Page 1 of Her Christmas Fix
1
MONIKA
The GPS announcesthat I’ve reached my destination just as my headlights sweep across what looks like a scene from a low-budget horror movie. The kind where the actress dies in the first five minutes because she’s too stupid to turn around.
I turn off the engine but sit tight in my plush Mercedes SUV, hands gripping the steering wheel like it’s the only thing grounding me in this moment. I can’t see the ocean in the darkness that surrounds the property and shiver as a brisk Oregon coast wind whips through the car windows I cracked open hours ago.
The salt-and-pine scent on the December breeze should be comforting, but it feels like Mother Nature is trying to send me a message that this isn’t where I belong.
I should probably listen.
But I have no place to go, which I realize is a ridiculous statement when you’re one of the most recognizable Hollywood stars on the planet. That’s the problem, though. I want to lick my wounds in private, and privacy is something I gave up years ago. It might sound like I’m playing my tiny violin here. Who’s going to feel sorry for the megastar dumb enough to fall for a guy who turned out to be a sleazy grifter?
It feels like I’m out of options. I’m definitely out of people I can trust. The house in front of me is supposed to be my sanctuary. According to Daniel, the renovations were completed last month.
Now I know Daniel’s promises were nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
The Cape Cod-style house sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, its cedar shingle siding faded by years of sun and salt air. When I was twelve and visiting my sweet Grammy Maude for the summer, we’d walk the stretch of beach in front of the property every morning.
“That’s the one, Monika,” she’d say in her lilting voice as she pointed to this house. “If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be right there. I’d have my coffee on the deck while I watched the waves.”
She laughed when I asked why she didn’t buy it. “Oh, sweetheart,” she’d told me. “Houses like that aren’t for people like us.”
It came on the market six years ago, right after Grammy passed after years in the assisted living facility near Mom in Chicago. I happened to see the listing when I looked up the house in the airport lounge after her funeral and bought it on impulse. It was a way to honor her memory or proof that people like us could have beautiful things after all.
I planned to be involved in the renovations and use it as a retreat between filming. But then my career got busier with back-to-back film commitments and a constant hamster wheel of press junkets while I tried to give my thirteen-year-old daughter, Riva, some semblance of a normal life. The house sat empty until Daniel offered to oversee the construction while I was on location. It seemed like the perfect solution.
More like a perfect shit show.
“Monika Graham,” I say out loud, mimicking a deep-voiced movie trailer narrator, “has made a habit of spectacularly bad decisions, so she flees LA with nothing but a suitcase and her shattered pride.”
The pinnacle of my bad decision track record was trusting my manager-slash-boyfriend with both my career and my bank account. Daniel has been systematically draining my accounts for years, and I’m beginning to realize his progress reports on this house were just another lie in a relationship built on them.
But I’m here now, and it’s time to see exactly what I’m working with.
There are two weeks until Christmas, and I’m on my own for the first time in years. Riva is with her dad and stepmom in Colorado, and I’m determined to spend the holiday in my grandmother’s dream house—my house—and figure out how to start putting my life back together.
Using my phone’s flashlight to guide me, I grab my suitcase from the backseat and pick my way across the uneven ground toward the front door. The key they sent after I closed on the property still works. Small miracle.
It’s been nearly a month since I discovered the extent of Daniel’s embezzlement and fraud, thanks to a call from the FBI agent heading up the department’s investigation into him. Our two-year relationship had been circling the drain for a while, but I didn’t know how to break up with him when he was managing the bulk of my career. Low self-esteem is a well-known celebrity cliche, and mine played right into Daniel’s ability to take advantage of me for so long.
Our business breakup has been a way harder blow than losing my boyfriend, which doesn’t speak highly of my judgment in either area. I’m still untangling the layers of awfulness, but the fact that the renovations on Grammy’s house are part of the whole mess might hurt the most.
I hold my breath as I step inside, fumbling for a switch. When the lights come on, I almost wish they hadn’t.
The entryway and living room it opens to are gutted, with bare studs where walls should be and exposed wiring dangling like Christmas tinsel. Instead of the restored hardwood I expect under my feet, all I see is concrete subfloor. In contrast to the fresh scent of the outdoors, the house’s interior smells stale and musty. More musk than must, actually, almost like…
A chittering sound from somewhere above makes me freeze. It’s followed by the sound of tiny feet scurrying across the ceiling. I aim my phone’s flashlight upward and catch a glimpse of a masked face peering down at me from the gap in the seam between the wall and ceiling.
A raccoon. In my half-renovated house.
“Oh, hell no.” I take a step back as another one appears, this guy bold enough to start climbing down the studs like a furry construction worker. “This is my house, you little fuckers.”
The first raccoon growls like it doesn’t approve of my swearing. Or me being here in general.
That’s when the second one decides to demonstrate that there’s safety in numbers, and I’m clearly on my own. It knocks over an empty utility bucket, the sound echoing through the gutted space.
The noise wakes up the rest of the crew. Suddenly there are four sets of eyes challenging me to a staring contest. The animals chit-chit-chit at each other like they’re discussing the rude lady who’s interrupted their evening.
