Page 36 of The Right Kind of Wrong

Blake looked toward the sound. Near the back edge of the property line, nestled under a canopy of trees, there was a solid-looking wooden playset. It looked better suited for a public park than a private backyard. On the left side, there were two swings swaying gently in the evening breeze. Next to it, there was a two-story fort that had a slide and a wooden ladder with fake rocks, which acted as an angled climbing wall.

And sitting inside of that fort was . . .

“Monroe?” Blake took another few steps, moving closer.

Obviously it was Monroe. She could see her in the setting sun, her head tipped back against one of the pieces of wood that created a wall.

What Blake hadn’t expected to see was the bottle of wine in her hand, the same one that Blake had brought over a few days ago.

Once she made it to the entrance, there were only two ways up: climbing the slide or climbing the small rock wall. She wondered which one Monroe had opted for.

Blake stood staring into the fort, hands on her hips, trying to gauge the situation. “I didn’t really think you were a fan of wine,” she joked, still not quite sure what she’d walked into. Or, at the very least, not quite sure of Monroe’s current emotional state.

Monroe held the bottle up, which was still mostly full. “Well, I finally got Maisie to sleep after about four hours of intermittent meltdowns. And then, I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t a nice, cold beer be great right about now?’”

“No arguments there,” Blake agreed, shooting a subtle look at the rock wall to assess the best way up, if it came to that.

Monroe tipped her head down, meeting Blake’s stare intensely. “But then I realized that I didn’t have any. And I then realized that I couldn’t leave the house because Maisie was sleeping.” She let out a mirthless laugh. “What business do I have trying to raise her? Did you know that the most time I’ve ever spent with kids before now was when they cut in line in front of me at the bodega?”

It became clear then that Monroe had been crying. Her voice was raw, and this close, Blake could see the redness rimming her eyes. And she’d taken herself as far away from Maisie as she safely could, just to make sure the little girl didn’t hear her weeping.

That knowledge alone would have propelled Blake forward.

Add in that Blake knew what it was like to cry by herself, to feel so lost and desolate and alone, and it was undeniably clear that she wasn’t walking away. If Monroe wanted her to leave, she would, but she wasn’t going to unless Monroe told her that she wanted to be on her own with her emotions.

It hadn’t been what Blake had wanted, but there hadn’t been another choice.

“I’m coming up,” she said, her hands already bracing against the rock wall, her feet following after. She was completely off the ground when she had a thought. “Can this thing hold two adults?”

Monroe knocked against the wood. “Industrial grade. We could land a jet on top of it.” She shrugged, taking another sip of wine before adding, “So says the guy who built it for us, anyway.”

Well, that was good enough for her.

As gracefully she could manage, Blake navigated the couple of fake rocks that it took for her to scale the angled wall. Once she was close enough, she grabbed onto the bar running along the top of the fort and pulled herself inside.

There was more than enough room for both of them—the fort was surprisingly spacious—but she shifted over so that she was sitting next to Monroe, their knees touching. She extended her hand into Monroe’s personal space. “Care to share?”

The bottle was handed to her wordlessly as Monroe tipped her head back again and stared up at the canvas-tented ceiling.

The heat had broken slightly, now that the sun was going down, but it was hot inside the fort, even with the slatted wooden walls that presumably let air flow through.

Blake took a small sip and passed the bottle back, the cheap flavor stinging her throat. Or maybe it was the thoughts rolling around in her mind, when she considered the weight of all Monroe was carrying. “No one could expect you to be perfect in this situation,” she said seriously, tilting her head to try and capture Monroe’s stare.

Monroe didn’t bite, keeping her eyes focused upward, at the little stars that had been placed like constellations on the tented ceiling.

It was quiet in the fort until Monroe answered despondently, “I’m not trying to be perfect. I’d settle for mildly functional at this point. I literally cannot do a single thing without googling it first. I think on the scale of ‘being a natural,’ I’m ranking at the bottom.”

Blake knocked their shoulders together, wishing that she was better at giving pep talks. “I think every parent probably worries that they’re doing a shitty job. And if they aren’t, they’re not taking it seriously enough.”

She herself had read all the books and some of the blogs. Knew all the best practices on pregnancy, birth, and raising children. What eluded her—and would elude her for the rest of her life, probably—was getting to put any of that in practice.

But she didn’t begrudge Monroe one bit for the situation she found herself in. No one should have to enter into parenthood unwillingly. It was, to put it mildly, a life-changing experience. Hell, it was a life-creating experience. Monroe was the end of a line of people who’d already been unable—or unwilling—to take on that responsibility.

It was clear that this hadn’t been Monroe’s, or Maisie’s, plan. Now, they were all the other had.

God, she ached with sadness for what the two of them were going through.

As if Monroe could see the grief written across Blake’s features, her own face crumpled, and Blake’s heart seized in her chest when Monroe said, “She hates me. She wants my mom back. Hell, I want my mom back. Neither of us wants to be in this situation, but I can’t give up because I know how bad the foster care system can be. I can’t do that to Maisie. So now I just have to let her hate me while I spend every moment of every day wondering whether I’m going to fuck her up beyond repair because I don’t know how to do this.”