illegible scrawl on the handwritten receipt.

“Gumby,” Blake called as he walked by the small office she called her own—except for the fact that it also housed the bustling communal microwave. “I need you to tell me what this says.”

“One sec, Blake,” he said before heading over to one of the bays, probably to school a mechanic on some vague, esoteric knowledge about a specific brand’s nuances, pulled from his decades of experience.

Benjamin Gaines—aka Gumby—was a man in his early forties, with graying temples and a lean, wiry frame that was usually obscured by his mechanic’s jumpsuit.

Actually, Blake had never seen him in anything else.

Gumby’s Auto Body Shop had been around since her childhood, when Gumby had been barely more than a teenager himself, but keeping the town’s business over the last few decades had been hard-fought. Dealerships had opened up as the edges of town sprawled outward, but Gumby, even without the heat waves, always did a steady stream of business.

The business of fixing cars, to be clear. Gumby, unfortunately, didn’t take the business of keeping his books all that seriously.

About a year ago, he’d gotten audited, and when Blake had come in to have her SUV serviced, he’d asked for her advice. She hadn’t even realized that he knew she’d gone to school for accounting, and it had sent a little thrill through her, to dust off her knowledge and help him.

Thus, their unlikely friendship had been born, and on the heels of her divorce, an offer for her to start keeping his books had come her way.

She’d be forever grateful to him, even if his writing was worse than chicken scratch.

Thankfully, whatever tutelage he needed to provide was quick, and he ambled back into her office and dropped his reading glasses—he’d only recently started wearing them—down onto the bridge of his nose.

He looked over the receipt before letting it flutter back onto the desk. “Mr. Gillis needed a new battery for his Buick. Damn heat wave.” He pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped it across his damp forehead.