The League of Berries and Laurels -- Ch. 6 (Pt. II)
Continued from:
Only decorations have changed in their grandparents’ retired home. For as long as Ulie has remembered, it has always been their home. It seems a place from which, in their old age, its denizens are inseparable, and this was the intention of people who are willfully deluded about their past and the source of their evident wealth. Just as it was along the nearby trail, from Ogilvie near the Loop to Milwaukee, a model train of the exact blue and same engine, stenciled with the exact logo, and pulling the exact cars, runs without a true conductor around the resplendent Christmas tree. As is the tradition, although she has been in university for a good few years, their grandfather ceremoniously produces a glittering ladder and offers Ulie’s sister the angel, first, and then a hand, so that she may place the dazzling finishing touch to tie the room’s streamers, baubles, and scenes all together atop the tree. She hops down with assistance to applause. Once all is through, and their grandmother, with her characteristic energy, rushes the others about, Mr Kerrigan’s father’s face falls.
“Where is Francis?” He gruffly asks near to a hiss.
“Sick,” is all Mr Kerrigan says. “Francis is sick is all.”
“Sick? You mean sick with the problem he had in the city, do you? Listen to me, no, you listen. Listen to me. When you went away, as if that was not shame enough, Francis was a black eye upon this family and all we built. The situations he found himself in, to speak nothing of the places he was discovered and dragged out of, it hung about our clan until, for your mother’s and wife’s sake, if not for my own, I left our empire to your brother’s care and brought us here. With you at home, are you telling me you still cannot mind your house?”