Page 67 of The Right Kind of Wrong

In this particular case, those intentions had allowed Maisie to pick up some unknown summer cold that was ravaging her little body. It was a lot easier for Monroe to be annoyed at the situation than to dig into the fear.

When she’d realized Maisie was running hot last night, a cough already forcing her lungs to work too hard, Monroe had panicked.

She’d thought about texting Blake, but she hadn’t.

Letting people in—needing them—didn’t come easily for her. And even with Blake’s open overtures of friendship and a desire to be a part of her village or whatever the hell people called it these days, the only time she seemed to be able to go there, to be vulnerable, was when she was so far beyond keeping her composure that it all just came spilling out in a tidal wave of emotion.

Healthy, she knew.

So, instead of asking for help, she’d had every children’s medicine known to man that the local pharmacy stocked delivered to her doorstep an hour later, along with heating pads, ice packs, under-eye masks, vaporizing lotion, a humidifier, and stress relief candles.

She had questions about the effectiveness of that last one. She’d had the candles burning all morning, and so far, she was not feeling less stressed.

After starting the laundry, she walked out of the bathroom and down the hallway, where it connected with the living room.

Maisie was lying on her stomach, her head resting on a pillow, glassy eyes focused on the TV as she watched a show that, until she’d come back to Cypress Falls, Monroe had never heard of before.

Monroe walked over to the sofa and sat down on the edge; Maisie’s small frame didn’t even take up half of the width. She put the back of her hand on Maisie’s forehead. It was still a bit warm, though the fever reducer seemed to be doing the trick. “How are you feeling, baby girl?”

“Yucky,” Maisie said against the pillow before she let out one of those little kid coughs where she didn’t cover her mouth. It wasn’t deep enough to expel anything in her chest.

Good news for the pillow, at least.

“I’m sorry,” Monroe said, rubbing her forehead gently. “Being sick is no fun.”

“Can we still go to the movies?” Maisie asked blearily, the medicine that Monroe had recently given her starting to take hold. Her blinks were growing longer, her breathing deeper.

“Not tonight. You just focus on feeling better, and then we can go. Okay?” Monroe started rubbing Maisie’s back, and when she finally fell asleep, Monroe muted the television. After it was quiet, she closed the blinds at the front of the house so that the light in the room was softer.

Then, she grabbed a blanket from the back of the sofa and draped it over Maisie, leaving it loose at the edges in case she got hot.

Once she’d tended to all the Maisie-related needs she possibly could—and trust her, she’d looked for more—she sat down at the other end of the sofa, keeping a watchful eye on her.

Without a task—laundry, medication, a back rub, encouraging small bits of food and liquids—Monroe was left with her thoughts.

It was not a place that she liked to be, if she was being honest.

As far as the seriousness of Maisie’s illness went, it wasn’t significant. Monroe could intellectualize that well enough. At least so long as Maisie wasn’t racked with an especially hard cough that shook her entire body.

Truly, it was a summer cold, complete with a runny nose, a low-grade fever, a cough, and some aches and chills. Monroe had had them a ton when she was little, too.

But now, she had too much perspective.

She knew that, in a second, everything could change. Maisie’s world was only going to get bigger and, as a result, scarier for Monroe.

There would be so many things that would happen in Maisie’s life that Monroe couldn’t stop.

Heartbreak. Failure. Insecurity.

And now, it was Monroe’s responsibility to both prepare Maisie for them and love her through them when they inevitably happened.

She rubbed at her chest, the weight of the commitment she was making settling deep inside.

Why did that knowledge make her want to turn inward?

Maybe if they stayed inside this house forever, they’d be insulated from all the bad that existed outside of these walls.

She thought of Blake, then. Clearly she was a person to be categorized as not bad who waited on the other side, if only she’d open the door.