Alright, this first chapter is basically a SETUP for the chapters to come. It is NOT in the same format as they will be in, which will be in episode-type format, with dialogue, etc. Please note this if you are planning on referring to this in a review. Just a warning.

Please read and review! . I have a whole bunch of chapters on the way, ready to go, but I would like some reviews and opinions from readers before I post them.

By the way, I don't own Adrian Monk, Natalie Teeger, etc.

The first day

I never thought my life would turn out this way. Everything wasn't supposed to be such a mess. I thought that when I got married that I'd be married for the rest of my days, raising a family together, and spending all my years with my husband, watching our kids grow up and raise their own families. Of course, it's obviously changed now, and somehow I've pulled through the hell of it all these past six years. I really don't get how Julie does it. Most nights I cry myself to sleep because I have no other time to do it, between working at the bar and Julie. She can't see how much it tears me up inside each and every day, but I feel that I'm through the worst. Well, maybe not; I don't know. She seems to cope well, but now that she's approaching her teen years, the lack of a father figure may hurt. Sometimes I get angry that he ever set foot in a plane, but then again, I never would have met him if he hadn't…

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I had been working as a blackjack dealer in Vegas for almost a year, barely scraping by, and had become addicted to gambling. He came over to my table where I had been losing tons of money, looking so incredibly handsome in his pilot's uniform that I actually looked up from my game. I was then about 23, and Mitch was 28. He had stopped his jet in Vegas to catch up on his sleep before beginning a new flight, but had decided to look around the casino first. He told me to stop gambling, that I would lose everything if I continued. I obeyed. I gave up gambling for good, eventually leaving Las Vegas with him…. That is, until a few years ago, when I decided that the house our family had lived in together was too much to bear. I had spent five years living with him and Julie in that house, and three with just Julie.

Then along comes that godforsaken intruder into my private home, and my life is changed again. I actually kill another human being, with my daughter's scissors, no less. And I still can't believe that I am not a complete basket case over what has happened to me. I do give myself credit for keeping calm, if only for Julie's sake. She's smart about stuff, but she's already gone through a lot from her father's passing, and doesn't need her mother having a nervous breakdown. It's bad enough knowing that the scissors she once used took someone's life.

Of course the San Francisco police department is inept in explaining what those men were doing in my house, and I seriously consider moving out. I had thought I had really started anew in renting that apartment, in reviving that goldfish year after year after year for Julie, but my plans just have to fall through every time. What better way than burglary to jolt me back to my senses?

In all my haste to find out why there were not one, but two intruders in my house, I chase down the "renowned" Adrian Monk, the man who I find can't even handle putting out a fire in a waste basket. At first glance, he seems quite ordinary, dare I say even quite distinguished, wearing his brown suit and dress shirt and polished shoes, but right when he begins moving and speaking, that's when I can tell there is definitely something wrong with him. Well, I can't say wrong with him because it's exactly that aspect of him that enables him to do what others can't, I suppose. In just that first day with the detective, my life will probably change yet again, hopefully for the positive.