Stepping Carefully Onto Each Rotted Wooden Step, to Keep Them from Creaking, Kaidge Climbed

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PROLOGUE

Summer 1981

Stepping carefully onto each rotted wooden step, to keep them from creaking, Kaidge climbed the stairs to his bedroom. His stomach clenched irritably as he listened to Pricilla in the bedroom near the bottom of the stairs. Her shrill voice spout curse after curse at John through thin as cardboard walls. Kaidge refused to call them mother and father since last spring when his mother beat his twin sister, Rochelle, black and blue with a wooden spoon. Their father had been too drunk to know what was happening therefore leaving it up to him to protect her from Pricilla. It had only taken a brief struggle that day for Pricilla to shove him into the hall closet and then prop a chair under the door knob trapping him there. Kaidge was bigger and stronger now and he knew he would never allow that to happen to him again.

His mouth angled down in a firm scowl as he remembered bloodying his fists as he pounded in desperation on the door to get to Rochelle. Pricilla had always been mean……..like a dog protecting its bone. If you left her and her things alone she would ignore you, but if you got too close she was unreasonably vicious. When Pricilla came home to find Rochelle playing dress up in one of her dresses she raged at her and it was like the devil took Pricilla over. Kaidge always got physically ill when he thought of that day and how scared he had been that Pricilla would kill Rochelle. The torment didn’t end when soon after Rochelle was sent away.

As Rochelle climbed onto that bus just days later, headed for the private school in California, tears streamed down her face and she begged him to stop their parents from sending her away. Pricilla callously laughed her shrill high pitched laugh and informed Rochelle that it was his idea to send her away. He wanted to explain that he wanted her safe but Pricilla wasn’t going to give him that opportunity. Kaidge hadn’t even wanted Pricilla to go to the bus with them but she insisted, determined to make sure Rochelle got on the bus. The look of complete rejection he saw in Rochelle’s eyes sealed a hate in his heart so deep for Pricilla that everyday it drove him to become everything she was not.

Kaidge swallowed hard and as the anger flowed through him his fist clenched so tight on the banister that his knuckles turned white. He always knew how cold and selfish the heart that lay beneath Pricilla’s skin was and learned years ago to build a wall around his own heart. The problem was that Pricilla was clever if nothing else and knew she could get to him through the pain she caused Rochelle. That’s why he had to stay away from his twin sister…………..it was the only way he could protect Rochelle!

Turning the door knob slowly Kaidge realized there was no way to get into his bedroom without causing the door to squeak so he held his breath and quickly swung it open. It wasn’t that he feared Pricilla but more that his hatred of her was so strong that he was afraid that some day he would loose control. There had been many times when he had wanted to choke Pricilla’s skinny little neck until not a breath was left in her. Days after Rochelle left Pricilla taunted him mercilessly and he did grab her by the neck and held her to the wall until her face was red. Kaidge saw the fear on her face and he knew that she was scared of him. Pricilla’s only power over him was and always would be through Rochelle.

When Pricilla’s high pitched screeching from the room below continued he shut the door and with a book of matches lit the three inch round wax candle on the four drawer chest next to his bed. John had built this shack they called home with his own hands but never got around to running the electricity up to the ten by ten room that made up the whole top floor. As often as their power was turned off it really didn’t matter anyway.

Kaidge proceeded to peel the smelly sweat soaked clothes from his body and it wasn’t until he stood shivering in his underwear that he realized he hadn’t brought any water up with him to clean up. A second trip down and then up the warped stairs probably wouldn’t go unnoticed. Kaidge chose to stay dirty and put on the comfortable extra large t-shirt that lay at the end of his bed. It wasn’t clean either, but it was dry.

A glass bottle crashed against the wall down stairs and he knew immediately that Pricilla threw it because John was just as passive when he was drunk as he was those few moments he was actually sober. Only seconds passed before the front screen door groaned open and then slammed shut and the house became eerily quiet, with only the creaking of weathered walls as the cool summer night wind blew fiercely outside.

Kaidge let out the breath he didn’t even realize he was holding then sat on the old metal framed bed. The mattress sagged under his thick muscular body and the smell of onions permeated the air. He was thankful that tomorrow would be corn fields so he wouldn’t have to spend his day bent over like today. Reaching was always preferable to bending so low to the ground and if Kaidge had been the average height of a ten year old boy, rather than so extremely big for his age, picking corn would not be so easy for him. But then again, the average ten year old wouldn’t have the stamina to do the kind of work he did, seven days a week, anyway. If God hadn’t blessed him with such a big sturdy physique and a strong cunning mind he and Rochelle would probably not have lived this long. Their lives had held unimaginable trials in a home where their mother not only didn’t want them but was even resentful that they existed. She had cared for them as babies seeing them as a way to get into their wealthy grandfathers good graces. When he still would not give her the time of day they became a burden to her.

Putting his hand on his aching back like an old arthritic man would Kaidge got down on his knees and reached to pull out the beat up math book shoved back to the wall under his bed. He had to check each evening and could only relax when he opened the book and saw his money was still stashed in the hole he had cut into the thick pages. It wasn’t even half what he needed to pay the tuition for Rochelle’s private school but he still had time and was just glad Pricilla managed to pay two years up front. She already seemed to have forgotten she even had a daughter once she discovered that the private school wasn’t going to get their grandfathers attention any faster than her last several schemes. “It was clever of me however,” Kaidge thought, “to make her think it would”. But then again, what did it matter to Pricilla because the fool she conned out of the money was still lavishing her with attention and she now had one less child to deal with. If Pricilla discovered the money he kept under his bed it would disappear faster than fresh slop in a pig pen so he needed to see if he could find a way to open a bank account without his parents help. Putting it back in the book Kaidge made sure to shove it all the way back to the wall under the bed again.

Standing Kaidge removed the five heavy investing books piled on the two thick plastic milk cratesstacked upside down next to the bed. The crates served as a table to do his home work on. Each night he read the investment books by candle light until he fell asleep; usually with them lying open on top of him. He needed to return them to his favorite employer Justin Taylor Sr., the town’s one and only lawyer, especially since he had already read each one several times. With his photographic memory he really didn’t need to keep reading them but felt compelled to do so anyway. Feeling for the pencil he stowed under his mattress with his left hand Kaidge opened his trigonometry book with his right. A cool breeze chilled him to the bone while putting the candle on the dresser out and a small amount of light coming in showed Kaidge that the dirt encrusted window above Rochelle’s bed, on the other side of the room, had blown open again.

Relighting the candle he stared at Rochelle’s empty bed for a moment before crossing the room to close the large window and hook the rusty latch. The first days she was gone he had really struggled, but not anymore. That naive child…….. The one that dreamed about friends to play with and family meals with parents who cared about what their children did all day had finally grown up. “I will make my fortune someday,” Kaidge thought, “everyone will look up to John Kaidge Sterling Jr. the man! My name will hold as much weight as Carnegie or Ford!” Angrily Kaidge walked over and yanked the thick gray privacy curtain between the beds shut. He would allow no time for self pity he reminded himself as he irritably shoved aside his math book and opened one of the investing books instead. Pricilla would never lay a hand on Rochelle again and some day she would see that all the Sterling men weren’t worthless drunk bums!

CHAPTER 1

Spring 2009

The largedark ugly green center appeared almost black and was the ugliest thing Morgan Chandler had ever seen. Thehideous center stone was surrounded in little yellow gems that formed what appeared to be legs. It looked like it belonged in some Egyptian art museum display. “It is so dreadfully awful,” Morgan thought as sheset the picture on the seat next to her so she could hold the steering wheel with two hands again. The roads were very narrow and twisted left then suddenly right quit frequently on the east bound interstate headed through the WasatchMountains. Morgan couldn’t understand why anyone would want something so hideous and even be willing to pay herten thousand dollars to steal it?Thatwas the insanely large amount of money Roxxi Sterling, her best friend, had promised her in return for this so called “favor.”Not that ten thousand was a hardship to Roxxi, sinceshe often spent that kind of money in one weekend without as much as a second thought.Morgan could only imagine what life would be like in Roxxi’s shoes having worked hard for every dime she spent all her life. But Roxxi seemed oblivious to her good fortune, and Morgan believed some one had to be paying her bills since Roxxi had no financial common sense whatsoever.

Morgancouldn’t keep herself from glancing again to her sideat the picture lying on the passenger seat.Maybe the picture didn’t do the brooch justice. Either way it was the answer to her prayers. Looking back up just in time to miss an oncoming car Morgan swervedquickly back into her own lane and ignored the honking horns from bothoncoming and the traffic behind her. Her mindraced a mile a minute as it had been for the last week now with issues too distracting to even let the fact that she almost became road kill even faze her.

Roxxi had told her some long drawn out story about how the brooch belonged to her mother and was a gift. For some reason Kaidge, Roxxi’s twin brother, decided he didn’t want Roxxi to have it and took it. It had something to do with principle and Kaidge believing their mother was a terrible mother, butMorgan really didn’t care about the details.She didn’t try to make sense of it because in truth she desperately neededthe money.Morgan did however find it ironic that Roxxi needed a favor,and was willing to pay lavishly for it at what was probably the most financially desperate she had ever been.It seemedbest not to question her good fortune and that is how she ended up on this detour to Colorado instead of headed straight to New York, as were her original plans. It was alright though because the new plan was simple enough. She would find the Sterling estate, charm her way in, get the brooch and be back on the road to New Yorkwithin a day or two. A short detour was definitely worth ten thousand dollars, in fact Morgan would have done it for far less money but Roxxi cared more about that ugly brooch than she did the money, and at this point in time that worked in Morgan’s favor.

Leaving the mountainous roads behind for a more desolate road Morgan thought for the first time since leaving California early yesterday morning, “I am completely alone now”. Mark, her boyfriend of several years, hadn’t tried to stop her.It made sense though because what had originally attracted her to him was how he never tried to change or control her in any way. In fact, she realized he had never really showed much concern about what she did when they were apart, which was seventy percent of the time. In hindsight this should have been an indicator that their relationship would never be more than just friends and maybe that’s all she had ever really wanted. Morgan smiled thinking of their last moments together. One of Mark’s redeeming qualities had always been a sense of humor and it showed in the unusual good luck gift he handed her as she walked out their door for the last time.Morgancouldn’t help but laugh as she realizedthat the little plastic spy glass he bought her at a toy store,he wastrying to be facetious,may actually come in handy.She wouldactually miss him.

Red and blue lights appeared in her rearview mirrorstartlingMorgan out of her thoughts. As the police car closed in fast from a quarter mile back Morganirritably flipped on her blinker and navigated over to the side of the road. There hadn’t been a speed limit sign for quite some time butshewas fairly sure that she hadn’t been speeding.Digging for the registration card buried in the over stuffed glove compartment Morgan breathed a sigh of reliefwhen the police cruiserflew right by.When she lookedup into the rearview mirror and prepared to pull back onto the road Morgan caught sight of her tired drooping eyes. It had only been a week since she made this drastic decision to up root her comfortable life to go to New Yorkto care for little Jeremy and already Morgan was seeing the effects it was having on her. The biggest thing she would miss was her job. The sense of accomplishment she got when her news articles resulted in actual change. HopefullyNew York would have even more causes for her to sink her teeth into. This was her opportunity to start fresh. “Maybe there won’t be any Morgan bashing on the early morning news shows,”Morgan thought aloud and smiled. Those radio shows didn’t realize they were actually helping her career by encouraging people to buy the paper whether they were for or against her views.

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Kaidge Sterling thanked the lady at the front desk of the hotel again for a pleasant stay as he tried once more to check out. The young pretty clerk was stalling in every way possible, from swiping his card backwards to hitting wrong keys on the computer. He had spent the last few days fighting off her advances as Justin Taylor Jr., Kaidge’s lawyer and best friend, enjoyed watching his fruitless efforts. Justin even tried to convince him to loosen up a little and enjoy the attention. After all she wasn’t all that bad looking with her long golden blond hair and big blue eyes, but Kaidge was all business, all the time. He was like a magnet to women with his well tailored expensive suites hanging sophisticatedly off his broad shouldered six foot two frame.

“Why is it women always go for tall men,”Justinhad said to himself more than once since they arrived.The relationships Justin had witnessed between Kaidge and women had always appeared more like a business transactions than something of a personal nature. Not for lack of effort on the ladies part; Kaidge was a real catch financially and he had the looks too, but he was completely cut off emotionally. No self respecting woman could put herself through the torture of a long term relationship with Kaidge Sterling. He treated them well by holding doors open and buying them gifts but they never got past the wall he built around his heart. Justin believed that was why the majority of women in his life had been gold diggers. Kaidge treated all women, with the exception of his twin sister, with a cold distant and completely fabricated respect.