1. One
ONE
PRESENT DAY
“I’m glad you like it,” Bree James said as she looked around her old house, which just so happened to be my new house.
There was a wistful air about her, as if this house was the key to all her dreams coming true.
Then she shook her blond head. “Remember what I said about the HOA? All of the stuff I put in the yard is grandfathered in under the old rules. They can’t make you get rid of any of it. ”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that a lot of the stuff she was talking about — the weird birdbath with cement gnomes, the windmill water feature that boasted a mechanical bear coming out of a barn and belching at the top of every hour, and the naked statue under the gazebo — would all be going over the next couple of months.
I, Huxley Ambrose, couldn’t deal with the weird bear.
Bree insisted that it was growling, not belching, but it was clearly belching.
She’d gotten it from some beer liquidation center because the bear had a can of beer in his hand.
It was no wonder the HOA had created a new rule after she’d installed it.
Bree had been at war with the HOA at The Landings, an exclusive community on Skidaway Island near Savannah, Georgia, for almost three years now.
From the second she’d moved in she’d made it her life goal to irritate them.
She was really good at it, too, if the state of her former yard was any indication.
It had more eyesores — ahem, artistic pieces — than every other house in The Landings combined.
She’d gone out of her way to skirt every rule they had because she was convinced that they were overbearing and obnoxious.
Frankly, I had to wonder if Bree was the one who was overbearing and obnoxious, but I never mentioned that. It wasn’t because I was afraid of her or anything — mostly — but she enjoyed torturing people. She didn’t bother denying it.
She hadn’t wanted to give up the house, something she’d been forthcoming with when I came to look at it upon moving to the area a few months before.
She did not want to sell her house because she enjoyed the game with the HOA so much.
Her husband, Brody Bates, made her, however.
He was sick of owning two houses in the uber-exclusive community.
He was also sick of paying the exorbitant fees that were necessary to access all the amenities in the community twice a year.
That had led to fights about which house they would move into permanently once they got married.
Brody’s house was bigger, and the yard didn’t have a naked woman statue that changed hats 12 times a year.
Bree had to dress up the statue for the holidays if she didn’t want to get dinged by the HOA.
Otherwise, they would have had grounds to yank the statue.
That’s why it wore a Santa hat in December and a witch hat in October.
It had a Mardi Gras outfit, a turkey hat, and a Fourth of July ensemble that lit up.
There was a shamrock hat for St. Patrick’s Day, a weird hat that looked a lot like an Easter egg, and a heart ensemble for Valentine’s Day.
By her own admission, Bree had to think outside the box for some of the other months.
The fact that she’d gone out of her way to have a Juneteenth hat created proved just how committed she was to her mission.
Despite that, Brody had finally put his foot down. They were burning money, which hadn’t been as big a deal when it was just the two of them. Once they added a baby to the mix, though, he got serious.
That was how I had managed to buy Bree’s house without it ever going on the market.
Bree had wanted it that way, so the HOA couldn’t come in and affix specific conditions on the sale, so once the offer was made, the sale happened quickly and quietly.
She wanted me to be able to keep all of her additions.
Even if they were hideous, and they were hideous.
“I like it a great deal,” I assured her. “It’s amazing. I can’t believe you let it go.”
Brody, who was in one of the chairs at the kitchen table with a baby in his arms, shot me a dirty look.
I dipped my chin and schooled my features so he wouldn’t see the smile on my face.
I enjoyed watching him squirm when it came to his wife.
She clearly had the more dominant personality in their relationship. Brody was far more easygoing.
“Your first reader event is tonight,” Brody said as he shifted the baby so her head was resting against his shoulder.
Bronte Bates — Bree and Brody couldn’t name their daughter with anything other than a B — wasn’t showing much of a personality yet, as far as I could tell.
She was nine months old and boasted her father’s dark hair.
Other than that, she was a mystery. Sometimes she laughed.
Other times, she looked thoughtful. Whenever her mother got wound up, she giggled and squirmed.
Yeah, babies were a mystery to me. This one didn’t fuss a lot, though, so I didn’t mind her being around.
I nodded. “It’s my first event here,” I confirmed. “I’ve been to reader events in other places, but my understanding is the ones here run differently.”
“This is our third year doing them,” he confirmed. “Last year was different because they made us go to camp in addition to doing the twice-monthly restaurant events. This year, they’re going back to the restaurant events, and the camping is off the table.”
I was secretly relieved about that. Camping was not my thing. “Was the camping that big of a failure?” I asked, hoping he would say yes, so I would never have to worry about them repeating that fiasco again.
Instead, he shrugged. “There were some issues.”
“Yeah, like the organizer of the event stalking Bella,” Bree said on a sniff. “He was a tool, and they don’t want to give anybody the amount of power he had again.”
I’d heard stories about that event but didn’t want to pry too much. I only know the woman it had happened to — Bella Oakley — in passing. Now that I’d joined the writer community in Savannah, which was thriving, I expected that to change, especially now that the reader events were upon us.
“I’m sort of happy we’re just doing the restaurants,” I admitted. “Twice a month is a lot regardless.”
“It’s only during the summer,” Bree replied as she walked over to Brody and the baby. She was a loud person, but her approach was soft as she stroked her hand over Bronte’s head and smiled at her husband. “We’re treating them like date nights.”
Well, now she had my full attention. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we have to get a babysitter because we can’t very well take a baby to a reader event,” she started.
“You could,” I argued. “Your readers might be thrilled to see Bronte because they’re so invested in your love story.”
Bree and Brody had made headlines when they hooked up thanks to an obsessed reader trying to keep them apart through some rather troublesome means.
Ever since I’d met them — which hadn’t been all that long because I’d only found out about the house through my agent, who happened to know Bree’s agent — they’d been leery about the incident with the fan. They didn’t like to talk about it.
“Yes, well, we’re not doing that.” Bree was firm as she shook her head in tandem with Brody.
“Bronte didn’t ask to be in the public eye.
And, yeah, we’re authors, not Hollywood stars, but we’ve learned the hard way that sometimes fans don’t care if we want our privacy.
We won’t be taking Bronte to any events. ”
“Not even when she’s older?” I asked.
Bree was adamant enough that her blond hair started swinging left and right. “No. It’s not happening.”
“You were raised in the conference circuit, though, right?” Brody asked. “I remember reading about your mother taking you on the road with her for book tours when you were a kid.”
“That happened quite frequently,” I confirmed, smiling. “I actually liked being on the road with her.”
“Even after that whole Galactic Empire of Coronado blow up?” Bree challenged.
My shoulders went stiff at mention of the movie trilogy that had forever changed my mother’s life. Heck, it had changed my life as well.
“I won’t say that things weren’t tense there for a little bit,” I hedged, my mind going back to a memory of my mother losing her mind and screaming at Agnes Quincy in front of thousands of fans at the Austin Convention Center in Texas.
There had been a slap, too. The slap heard round the world.
Well, up until that Will Smith at the Oscars thing.
My mother, always cool and collected, had found out about “the betrayal” three minutes before joining Aggie on stage.
She’d kept her cool for a grand total of 30 seconds.
Then she’d slapped Aggie and thrown herself on her longtime friend.
There was hair-pulling, accusations of being a whore, and an oath that they would never work together again.
That had been 12 years ago — five years after they announced the big science fiction project — and they’d never spoken again.
My mother was serious to the nth degree when making a promise, and she’d promised to dance on Aggie’s grave one day.
“Tense?” Bree let loose a hollow laugh. “I heard that Agnes Quincy still has bald spots from all the hair your mother pulled out.”
The incident at the Austin Convention Center was legendary now.
Authors weren’t known for being rowdy after all.
That was the domain of Hollywood stars. People were meant to remember Will Smith storming the stage at the Oscars and slapping Chris Rock.
They would talk in reverent whispers about Orlando Bloom and Justin Bieber going at it in Ibiza.
They would laugh while also worrying about all the weird stuff Shia LaBeouf had gotten himself into.
Authors were supposed to be above it all, though.