The Young Wives Club
Julie Pennell
For two of the strongest southern women I know,
my mom, Sandy, and my sister, Jill
prologue
TWO THOUSAND, ONE hundred and fifty-four people live in my town. There are ten restaurants, two stoplights, one grocery store, and three schools—Toulouse Elementary, Toulouse Middle, and Toulouse High. Not the most creative names, I know, but that’s Toulouse for you.
Life here is simple. All we need is a nice white dress for church on Sundays, and a shaded porch on a hot summer day. For us, heaven on earth is a run-down restaurant with a sticky floor that serves crawfish and sweet tea.
After all, just like on the Upper East Side or in Beverly Hills, every girl here is hoping for her happily ever after—only she won’t be trotting down the aisle in Louboutins or toasting her wedding day with Dom Pérignon. Hell, she probably isn’t even old enough to legally drink. Because in my little corner of Louisiana, finding your one true love happens sometime around high school. If you’re lucky, he might just be the man you thought he was. But not every girl has luck on her side. . . .
1
laura
“COULD YOUR LIFE be any more perfect?” the short brunette squealed, hugging Laura Landry. They’d run into each other while waiting in line for hot dogs during halftime at Tiger Stadium, where they’d briefly caught up on the last few months of their lives—in between an ongoing debate about whether they should be bad and get the chili.
Laura felt terrible, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember the girl’s name, even though they’d spent all of last year’s gym class complaining to each other about running laps in the humid Louisiana weather. Perhaps it was because Laura had other, more important things to pay attention to back then, like when Brian’s papers were due (she wrote them for him) and how he liked his locker decorated for game days (school colors, but not too over-the-top).
“We miss you at school, but you definitely did the right thing. I mean, Brian’s doing awesome out there! He’s gonna win this one for sure.” The brunette squeezed Laura’s arm encouragingly.
Laura smiled. She knew her husband was amazingly talented—it was why she’d dropped out of school after her junior year and married him, following him to LSU—but it was still reassuring to hear other people say it. “Still half the game to go, don’t jinx it!” she teased, but secretly she knew Brian would pull off the win.
It was LSU’s second home game of the year, playing rival Ole Miss. Because Brian was a freshman, his coach had been hesitant to start him when they played Auburn, only putting him in at the end of the third quarter. But Brian hadn’t been recruited on a full scholarship for nothing: two touchdowns and zero interceptions later, Coach Perkins had decided Brian deserved to start the next game. At the rate he was going today, he’d be starting every game, for years to come, until two decades from now when he’d retire from the NFL (just like his uncle Bradley, a football legend who was a commentator on ESPN, and the most famous person—make that the only famous person—to come out of Toulouse). And of course Laura would be by his side through it all.
After saying a quick good-bye, Laura made her way back to Brian’s parents, Rob and Janet, in the stands. Rob had made up his own chant for the tenth time that day: “Cracklins, boudin, crawfish pie . . . come on, Tigers, kick it high!” The sea of purple and gold around them cheered. To her left stood a line of beefy frat boys with floppy hair and backward baseball hats, the letters GEAUX TIG S spelled out on their shirtless chests. The E and the R were nowhere to be seen, perhaps a casualty of heavy tailgating.
“Can’t believe all of this is for my baby,” Janet said, fidgeting with her purple and gold Mardi Gras beads. She then let out a roaring “Who dat!” For such a tiny little woman, it was always a mystery where Janet’s booming voice came from.
Laura took a bite of her hot dog and glanced around the stadium, taking it all in—the manicured field edged with ESPN cameras, the coiffed cheerleaders stretching on the sidelines, the deafening roar of nearly a hundred thousand people. It was a far cry from the tiny field with rusted bleachers she grew up with eighty miles away. But this was it. She always knew she belonged in a place like this; it was in her blood. Her mom was originally from Dallas, and as soon as Laura married and moved out of town, her parents had hightailed it to Arlington, Texas, bought a condo, and never looked back. No one in Laura’s family had visited tiny Toulouse in the months since. They weren’t meant to be small-town people.
The crowd roared as halftime ended and the players returned to the field. But Laura had eyes for only one of them. She zeroed in on number seven, enjoying how cute Brian’s butt looked in his spandex, how powerful he seemed as he arranged his players around him. She smiled, appreciating her man. She took a quick picture of the field and posted it on Instagram, tagging it with #blessed and #luckygirl. She still couldn’t believe she was really here, that this was really her life. It had all started on a seemingly ordinary day less than six months ago. . . .
On a scorching spring afternoon right before prom, she and Brian lay sprawled on his dad’s fishing boat in the middle of Darby Lake. They had just rubbed each other down with baby oil, and every page she flipped in her Cosmo was sticky from her fingers.
Brian shifted his body into hers and gently grabbed the magazine out of her hands. “There ain’t nothing you can learn from that article that you don’t already know,” he said, grinning.
Laura lowered her cat-eye sunglasses and blushed.
“But you sure as hell can practice,” he said, glancing down at his swim trunks.
Laura grinned and looked around the lake to see if anyone was nearby, but all she spotted were a few birds pecking around in the water. As she hovered over him in between kisses, she caught her reflection in his Oakleys. She liked the girl she saw—the girl he made her feel like when she was with him. Hot. Fun. Loved. Their lips touched and she slipped her tongue into his mouth. He pulled her closer and kissed her harder. And then he grabbed her hand and guided it down his shorts. As she explored him, she felt something hard, round, and . . . metal?
“What’s this?” Laura asked as she extracted a dainty diamond ring, tied to a string inside his trunks. Brian just sat there, his head propped up on his strong arm. “Brian Hunter Landry. What the hell is this?” Laura’s stomach filled with butterflies. His smile only grew deeper. “Is this for me?”