Page 8 of The Right Kind of Wrong

Finally, it seemed to do the trick, and silence enveloped them.

This made things start to feel really awkward, really fast, as Blake realized that she’d just wandered into a stranger’s house without invitation and tried to insert herself into what was . . . She glanced toward the stove, where the charred remnants of something resembling a thick soup were visible.

Well, she didn’t exactly know what to call it, but it was definitely some sort of culinary endeavor gone awry.

Blake held her hands up, mortification washing over her. What an idiotic thing for her to do. It wasn’t like she was the neighborhood watch. Hell, she’d only been here for a week. This woman was probably going to be running up and down the street, telling all her friends that an absolute loon had moved in next door and that everyone should be on high alert for her wandering into their homes.

She hoped her face wasn’t as flushed as it felt, but she’d always worn her embarrassment front and center. “I’m so sorry about the confusion. I really was just trying to help. Anyway, I live next door,” she said, taking a few steps back. “If you do end up needing anything, that is.”

Blake wasn’t sure what happened then, or what exactly she’d done to cause it, but the little girl with curls very similar to her mother’s burst into tears. The sound hit Blake squarely in the chest. The little girl hopped off her chair and ran over to the woman’s legs, wrapping her arms around as much of her waist as she could encircle.

“I thought it was Nana,” she cried, her little body shaking in fits and starts until the woman picked her up and nestled her against her chest.

For the briefest second, Blake thought she saw panic in the woman’s eyes, but it was gone by the time she tried to look closer. Which was ill-advised anyway, considering that she shouldn’t have even been there.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” the woman soothed, running her hands down the little girl’s back before shooting Blake an icy stare that conveyed more than any words could.

Blake didn’t know how things had gone so quickly off the rails, but staying seemed to only be making things worse. “I am so sorry,” she said, backing up again, intent on making it to the door as quickly as possible.

Muggy heat drenched her as soon as she was beyond the screen door, and if it hadn’t been sitting on the rocking chair, she would have forgotten the bag she’d placed there minutes ago.

God, she hadn’t had “making a child cry” on her Bingo card today, especially not when she’d just been trying to help out her new neighbors.

The road to hell really was paved with good intentions.

She shook her head as she trudged across the dead grass, back to her own house. Why had she thought it was a good idea to wander in there?

Right, she remembered. Because she didn’t like the sound of Noah in the back of her mind, dictating how she behaved in this town or what she could do. Only, left to her own devices, it was clear that she wasn’t excelling.

For the last six months, she’d been so turned around and overwhelmed that it was hard to know which way was up anymore.

When she opened the door to her own home, she was greeted with smothering heat that almost made her miss the neighbor’s house, in spite of how terribly her impromptu visit had gone. She couldn’t afford to run her air-conditioning when she wasn’t home, so she quickly walked over to the window unit in the living room and turned it on.

She’d grab a shower while the house cooled down to a manageable level, and then she’d heat up last night’s leftovers and curl up on the sofa.

It wasn’t until she was finally confident that she’d vigorously washed the day’s muck from her skin and nails and hair that she was struck by a face she hadn’t thought about in years—probably not since she’d graduated high school.

That woman, the one who’d looked at her with the cold, blue eyes, was a dead ringer for Monroe Lockhart.

CHAPTER FOUR

Monroe was so out of her depth that she might as well have been rocketing through outer space. She had been Maisie’s temporary guardian for ten days now, and she felt like, at any second, the judgmental woman from the Department of Family and Protective Services was going to show up and tell her that she’d been found lacking and Maisie needed to go back into the foster care system.

As if Monroe would ever let that happen.

Which was how Monroe found herself wrestling Maisie’s wild hair—very similar to hers—into a ponytail while they got ready for the Wild West Fest on Sunday morning.

They’d seen a sign for it while driving through town a couple of days ago, and Monroe was already running out of things to keep a five-year-old entertained, much less a five-year-old who was on the cusp of crying at any moment.

She’d forgotten how goddamn hot Texas was. The unrelenting, beating sun was there to happily greet her every single morning, and it did not pair well with her mostly black wardrobe.

Sylvia, or anyone, really, from her life in New York, would laugh if they saw her right now. She didn’t find her situation all that funny, though.

But there was a little girl who’d just lost the person closest to her and who was now looking to Monroe to keep them on track. She was going to do her best not to fuck things up—even if her best might not even be close to good enough.

“Are you excited to go to the park?” she asked, trying to remember to talk to Maisie like a grown-up instead of a kid. Maisie had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was “not a baby” on more than one occasion already.

And, fine, Monroe would acknowledge that five years old did not a baby make, but yet again, she needed to remind the class that she was so out of her fucking depth this could have been a reality TV show, where they put someone totally inept in a ridiculous position to see how it would play out.