Ain't She Sweet? by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

her a raspberry.
    “You know you’ll try to nip me if I come after you.” He never went so far as to actually hurt her, but he liked to keep her on her toes.
    She watched him trot up the steps to the veranda. “Fine. Do me a favor, and don’t bother to come home.” Contrary to the habits of the rest of his breed, Gordon refused to roam.
    He liked torturing her too much to hit the open road. She stomped back toward the carriage house. What did it say about a person when even her dog hated her?
    She grabbed her purse, stuck an old straw cowboy hat on her head, and set out to search the depot for the painting. But as she tramped down the drive to her car, she found a ticket for unlawful overnight parking tucked under her windshield wiper. Terrific. She shoved it beneath the visor and headed for town.
    Purlie’s Auto Shop was still doing business, but an office supply store sat in the space once occupied by Spring Fancy Millinery. Diddie had taken her there every year to buy an Easter bonnet, right up until sixth grade, when Sugar Beth had rebelled.
    Diddie’s nostrils fluttered like butterfly wings when she was displeased. “You ungrateful child. Exactly how is our Dear Lord supposed to know it’s Resurrection Day if He sees you sittin’ there in church bareheaded like some heathen? Answer me that, Miss Sugar Baby?”
    Sugar Beth had fluttered her nostrils right back. “Do you really think Jesus Christ is goin’ to stay in his grave just because I’m not wearin’ a hat?”
    Diddie had laughed and gone to find her cigarettes.
    A longing for her loving, imperfect mother welled up inside her so strong that it hurt, but her feelings toward her father were all bitter. “He’s not my real father, is he, Diddie?
    Somebody else got you pregnant, and then Daddy married you.”
    “Sugar Beth Carey, you hush your mouth. Just because your father is a reprobate doesn’t mean I am, too. Now I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again.”
    The fact that Sugar Beth’s silver-blue eyes perfectly mirrored her father’s made it impossible to hold on for long to the fantasy of Diddie having a secret lover.
    She supposed her parents’ marriage had been inevitable, but they couldn’t have been more ill-suited. Diddie was the extravagantly beautiful, fun-loving daughter of a local storekeeper. Griffin was the heir to the Carey Window Factory. Short, homely, and intellectually brilliant, Griffin was smitten by Parrish’s reigning belle, while Diddie was secretly contemptuous of the boy she considered an “ugly little toad.” At the same time, she coveted everything a union with him would bring her.
    Griffin must have known that Diddie was incapable of giving him the adoration he craved, but he’d married her anyway, then punished her for not loving him by openly living with another woman. Diddie retaliated by appearing not to care. Eventually, Griffin raised the stakes by turning his back on the person Diddie most loved . . . their daughter.
    Despite their mutual hatred, they never considered divorce. Griffin was the town’s economic leader, Diddie its social and political one. Each refused to give up what the other offered, and the marriage ground on, dragging a confused little girl in its destructive wake.
    Sugar Beth passed a McDonald’s, spruced up since her high school days, and a travel agency sporting one of the downtown area’s new maroon and green awnings. She turned on Valley. The one-block street, which was anchored at the end by the abandoned railroad depot, had escaped the town’s revitalization efforts, and she parked her car on a crumbling patch of blacktop. As she gazed at the dilapidated redbrick building, she saw the place where Colin Byrne had stood for his fuzzy author photo.
    Shingles had blown off the depot’s roof, and ancient graffiti covered the splintered plywood boarding up the windows. Cans and broken bottles littered the weeds by the tracks. Why had Tallulah thought it was so