The Royals Next Door Read online

  He remains silent and visibly uncomfortable, and I take a little too much glee in that. Serves him right for escorting me to my own damn house. I mean, do I look like the type of person who is going to go home and get her camera and climb up through the tangled salal bushes and overgrown ferns just to get a glimpse of them? Does he think I’ll show up at their door, peer in through their windows, and post it all to my Instagram stories?

  I’m guessing so. I totally get him needing to be protective of them, but this seems like overkill, especially since Bert seemed to vouch for my character. Though I guess he could have said a few more complimentary things just in case. So far Harrison knows I live here, but I’m pretty sure I’ve only given him evidence that I’m some quirky manic pixie dream girl, minus the dream part. Nightmare is more like it.

  The road ends in a narrow cul-de-sac with barely enough room to turn around, the ocean on either side crashing against kelp-strewn rocks. So far the street has been quiet, so I guess Harrison has been doing a good job keeping people away, if anyone has caught on yet that this is actually where Eddie and Monica are.

  The driveway that we share runs off the end of the turnaround, up another slight hill where it forks into two. I take the driveway to the left, which plunks us into my parking spot beside a tall western red cedar. From here you can see a bit of the cul-de-sac, but you can’t see the mansion at all.

  It’s a really interesting property. Even though it takes over the very tip of the peninsula, with the ocean on nearly all sides, where they placed the servants’ quarters (aka my house) is among tall cedar and arbutus trees. It’s on the dark side, and you can only see glimpses of the ocean through the trees. I’ve talked about taking down a few to improve the view, but my mother has extreme paranoia and thinks if I do that, it means people can spy on us easier, so I’ve just let the trees grow and the branches continue to block the ocean. But we’re lucky that there’s a path that takes you to rickety steps that lead down to deepwater moorage. The dock is crooked, and one end is sometimes underwater, but when I’m craving the sun and blue sky, that’s where I go.

  And while there is a fence separating us from the road, there’s no gate and there’s also no fence between the properties. We just know where the lines are and we keep to our side, even though the mansion has been vacant for as long as we’ve been here. Sure, sometimes there are families or couples staying there, but we never really see or meet them, and I’m sure it’s more the owner’s friends coming to stay rather than an Airbnb or some other vacation rental.

  That said, I still have no idea who owns the place. There were rumors in the past that it belonged to the infamous Hearst family, but I doubt that’s true. Whoever they are, however, they must have some kind of connection to Eddie and Monica.

  “So,” I say innocently, turning to Harrison as I put the Garbage Pail in park and turn off the engine, “if they’re just looking to rent and not buy, who are they renting it from?”

  He doesn’t even look at me. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Are Eddie and Monica in the house right now?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  I roll my eyes. “What are you at liberty to say?”

  “Just that I need to make sure that you’re not going to be of harm to the Fairfaxes.”

  I gesture to my house. It’s small and quaint, with a garden out front that my mother dutifully attends to. Most of the plants have to thrive in the shade or part shade, but she’s got a green thumb, and even the zinnias are doing well. “Look. That’s where I live. I wasn’t lying when I said this was my address, and I can definitely promise you I’m not going to harm them in any way. I’m a schoolteacher. I read romance novels. I like Tic Tacs. I have a rescue pup. My bones ache when a cold front comes in.”

  He eyes me. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m just trying to prove that I’m human.”

  “I never said you were a robot. I said I need to make sure you aren’t a threat. And for your information, Tic Tacs were Ted Bundy’s candy of choice.”

  “So now you’re comparing me to one of America’s most famous serial killers?”

  He opens the door and gets out of the car. This already seems like a classic Harrison response and I don’t even know the guy.

  “By the way,” I tell him, getting out of the car and looking at him over the roof, “Tic Tacs aren’t candy. They are mints.”

  “I find the fact that you stress-eat them troubling.”

  “And also, if Ted Bundy really ate Tic Tacs, he wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on anyone. You would have heard him coming.”

  “Doesn’t change a thing.”

  I throw my arms out. “Fine. Do you want to call the school principal and get a reference of character or something? I guess the chief of police wasn’t good enough.”

  He stares at me, and even in the shadow of the trees, he still hasn’t removed his sunglasses. I’m starting to think he goes to sleep in them.

  It doesn’t matter. I’m done here. Any excitement I should be feeling over the fact that the royals might be moving next door has been absolutely dashed due to this sexy British dick on a power trip.

  Whoops. Did I say sexy? Definitely didn’t mean that.

  I grumble under my breath and start walking toward the house, noticing the light in the kitchen is on, which means my mother is probably up. I steady myself internally.

  “I need to walk you to the door,” Harrison says, slamming the car door hard enough to make the Garbage Pail shake, and I look over my shoulder to see him striding purposefully over to me.

  I blink at him, shaking my head before I turn around and start walking to the front door, hoping my mother doesn’t have to see any of this.

  “You, sir, have control issues,” I point out.

  “It’s my bloody job to have control issues,” he snaps.

  I pause and look at him. Whoa. Defensive much? I think this is the first display of any sort of emotion I’ve seen from him.

  He realizes how he’s come across too, because it’s like he wipes his face clean and there it is, that blank but broody slate again. He clears his throat, raises his strong chin in defiance. “Control is an important factor of my job.”

  Yeah, that’s not what you said the first time, 007.

  I head for the door up the winding woodland-style path with prehistoric-looking hostas lining the sides, and stop on the front steps, ivy crawling up the sides of the overhang. “Okay, well, here I am at the door. Satisfied? Or are you going to demand to come inside too, because I know for a fact that you’ll need to provide a search warrant and I can scream real loud.”

  He studies me for a moment, and I so know that he wants to tell me some bullshit about inspecting my house to make sure I don’t have dead bodies in my freezer, but instead he just nods. “That will be all.”

  He’s turning to leave just as the door opens.

  I freeze in place.

  He freezes in place.

  My mother is there, her head poking through the narrow opening as she eyes us both suspiciously. Her hair is a mess, and I cringe inwardly in embarrassment until I remember that my hair is a mess too. Like mother, like daughter.

  “What are you doing? Why are you late? Who is that?” At the last question she narrows her eyes into slits, venomous daggers directed at Harrison.

  I know I have to lie. My mom has paranoid delusions and distrusts authority, and if she found out the truth about Harrison, she’d start freaking out, and that’s when Harrison would really consider us a threat.

  “Mom,” I say quickly, gesturing to Harrison. “This is Harrison Cole. He’s, uh, our new neighbor.”

  I can feel his frown at my back, and I keep on smiling, hoping he’ll play along. Then again, I don’t think the man knows what the concept of play is. He probably supervised other ch
ildren on the playground when he was young.

  “Harrison Ford?” she asks.

  “Harrison Cole,” I tell her. Then I do a weird thing where I lean back and grab Harrison’s forearm and pull him forward so he’s standing next to me, and I don’t let go of his arm. His very strong, muscly arm. Holy crap. Just touching him feels like it’s scrambled my brain. I clear my throat and try to ignore it. “He might rent the house next door, so I thought I’d show him where we live.”

  To his credit, Harrison hasn’t yanked himself out of my grasp, nor has he corrected me on this white lie.

  My mother eyes my grasp on him, and then a strange look of realization comes over her face. I know what that look is. She thinks I’m interested in this man, like, sexually, because so far, he seems exactly like all the assholes I used to be attracted to: handsome, emotionally constipated, and very controlling.

  “Okay,” she finally says. “Welcome to the neighborhood, then. Do you want to come in?”

  “No,” I say quickly, my voice bordering on a yelp. “No, no. It’s fine.” Harrison opens his mouth to say something, but I blabber on through. “He has to go back; this was just a quick visit. I’m sure you’ll see him again if he rents the place.”

  My mom shrugs, suddenly disinterested. “Okay,” she says, then closes the door on the both of us.

  “What was that?” Harrison says to me after a beat.

  “You mean my mother? She’s like that. Don’t take it personally.”

  “No, I mean, why did you lie? Why didn’t you tell her who I was?”

  “It’s a long story,” I tell him. And none of his business, but I don’t feel like antagonizing him anymore. He did his part by keeping his mouth shut, and that’s good enough for me. Now if only I didn’t have to see him again. Something tells me that might be a tall order. “But thanks for playing along.”

  “I didn’t seem to have a choice,” he admits gruffly.

  I fold my arms and shrug. “Well, I’m afraid that despite what my mother just said, this is where we part ways. If you feel like harassing me further, feel free to leave a letter in our mailbox.”

  He watches me for a moment, exhaling harshly through his nose. Then he gives a stern nod. “I’ll be in touch. If they do end up renting this place, we’ll need to put a security gate at the start of the driveway, and I’m sure we’ll need your permission for that. I’ll make sure to put the forms in your mailbox.”

  He then turns around and walks down the path, past the Garbage Pail and the cedars until I can’t see him anymore.

  I let out a long, heavy sigh and straighten my shoulders before I open the door and step into the house.

  Three

  “So, new neighbor, huh?” my mother asks from the kitchen while I take off my boots in the hallway.

  I slide on my sheepskin slippers (step one of decompressing from work) and pad on into the kitchen, where she’s sorting out packets of herbs that she dried herself and sprinkling them into a diffuser that fits over her giant teapot.

  The kitchen is a total mess—mint and lavender scattered everywhere, unwashed dishes, leftover coffee grinds, oat milk spills—but it barely registers. Once upon a time, I would have lost my temper, which in turn would have made my mother lose her temper, so now I just let it get worse and worse and then after she goes to bed tonight, I’ll clean everything so that she can destroy it again tomorrow.

  I know that sounds really callous of me, but ever since my father left us, back when I was fourteen, my mother has become my dependent. Dependent personality disorder is exactly that; when you combine it with borderline personality disorder, it means that I’m really the only person she has to keep her in line. She’s not a fan of doctors, she hates that she has to take medication (I’m here to make sure she does), I’m an only child, and my father has a new family out in Toronto (we’re friendly and talk a couple of times a month, but he doesn’t offer any help), so it all falls on me.

  I’m used to it. Doesn’t mean I like it, doesn’t mean that while I provide care for my mother when she needs it, I’m not emotionally disconnected at the same time. I have to be, for my own sanity. It’s taken me years of therapy to finally come to terms with my own issues and the coping skills I developed during my childhood and distance myself from them. Avoiding conflict, always being a mediator, being attracted to emotionally unavailable men, becoming a doormat and doing whatever people want in order to keep the peace. Through my therapists (plural, because finding the right one for you takes a lot of trial and error . . . it’s like dating, but way more expensive), I learned that my coping strategies ensured my survival as a child and teenager, but as an adult, I’ve been learning to let them go.

  Which I guess I’m doing an okay job of, because when I think back to my interactions with the pissy protection officer, people pleasing was the last thing on my mind, and I think I created more conflict than what was warranted.

  (I should probably stop thinking about him; he’s making my blood boil all over again.)

  “Want some tea?” my mother asks, grabbing two mugs from the cupboard. She always makes me a cup regardless of what I say.

  “Sure,” I tell her, taking a seat at the kitchen island. “Where’s Liza?”

  “Napping in the sun.”

  Liza is my adopted pit bull, a short, gray, fat little hippo with the cutest face and laziest personality in the world. Her favorite place is the corner of the deck where one bare patch of trees lets the light in.

  My mother named her after her obsession with Liza Minnelli, and she makes a really good companion/emotional support animal for her. Liza was rescued when she was a year old after being abused, and yet she’s come full circle and really helped all of us heal just as she was healing.

  “Back to the neighbor,” she says to me, fixing her eyes on me. Despite the messy hair and the fact that she’s in her pajamas, she seems to be doing okay today. “When did he move in? I haven’t seen any moving trucks.”

  “When was the last time you left the house?”

  She shrugs. “Yesterday I took Liza to the ferry terminal and back. Didn’t see anything unusual.”

  “Well, technically he’s looking to rent the place. Nothing has been finalized.”

  “Does he have a wife?”

  “No,” I tell her, even though now I’m thinking back to whether Harrison had a ring on. I mean, he could have a wife, but for this version of the story, he won’t.

  “You sure?” She squints at me. “I know that’s your favorite type.”

  I give her a stiff smile. Even though she’s just being blunt and isn’t trying to be mean, it always feels like a punch to the gut when she brings up my past mistakes, and I’ve made some pretty major ones.

  “He’s not married,” I repeat.

  “But you were grabbing on to him like he and you were together. So that’s something.” She tilts her head, studying me. “I don’t mean to be a nag, Piper, but you were so proud of those revelations you had during therapy with Dr. Edgar.”

  “I’m still proud of them. And I’m not interested in this guy.”

  “Harrison Cole,” she says.

  “Yes. I was just being nice.”

  Come to think of it, there really had been no reason for me to hang on to him like I had. I don’t know what I was thinking or what I was doing.

  “So he doesn’t have a wife—does he have kids?”

  “Uh, no.”

  She turns her back to me as she mulls that over, checking on the teapot. “No wife, no kids. How is he going to afford that place? Doesn’t it belong to the Hearsts? What does he do for a job?”

  “I’m not sure,” I tell her, and that turns out to be the wrong answer, because I see her shoulders stiffen and she slowly turns around to look at me with wide eyes.

  “You don’t know what he does? Piper . . . he could be a drug dealer. A mobs
ter. A criminal. How else would he afford that place?”

  Uh-oh.

  “He’s probably a lawyer,” I point out. “A successful one. Maybe a film producer. Perhaps he’s related to royalty . . .”

  She shakes her head, and I know she’s not going to let go of whatever paranoid theory her brain conspires. “You can’t trust lawyers either.”

  “How about next time I see him, I’ll ask him?” I say, hoping to soothe her. “Who knows, he may not even move in.”

  That thought gives her pause. “I hope not. I don’t like strangers.”

  “I know you don’t. It’ll be fine, I promise.”

  And there I go, trying to be the mediator, trying to promise things that I have no control over. It’s hard to rise out of your old roles in life when you’re still so tied to your parents.

  After she makes me some tea, I head out to the dock and sit there, taking in the peace and quiet and the soft summer air and the waning sunshine. A seal pops his head up in the water, his big dark eyes taking me in before he ducks under. A bald eagle soars overhead, heading for the group of nests by the marina farther down the narrow isthmus of Long Harbour.

  This is the best part of living here, being one with nature, having time to de-stress and breathe in the fresh salty air and the breezes that rattle through the arbutus leaves and the smell of sunbaked moss.

  If the royals end up moving next door, there’s a chance that all of this could change. I’m not a huge fan of change; I like my routine, as do a lot of people on the island. Bert wasn’t too far off when he said this might not be the best place for any kind of celebrity, especially a royal couple who have created headlines for two years straight and are now the hot topic of all media.