The phone call

Yesterday morning I tried to call Granny, but Patrick answered the phone and hung up. I wish they would forgive me. I know that Granny does. After all, she's the one who encouraged me to marry Norman, watched me leave the house as I ran away on St. Patrick's Day. I miss her dreadfully, I miss talking to her. She hasn't answered any of my letters. I suppose Patrick or Uncle John have intercepted them. When Patrick brought my trunk over to Norman's parents' house, he was curt and rude to Mr. Balmoral and, when my new father-in-law called for me to come to the door, my fuming brother said, "That's quite enough, sir, I don't need to speak with Agnes."

We don't need to speak. Quite the opposite, we need to speak every day. We need to talk about the baby. Only Granny knows about it, at least as far as I know. We need to talk about how ridiculous this feud is becoming. We need to talk about the Catholic Church, that I only left it to marry Norman, and just how similar it is to Norman's Episcopal Church. I really, really want to speak with my grandmother. My beloved Annie Kate!

Yesterday morning I was sick to my stomach again. I guess it's the morning sickness. I'm sitting here at Victoria's desk, sitting in my mother-in-law's place at the phone, staring out the window. Shall I try calling Granny again? Perhaps Mama would answer, I want to speak with her, too? I miss my mother, too. But Uncle John laid down the law: no more associating with the "sinner," Mama's daughter doomed to perdition. That much I know, without even being there. I got pregnant before I got married, in itself a damning crime, and then I married a Protestant. Damned to hell on two counts, I suppose. No, Uncle John would see to it that Mama and Patrick never saw me again. But Granny, how could he control Granny? No one had ever told Annie Kate Limerick what to do.

Looking out the window, I see Balmoral's General Store across the street on the corner. That's where it all began -- that Saturday afternoon I was so desperate to see Norman. I tracked him down to his parents' store, where he was balancing the books in the back office. The empty store and missing him led to our first time, my first time ever -- which explains my current predicament. Why hadn't I planned better? But no, I let my feelings get the better of me. Norman was probably in that same office right now, and probably hasn't even thought that this is where we had sex the first time.

Oh, hell, I'm going to call home and try to talk to Mama or Granny. Ah! And the phone is ringing now. I hope, hope someone with a woman's voice will answer.

"Hello?" said the old voice on the other side of the line. I recognized it at once as Annie Kate.

"Granny, it's me!"