Sweet Tea at Sunrise by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

arrangement guarantees I can see him every other weekend. Sarah doesn’t object if I come more often.”
    “You have to see him in South Carolina,” Marshall said with a sneer, as if that were akin to Timbuktu. “How’s the boy supposed to learn about his legacy when he doesn’t spend a minute with his family here in Alabama?”
    “He’s barely four. He doesn’t need to learn how torun a cotton mill just yet,” Walter replied for about the hundredth time. “Let it go, Dad. Maybe if you and mom hadn’t been so mean and spiteful to Sarah, she wouldn’t have taken Tommy and Libby and left town. I offered to buy her a house here in town, any house she wanted, but she said she could hardly wait to get away from the two of you.”
    Not that he didn’t bear his own share of the blame. There were times when Walter felt as if he’d let his parents brainwash him about Sarah. It was interesting that she’d called him on just that last weekend when he’d been over to Serenity for a visit. He hadn’t wanted to hear it, of course, but he could see now that she’d been right. His view of Sarah had started changing the minute he’d brought her home to Alabama to live.
    How many times had he heard that she wasn’t good enough? How many times had his mother criticized her housekeeping, her social skills, her desire to teach? And, of course, the worst sin of all was that she’d gotten pregnant before they were married. They acted as if she’d done that all on her own, then treated the wedding as if it were an occasion for shame.
    The real shame, of course, was that he’d let them get away with it. No, it was worse than that. It was that he’d taken up the same rallying cries. Sometimes when he looked back on his marriage, he wondered who the hell he’d been. Certainly not the man Sarah had met at college, a man so crazy about her he’d known almost instantly that she was the one he wanted to marry. He’d let his parents’ nonstop criticisms erode not just the passion, but also the respect he’d always felt for Sarah.
    Sadly, none of these things had occurred to himbefore it was too late. It was only after Sarah had gone, after the divorce was in motion, that he began to see the strong woman he’d fallen for in college. When he stopped to analyze it, which he didn’t very often, he knew that was why he continued to lash out at her, like the other day when he’d criticized her taking a job in that diner. He’d heard those critical words coming out of his mouth, known how arrogant and superior he sounded, but he hadn’t been able to shut up.
    As frustrating as it had been at the time, a part of him admired Sarah for standing up to him, defending her decision to work and defending Wharton’s. He wished she’d done more of that when they’d been married. Things might have turned out differently.
    “I suppose you’re going over there again tomorrow with your tail between your legs,” Marshall said disparagingly.
    Fed up in a way he’d never expected to be, Walter stood and threw down the pen in his hand. “No,” he said, drawing yet another disappointed look from his father. “As a matter of fact, I’m going over there right now.”
    His father seemed to take that as a good sign. “If I were you, I’d just pick Tommy up and bring him straight back here. Nobody around here would dare to take that boy away from his daddy. They’d have to answer to me.”
    Walter shook his head. “I’m not surprised you’d want to go that route, and you know what? It makes me glad Tommy’s with his mama, because the last thing I want for any son of mine is for him to grow up to be anything like his granddaddy, thinking the whole world needs to bow and scrape to him.”
    The veins in his father’s forehead pulsed, and hiscomplexion turned an interesting shade of purple. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, boy! My whole life’s been about you and making sure you had a legacy to be proud of. I’d think twice