She smashed her Waterford goblet on the wood floor and ripped her brooch of Agnes and Patrick off her dress. She looked at the pictures -- Agnes on the left, Patrick on the right. She lobbed the picture of Agnes out and tore it to shreds. The dining room walls closed in on her. The floor rose up and the ceiling crept down. Her mouth went dry, she felt the sewer-like vacuum of acid gurgle in her stomach, and her hands shook. Mother Limerick stood in the foyer, saying something in her Irish brogue, Siobhan had no idea what. She had to get out of this room.
Agnes gone, Agnes gone, my daughter is gone to me, all I've got left is Patrick, where is he, I never see him around the house anymore, either, I have no one, my husband is dead, my four babies gone twenty-five years, my only daughter gone, my son God knows where, I have no one. Despite her Oxfords and heavy stockings she galloped up the steps two at a time, vomited into the toilet across the hallway, then ripped into her bedroom, the choke of vomit particles still in her nose.
She threw herself at the window. Please, God, please say this isn't so. My Agnes married that Protestant heathen. And she's going to have his baby, a little bastard damned from conception on. She's damned herself for all eternity. Don't let it be so, she was always such a smart girl, such a good little girl even if she was left-handed, please, God, please say this isn't so. Let me wake up from this nightmare and see her pretty red hair and green eyes in front of me. Let me hear her play Beethoven on Mother Limerick's piano, let me hear Collin scold her for doing her math equations. Please, God, please say this isn't so.
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