Page 59 of The Right Kind of Wrong

“Oh, this is like . . . serious.” There were very few things that Denny ever defended, even jokingly. Which meant that Monroe was now even more curious than before.

She would have pushed it, except that Denny crossed his arms, taking a sock-clad step closer. “Now, don’t think you’re getting out of talking to me about whatever the hell is going on between you and Blake Bettencourt.”

“Keep your voice down,” Monroe hissed, glancing toward the living room, which, thankfully, was currently empty.

“Are you worried that Maisie will hear or that Blake will?” Denny chided, a stupidly big smile on his face. He was enjoying himself way too much.

“Maisie, obviously. Blake already knows.” She looked at him pointedly before turning her attention back to the stove.

Denny let out a low whistle. “Is that so? And what’s her opinion on the subject?”

“Nothing?” Monroe said quickly, though, somewhere in her chest, it felt like a little bit of a lie.

Monroe wasn’t even sure why. Blake hadn’t commented when Monroe had brought up Sylvia or when they’d discussed her sexuality on their first drive to Slider’s. Blake had treated it like a nonissue, overall.

The actual truth was that it didn’t seem like Blake cared. At least not in the way that people here generally would care, if they had an opinion on it.

Monroe hadn’t come out to anyone except Denny before leaving town. And she’d only come out to her mom once she’d moved in with Sylvia, when there’d been something to tell.

Kendra Lockhart had seen too many things in her short life to be at all plussed by her daughter telling her that she was a lesbian and had moved in with her former professor.

Hell, Dean was the illegitimate son of a pastor from the bumblefuck town in West Texas where her mom had grown up. She’d been pregnant at sixteen, kicked out of her house, and shunned from the small community where she’d been raised.

So, unsurprisingly, her mom had taken something like her sexuality in stride. It almost seemed like it had invigorated her, in a way, to understand why Monroe had been so insistent on leaving.

Monroe thought back to the comments her mom had started making over the years. Letting her know that the town was changing. Coming into the twenty-first century, even if it was about fifteen years late.

Maybe it was because she could imagine her mom standing in this very kitchen, her phone cradled against her cheek while she talked to Monroe, cooking for herself and Maisie after a long day on her feet.

There was a wedding announcement for two women in the paper. I saved the clipping for you to see when you’re back in town.

Someone new started at the cleaning company last week. They use they/them pronouns.

The school a few towns over just elected two homecoming kings! How fun!

She felt the hollow ache again, thinking about her mom, who thought she’d left because she was a lesbian in a small Southern town, not because there weren’t a lot of ways for Monroe to stay in Cypress Falls and still make something of herself that would afford them any sense of stability.

If her mom and Dean were the litmus tests for how she could expect her life to play out in Cypress Falls, then Monroe had known the risks of staying outweighed the risks of leaving. She saw little sense in working too hard for too little money or turning to a life of petty crime that would eventually go awry.

No, thank you. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

It wasn’t even that Monroe hadn’t wanted it for herself. She hadn’t wanted it for them, either.

Unfortunately, her mom’s and brother’s futures had been set via death and prison before Monroe had been able to truly make a difference.

But her mom hadn’t known any of that.

So, in Kendra’s roundabout way, god love her, she’d tried to tell Monroe that things were changing. Progress was happening. That it was safe for her to come back. To live her life here, with her family.

Leaving was hard—the hardest thing she’d ever done, actually—but she hadn’t been running away. At least not in the way her mom had thought.

It had been Monroe’s way of helping.

And she’d done just that. Bought this house. Built a future for Maisie. Made sure her mom no longer needed to work two jobs while taking care of her granddaughter because her son was in prison.

Her lips twitched. Would she have traded the money and the success and the stability to have been able to live here and spend those last ten years with her mom?

Absolutely. She’d just always thought she’d have more time.