Read Everything She Ever Wanted for Free Online Page B

an
    exposer.   His father was much too controlled to do such a thing, or had
    always seemed so to Tom.
     
    Still, his dad had done about everything else he could to make their
    lives miserable.
     
    Tom called his father's law offices and no one answered.   His life
    seemed to be spinning out of control.   It was one thing to have his
    father angry with him.   Lord knew he was used to it.   But every day
    brought some new shock.
     
    Margureitte had told him his father didn't care if he lived or died and
    wouldn't even spit on his grave if he did.   His father had accused him
    of putting poison in his own baby's milk and of stealing guns from
    him.
     
    And Pat believed his father had ruined him in the job market, and would
    actually kill him if he got the chance.   That was exactly what he had
    told Mrs.   Radcliffe.
     
    Even Nona and Paw had warned Tom that he might be in danger.
     
    But this.   His father had done the unforgivable.   Walter Allanson, an
    attorney at law, candidate for judge, had exposed himself to his
    wife.
     
    Tom was enraged.   Poor Pat was so sick she could barely move, her
    collarbone hurt her all the time, and still she had been out there
    trying to help by mowing the lawn.   How dare his father frighten and
    shock her that way?
     
    It made Tom realize that Pat had been right; he couldn't let his father
    get away with it.   Neither of them could stand for such shabby
    treatment.   As much as he dreaded the prospect, Tom knew that he would
    have to confront his father.
     
    Walter O'Neal Allanson and his wife, Milford-but called Carolynwere
    both fifty-one in late June of 1974.   They had been married for
    thirty-two years, more than half of their lives.   They lived in East
    Point, a gracious suburb adjacent to Atlanta's southwest border.
     
    Theirs was by all accounts a comfortable marriage, although some said
    that Walter had strayed a bit in his forties.
     
    If he had, Carolyn had let it go.   The woman involved was long dead.
     
    In his fifties, Walter Allanson had grown almost puritan in his
    opinions about the sanctity of marriage, as virtuous as a reformed
    hooker.   If there were children involved, he was inflexibly against
    divorce-a sometimes difficult stance for an attorney whose practice was
    general law.
     
    Walter was a handsome man with iron gray hair and clear bluegray eyes,
    a compactly trim man-save for a slight falling away of his chin line as
    he moved through middle age.   "Big Carolyn" was a plain woman who
    rarely wore makeup.   Her hair was brown and combed back from her face
    into nondescript waves.   She was neither slender nor fat; rather, her
    figure was full breasted and solid.
     
    The months ahead promised to be as challenging and exciting as any in
    the Allansons' lives, ever since Walter had announced his candidacy for
    a civil judgeship.   He had a good reputation, and there was every
    reason to think he would win in the fall elections.   Carolyn truly
    enjoyed her job as a nurse in a local doctor's office, but both she and
    Walter came home for lunch every day.   They were always together.   If
    the early fire had gone out of their relationship, they were
    companionable.
     
    Walter came from simple people, uneducated but with native
    intelligence.   His childhood had been hardscrabble, and.   it was
    important to him to have money against tomorrow's uncertainties.
     
    He was shrewd when it came to real estate.   He had bought the house at
    1458 Norman Berry Drive in East Point for a good price.
     
    The neighborhood was prime then, with Norriian Berry Drive a pleasant
    boulevard divided by a green strip of young trees and shrubbery in its
    center island.   Russell High School, Walter's alma mater, was almost
    directly across Norman Berry.
     
    The house was built in the.   forties of dun-colored brick and white
    siding with peaked dormers.   It was a solid house, set on a plateau so
    high above Norman Berry Drive that a man