farm. “Family’s big to the Duke, right?” Fern reasoned. “Maybe he’ll understand why you need to do this before you run off with the circus.”
When I called Audra, because I still didn’t have Auggie’s phone number, she let me know that because of protocol, my driver would still have to take us up to the farm, but he would keep a respectable distance to the family while I tied up any loose ends.
Little did she know.
By sunset, the Alda was climbing up the mountain road leading to my parents’ farm.
Technically speaking, it wasn’t their farm. My mom and dad had made a career out of caretaking all kinds of properties that belonged to other people. They had lived all over the country, doing all sorts of different jobs, from raising ostriches to growing cannabis. They were currently taking care of a property in Ojai, just north of Los Angeles, where they grew a variety of food, raised chickens for eggs and, yes, had a greenhouse full of weed.
That’s how the McPhees rolled. We put the hip in hippie.
Both Dash and Dallas bussed into Ojai to go to school, and that was where Dallas also trained on the ice. We may have been a mellow lot, but we were hard workers one and all.
The house itself was a picturesque place, owned by a music producer who had bought the property as a present for his wife, who had always wanted to live on a farm. Unfortunately, she died soon after and he could no longer face the prospect of going to that big old house all alone. Yet, he couldn’t bear to part with it either. He hired my parents to run the $4 million dollar compound and let them keep the profits of anything they were able to grow there.
This was why this “farm” as we called it, had every amenity known to man. The main house was nearly 10,000 square feet, with eight bedrooms and eight baths. The guest house was over 2500 square feet, with four bedrooms. The pool house was a little cozier, just over 1500 square feet, with two bedrooms, each with their own entrance to a free-form pool complete with a waterfall and water slide.
The property had also had an Olympic-sized tennis court, stables and the horses to fill them, and plenty of pasture to run them. They had a thriving business renting horse tours of scenic Ojai as a result.
Everything was connected by stone pathways and a canopy of trees.
Mr. Producer hadn’t stepped foot on Maggie Farms for years, but Mom kept the place running as though he might. Instead, Mom, Dad and the kids lived in the guest house, making it the new Family Home. Fern and I stayed at the pool house whenever we came to visit. There was the greenhouse, along with an actual barn, both of which were Dad’s domain.
Mom took care of the business because she never met a stranger.
The whole family worked the land, harvesting the fruit and nuts from an orchard that took up about a two of the ten acres. They had workers, of course, it was just that big of an operation, but McPhees had always preferred to pull their own weight wherever possible.
Best of all it was a gated, private property that would negate any use for security within the walls, so Auggie’s footman could find somewhere else to keep himself busy.
I couldn’t wait to get to the farm, frankly. With everything that was going on, I knew it would bring me some peace. I had the driver stop at the gate, where Fern and I hopped out to grab our belongings, to take the trek to the house on foot.
“We got it from here,” I promised. He said nothing and I felt bad, but I wasn’t about to inflict the Queen’s protocol on my family. They hadn’t signed up for any of this, and I didn’t think their lives should be turned upside down because of it.
Believe it or not, there were some things even the Queen of Aldayne didn’t need to know. If my sister could keep it on the downlow, not using any of these picturesque surroundings on her YouTube page, then Queen Maeve could keep her business out from behind these walls, too.
Honestly, I was glad we did it the minute the gate closed behind us. As we walked along the road leading towards the main house, I could feel the stressors of life ebb away with every chirp from