Annie Kate Limerick: Something's burning

She smelled an ugly mixture of singed wood, scorched brussel sprouts, and pungent iron from the kitchen. "Siobhan, you've burned the vegetables again."

Her daughter-in-law might've made Martin a good wife and provided him with two beautiful children, but she couldn't manage the kitchen, at least not since Martin had died and Annie Kate had moved back into the house. Why, oh why, on earth wouldn't Siobhan surrender the kitchen to her? It was her own kitchen, after all -- at least, it had been until Andrew had died in 1909. Back then, she'd given up the house so that Martin and Siobhan could move in. They were expecting their second child and needed to live in a bigger house, and as tradition dictated, Martin as the oldest son moved into her house -- the house she and Andrew had bought when his bricklaying business took off in the 1890s, where she'd lived nearly 20 of her 60 years -- and Annie Kate went to live with her cousin Aurelia in Chestnut Hill. Nearly ten years later, though, Martin died -- her favorite son, gone -- so Annie Kate had moved back to the red-bricked house on the corner of 6th and Pine Streets. She loved it here, but oh, how quiet it now sounded without Martin's jolly laugh ... and little Agnes, not even nine, quiet and still as a mouse, the frilly laughter and curls silenced since Martin succumbed to the flu on the day before Christmas.

She walked into the kitchen -- her kitchen. How different it looked from when she was this mansion's mistress! Dark walls, dark wood on the floors, deep red draperies in the back of the house! Why, she'd insisted on bright colors and open windows even in the 1890s, when dark furnishings and colors were all the rage. No denying, Siobhan Limerick was an entirely different woman than she, but of course, Siobhan hadn't raised nine children -- she'd only had two, not counting the four that died at birth. And she hadn't needed to deal with the famine in Ireland, the harrows of making the Atlantic crossing, pregnant with Martin's younger brother, dealing with Americans hostile to the Irish (thank the Lord for Mr. Tasker, or she'd have died) -- no, she only had to deal with the loss of some babies and being a widow at 40. She didn't watch her favorite son succumb to the influenza like Annie Kate had.

But now Siobhan wanted to burn the house down -- her very own house! Annie Kate raced over to the stove and extinguished the fire with a bucket of water. Smoke went everywhere, right into Annie Kate's flaming red hair.