Icicles tingling against a cold slab of ice, tin glimmering on the surface of aluminum sheeting, organ pipes collapsing in a pile of glass shards, and the collapse of the crystal palace long after the Great Exhibition ended in 1851.
These sounds compared as nothing against the cacophony that reverberated through the small apartment above Balmoral’s General Store. Georgianna stood at the kitchen sink, solid as petrified wood, her face locked in a stare on the salmon-colored wall in front of her. She could not bear to turn around.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Mother Balmoral!”
She’d come to like her new daughter-in-law, but at that moment, Agnes’s melodic soprano voice eviscerated Georgianna of any hope that the worst had not happened. She turned around in discrete, clock-wise motions that had her despairing of what she’d find when her body reached six o’clock.
Agnes stood by the cluster of shelves on the wall near the hallway’s entrance, holding a laundry basket filled with Norman’s sweaty undershorts and shirts. Those three shelves stood completely bare, but the floor by Agnes’s feet resembled the demolition of a pre-Civil War building making way for a modern skyscraper.
Georgianna cried out. Her Royal Doulton figurines, every one of them smashed onto the floor. The only valuable possessions she’d been allowed to take in the foreclosure.
She thought of everything at that moment. Her son getting a divorce; the benefits of corporal punishment; slapping Agnes until she turned blue; punching her in the stomach and bringing her pregnancy to an abrupt end; and murder. All these thoughts went through Georgianna’s head at that precise moment.
And then the horizontal line of composure, trained to her by her mother, rose in front of her, over her head, and behind her. Think what the queen would say, her mother would always counsel.
“Agnes, my dear, these are only minor trinkets. You needn’t concern yourself over them. And please, dear, call me Georgianna.”
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