Page 42 of The Right Kind of Wrong

Any texts from Blake to help with the party or to check in about whether Grace needed anything had been largely met with silence and read receipts. Sometimes, she’d get a quick ‘all good’ response, but eventually, she’d stopped trying.

Blake would have loved to have kept the house in the divorce. For so many reasons. Not that she could have afforded it on her own, but even getting half the proceeds from a sale would have put her in a dramatically different position than the one she currently occupied.

Except I wouldn’t have met Monroe. The thought flitted through her mind, probably because she’d been aggressively inserting herself into Monroe and Maisie’s weekend away.

Monroe calling her yesterday, while they’d been in the car on the way to dinner, had been the bright spot of her weekend.

They were probably home now. It was laughable how much more enticing hanging out on Monroe’s back porch sounded than hurtling over the social landmines and fake pleasantries of a Cypress Falls children’s party.

Still, she was going to put in effort. She deposited the gift that she’d bought for Amelia in the pile on the table, and when she saw Grace pop through the sliding glass door that led outside from the kitchen, carrying cutlery and plates, she tried to catch her sister’s stare.

No such luck.

Everyone else had the sense to stay inside in the air-conditioning until the party started, so she tried to take a few minutes alone with Grace to catch up with her.

Grace was her only sibling and four years older than Blake. As children, she’d thought that Grace walked on water. She had always been someone Blake had looked up to, especially through her own teenage years. Until recently, she’d have described them as close.

She moved nearer to the tables and coolers set against the house, where drinks and food would be laid out. “Hey, sis. Can I do anything to help?”

“Blake,” she said, surprise in her voice as she turned toward her, like Blake had appeared out of nowhere.

“I already dropped my present on the table.” She pointed awkwardly over to it, as though to prove its existence.

She didn’t know why she added that part. Maybe because she was worried her sister had assumed she would show up empty-handed, just another point in the column of her latest failures.

With other people—the Stephanies and the Allisons of the world—she could take it. But when it was Grace who was leveling a disapproving stare in her direction, it hurt that much more.

Blake shouldn’t have hoped that because it was Amelia’s birthday—Blake’s godchild, no less—her sister would somehow be more welcoming than she’d been lately.

It became clear that wasn’t going to be the case.

Grace ran her hands down her patterned midi dress and boots, giving Blake, who was wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, a look that could only be described as judgmental as all hell. “Well, I guess the ship on asking you to dress up has already sailed,” she stated coolly. “Are you trying to make Mom go postal today?”

She passed the buck as though she wasn’t the one who was actually annoyed—though Blake knew their mom wouldn’t be thrilled with her casual outfit either.

Blake ignored the jab and lobbed one of her own right back. “I figured I’d mostly be running around with the kids. Unless you want me hanging out with you and your friends?”

People who used to be Blake’s friends, too, but she didn’t add that part. She had some decorum left.

Truly, playing with the kids had seemed like the safest plan by far. Her metaphorical scratches from the Wild West Fest still hadn’t healed, and she had no interest in going another round with The Powers That Be who ruled Cypress Falls. Many of whom would be in attendance today.

Grace had three kids, two of whom were in school, and her husband, Bill, was now a manager at Duvall Distribution. He’d gotten a warehouse job there in his early twenties, when the Duvalls had built their massive new facilities outside of town.

Unsurprisingly, Grace had the nerve to act aggrieved. She slammed the cups down, crunching the one on the bottom of the pile. “I don’t have time to get into this with you today, Blake. It’s Amelia’s birthday. Anything else will just have to wait.”

Blake held her hands up. “I don’t want to get into anything.” Then, to be a little annoying, she made a cross over her heart and smiled widely. “Promise.”

She just prayed that the rest of the guests felt the same.

It wasn’t looking likely that Blake was going to make it to the cake-cutting portion of the party. She’d run around with Amelia and her friends—she taught most of the girls in dance class—and then she’d nabbed a sandwich from what was left on one of the trays, which she’d eaten alone inside.

Like these parties always went, the women were congregated in a semicircle, talking while they kept an eye on the kids. Their husbands stood around the cornhole boards, drinking beer and waiting for their turn to show their dominance.

Blake wandered outside. She shaded her eyes with her hand, trying to find Amelia in the crowd. She was, even as one of the youngest girls in her friend group, one of the tallest. This made her excel in dance class, but it also made it easier for Grace to have her daughter’s entire pageant trajectory mapped out.

Blake felt someone standing next to her, surveying the party. When she looked over, she was met with Holland’s wry smile and a gentle nudge from her shoulder. “Where have you been hiding? I can’t believe that you haven’t said hello.”

Blake rolled her eyes playfully. “Silly of me to forget they’d invite Amelia’s dance teacher. My mistake.”