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Esme is aware, to the depths of her soul, that most decisions in her life aren’t made for her or by her. Her birth, her marriage, the hours spent taking bets with a belly heavy and round. She decided her love, though. That is all hers, a household with a husband and children, gilded in her mind’s eye, glowing.
It is, therefore, expected that that life slips away from her, by will of the universe.
~~~~
The Lees and the Shelbys aren’t on the best of terms. She doesn’t get involved, exactly. Her brothers, her cousins and uncles say the streets are no place for a woman, but more importantly, they’re no place for anyone who values their life.
Esme values hers to the point she can. She stays out of it where outside eyes are concerned. If she overhears conversations, if she stands too close to walls, if she peeks from corners, well. That’s nobody’s business but hers.
A bullet with Tommy Shelby’s name isn’t enough to stop that family. It should be. It should more than halt it, it’s a clear threat, tempered glass, enforced.
Naturally, it’s disregarded.
Esme learns, within one heartbeat in which she is her parents’ daughter and her brothers’ sister and the next, in which she’s spoken for and soon to be a bride to a boy she’s never met, that Tommy Shelby is incapable of understanding threats, that he knows how to press the glass so it’s shattered, thumbnail-sized pieces.
Turns out the enemy of my enemy is my friend is something her family believes in. To go against Billy Kimber and his horse races and his earnings and his evasion and dealings with the British Police, they are willing to believe in it.
In a way, Esme doesn’t mind being a pawn in this game. She likes kids, she wants kids, and she wants a husband. She didn’t plan on getting a husband who already has kids, but that’s okay. They’ll make some of their own later, and with the money rolling in, legal or not, they’ll grow up better than she did.
~~~~
She does what she tells herself she does best — she flees. It’s harder than expected, she stops mid-folding more than once, pressing wrinkles in the fabric of her skirts. She thought it wasn’t in her blood to get attached to places, and she’s not. Not in the pale blue of the walls or the cold metal of the bed frame.
But she can’t run a hand over the comforter and not think of how bundled up John slept, she can’t hear the chickens and not picture him and two of the kids running after them, tripping, laughing.
It’s more sentimentality than she wants and more than she can afford, so she takes to writing letters to Tommy, Arthur, Polly. They’re supposed to be just strongly worded — half the words are cussing them out. Worse, the ink is blotched. Esme won’t admit those are tear stains.
She doesn’t send them.
~~~~
It is not the will of the universe. It is the will of the Italians. It is the will of the Shelby family, of Tommy, and it has been their will since the moment they chose this life. Bullets, flesh, bullets, flesh. Rinse, repeat. For every body that falls a dandelion grows in her mind.
~~~~
In the February sun, weak and unable to penetrate the cold, Esme stands knees-deep in the river Seine, removing drool and food off the kids’ clothes. She fantasizes about washing Changretta’s blood from her good dress shirt, the one she wore to Arthur and Linda’s wedding.
Later that day she writes letters again. Two this time, just Tommy and Polly. Taking care with each stroke, she forms words that sound nice and amiable and extending a branch. She sends them back with a Lee boy on his horse, a surefire way for them to be opened, but also a surefire way for them to be received on time.
~~~~
She threatens two boys that are probably at least three years younger with a broom until they agree to teach her how to perfect a bullseye.
~~~~
Esme’s not accounted for when Changretta rounds up the family in the gin distillery. Arthur isn’t either, apparently.
~~~~
Her perfecting her shot turns to be unneeded. Men work for the highest bidder, and for the ones that stood in this room, that’s no longer Changretta. Through the yells and the turned-over tables and the glass breaking, the sound of her gun is not nearly as deafening as expected or feared, almost point blank.
For a second, as she watches his knees buckle and his body fall, feels the adrenaline reach her heart through her veins, leave through the arteries, she understands why this family opened themselves wide. Dug through every piece of them to give to this life then unburied more.
Only for a second.
~~~~
Luca Changretta is laying in a pool of his own blood. Esme has a cut or two herself from a shard, she can see her sleeve dyed red.
Tommy is spotless. Messy hair, yes, dark circles. Maybe a bruise under the buttoned shirt from where Changretta had pushed and hit him, but no injury. Esme did this for herself only, for her anger, for her need to exact revenge. In an alternate reality where she’s as devout as Arthur’s wife, it’s for her own peace of mind too. Yet, it’s Tommy who ultimately comes out the winner. It’s his issues resolved.
There’s a metaphor hidden in there somewhere, if she thinks about it. If she thinks about it, she can describe her life using a snapshot of this moment alone.
She doesn’t think about it.
Where’s your manners?
She doesn’t want to, but-
“Thanks,” she tells Polly, who only lights a cigarette.
“We all have our demons to exorcize,” she gets in response, through a puff of smoke. “I suspect this was yours.”
It was.
~~~~
Within the week, all the kids and she have their bags outside of Tommy’s manor, because that’s what it is. A bigger house than any single person would need.
The maid, Frances, doesn’t want to let her in. Esme doesn’t care.
She finds Tommy next to the fireplace. “You said you’d cut me from this family, years ago,” she says. “I cut myself. I didn’t like it.” Esme swallows. “Charlie would grow well in the company of other kids, I’m staying here.”
There needs to be a talk about how far from the life she’ll be staying, too, but not now. Not today. She’ll build a good life for her children, and this house has more security and luxury than John could ever dream of.
She throws a dirty suitcase on top of what are probably satin sheets. At the edge of the horizon, the last ray of the sun of the day gets swallowed.