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The Christmas Surprise

Song : You Should Probably Leave - Chris Stapleton

T he two months after my unexpected hospital stay was a fever dream—equal parts Hallmark movie and true crime docuseries.

My parents and Jon had become obscenely close, like Christmas-card-worthy, casserole-swapping, finish-each-other ’ s-sentences kind of close.

My dad, who previously thought all white men were either country singers or serial killers, had adopted Jon like a long-lost son.

And my mother? She was sending him videos of how to cook curry goat “the proper Trini way” and texting him good morning like they were in a WhatsApp group chat titled Family But Make It Spice.

Meanwhile, Patricia hadn’t so much slowed down as leveled up in her campaign of digital terrorism.

Every morning I woke up to fresh material—photoshopped mugshots of me, hashtags like #TexasTrafficker, and full-blown exposés on her Instagram stories with headlines like “Delilah Charles: Criminal Mastermind or Satanic Witch?” (Answer: Neither, ma’am.

I can’t even commit to a skincare routine.) Jon, who initially tried to ignore it, had since taken to sending me screenshots of her posts with captions like, “Babe, this is better than Dateline.” He was also rapidly becoming Houston’s honorary redneck-in-residence.

I’d taken him on a grand tour of the city—from lazy strolls in Hermann Park to aggressively sweaty crawfish boils in Alief.

He even started referring to the Loop as “the Beltway thingy” like a true transplant. Thanksgiving was easy. I didn’t go.

Jon drove up to North Carolina in his new “Texas Edition” Chevy Colorado he bought for himself after trading old Lenore in to visit Aunt Becky and the kids, and I stayed home under the very valid excuse of “healing from pancreatitis” (read: I was in no emotional shape to be around a woman whose idea of comfort is offering you deer jerky and unsolicited commentary on your bra size) .

“You sure you’ll be okay, sugarplum?” Jon had asked before he left, cradling my cheek with one hand and a giant-ass cooler with the other.

“Fine. You go eat salmon cakes and vibe with your hillbilly ancestors. I’ll be here, recovering and watching Patricia lose her last brain cell on Instagram Stories.”

He kissed me goodbye and returned a few days later with a cooler full of bacon and something he called “red hots,” which looked and smelled like Satan’s Vienna sausages.

Now, with Christmas creeping in like a Mariah Carey whistle note and the air finally pretending to be chilly, I was leaning into my favorite season with the emotional stamina of a woman who’s survived both hospitalization and high-level internet slander.

In a twist of fate—or trauma-induced solidarity—I’d struck up a friendship with Blake’s ex-fiancée, Jeanine.

It started with a cautious DM that read, “Hi, I think we’ve both been attacked by the same lunatic,” and evolved into a text thread called Survivors of Patricia (SOP for short).

Jeanine had just gotten married to a hunky real estate agent named Kaleb in Vegas.

I watched their elopement photos like they were reruns of Friends.

The best part? Not a single sighting of Blake or Patricia. Honestly? Iconic.

“I like her,” I told Jon one night as we were laying in bed, eating the Christmas cookies my mom had made him “with real butter, not that vegan nonsense.”

“She seems sane,” he said between bites.

“That’s rare for anyone connected to Blake.”

“Oh, she’s got a Taser in her purse now,” He raised an eyebrow.

“That’s the hottest thing I’ve heard all day.”

Meanwhile, I’d been texting Valentina—Blake’s daughter and future FBI agent in training. The girl was sixteen, sarcastic, and smarter than all of us combined. She sent me a text last week that read:

“Patricia took me around the house and pointed at corners saying that’s where she saw meth coming from.” I almost choked on my peppermint mocha.

“ Meth. Corners. Of the house .”

“She said it really serious too,” Valentina had added.

“Like she was on Breaking Bad.”

“She’s unwell,” I told Jon.

“Like, really unwell. She also told the kids I run a sex trafficking ring out of a Texas airport.”

Jon blinked at me from across the kitchen, where he was making scrambled eggs in nothing but flannel pajama pants. Heaven .

“That seems logistically exhausting,” he said.

“Also… where in the airport?”

“I think Concourse C,” I deadpanned. He snorted.

“Damn. And I thought TSA was the worst thing in Houston airports.”

But the truth was, Patricia’s lies were so insane they bordered on performance art.

If she’d said I was secretly a lizard woman who shapeshifted into flight attendants at night, it might’ve had more traction.

Her Instagram was like a narcissist’s manifesto crossed with a poorly-researched Lifetime movie.

Every accusation was just a detailed description of herself: lazy, uneducated, manipulative.

Her ex-husband even messaged Jeanine and me to say, “She’s like a Roomba—sucks the life out of a room, circles in chaos, and never does any real work.

” And don’t even get me started on Blake.

Blake had gone completely off the grid—no calls, no visits, no child support, nothing.

After Jeanine got a protective order against Patricia (a smart woman), Blake decided parenting just wasn’t for him anymore.

He ghosted his kids harder than a Hinge match with a neck tattoo.

Valentina told me, “He said he couldn’t come visit because of ‘court stuff.’ I said, ‘You mean the court stuff that keeps your crazy girlfriend away from us? That one?’” We love a teen with emotional clarity.

Meanwhile, I was trying to keep my blood pressure low and my Christmas spirit high.

Jon had wrapped the two Christmas trees my mom puts up every year in white twinkle lights that kept shorting out every time it rained, and I had spray-painted pine cones gold in what I thought was a whimsical Pinterest moment but ended up looking like a glittery squirrel funeral.

“Are we normal yet?” I asked Jon one night as we watched Elf for the third time that week and my mom walked in carrying a fresh batch of rum cake.

“Babe,” he said, pulling me into his chest, “compared to Patricia? We’re like the Kennedy’s.” Touché.

And so, surrounded by Caribbean food, fake meth allegations, and an absurd amount of Christmas lights, I leaned into the absurdity of it all. Because if life was going to keep throwing curveballs, at least I had someone to catch them with—preferably shirtless, and holding a tray of bacon.

The week before Christmas, my parents announced they’d be flying to Switzerland for ten days to “relax, eat chocolate, and stare at snow-covered mountains like two boujee bond villains.”

“You’ll be fine, right?” my mom asked, casually packing a suitcase full of thermal underwear and eating rum cake.

“Of course,” I replied, while internally calculating the probability of the house catching on fire, Nacho getting eaten by a hawk, or Patricia parachuting onto our lawn with a printed-out restraining order and a megaphone.

They were leaving us to house-sit. During Christmas.

With one neurotic dog, a possessed Roomba, and a hot tub that sounded like it was haunted when the jets came on.

We were also ushering Cleopatra Belle—our family’s 15-year-old diva of a Corgi-Dachshund mix—into the afterlife.

Once regal, always dramatic, Cleo had lately taken to glaring at walls and growling at her own shadow.

She had also developed an aggressive form of cancer, and as much as we joked about her being a furry demon in a dog’s body, she had been my loyal companion since my 20s.

The vet came on a cloudy Tuesday. A kind woman with a voice like warm tea and eyes that knew this wasn’t just a dog—it was an era ending.

We lit candles. My dad played some soca music softly in the background (I suspect Cleo requested this telepathically).

We all sat on the floor, petting her velvet-soft ears while she drifted off, surrounded by the humans she’d bossed around for over a decade.

Even Jon, who had only known her for a few months, cried.

Big, silent Jon tears that he wiped away with the sleeve of his flannel like a rugged lumberjack caught in a Hallmark moment.

We had her cremated and placed her on the family pet shelf in the hallway—next to Mona Lisa (our childhood dachshund who had a temper worse than mine) and Adonis (my mom’s beautiful baby who once bit Ranger … maybe more than once)

After all the tears and sniffles and awkward family hugs, my mom still dared to check if I knew how to use the security system.

“I swear if you set it off again, the HOA will call.”

“I’ve grown since then,” I said.

“No, you haven’t,” she replied, zipping up her designer suitcase and kissing me on the forehead. And then they were off. Switzerland-bound. Leaving me and Jon in charge of the house, the cremated dogs, one unstable living dog, and the holidays. Which we nailed, obviously.

Jon was in full Southern Holiday boyfriend mode.

He had big plans: a smoked turkey that took up half the fridge, turnip greens with ham hocks simmering for days, and homemade stuffing with cornbread so moist it could’ve written poetry.

I, naturally, was in charge of all the high-maintenance side dishes—mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and my world-famous cranberry sauce that required an entire bottle of red wine and two hours of simmering while listening to George Strait.

“Do you think one turkey’s enough?” Jon asked me as he poked at the brining bird like a man interrogating a suspect.

“There are only two of us.”

“Yeah, but what if we want leftovers for, like, three weeks?”

“We are not pilgrims,” I said.

“We are not living off turkey and cranberry sandwiches until February.”