#Minerva Lucianne Sheehan-Malone

[colleenmurphy]

Stomping thudding footsteps signaled that the Master of the Manor was home. Nearly three hours late but Fred was home nonetheless. The Lady of the Manor, as she liked to call herself, otherwise known as Minnie Sheehan-Malone, was thinking of just how expensive the car repairs were going to be this time. Jimmy had to have been drinking at The Club.

The Club. Ugh.

"Think of the family, Minerva. Think of our reputation."

The steady sound of Minnie's delicate chopping on the island block of their cavernous kitchen stopped. Knife still in hand features set and mind ticking like a bomb she studied her husband of nearly thirty-eight years.

"Our reputation can fly the fuck away, Lemual. If reputations were everything I'd have married Jimmy Murphy."

Flicking her knife towards a seat at the small table in the corner she motioned Freddie's drunk self to sit down. The lumbering string bean as she called him these days plopped himself down rather ungracefully into the wicker back chair.

"You're one to talk about reputations considering you're the one that set her up with that Flannery boy. He beat her senseless at the summer house and you blamed her."

All five feet of Minnie was standing on edge now, her right hand still holding the knife in a death grip her rings flashing from under the cold white bulb that hung in the kitchen. Something about being modern, Fred had said when they renovated the formerly beautiful brownstone. Just like everything else in his life Frederick Malone had have the very best of everything. The newest most top of the line..thing. That's all he viewed the people in his life as, that's all he ever saw them as. Pieces of window dressing to help him climb the social ladder. Minnie had had enough.

"Let her be happy this time. You got what you needed from the poor girl."

A look of disgruntled disgust flashed over his once handsome booze soaked features.

"Oh here we go. The poor Mother's Baby schtick. She's twenty-five years old, Minnie! She can't always be your little girl."

Who else had their daughter had then? Fred had missed damn near every event in her daughter's life. Except her wedding to Frank Flannery. He had been 'out of the country' aka in rehab during the divorce proceedings, Minnie had seen to that.

"Well, she certainly isn't yours."

Was her cutting reply that set him off in a blind drunken rage that ended with a pan full of chicken marsala on splattered across the kitchen as she brought a white hot stainless steel pan upside his head after he knocked the knife from her hands. The police had ruled it self defense, the insurance paid out partially and Fred was cremated and scattered at sea without ceremony. Minnie sold the wreck of a brown stone, gave the cash to Colleen and her new lawyer boyfriend - a fiery little prosecutor working for the DA's office named William Edgerley and she was setting sail for the French Rivera. She had someone waiting on her in the Lerins Islands.

#Minerva Lucianne Sheehan-Malone #Mary Colleen's mother