Moms Club

A Novel

PROLOGUE

queen bee, noun

a fertile female bee
a woman who is in a favored or preeminent position

NUTCRACKER MARKET, NOVEMBER 2014

A phone lies on the floor—a phone with secrets. I steal a glimpse at it, upside down on the dingy, stained carpet of the party bus. It lies forgotten for the moment, exactly where Priscilla dropped it. The pink, tinselly phone case shimmers in the artificial light. What is on that phone? Only Mandi and Priscilla know, and they’re frozen next to the stripper pole. Their eyes glaze with shock. Mandi clutches her chest with a trembling hand, and Priscilla’s knuckles grip the pole so tightly her tanned skin has gone white.

The bus tears through the storm, rain pounding on the roof as we race toward home. Thunder rumbles outside the purple-tinted, rain-soaked windows. I look up. Water soaks my cheek. The storm has breached the bus, dripping through the emergency exit above our heads.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Water streams through the well-worn, probably not-working hatch in the ceiling. The storm is here. There’s no outrunning it, no hiding from it. Just like the mess we made. A living, breathing monster that we nursed and unleashed, now beyond our control.

I inch toward the phone, careful not to draw attention. I need to get to it before someone grabs it for themselves, or the screen locks and its secrets are lost forever. Slowly…slowly…I squat down to reach out and grasp it. Close…so close! Priscilla’s hand is quicker. She catches my wrist in a vice grip before I can seize it. My face flies to hers, and she shakes her head tightly. No. I wrench my hand away and stand.

What the hell is on that phone?

My eyes scan the carnage around me. A swollen ring circles Mandi’s throat, along with dainty, black and blue marks where Summer’s fingers attempted to squeeze the life out of her. Amy cowers in the corner, the shoulder of her shirt ripped away. Next to her, Shana holds Amy’s missing fabric in her sweaty grasp. Callie tenderly covers red scratches on her neck—a reward she received for protecting her friend. The black velvet walls close in around us as sobbing echoes behind me.

What did we do?

My breath comes in short gasps. We never meant for this to happen. We wanted to stand up to her… to get justice…revenge for what she’d done to us. But I never…we never… Thoughts run wild in my head, so loud against the hush that has come over the bus.

Something wet runs down my fingertips. I squeeze my hand into a fist and look down. Pain shoots up my arm like lightning, and a small cry escapes my lips. How did I cut myself? I study my hand and find a piece of glass glistening in my skin. Pulling it out, I toss it to the floor.

My eyes go to my co-conspirators, who are as shell-shocked as I am. Emily’s single, brown eye stares back at me in disbelief, her hand protectively covering the other. Something must’ve hit her during the chaos. The pleather seat beside her is ripped straight down the middle. She adjusts her hand, wincing in pain, but she doesn’t utter a word. Priscilla stands to her left, her face drained of color. She closes her eyes and sways like her body might give out. My strong, unshakable friend—silenced.

After the roar of a million voices, tearing each other apart, only silence remains. We stand amidst the wreckage of broken glass, broken bottles, and broken women.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this, never like this. We were trying to make things better; I promise we were.

To my left, I hear a whimper, and then Summer screams.

CHAPTER 1

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

HOUSTON, TX

Welcome to the Moms Club of Willow Ranch Facebook Group! Our goal is to build a “village” to support each other and raise our kiddos! Thank you for your interest! We host monthly meetings, playgroups, mom’s night outs, holiday events, and more! We are SO excited you’re here!

To apply for membership, please answer the following questions, and our admin will review your application. Dues are $40 per year!

XO,

Summer Monroe

Vice President, Moms Club of Willow Ranch

I think I just threw up a little bit. I’ve never read anything so peppy in my entire life. I mean, how many exclamation points does a person need in one paragraph? Certainly not one at the end of every sentence. “This is never going to work,” I groan aloud to my laptop, my only channel to the outside world for weeks.

My mouse arrow freezes over the hot pink “Join Group” button as a crowd of perfect-looking, thirty-something Texas moms smile back at me from the glistening cover photo. Their smiles are big, white, and shiny. Like a toothpaste commercial from hell.

I exhale, and my head drops back against the seat. I really hate my life right now. Holding my breath, I click the “Join” button, and a pop-up box fills my display chock-full of Moms Club screening questions. Here we go…

Name: Ali James

Are you a Willow Ranch subdivision resident? Yes

Children’s ages? Luke – 5 Hannah – 3

Do you work? No.

Does that matter?

Why do you want to join Moms Club?

An essay question?

I just moved to Texas, and I’m looking to meet new people. I’m also desperate for reasons to get me and the kids out of the house.

Maybe that sounds too desperate. Oh well, submit! That’s done. I sit back in my chair and glance around my stark, empty house as the loneliness of the past few weeks washes over me. Lingering paint fumes sting my nose, and the rumbling of the dryer echoes throughout the vacant rooms of our brand-new Texas house. It’s not a home yet, just a house. A miserable, empty, lonely house.

Okay, I’m being dramatic, but it has been weeks, and the movers still haven’t shown up, so nothing feels right. There isn’t a damn thing in this place. No furniture, no clothes, no plates or forks, no friends, no life, no hope. Just a hollow, echo-ey house.

Welcome to Texas.

Tears burn my eyes as I think back to the painful moment when Jase broke the news to me. I stood across from him in our kitchen, and he looked like he was about to tell me someone had died. Then he said it. “We’re moving to Texas.” And it was my soul that died.

“I am not moving to fucking Texas!” I yelled back at him, slamming the mail on the counter and scattering it everywhere.

“Why not? It’s great! Everyone in California is moving there,” Jase replied calmly, taking my rage in stride, as usual.

“Not me!” I retorted.

“Why not?” He bent down slowly to pick up the letters and catalogs on the floor.

“Why not?! I’m a Californian; our family is here, our friends are here, our work is here, our entire lives are here. I’ve never even been to Texas!” I crossed my arms as I finished my ironclad argument against the worst idea in the world.

“Texas is so much cheaper, Al. We can have a huge house and a yard bigger than a postage stamp.” He gestured to the embarrassingly teeny patch of grass behind our cramped townhouse in the Valley.

“Why don’t we move to Orange County?” I countered, storming out of the kitchen and into the den where thousands of Hot Wheels obscured the floor. “We can have a yard there.”

“You know I can’t commute from Orange County.”

“You could try,” I replied mulishly, picking Hot Wheels up and chucking them into a bin.

“This is a huge opportunity for me. I would be the head of recycling for the entire state of Texas. Think of the impact I could make! Are you asking me to turn it down?”

“Yes!” I swore, violently tossing the bin full of cars into the corner. “You can save the world here! No one in Texas even recycles!”

How could Jase ask me to leave California? It was our home. And how could we move to Texas, of all places? We don’t own a gun or a truck. Good god, would we have to start going to church?

“What about my job? Are you discounting my career altogether?” I said, trying to change tactics, desperate to make him realize how horrible this idea was.

He glared in my direction. “You know I’m not, and you said yourself that it was time for you to look for something new…”

“I meant new in California—not Texas!” I blustered out of our tiny kitchen and up our tiny stairs into our even tinier bedroom. It was not helping my argument to be reminded of how small our house was. Since Hannah was born, we had rapidly outgrown our modern yet snug house in Sherman Oaks. The kids shared a bedroom on the second floor that could barely fit two beds. Toys covered every surface, threatening to take over any extra space. I knew we couldn’t stay here forever, but I also knew we couldn’t afford anything else. I had just hoped options would come along that didn’t involve us moving to another planet.

“You could finally write your book,” he offered.

“What book?” I snapped.

“You’ve been wanting to write a book since we met. This is your chance to do it. With my promotion, you wouldn’t have to work. You could finally have time to stay home and write it.”

He had me there. I’d been trying to write a book for years. I’d started half a dozen different books but never finished any of them. I always said I would do it when I had more time, but work came first. Then Luke was born, and he came first. Then Hannah arrived, and I barely had time to shower or sleep, let alone write a book. Maybe if I stayed home and didn’t have to work, I could finally…

“From your silence, I assume you’re considering it,” Jase leaned against our bedroom door frame, his smile returning.

“Ugh.” I dropped onto our bed, letting out a frustrated huff.

He walked over and sat gingerly beside me, taking my hand. I pulled it away. “Look, Al, California is so expensive, and our bills are getting higher every month. We could have a better life in Texas. The schools are great, it’s safer, and you actually know your neighbors.”

I glared into his annoyingly logical, blue eyes. Why was this happening? How could my total California-boy husband consider moving to Texas? He looks like he stepped out of Point Break, with bleach-blonde hair spiked into an adult faux hawk. How could he fit in with a bunch of cowboys?

I twisted my body toward him, “How can we possibly move to Texas? We’re Californians; it’s against our religion.”

Jase laughed and put his arm around me. “We don’t have a religion.”

“That’s the sort of thing that will get us killed in Texas!” I declared.

“Can we at least try?” he pleaded. I wrestled out of his embrace and stomped over to the dresser. A picture of us doing a beach clean-up before our wedding stared at me from the corner. Jase had been trying to save the planet since I met him, and this was his chance to finally make a big impact. How could I say no? He would do it for me, and if it gave me time to write, maybe it would be worth it. I felt myself giving in.

And now I’m in hell.

The memory of our tiny yet lovable Sherman Oaks townhouse fades away, and I’m back in my current reality—besieged by the cavernous, homogenized, lonely house we bought in the Willow Ranch suburb of Houston.

Since we arrived a month ago, Jase has been gone every single week. A month into his new gig, the CEO was replaced, and (shocker) the new guy wants him at a different site each week. His travel rose from 20% to 90% overnight, which has left me with no one to talk to over the age of five. If I don’t find some adult conversation soon, I’m going to kill us all.

Our realtor mentioned that our neighborhood has a very active Moms Club. Originally, I scoffed at the idea of a Moms Club because it sounded like a bunch of Stepford, stay-at-home moms who would make me feel bad for not breastfeeding my three-year-old.

However, desperate times call for desperate measures. I need friends. Bad. So, here I am on the Moms Club Facebook page, hoping they are the answer to my prayers.

“Mama, Mama!” the back door bursts open, and Hannah and Luke run screaming into the kitchen. Hannah’s hands pull frantically at her hair as she wails.

“Hannah, what’s the matter?” I shove her onto my lap. Tears coat her little pink glasses.

“A BUG! A big bug flew into her hair!” Luke screams in a panic, his deep brown eyes wide with terror.

Hannah’s fingers rub wildly through her golden locks, tangling them into knots. I would kill for hair like hers. Instead, Luke and I struggle with mousey brown hair that frizzes and curls in this crazy Houston humidity.

I pull her hands aside and pick through the strands carefully. Sure enough, I find a love bug, actually two love bugs, tangled in her hair. Love bugs are new to me. We don’t have them in California. They’re two black bugs stuck together in what seems to be an everlasting no-pants dance. They’re everywhere in Houston, constantly mating. They don’t bite, but the sheer volume can be overwhelming for kids…adults, too. There is no apparent break from these bug orgies because I’ve yet to see one alone. After the mating season, I assume they take an extended rest or die.

“It’s a love bug, sweetie,” I say calmly, pulling it out of her hair.

“It okay?” Hannah peeks out of the mass of hair hanging in her face.

Umm…it is not. The lovers have both ceased to be, having been strangled as I pulled them out of her hair. Another case of erotic asphyxiation gone bad.

I stand up and discreetly dump the remains of the love bugs into the sink. “Who wants fruit snacks?” I say enthusiastically. Fruit snacks are my go-to subject change these days. My kids would hop into an unmarked van with Voldemort if fruit snacks were on the table.

The dead lovers are quickly forgotten as Luke and Hanna grab their packs of fruit snacks and begin smacking away.

“We made a Starbucks drive-thru, can you come to it?” Luke hops up and down with glee.

“Of course,” I say, wondering if this is proof my daily Starbucks habit has gotten out of control. Our morning Starbucks trek has been our lone outing of the day, and I look forward to it like a Chris Hemsworth push-up contest. Actually, a shirtless Chris Hemsworth push-up contest…against Chris Evans. Yeah, that’s it.

“Mom!” Luke pulls on my hand.

“Huh?” I sputter, jerking out of the best daydream ever. My habit of watching Avengers movies before bed has also gotten out of control.

“Come ooooon! Come to our Starbucks!” he drags me toward the backyard, which is definitely bigger than our old one. Although, if you ask me, this Stepford patch of grass doesn’t have nearly as much charm.

My phone buzzes as I head out the door to get a latte from Luke and Hannah’s Starbucks franchise. I grab it, and a Facebook notification fills my screen.

Moms Club of Willow Ranch Facebook Group

Welcome to Moms Club, Ali! We are so excited you are joining! I’m Summer Monroe, the Vice President. You are now an official Moms Club member.

I’ve added you to the Facebook group, so you’ll start getting notifications about events—turn them on! Bring $40 to the first meeting for your dues. If we don’t receive your dues, we will have to remove you.

I look forward to seeing you at our next playgroup!

XO, Summer Monroe