their dreams.
When Kristen was sixteen, the Hansen family took her on vacation with them to the Caribbean. Mr. Hansen had arranged to have a private yacht at their disposal. Kristen and Michael had the vessel all to themselves one afternoon and he decided that Kristen should learn how to fish. She leaned over the railing, casting out her line while he kept his strong arm around her slight body, preventing the wind from carrying her off. She loved his scent of cocoa butter and musky cologne. Michael patiently coached her until she reeled in her first one. He gave her a smile as he removed it for her and she proudly held it up as he applauded. She then insisted that it go back in the water. Michael gently released the fish and when he turned back, he gave Kristen a long kiss. No one was there, except the ocean, and they couldn’t stop once they started. The magnetism was so strong.
Kristen challenged him. “Michael, do you like me?” Michael gave her a cocky look “Of course I like you Kristen. You’ve always been my buddy!” Kristen pressed on. “Not like that Michael. You know what I mean.” Michael stood back from her like a bee had just stung him.
He didn’t have a chance to answer her. Unexpectedly, his family arrived back early pulling up in a dinghy and boarded the yacht. His father laughed “So, did you two have a good time together?” Michael just smiled at him and went below deck. Kristen told Mr. Hansen about her fish as she lamented to herself at the loss of her opportunity to land Michael too.
There were several other incidents where Michael and Kristen would find themselves alone, but Michael wouldn’t let anything happen. There were no more kisses, nor any opportunities to lead her on. Kristen was still crazy about him. She couldn’t help it. She had unwittingly placed Michael in the middle of her one-sided teenage fantasy.
Eventually, fall came and Michael went away to an Ivy League school out east. His parents flew out to see him whenever he had semester breaks and he didn’t come back to Illinois. Kristen missed him greatly and realized she had very strong feelings for Michael. She thought out loud as her heart jumped. “He’s the one!” She just knew he felt the same.
As the seasons moved on, Kristen was now ready for college herself and decided to live at home and attend the prestigious Northwestern University which was only two miles away. She enjoyed writing and chose Journalism as her major. A few weeks later, Mrs. Stratford unexpectedly died during a cosmetic procedure. Kristen was in total shock and felt like she lost her best friend. It started feeling extra lonely in the Stratford house and her father seemed to be out of town on business more often.
It did not take long before a Golf Club Manager introduced her father to Margaret. She was a sixty-plus socialite that had been a widow for a short time. Margaret had the term Gold Digger nailed down to perfection. She had risen far above her ho-dunk roots deep in Georgia. She was a real southern belle. A real snake!
It had been too easy for her father to move on and Kristen now came to believe that her young and beautiful mother had only been a business prop to him. It seemed that she was just someone to wear on his arm. Kristen was also thinking that the Stratford children were also part of the show. They all looked like the perfect family smiling from the gold framed photo on his office desk. She hoped that no man would ever treat her solely as a possession.
It only took a short time for Margaret to work her charms and to Kristen’s dismay, Mr. Stratford plowed ahead and married her. Kristen moved into an apartment near campus and she never saw a family holiday again. When that time of the year popped up, Margaret always made sure they were either on a cruise, or with her grown children.
Mrs. Stratford had cared deeply for her four children and arranged for an early trust fund for them. Just a little something to get them by. Each one was to receive a lump sum and then a distribution each month. The rest of their mother’s family money would then be made available whenever her father’s estate was divided after his death.
Time passed uneventfully. Kristen was doing very well in college and decided that she wanted to be a fashion writer. She began working free-lance and would submit articles to various publications. Her father was proud of her and began to communicate more often. Kristen wondered if something was adrift in his marriage since lately he never seemed to mention his wife to her.
His birthday was the following week, so Kristen decided to call him and ask what he wanted. The phone rang a long time and the machine did not pick up. She was about to hang up and was pulling the receiver away from her ear when she heard a familiar voice. It was her brother John.
Kristen practically yelled in utter fear “What are you doing there?” Although he always buttered Margaret up, Kristen knew John hated the Step Witch even more than her; in fact he was the one that named her. It was rare that he would ever go over there to visit. He said quietly “Kristen, Dad is dead.” Kristen felt her heart absolutely rip apart inside. A cold mass of air filled her lungs and she almost went black. She started crying, emitting a primal noise “Oh no! Not my baby. Not my father!”
John continued “He died Tuesday morning. We’ve been trying to reach you all week, but Margaret said she did not know your newest number. We don’t even know where you live. The funeral is tomorrow at 10 AM. I can’t talk right now. I will see you there.”
Kristen sadly walked into her bedroom and felt lonelier than ever. She softly cried for most of the night. She was definitely not looking forward to tomorrow or seeing Margaret. “What a liar. The Step-Witch did indeed know her number.”
Once again, Kristen dressed in black and drove to their church. She hated funerals. She was always in such bad shape at them. She ran into her sisters and brother before the service started. Wide-eyed, her oldest sister told her that the night before a big water pipe crashed through a guest bedroom ceiling at her father’s recently built house. Also, a swarm of bees invaded the living room while Margaret was sitting in there.
John, who had an unhealthy fondness for Cutty Sark, seemed like he was a little drunk. He mumbled “Do you think Margaret black-widowed him? That’s too weird all that stuff happened to her. Maybe, Dad was trying to tell us something from the grave. You know, it was exactly a week before his 75th birthday, when I think his life insurance expires. I think Margaret is the sole beneficiary!”
Her sisters, who liked Margaret, groaned, and even Kristen had to choke out a laugh from underneath her tears. John looked as if he really believed it. Kristen said sarcastically “Maybe it’s true!” She looked at John’s face. “Oh, come on John, you know she didn’t. Go sober up, will you?”
The church was packed with extended family members, friends, and Mr. Stratford’s club and business acquaintances. The back room was also filled to capacity with guests watching the service on a large television monitor. Kristen sat on the opposite side of the pew from the Step Witch and sobbed quietly. She noticed Margaret kept her head down but did not shed a tear; and twice she pulled out her phone to scroll through her text messages.
After the service, they had the funeral luncheon in a banquet room for closer friends and relatives. Funeral parties were not an easy thing for Kristen to enjoy. She hated it when people would see her grieving in public. The guests always seemed to whoop it up too much at these events. It was good to see everyone, but it was too hard for her to be there.
Kristen did not see Margaret the entire time until they were in the restroom together. They were both standing at the sink when Margaret said “Kristen. Just who were you crying for at the funeral? It surely wasn’t for your father.”
She then walked her tight butt out of there. Kristen stood there dumbstruck. She could not believe how mean that woman was. To avoid another run-in, Kristen decided to drive home and not go back into the party.
A few weeks later Kristen was surprised to receive the first distribution check of what inheritance she had immediately coming to her. It was made abundantly clear that Margaret would only have access to the interest, and never
the principal. The interest was still a lot of money for Margaret, but Kristen guessed the Step-Witch was taken by surprise and not pleased knowing that she did not have total control of the whole estate. If she had, Kristen and her siblings would have never seen a penny. Margaret had fought off the pre-nuptial, and it was good to know that her father finally succeeded in the end with preserving the family money which was intended to be passed down through the generations to come.
Kristen knew the obvious choice was for her to immediately move down to Palm Beach. That was the place that always made her the happiest. But she did not have the amount of straight cash that was needed to secure a home there. That was going to have to wait until her big inheritance.
Within a week, she arranged her move and was ready to hit the road. The drive went well, and on the second day she entered Georgia. It was in the upper 70’s. She had held onto her winter coat for just this occasion and threw it into a dumpster outside of Taco Bell.
When she finally entered Florida, the sky seemed wider and it lightened up like a blanket that was pulled down from her eyes. The road shot straight down the middle of the state and she could sense the Gulf and the ocean growing
The Devil's Intended-Love & Evil In Palm Beach Page 2