“Collin, would you use the ashtray, please! Not on Annie Kate’s oriental rugs!”
“I’m sorry, Siobhan, I forgot. It’s not as if it won’t clean up.”
Annie Kate Limerick would pop a blood vessel if she knew Collin had flicked his cigar’s ashes onto her priceless red rug. Not only did her mother-in-law detest Siobhan’s brother, she’d bought that rug at an exposition in New York back in ’93 and spent a small fortune shipping it to Philadelphia. Annie Kate loved it better than any possession she’d left behind when giving the house to Siobhan and Martin twenty years ago.
Collin was her favorite brother, the monsignor of St. Patrick’s, and now that Martin had been dead a dozen years, the sole father figure for Patrick and Agnes. But oh, what a mess he made whenever he came to visit! If it wasn’t cigar ashes on the floors, it was soggy food on her dining table and red wine stains on the chairs. Thank goodness Collin didn’t take snuff, otherwise he’d just spit it out on the floor wherever he liked.
She looked up the stairs, wondering if Annie Kate had overheard her complaint toward Collin. All she heard was rowdy snoring from Agnes’s bedroom. She’d probably taken a nap after chatting with Agnes. Why did grandmother and granddaughter always run off together?
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