Today, the women regaled the men with stories from their New Orleans trip, which they had just driven home from. Who knew Lynn had it in her to rally her daughters for a two a.m. nightcap of Sazerac at a cozy jazz club on Bourbon Street? Hanna had surprised them all by joining the band for a sultry cabaret-style duet. It was pretty remarkable what a night away from the kids brought out in her sister.
Lexi, so excited about Martin Castleberry, made everyone watch a few scenes from her new planner’s Netflix show Southern Wedding Belles before cooking dinner.
The episode she picked followed a bride in Shreveport who insisted just days before the wedding, after seeing a picture of a celebrity’s colorfully dipped gown, that Martin find a way to dye her dress pink.
“Oh lord,” Seth said, hand over his mouth, trying to stifle a laugh. “Please tell me you’re not gonna do anything like that.”
Hanna butted in, while grabbing two cans of Bud from the fridge and handing one to Tom. “I doubt Lex’ll do anything like that with her twenty-thousand-dollar dress.” She laughed.
Seth blinked. “Twenty thousand?” His eyebrows furrowed. He wasn’t laughing anymore.
Lexi patted her fiancé’s arm. “Minor details you don’t need to worry about,” she said, before giving him a sweet peck on the cheek.
Callie watched as Seth walked away and grabbed a beer for himself. She wondered what was going through his mind. He wasn’t the kind of guy to make a scene in front of the family, but he also wasn’t the type who would put up with Lexi’s shit. The thing Callie loved most about him was how grounded he kept her little sister. Despite coming from a family of extreme wealth, Seth was one of the most down-to-earth guys Callie knew.
“Seth, why don’t you start choppin’ the onions?” Their mom handed him a green apron and directed him to the stained oak cutting board and knife, giving him something else to focus on other than the twenty-thousand-dollar dress.
The onions had been Seth’s job since he first came over for Family Sunday. He inherited the task from David, whose eyes always burned and teared up when he did them. “Damn onions make me cry like a baby,” their burly dad would say, wiping tears away from his eyes. But it turned out that Seth had some magical gene that made him immune to the eye sting associated with chopping onions, and thus, he became the official chopper for the Breaux family dinners.
Callie looked over at the other side of the kitchen and saw Tom starting to make the potato salad. Lynn had tasked him with it the first time he came over for dinner. He had added his own spin, boiling the potatoes in crab boil the way his grandma had taught him before she died. From then on, Lynn always asked him to make it. Callie smiled, looking at her brother-in-law, who was wearing Lynn’s floral apron.
Tom became an instant member of the family as soon as Hanna started bringing him around—he had already been part of their church family for years before, but really bonded with the Breauxs when Hanna started dating him after high school. And Seth also fit right in with the family quickly after he met Lexi.
Callie wondered what her parents and sisters would think of Wynn—once she finally started bringing him around, that is. The idea of introducing him to everyone made her stomach flip with both excitement and worry: excited about finally having someone special of her own, worried about everything else. She chalked it up to being a little more cautious than her sisters. That wasn’t a bad thing, right?
“Maybe next week we’ll go out on the new boat,” David said, bringing Callie back to reality as she worked on preparing the rice to boil. Her dad was gazing out the small kitchen window at the shiny black fishing boat being protected from the elements by the carport in the backyard.
“I got shifts both days next weekend at the diner,” Lynn said. “Sadly, I’ll have to miss that, but bring home some catfish and I’ll fry it up for dinner.”
“You don’t have to do that anymore, Mom,” Hanna said sternly. She was sitting at the table, helping Tom peel potatoes. “We’ve set y’all up—you don’t have to work anymore.” Their dad had already retired. It didn’t take any convincing for him to quit his job, especially since his arthritis had been making it tougher on him every day. Their mom, on the other hand, needed more convincing.
Lynn let out a small chuckle and waved her hand at Hanna. “Oh, stop. I’m gonna be workin’ ’til I’m dead.”
As her sisters began arguing with Lynn over her stubbornness, Callie’s phone buzzed in her back pocket. A text from Garrett appeared on the screen: Councilman Francis is buddies with levee contractor. They share stake in other businesses. Has political corruption written all over it. Emailed u some info. Good luck.
Staring at the words on the screen, she could feel her heart begin to speed up and pound in her chest.
Garrett Jordan, you are a god.
Callie quickly typed back a simple, Thank you! and excused herself from the kitchen. “Mind if I go work a little before dinner?” she said, placing the wooden spoon on the counter.
Her mom frowned.
“I have a big deadline tomorrow and my coworker just sent over something that I need to tie into my story.” She backed out of the kitchen, wagging her finger at her mom and sisters, shouting, “You guys made me have fun this weekend instead of working—it’s your fault!”
They laughed and waved her away. “Well, we’re gonna have fun without you right now,” her mom yelled back.
“Story of my life,” she called.
Callie went out to the car to grab her overnight bag that had her laptop in it, waving as she passed her niece and nephew playing on the porch swing.
Back in the old bedroom she once shared with Lexi and Hanna, she sat on her bottom bunk, which was covered in the same blue plaid comforter she snuggled up with all those years ago. The wall was still painted in the same dusty pink hue that she and her sisters had begged their parents for when they were in middle and high school. Photos of the girls with each other and their friends plastered the walls, along with tear-outs from J-14 and Tiger Beat. Their parents may have struggled with money, but they occasionally gave in to their daughters’ clamoring for a magazine filled with their celebrity crushes. It was the little things like that that made Callie love her childhood so much. She winked at the Adam Brody poster hanging above her bed, opened her laptop, and started sifting through the materials Garrett had sent her. Once she had what she needed, she started typing.
Despite a failed compaction test, the contractor continued to move forward with the project. An engineer on the project told the Herald there were rumors of bad materials being used in the foundation. Councilman Francis, who hired the contractor, shares financial ties with the owner of the business.
A feeling of pride washed over her as she sat back to reread the article. This was going to be the biggest investigative story she’d covered so far.
As she tweaked some words and edited her copy, she heard a knock and the door squeaked open. Her mom walked over and joined her on the bed.
“You’re just like your mama, did you know that?” Lynn’s brown eyes studied the screen and then looked back at her daughter.
“What does that mean?” Callie asked, closing her laptop.
“When I was a little girl, I used to write in my journals all the time. I had pages and pages of notes of things like what happened at school, what my mama cooked for dinner.…” She chuckled to herself, adding, “Even wrote about what I wanted to be when I grew up—and it wasn’t a waitress.” She paused and then put her hand on Callie’s leg. “I wanted to be a writer just like you are.”