Page 4 of The Right Kind of Wrong

Her life these days was both infinitely harder but also infinitely simpler than it had been. It was a contradiction she was still working her way through, except that she didn’t often have the energy to think about it.

Cypress Falls wasn’t especially large, with fewer than six thousand residents within the town limits. But add in the greater county—along with the expansiveness in Texas—and the population ballooned to over twenty thousand. Plus, there were all the tourists who flocked to the area during the warmer months.

Over the years, the small, self-sufficient communities roughly ninety minutes outside of Austin had started bumping against one another’s edges, creating a sprawling, interconnected web of small towns leading all the way back to the major cities.

The change had happened over time, though. Except for the few years that she’d spent at college, Blake had grown up here, had always lived here. Then, one day, she’d looked up, and everything was different.

Blake rolled her window down—manually, since nothing about her old, white pickup truck did anything without human intervention—and took an inhale of warm air. It was late afternoon, the hottest part of the day, and she was sticking to her worn leather seats.

Nothing about this truck made sense, and she wouldn’t have been caught driving it a year ago except for the irony. But she was lucky to have it now. Gumby’s Auto Body Shop, where she spent her weekdays doing light accounting work since she wasn’t really an accountant, had been a great place to find a much-needed vehicle.

One of the mechanics had taken pity on her, and just a few weeks ago, she’d become the proud owner of a brand-new-to-her 1990 Dodge pickup that was older than she was. This was made possible only because the mechanic in question had spent countless hours fixing it up.

She tried not to look too much into what Denny had done for her, and she hoped to god that it didn’t come with any strings attached. But she’d been desperate, in no position to turn down help—especially considering what short supply it was in these days.

So, she was going to chalk it up to Southern hospitality—or a small-town sense of community—and leave it at that.

And sure, she may be down, but she definitely wasn’t out. Not by a long shot. Which reminded her that she needed to do her coursework for one of her online classes before the weekend was over.

As she continued her drive home, she passed the large town square—a park, if she was getting technical—and clocked that they were already setting up for the Wild West Fest, happening this weekend. In past years, given that Duvall Distribution was one of the event’s biggest sponsors, she’d been a committee chair with significant input into the planning and execution of one of the town’s largest festivals.

This year . . . She let out an exasperated sigh, realizing just how far she’d fallen. On Sunday, she had the honor of being relegated to the corner of the park, where a large foam machine would be set up for the kids to play in.

Effectively, her job was to make sure that the bubbles weren’t too dangerous. In her world, it was about the biggest backhanded smackdown she could have received from the women she used to call her friends. Zero engagement with other adults. Pushed to the side. Trying to keep track of dozens of children who, for some unknown reason, seemed to think that the height of fun was rolling around in the foam like a dog in the mud. Usually, it was where they put teenagers who needed community service hours for graduation.

But not this year.

No, this year, the Foam Frenzy would be managed by Blake Bettencourt—formerly Duvall—in all her pariah glory.

Blowing a strand of dark hair away from her face, she cruised down the main drag that ran through Cypress Falls.

Sometimes, all she wanted to do was run away from this town, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. This was her home, and they’d have to make it significantly more uncomfortable before she ever considered leaving because of them.

If she turned right, she’d hit her parents’ house, nestled in a subdivision from a neighborhood that had been new in the early ‘90s, when Cypress Falls had been going through its first boom. It was close to downtown but situated on a sprawling lot that afforded her and her sister room to roam and plenty of other kids to spend their days with, playing tag or capture the flag. Idyllic was the word that came to mind, but after spending the last six months living in her childhood bedroom, she could say with certainty that the rose-colored glasses of her youth had been fully stripped away.

She passed the updated part of the downtown stretch, where hip restaurants had made their way into the unoccupied storefronts within the last decade. During the second boom, when housing prices had started to explode and sprawling mansions came to the outskirts of town—along with wineries, breweries, and a whole lot of people who made a whole lot of money, but from what, she couldn’t really say for sure—the town had shifted again into a vacation hot spot to escape the summer heat in the cities.

For the last six years, she’d lived in one of those ridiculously big houses up in the hills—with a state senator on one side and an oil executive on the other—situated on the edge of the country club and golf course that cost more per year in membership than the average townsperson earned in that same amount of time.

Her old neighborhood, before the transient move in with her parents, was tucked up in the hills but less than a fifteen-minute drive from where she was now, protected by gates and full-time security. It oozed exclusivity and was by far the nicest—or at least the most expensive—area in Cypress Falls.

It was a knee-jerk reaction to turn into the grocery store parking lot near the edge of downtown, but god, did she need a bottle of wine. Maybe two.

Thinking about her old life had that effect on her.

Not that she had very much to unpack in her new rental, but maybe being a little drunk while she did it would temper the sting of looking through stuff that now felt so foreign.

Seriously, what the hell was she supposed to do with designer dresses or heels that cost more than her rent? Well, probably sell them in Austin and get a few months of cushion on said rent, if she was really thinking about it.

Gumby’s paid a little more than minimum wage, and between working there thirty hours a week and teaching dance classes in the evenings, she was going to be able to get by. Not save or have any sort of fun, but at least she’d have a roof over her head that didn’t involve sharing it with her parents any longer.

She grimaced, thinking about the looks—and words—from them that had come with the place to stay. If she’d had the truck sooner, she probably would have opted to sleep in it instead.

But she was out of their house, and that had to count for something. At least she had the ability to breathe a little easier, no longer constantly judged for something that, at the end of the day, she’d had zero say about.

The truck cruised into one of the empty parking spots, fitting easily, and she hopped down, gravel crunching beneath her sneaker-clad feet. The concept of a dress code didn’t really exist at the garage, so it was only now that she remembered she was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a tank top. She’d started the day with a billowy overshirt, too, but she’d gotten a large grease stain on it at some point, though she’d never know exactly when or where.

Chalk it up to the magic of Gumby’s.