Post by Emma “Emmz” Squalor on Apr 19, 2009 18:35:36 GMT -5
Originally, I was between decisions in whether or not to post this. But after some encouragement from Jenny, I've decided to. I would also like to credit her for the idea of Olaf hating Esmé's freckles.
Anyway, this is a very personal piece I wrote in order to cope with some issues I've been having lately. It doesn't necessarily tie into either my main or RPG universe, but can be considered a companion piece to The Ominous Obsession.
Author’s Disclaimer: I do not own A Series of Unfortunate Events or any of its characters or places. They belong to Lemony Snicket a.k.a. Daniel Handler.
Rating: PG (for one word of course language).
Genre: Drama/Romance
Story-Type: One-Shot
Summary: Esmé Squalor copes with some obsessive compulsions.
Esmé Squalor was restless.
It was nearly three o’ clock in the morning, and she hadn’t slept a wink all night. Every time she felt ready to doze off, she would be jolted awake by a thought pertaining to some pointless task she had not yet performed. By now, she was so exhausted that she had lost count of how many times she’d gotten out of bed. Her mind felt fuzzy, but not enough to cloud the realization of what still had to be done.
Being extremely careful not to wake Jerome— who had fallen asleep from almost the moment his large hands had wrapped around his wife’s soft middle —Esmé threw her long legs over the side of the bed. Grabbing the patchwork quilt she had tossed over the foot of the bed the last time she had gotten up, she wrapped the quilt around herself. It was unusually cool for mid April, which caused her to shiver inside of her pink and white pinstripe pajamas as she headed for the door.
In her heart, Esmé knew what she was doing couldn’t possibly be considered normal behavior. She could only imagine what her associates at the bank might think, if what the city’s sixth most important financial advisor did in her spare time was ever discovered.
Esmé shook her head, eliminating such discomforting thoughts from her mind. What made her feel worse was what her husband and two children would think of her. Emma was not yet five years old, but still Esmé was concerned with what the child’s interpretation of her mother would eventually be. Perhaps Esmé’s strange behavior could possibly be related to Emma having recently started nursery school. Esmé smiled at the thought, convinced for a moment that was all it really was.
Carmelita was an extremely light sleeper, which was why the former villainess stopped before her adopted daughter’s bedroom. Esmé never allowed either of her children to sleep with their doors closed, and therefore was extra quiet as she crept past Carmy’s room. The last thing Esmé needed right now was for Carmelita to think her adoptive mother was some kind of crazy for wandering the hallway of the penthouse in the middle of the night.
Esmé’s bare feet were cold against the carpet, and she wished she’d remembered to wear her slippers. But it was too late to turn back now. Because she was just three doors away from her husband’s study, she decided she might as well go the rest of the way, slippers or no slippers.
A few seconds later she was standing outside the door, which had been left ajar following her previous leave. Rather than flicking on the light and risk waking the penthouse’s other inhabitants, Esmé simply chose to stride across the room in the dark.
As Esmé lowered herself into the swivel chair by the desk, she cursed herself for having shut off the computer earlier. She hadn’t intended on coming back, and it was going to take at least five minutes for the computer to boot up.
With a quiet sigh, Esmé pressed the button on the monitor and watched the soft, florescent glow of the screen light up in the darkness.
While she waited, Esmé wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and crossed her legs. She wondered what Jerome would think if he discovered what his beloved wife did every night after he’d gone to sleep. Knowing him, he would find it cute to find her typing on his computer in the darkness. Then he would actually see what it was she was typing and think she had completely lost her mind.
The consideration that Jerome would even think something negative about her was enough to beckon tears to Esmé’s eyes. She blinked them away as the desktop loaded, and smiled a little at the background her husband had chosen for the week. As usual, it was a picture of her: she was standing in front of the window in their bedroom, her long-nailed hands folded protectively across her then six-month-old pregnant belly.
Even though she had seen it every night for the last five days, Esmé couldn’t keep the blush from creeping into her cheeks.
Her eyes stayed focused on the picture as she took the mouse and moved the arrow key over to the start menu. She clicked it, and then moved the arrow key up to the Notepad program. Another click, and a blank document opened up on the screen.
Taking a deep breath for courage, Esmé positioned the fingertips of both hands on the keyboard and began to type furiously.
“Yvette walked to the store and bought a jar of marmalade,” Edward said.
“Edward drove to his daughter’s school and participated in a meeting with her teacher,” Raymond replied
“Raymond sat down on the couch and watched television,” Yvette answered.
Leaning back in her chair, Esmé took a look at her progress. She still had a few more things she needed to accomplish, but she had thankfully gotten past the bulk of it. Judging by the computer’s clock, it was just fifteen minutes to three. She was grateful it was a Saturday and that she didn’t have to be up early for work, seeing as it was unlikely she would be able to drag herself out of bed before ten.
Esmé’s eyes ached from lack of sleep, and she ran her hand tiredly over them in the same way Jerome did when he was exhausted or frustrated. It was these two emotions that were currently running through the financial advisor’s mind. She groaned at the idea that it would be another few minutes until she could go to bed.
Staying up late had never appealed to Esmé until just recently. Until then, she had preferred getting to bed either before or by ten, in order to perform her tasks at the bank successfully the following day. But over the past few weeks, it was getting harder and harder for her to keep up. Eventually she was going to give someone the wrong amount of money or possibly fall asleep at her desk. She had only recently returned to work, and now she was going to have to quit because she could no longer handle the job.
The thought was enough to cause Esmé to start panicking, which was just another attribute that had come along with her strange typing obsession. She couldn’t explain the significance of either: only that she had been struggling with both on and off since she was a teenager. She had managed to conceal both very well, and it was only after Emma’s birth that Esmé had begun to lose control. Her obsession with being both physically and emotionally perfect had gone from being part of her everyday life to a downright burden. She didn’t know how many more nights like this she could take, before she ran through the hallways screaming.
As if she thought this might happen, Esmé bit her lower lip softly and turned her attention back to the computer screen. She would be finished soon— just a few more sentences and she could finally capture the sleep she missed so much. Her long, manicured fingernail was just about to tap the “enter” key so she could start a new paragraph, when the door behind her squeaked.
Esmé jumped. Why had she not bothered to close the door after coming into the study? Of course, it was so she would be able to hear Emma— who tended to wake up in the middle of the night —if she happened to call for her mother. Too embarrassed to ask who it was, Esmé chose to sit perfectly still. She hoped that whoever had entered the room would ignore the light coming from the computer screen and not notice the silhouette of her head in front of it. Just in case, she sunk down as low as she possibly could in the chair until she felt the bottoms of her toes touch the wall.
“Carmelita?”
Esmé recognized the voice as that of Jerome. He must not have spotted me, she thought, and breathed a silent sigh of relief. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the embarrassment she would suffer if Jerome came over and read what she had typed. Esmé hadn’t noticed before, but the sentences she had written were very similar to the notes Carmelita took down in Mr. Remora’s class. So as long as Jerome didn’t decide to spin the chair around, Esmé would be safe.
“Carmy,” Jerome said, and Esmé felt her heart begin to pound as light flooded the room. It meant that her husband would be coming over, and there was nothing she could do without exposing herself. She shut her eyes, feeling her face redden with humiliation as she sensed her husband drawing closer. “It’s three o’ clock in the morning… have you been up all night talking with Lisa over Instant Messenger again?”
Esmé couldn’t help but smile at that, and she bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. Then she remembered what was on the computer, and her smile faded instantaneously. She was getting ready to shoot out her hand to turn off the monitor, when a pair of hands gripped the top of the chair and spun it around.
In another moment, Esmé was gazing up into the miraculous green eyes of her husband. His brown hair had curled up on the right side the way it always did after he woke up, and his chubby face was covered in a light layer of stubble. He looked so sweetly confused by his wife’s presence in his study at such an ungodly hour, that she felt a small amount of tension leave her.
“Hi,” Esmé said, and batted her long, curly lashes. Because she had no makeup on, the freckles around her cheeks and bridge of her nose were conspicuous in the bright light.
“Darling,” Jerome asked, “what are you doing up at this time of night? And in my study, of all places?”
Esmé shrugged, before sliding her hands away from the armrests and placing them in her lap. Her eyes lowered, and she began to ssalsae at the skin of her cuticles. It was an unconscious habit she had recently picked up, which she participated in whenever she was nervous. She would only stop when she began to bleed. She hoped that everyone at the bank had dismissed it as a sloppy nail-polish job, rather than the self mutilation she was so famous for at home.
“Esmé, stop that,” Jerome said, and knelt before her so that he could take her hands in his. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Esmé attempted to release one of her hands from Jerome’s grip, but the billionaire succeeded in holding her fast.
Her camisole had ridden up to nearly above her ribcage, and her round, soft stomach curved over the waistband of her pajama pants. She blushed as her husband leaned forward to kiss her just below the bellybutton. As he laid his head upon her stomach she let out a deep, contented purr.
Esmé knew she was never going to get any work done with Jerome fawning all over her, but it was a welcoming feeling to be reminded of how loved she was.
She didn’t suppose he would be able to understand what it was she was going through if she told him, and that time was going to come eventually. She only hoped he would put the question off until after she’d gotten some rest.
Esmé’s red-nailed toes curled as she felt Jerome’s thumb and forefinger gently squeeze the roll of baby-fat underneath her bellybutton. In response, she wrapped her arms securely around him and buried her face in his hair. She kissed the top of his head, just as he did the same to the spot his fingers were presently touching.
Esmé could be on the brink of fatigue, and still have enough strength left to give Jerome what he wanted. Because, in most ways, they both wanted the same thing. She was starting to get past the fact that she was now noticeably curvier, with hips and a stomach that would never again be flat no matter how many sit-ups she did. She liked the way her husband was so attentive to those two parts of her body, which just so happened to be the ones she was most self conscious about.
As Jerome kissed Esmé just above the bellybutton, she hugged him tighter. At that moment, she felt so comforted that she’d nearly forgotten about the ritual that had since wandered to the back of her mind. She groaned inwardly, not wanting to give up her safe place in her husband’s arms but knowing she didn’t have a choice. If she expected to get any sleep tonight, then she was going to have to take the next step in completing her ritual.
“Jerome,” Esmé said, feeling his hands slide past her elastic waistband and rest on her bare hips. “Honey, why don’t you go back to bed and wait for me? I promise I’ll be there soon. I just… I have to finish something for work.”
“But it’s the weekend,” Jerome practically whined, and squeezed his wife’s hips gently. “Can it not wait until Sunday?”
Any longer and I’ll lose my mind, Esmé thought miserably. With much reluctance, she pushed her husband’s hands away and spun around to face the computer.
Jerome was no longer the type who took his wife’s indifference to heart, and he peered over her shoulder at the screen. “Carmelita must have been typing up her notes for Mr. Remora’s class,” Jerome pointed out. “And forgotten to turn off the computer.”
“You can stay if you want to,” Esmé said. “Just don’t stand there looking over my shoulder. It makes it difficult to concentrate.”
After kissing his wife lovingly on the cheek, Jerome walked a few paces and collapsed down on the loveseat by the window. In spite of the circumstances, Esmé smiled before turning back to the task at hand.
Her mind tended to drift every time she lost herself in her ritualistic behaviors. She was very much aware that they made little to no sense, and that the reason behind them was a mystery. If someone was to ever discover that she spent one to two hours a night losing herself in obsessive compulsions, she didn’t like to think what the result would be. She’d struggled enough in trying to get back her reputation following the articles in The Daily Punctilio: the last thing she needed was to be thought of as a psychotic on top of a harlot.
Regardless of the fact that her eyes ached and her temples throbbed, Esmé forced herself to press on. It wouldn’t be long until she was finished— her reward would be a warm hand on her belly and a head overflowing with beautiful dreams.
Closing her eyes, Esmé took a deep breath to prepare herself for the next part of her ritual. Positioning her fingers on the keys, she used the preceding sentences she’d typed as a guide for those she pounded out next.
Yvette walked to the store and bought a jar of marmalade.
Edward drove to his daughter’s school and participated in a meeting with her teacher.
Raymond sat down on the couch and watched television.
As Esmé’s punched the last letter of the final word with her long-nailed finger, an incredible relief washed over her. For the first time in three hours, it was as though she could breathe again. Leaning back in the chair, her eyes drifted to the ceiling and she stared, waiting for a thought to catch up to her. Such an occurrence was frequent following her rituals: she would be shutting down the computer or climbing into bed, only to realize she’d forgotten to type one of her dozens of sentences. If she didn’t do them a certain way (whether they be standard or dialogue), then it would be impossible for her to fall asleep. It was either give into her compulsions, or spend the entire night with unbearable stomach cramps. Esmé was all too aware that her behavior was absurd, and she wished she understood why it bothered her so much. She supposed that it must have something to do with her past, and her never-ending struggles for perfection. She knew that such a thing should no longer matter, because she had a family that loved her. But it was difficult to put the past behind her, regardless of what she had now.
“Sweetheart? Are you finished?”
Jerome’s kind voice snapped Esmé away from her thoughts, and she smiled sweetly in his direction. “Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go to bed.”
“O.K.”
As usual, Esmé closed the document without saving it and then shut down the computer. When the screen went black, she rose out of the chair and turned to face her husband. Her camisole was still riding high above her bellybutton, and she tugged the garment up a bit more so that her ribcage showed. Despite her exhaustion, Esmé’s feeling of entrapment had left her. She was able to fall freely into her husband’s arms, losing herself in the feeling of his soft hands on her plump hips and belly.
“Jerome,” Esmé said, as he kissed her bare shoulder. “Darling, I have a confession to make.”
His hands stilled, and he pulled her further into his lap. “What is it?” he asked.
“Those weren’t Carmelita’s notes on the computer before. They were mine.”
Jerome grinned. “Are you writing a story?”
“Well, I—”
“May I read it?”
Esmé shook her head. “It isn’t a story,” she said, and unlaced her arms from where she had wrapped them around her husband’s neck. Setting her hands in her lap, she began to pick at the skin surrounding her fingernails.
Just as he’d done before, Jerome made another attempt to stop his wife from injuring herself. Taking her hands, he held them forcefully so that she wouldn’t be tempted to continue with what she’d been doing.
“Esmé, you’re so tense,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“I can feel you trembling.”
“Only because I’m with you.”
Jerome smiled, and then let go of Esmé’s left hand. Raising his, he lightly thumbed the lower corner of her face where a tiny, heart-shaped birthmark was located. Up until she’d met her husband, she had always considered it to be a painfully embarrassing feature— especially when Olaf had forced her to cover it up. Other than that, he’d absolutely hated her freckles, insisting they made her look like a child. Esmé supposed that was part of the reason why she always made an attempt to conceal them. She had stopped trying to hide her birthmark, but only because Jerome insisted it was her best physical trait next to her “absolutely smashing stomach”.
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” he asked, and kissed his wife on her birthmark.
Esmé was certain that Jerome didn’t expect she was lying to him, and his kiss assured her of that. “No,” she admitted. “Jerome, I… I’m weird.”
The billionaire chuckled, running both hands through his wife’s sleek ebony hair. “Well, I admit your fashion sense is sometimes questionable. But that’s just one of the many things I love about you, darling.”
Even though Jerome’s words weren’t enough to set Esmé’s mind completely at ease, they did give her the confidence to continue. “That isn’t what I mean. What I mean is I do other things. Things that society wouldn’t exactly consider normal.”
“Like what?” Jerome asked, genuinely curious.
“Like those sentences I wrote,” Esmé explained. “I do them regularly— nearly every night. It’s a… a compulsion I have. One that I can’t seem to shake.”
“Why do you do them?”
Esmé could already feel her face getting red, and she shrugged her shoulders unnervingly. “That’s just it, Jerome. I don’t know. If I did, then maybe I’d be able to stop.”
“You don’t have even the slightest clue?” he asked, concern lacing his voice.
Esmé’s blush deepened. She pressed her palms to the sides of her face and averted her ice-blue eyes from Jerome’s emerald green ones. “Well, yes,” she replied. “But I can’t tell you.”
Jerome laughed, and adjusted his knee so that Esmé was no longer sliding off his lap. “Why ever not, my darling?” he asked.
“Because I… I’m embarrassed.”
“What could you possibly have to be embarrassed about?”
Once again Esmé shrugged, and reached down to pull her camisole down over her stomach.
“Leave it,” Jerome commanded softly, and her hands slipped from the hem of her top. “And tell me what it is that has my little sweetheart so embarrassed.”
Leaning her head against her husband’s shoulder, Esmé laid her hand against his heart. “It’s complicated,” she began. “Because I don’t understand it myself, I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it properly. But I’ll try.”
Jerome’s thick arm laced around Esmé’s back, while his other hand pressed lovingly against her stomach. “Then try,” he encouraged. “And I’ll do my very best to comprehend all you have to say, my love.”
The financial advisor nodded silently. She drew her knees up so that they pushed slightly against her husband’s stomach, noticeable even through his pajama top.
“When I was a teenager,” Esmé began, “I kept a diary. It was a commonplace book given to me by Olaf’s mother, but I used it as a diary. I wrote in it every night for three years; filling it with my most personal thoughts and deepest desires.
“I remember the night when these unusual notions first took hold of me. I was eighteen, and Olaf’s parents had just been killed by very fatal darts. By then, I had already received Beatrice’s confession, and so there was a lot going on inside my head. I filled up six pages of my diary that night, which included dialogue from our conversation.
“I’d felt a bit better after I had gotten everything out, and then crawled into bed. Normally it would have taken me half an hour or less to fall asleep. On that night, however, it took me almost four. Not only because I was upset, but because of the thoughts gnawing away at my conscience. Thoughts of what I had written down circled around and around inside my head; insisting that I get out of bed and make it right.
“I waited until I heard Olaf start to snore, and then tiptoed down the hallway to my old bedroom. I retrieved my diary from underneath the worn out mattress and then went downstairs. Once I was sitting at the kitchen table, I opened my diary and looked carefully over what I’d written. It had taken me more than two hours to jot everything down the first time, and so it was going to take me twice as long to do it again.
“I replaced all of the words and phrases pertaining to death with less destructive nouns and verbs, until I had completely rewritten my entry. When I looked at the clock, I saw that it was closing in on two in the morning. I had just enough time to stuff the extra papers into the back of my diary and hurry upstairs, before Olaf got up to use the bathroom.”
After Esmé had finished her account, she waited anxiously for Jerome to say something. He hadn’t said a word throughout; she couldn’t help but feel it was because none of what she’d just explained made the slightest inkling of sense. She hated to think that any of her prior convictions were true, and that there was something wrong with her.
“Jerome,” Esmé said at last, “do you think I’m crazy?”
Her answer came in the form of a loving kiss to her forehead and a gentle caress across her belly. She shivered, her toes curling as her knees pressed into the softness of her husband’s stomach.
“No, Esmé,” Jerome insisted, his other arm wrapping around Esmé to pull her closer.
“I want to stop,” she insisted, as tears of frustration began to form in her eyes. “I wish I could, but I can’t. It’s too hard, and I’m too weak. I… I…”
Her husband’s large hand closed over her forehead and stroked back her bangs. “You, Esmé? Weak? My darling, you are by far the bravest person I know. You’re the one who rescued Carmelita from that terrible fire, and brought our beautiful baby daughter into the world.”
“If I was so brave, then why is it so impossible for me to stop doing something with no significant purpose?”
Esmé knew this was a question without an answer. She had been trying for years to find one, but she had never succeeded. And if she didn’t have an answer, what could possibly make her think Jerome did?
“I hate this,” Esmé pouted, too frustrated to realize how cute she looked. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, her hair was ruffled and her lower lip stuck straight out. “It’s not fair, Jerome.”
The tears that Esmé had been trying to hold back at last loosened from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She chirped sadly as Jerome thumbed away her tears, before cupping her face in his hands and kissing her on the nose.
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, and placed a second kiss on her lips. “But you’re doing the best you can, aren’t you? You don’t need to do anymore typing now, do you?”
Esmé shook her head. “No,” she replied, and sniffed. “I’m done for the night.”
“What I was able to gather from your account is that you only do these things when you’ve previously written something relating to death. Is that right?”
Esmé nodded, her oval face still cupped between her husband’s chubby hands.
“What I’m curious about,” Jerome went on, “is what brought all of this on in the first place.”
Esmé raised her hands and laid them on Jerome’s before answering. “It was during my lunch hour this afternoon,” she replied. “I was bored. So I decided to edit Annette Frazier’s Wikipedia page dedicated to her three dreadful Scottish Terriers.”
“The same ones that tried to bite Emma?”
“Yes! Did you know that each of those little beasts has its own room? Honestly! How neurotic can one woman be?”
“Isn’t Annette the one with curly blonde hair who always wears a navy-blue suit?” Jerome asked.
“No,” Esmé said. “That’s Melissa Reeves, my other co-worker. Annette is the irritatingly skinny one who’s always bragging about her husband the lawyer.” Esmé rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? She’s the mother of three children and still manages to maintain a size four.”
“Is that why you slandered her efforts, darling? Because you were jealous?”
Esmé huffed, and made an attempt to yank her top back down. As usual, Jerome caught her by the hands before she could succeed.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
Jerome stroked Esmé’s chin affectionately with his thumb before kissing her upon her perfectly petulant lips. “What was it you wrote on Annette’s Wikipedia page?” he asked. “That made you feel like you had to make up for it?”
Esmé shrugged. She was getting tired of discussing her strange symptoms with her husband. Jerome was probably only asking her questions to be polite, and not because he was actually interested. He probably thought she’d gone mad, and as soon as her back was turned he was going to contact her therapist.
“Just something about some dog she used to have that died,” Esmé replied nonchalantly. “She said it had some kind of kidney infection. When I altered the original sentence, I said its death was caused by getting run over by a clown car.”
She hoped Jerome wouldn’t think her too cruel, and was relieved when she saw that he was smiling back at her.
“You probably think I’ve lost my mind,” Esmé said. “Don’t you? Sitting here in your study, in the middle of the night, typing nonsense. And all because I feel so damn guilty over something no one else would give two thoughts about.”
Esmé knew that Jerome had only the purest of intentions, but the feeling of his hand on her stomach did little to reassure her. She was frustrated with herself for being weak and giving into something she didn’t understand, and for crying as if it mattered. She knew she had nothing to complain about: she lived in a luxurious and most expensive apartment in the city; she was married to the kindest and most handsome man in the world; she had two beautiful daughters and a well-paying job. In short, she led the sort of idyllic life envisioned only in fairytales.
Esmé was getting ready to announce that she was, at long last, ready for bed. Her mouth had just begun to form the words when she was interrupted by the petrified scream of her youngest child.
Esmé practically tumbled off Jerome’s lap in her attempt to race over to the door. With her husband trailing after her, she left the study and swept down the hallway to her youngest daughter’s bedroom.
With a flick of Esmé’s long-nailed finger to the switch by the door, a bright light revealed what was an almost blindingly pink room. Emma was sitting up in bed, her pink pinstripe comforter wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Her ebony locks hung in tangles and her shiny, blue eyes glistened with fear.
“Had a bad dweam,” Emma informed her parents. “Monstas.”
Esmé raced across the room and gathered the four-year-old into her arms. “Oh, Emma,” she said. “You must been so frightened…”
Her single eyebrow furrowing, Emma nodded as she nuzzled her into her mother’s shoulder. “Monstas scowy.”
“I’ll bet they were. But you’re safe now, darling. There aren’t any monsters in the penthouse.”
“How you know dat, Mommy?”
Jerome— who had been standing in the doorway observing his wife and stepdaughter —chose this moment to intervene. “Because your mother would never lie,” he confirmed, ruffling Emma’s hair.
“Well,” Esmé answered, and smiled sleepily at her husband. “I was going to say it’s because the doorman would never let a monster into the lobby. But Jerome’s answer is proof enough.”
“Do’ wanna go back to sweep,” said Emma. “Can’t. Too scared of monstas comin’ back.”
Esmé placed a kiss in the center of her daughter’s eyebrow. “Would you like to spend the rest of the night with Jerome and me?” Esmé asked.
Twirling her tiny finger around the strap of her mother’s camisole, Emma nodded.
While Esmé had been surrendering to the demons in her head, Emma had been trying to escape the ones in her nightmares.
As she looked down into her daughter’s big blue eyes, Esmé realized what she needed to do.
“Jerome,” she said. “I’m going to try my best not to let these thoughts take over me. I want to set an example for Emma. And the only way I’ll be able to do that is if I stop giving in.”
Jerome kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’ve never thought of you as anything less than brave,” he told her truthfully. “But being brave doesn’t mean you can’t be frightened, my darling. And I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you— even if it means staying up all night.”
“Then help me, Jerome. Help me be normal.”
Jerome smiled, the apples of his round cheeks pushing up the bases of his eyes so that he looked more adorable than ever. Had she not been holding Emma, Esmé would have thrown her arms around him.
Jerome placed a comforting hand on his wife’s waist. “Come along, my darlings,” he said. “It’s time for bed.”
It was the best suggestion Esmé had heard all night.
Anyway, this is a very personal piece I wrote in order to cope with some issues I've been having lately. It doesn't necessarily tie into either my main or RPG universe, but can be considered a companion piece to The Ominous Obsession.
~
Author’s Disclaimer: I do not own A Series of Unfortunate Events or any of its characters or places. They belong to Lemony Snicket a.k.a. Daniel Handler.
Rating: PG (for one word of course language).
Genre: Drama/Romance
Story-Type: One-Shot
Summary: Esmé Squalor copes with some obsessive compulsions.
***
Esmé Squalor was restless.
It was nearly three o’ clock in the morning, and she hadn’t slept a wink all night. Every time she felt ready to doze off, she would be jolted awake by a thought pertaining to some pointless task she had not yet performed. By now, she was so exhausted that she had lost count of how many times she’d gotten out of bed. Her mind felt fuzzy, but not enough to cloud the realization of what still had to be done.
Being extremely careful not to wake Jerome— who had fallen asleep from almost the moment his large hands had wrapped around his wife’s soft middle —Esmé threw her long legs over the side of the bed. Grabbing the patchwork quilt she had tossed over the foot of the bed the last time she had gotten up, she wrapped the quilt around herself. It was unusually cool for mid April, which caused her to shiver inside of her pink and white pinstripe pajamas as she headed for the door.
In her heart, Esmé knew what she was doing couldn’t possibly be considered normal behavior. She could only imagine what her associates at the bank might think, if what the city’s sixth most important financial advisor did in her spare time was ever discovered.
Esmé shook her head, eliminating such discomforting thoughts from her mind. What made her feel worse was what her husband and two children would think of her. Emma was not yet five years old, but still Esmé was concerned with what the child’s interpretation of her mother would eventually be. Perhaps Esmé’s strange behavior could possibly be related to Emma having recently started nursery school. Esmé smiled at the thought, convinced for a moment that was all it really was.
Carmelita was an extremely light sleeper, which was why the former villainess stopped before her adopted daughter’s bedroom. Esmé never allowed either of her children to sleep with their doors closed, and therefore was extra quiet as she crept past Carmy’s room. The last thing Esmé needed right now was for Carmelita to think her adoptive mother was some kind of crazy for wandering the hallway of the penthouse in the middle of the night.
Esmé’s bare feet were cold against the carpet, and she wished she’d remembered to wear her slippers. But it was too late to turn back now. Because she was just three doors away from her husband’s study, she decided she might as well go the rest of the way, slippers or no slippers.
A few seconds later she was standing outside the door, which had been left ajar following her previous leave. Rather than flicking on the light and risk waking the penthouse’s other inhabitants, Esmé simply chose to stride across the room in the dark.
As Esmé lowered herself into the swivel chair by the desk, she cursed herself for having shut off the computer earlier. She hadn’t intended on coming back, and it was going to take at least five minutes for the computer to boot up.
With a quiet sigh, Esmé pressed the button on the monitor and watched the soft, florescent glow of the screen light up in the darkness.
While she waited, Esmé wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and crossed her legs. She wondered what Jerome would think if he discovered what his beloved wife did every night after he’d gone to sleep. Knowing him, he would find it cute to find her typing on his computer in the darkness. Then he would actually see what it was she was typing and think she had completely lost her mind.
The consideration that Jerome would even think something negative about her was enough to beckon tears to Esmé’s eyes. She blinked them away as the desktop loaded, and smiled a little at the background her husband had chosen for the week. As usual, it was a picture of her: she was standing in front of the window in their bedroom, her long-nailed hands folded protectively across her then six-month-old pregnant belly.
Even though she had seen it every night for the last five days, Esmé couldn’t keep the blush from creeping into her cheeks.
Her eyes stayed focused on the picture as she took the mouse and moved the arrow key over to the start menu. She clicked it, and then moved the arrow key up to the Notepad program. Another click, and a blank document opened up on the screen.
Taking a deep breath for courage, Esmé positioned the fingertips of both hands on the keyboard and began to type furiously.
“Yvette walked to the store and bought a jar of marmalade,” Edward said.
“Edward drove to his daughter’s school and participated in a meeting with her teacher,” Raymond replied
“Raymond sat down on the couch and watched television,” Yvette answered.
Leaning back in her chair, Esmé took a look at her progress. She still had a few more things she needed to accomplish, but she had thankfully gotten past the bulk of it. Judging by the computer’s clock, it was just fifteen minutes to three. She was grateful it was a Saturday and that she didn’t have to be up early for work, seeing as it was unlikely she would be able to drag herself out of bed before ten.
Esmé’s eyes ached from lack of sleep, and she ran her hand tiredly over them in the same way Jerome did when he was exhausted or frustrated. It was these two emotions that were currently running through the financial advisor’s mind. She groaned at the idea that it would be another few minutes until she could go to bed.
Staying up late had never appealed to Esmé until just recently. Until then, she had preferred getting to bed either before or by ten, in order to perform her tasks at the bank successfully the following day. But over the past few weeks, it was getting harder and harder for her to keep up. Eventually she was going to give someone the wrong amount of money or possibly fall asleep at her desk. She had only recently returned to work, and now she was going to have to quit because she could no longer handle the job.
The thought was enough to cause Esmé to start panicking, which was just another attribute that had come along with her strange typing obsession. She couldn’t explain the significance of either: only that she had been struggling with both on and off since she was a teenager. She had managed to conceal both very well, and it was only after Emma’s birth that Esmé had begun to lose control. Her obsession with being both physically and emotionally perfect had gone from being part of her everyday life to a downright burden. She didn’t know how many more nights like this she could take, before she ran through the hallways screaming.
As if she thought this might happen, Esmé bit her lower lip softly and turned her attention back to the computer screen. She would be finished soon— just a few more sentences and she could finally capture the sleep she missed so much. Her long, manicured fingernail was just about to tap the “enter” key so she could start a new paragraph, when the door behind her squeaked.
Esmé jumped. Why had she not bothered to close the door after coming into the study? Of course, it was so she would be able to hear Emma— who tended to wake up in the middle of the night —if she happened to call for her mother. Too embarrassed to ask who it was, Esmé chose to sit perfectly still. She hoped that whoever had entered the room would ignore the light coming from the computer screen and not notice the silhouette of her head in front of it. Just in case, she sunk down as low as she possibly could in the chair until she felt the bottoms of her toes touch the wall.
“Carmelita?”
Esmé recognized the voice as that of Jerome. He must not have spotted me, she thought, and breathed a silent sigh of relief. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the embarrassment she would suffer if Jerome came over and read what she had typed. Esmé hadn’t noticed before, but the sentences she had written were very similar to the notes Carmelita took down in Mr. Remora’s class. So as long as Jerome didn’t decide to spin the chair around, Esmé would be safe.
“Carmy,” Jerome said, and Esmé felt her heart begin to pound as light flooded the room. It meant that her husband would be coming over, and there was nothing she could do without exposing herself. She shut her eyes, feeling her face redden with humiliation as she sensed her husband drawing closer. “It’s three o’ clock in the morning… have you been up all night talking with Lisa over Instant Messenger again?”
Esmé couldn’t help but smile at that, and she bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. Then she remembered what was on the computer, and her smile faded instantaneously. She was getting ready to shoot out her hand to turn off the monitor, when a pair of hands gripped the top of the chair and spun it around.
In another moment, Esmé was gazing up into the miraculous green eyes of her husband. His brown hair had curled up on the right side the way it always did after he woke up, and his chubby face was covered in a light layer of stubble. He looked so sweetly confused by his wife’s presence in his study at such an ungodly hour, that she felt a small amount of tension leave her.
“Hi,” Esmé said, and batted her long, curly lashes. Because she had no makeup on, the freckles around her cheeks and bridge of her nose were conspicuous in the bright light.
“Darling,” Jerome asked, “what are you doing up at this time of night? And in my study, of all places?”
Esmé shrugged, before sliding her hands away from the armrests and placing them in her lap. Her eyes lowered, and she began to ssalsae at the skin of her cuticles. It was an unconscious habit she had recently picked up, which she participated in whenever she was nervous. She would only stop when she began to bleed. She hoped that everyone at the bank had dismissed it as a sloppy nail-polish job, rather than the self mutilation she was so famous for at home.
“Esmé, stop that,” Jerome said, and knelt before her so that he could take her hands in his. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Esmé attempted to release one of her hands from Jerome’s grip, but the billionaire succeeded in holding her fast.
Her camisole had ridden up to nearly above her ribcage, and her round, soft stomach curved over the waistband of her pajama pants. She blushed as her husband leaned forward to kiss her just below the bellybutton. As he laid his head upon her stomach she let out a deep, contented purr.
Esmé knew she was never going to get any work done with Jerome fawning all over her, but it was a welcoming feeling to be reminded of how loved she was.
She didn’t suppose he would be able to understand what it was she was going through if she told him, and that time was going to come eventually. She only hoped he would put the question off until after she’d gotten some rest.
Esmé’s red-nailed toes curled as she felt Jerome’s thumb and forefinger gently squeeze the roll of baby-fat underneath her bellybutton. In response, she wrapped her arms securely around him and buried her face in his hair. She kissed the top of his head, just as he did the same to the spot his fingers were presently touching.
Esmé could be on the brink of fatigue, and still have enough strength left to give Jerome what he wanted. Because, in most ways, they both wanted the same thing. She was starting to get past the fact that she was now noticeably curvier, with hips and a stomach that would never again be flat no matter how many sit-ups she did. She liked the way her husband was so attentive to those two parts of her body, which just so happened to be the ones she was most self conscious about.
As Jerome kissed Esmé just above the bellybutton, she hugged him tighter. At that moment, she felt so comforted that she’d nearly forgotten about the ritual that had since wandered to the back of her mind. She groaned inwardly, not wanting to give up her safe place in her husband’s arms but knowing she didn’t have a choice. If she expected to get any sleep tonight, then she was going to have to take the next step in completing her ritual.
“Jerome,” Esmé said, feeling his hands slide past her elastic waistband and rest on her bare hips. “Honey, why don’t you go back to bed and wait for me? I promise I’ll be there soon. I just… I have to finish something for work.”
“But it’s the weekend,” Jerome practically whined, and squeezed his wife’s hips gently. “Can it not wait until Sunday?”
Any longer and I’ll lose my mind, Esmé thought miserably. With much reluctance, she pushed her husband’s hands away and spun around to face the computer.
Jerome was no longer the type who took his wife’s indifference to heart, and he peered over her shoulder at the screen. “Carmelita must have been typing up her notes for Mr. Remora’s class,” Jerome pointed out. “And forgotten to turn off the computer.”
“You can stay if you want to,” Esmé said. “Just don’t stand there looking over my shoulder. It makes it difficult to concentrate.”
After kissing his wife lovingly on the cheek, Jerome walked a few paces and collapsed down on the loveseat by the window. In spite of the circumstances, Esmé smiled before turning back to the task at hand.
Her mind tended to drift every time she lost herself in her ritualistic behaviors. She was very much aware that they made little to no sense, and that the reason behind them was a mystery. If someone was to ever discover that she spent one to two hours a night losing herself in obsessive compulsions, she didn’t like to think what the result would be. She’d struggled enough in trying to get back her reputation following the articles in The Daily Punctilio: the last thing she needed was to be thought of as a psychotic on top of a harlot.
Regardless of the fact that her eyes ached and her temples throbbed, Esmé forced herself to press on. It wouldn’t be long until she was finished— her reward would be a warm hand on her belly and a head overflowing with beautiful dreams.
Closing her eyes, Esmé took a deep breath to prepare herself for the next part of her ritual. Positioning her fingers on the keys, she used the preceding sentences she’d typed as a guide for those she pounded out next.
Yvette walked to the store and bought a jar of marmalade.
Edward drove to his daughter’s school and participated in a meeting with her teacher.
Raymond sat down on the couch and watched television.
As Esmé’s punched the last letter of the final word with her long-nailed finger, an incredible relief washed over her. For the first time in three hours, it was as though she could breathe again. Leaning back in the chair, her eyes drifted to the ceiling and she stared, waiting for a thought to catch up to her. Such an occurrence was frequent following her rituals: she would be shutting down the computer or climbing into bed, only to realize she’d forgotten to type one of her dozens of sentences. If she didn’t do them a certain way (whether they be standard or dialogue), then it would be impossible for her to fall asleep. It was either give into her compulsions, or spend the entire night with unbearable stomach cramps. Esmé was all too aware that her behavior was absurd, and she wished she understood why it bothered her so much. She supposed that it must have something to do with her past, and her never-ending struggles for perfection. She knew that such a thing should no longer matter, because she had a family that loved her. But it was difficult to put the past behind her, regardless of what she had now.
“Sweetheart? Are you finished?”
Jerome’s kind voice snapped Esmé away from her thoughts, and she smiled sweetly in his direction. “Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go to bed.”
“O.K.”
As usual, Esmé closed the document without saving it and then shut down the computer. When the screen went black, she rose out of the chair and turned to face her husband. Her camisole was still riding high above her bellybutton, and she tugged the garment up a bit more so that her ribcage showed. Despite her exhaustion, Esmé’s feeling of entrapment had left her. She was able to fall freely into her husband’s arms, losing herself in the feeling of his soft hands on her plump hips and belly.
“Jerome,” Esmé said, as he kissed her bare shoulder. “Darling, I have a confession to make.”
His hands stilled, and he pulled her further into his lap. “What is it?” he asked.
“Those weren’t Carmelita’s notes on the computer before. They were mine.”
Jerome grinned. “Are you writing a story?”
“Well, I—”
“May I read it?”
Esmé shook her head. “It isn’t a story,” she said, and unlaced her arms from where she had wrapped them around her husband’s neck. Setting her hands in her lap, she began to pick at the skin surrounding her fingernails.
Just as he’d done before, Jerome made another attempt to stop his wife from injuring herself. Taking her hands, he held them forcefully so that she wouldn’t be tempted to continue with what she’d been doing.
“Esmé, you’re so tense,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“I can feel you trembling.”
“Only because I’m with you.”
Jerome smiled, and then let go of Esmé’s left hand. Raising his, he lightly thumbed the lower corner of her face where a tiny, heart-shaped birthmark was located. Up until she’d met her husband, she had always considered it to be a painfully embarrassing feature— especially when Olaf had forced her to cover it up. Other than that, he’d absolutely hated her freckles, insisting they made her look like a child. Esmé supposed that was part of the reason why she always made an attempt to conceal them. She had stopped trying to hide her birthmark, but only because Jerome insisted it was her best physical trait next to her “absolutely smashing stomach”.
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” he asked, and kissed his wife on her birthmark.
Esmé was certain that Jerome didn’t expect she was lying to him, and his kiss assured her of that. “No,” she admitted. “Jerome, I… I’m weird.”
The billionaire chuckled, running both hands through his wife’s sleek ebony hair. “Well, I admit your fashion sense is sometimes questionable. But that’s just one of the many things I love about you, darling.”
Even though Jerome’s words weren’t enough to set Esmé’s mind completely at ease, they did give her the confidence to continue. “That isn’t what I mean. What I mean is I do other things. Things that society wouldn’t exactly consider normal.”
“Like what?” Jerome asked, genuinely curious.
“Like those sentences I wrote,” Esmé explained. “I do them regularly— nearly every night. It’s a… a compulsion I have. One that I can’t seem to shake.”
“Why do you do them?”
Esmé could already feel her face getting red, and she shrugged her shoulders unnervingly. “That’s just it, Jerome. I don’t know. If I did, then maybe I’d be able to stop.”
“You don’t have even the slightest clue?” he asked, concern lacing his voice.
Esmé’s blush deepened. She pressed her palms to the sides of her face and averted her ice-blue eyes from Jerome’s emerald green ones. “Well, yes,” she replied. “But I can’t tell you.”
Jerome laughed, and adjusted his knee so that Esmé was no longer sliding off his lap. “Why ever not, my darling?” he asked.
“Because I… I’m embarrassed.”
“What could you possibly have to be embarrassed about?”
Once again Esmé shrugged, and reached down to pull her camisole down over her stomach.
“Leave it,” Jerome commanded softly, and her hands slipped from the hem of her top. “And tell me what it is that has my little sweetheart so embarrassed.”
Leaning her head against her husband’s shoulder, Esmé laid her hand against his heart. “It’s complicated,” she began. “Because I don’t understand it myself, I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it properly. But I’ll try.”
Jerome’s thick arm laced around Esmé’s back, while his other hand pressed lovingly against her stomach. “Then try,” he encouraged. “And I’ll do my very best to comprehend all you have to say, my love.”
The financial advisor nodded silently. She drew her knees up so that they pushed slightly against her husband’s stomach, noticeable even through his pajama top.
“When I was a teenager,” Esmé began, “I kept a diary. It was a commonplace book given to me by Olaf’s mother, but I used it as a diary. I wrote in it every night for three years; filling it with my most personal thoughts and deepest desires.
“I remember the night when these unusual notions first took hold of me. I was eighteen, and Olaf’s parents had just been killed by very fatal darts. By then, I had already received Beatrice’s confession, and so there was a lot going on inside my head. I filled up six pages of my diary that night, which included dialogue from our conversation.
“I’d felt a bit better after I had gotten everything out, and then crawled into bed. Normally it would have taken me half an hour or less to fall asleep. On that night, however, it took me almost four. Not only because I was upset, but because of the thoughts gnawing away at my conscience. Thoughts of what I had written down circled around and around inside my head; insisting that I get out of bed and make it right.
“I waited until I heard Olaf start to snore, and then tiptoed down the hallway to my old bedroom. I retrieved my diary from underneath the worn out mattress and then went downstairs. Once I was sitting at the kitchen table, I opened my diary and looked carefully over what I’d written. It had taken me more than two hours to jot everything down the first time, and so it was going to take me twice as long to do it again.
“I replaced all of the words and phrases pertaining to death with less destructive nouns and verbs, until I had completely rewritten my entry. When I looked at the clock, I saw that it was closing in on two in the morning. I had just enough time to stuff the extra papers into the back of my diary and hurry upstairs, before Olaf got up to use the bathroom.”
After Esmé had finished her account, she waited anxiously for Jerome to say something. He hadn’t said a word throughout; she couldn’t help but feel it was because none of what she’d just explained made the slightest inkling of sense. She hated to think that any of her prior convictions were true, and that there was something wrong with her.
“Jerome,” Esmé said at last, “do you think I’m crazy?”
Her answer came in the form of a loving kiss to her forehead and a gentle caress across her belly. She shivered, her toes curling as her knees pressed into the softness of her husband’s stomach.
“No, Esmé,” Jerome insisted, his other arm wrapping around Esmé to pull her closer.
“I want to stop,” she insisted, as tears of frustration began to form in her eyes. “I wish I could, but I can’t. It’s too hard, and I’m too weak. I… I…”
Her husband’s large hand closed over her forehead and stroked back her bangs. “You, Esmé? Weak? My darling, you are by far the bravest person I know. You’re the one who rescued Carmelita from that terrible fire, and brought our beautiful baby daughter into the world.”
“If I was so brave, then why is it so impossible for me to stop doing something with no significant purpose?”
Esmé knew this was a question without an answer. She had been trying for years to find one, but she had never succeeded. And if she didn’t have an answer, what could possibly make her think Jerome did?
“I hate this,” Esmé pouted, too frustrated to realize how cute she looked. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, her hair was ruffled and her lower lip stuck straight out. “It’s not fair, Jerome.”
The tears that Esmé had been trying to hold back at last loosened from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She chirped sadly as Jerome thumbed away her tears, before cupping her face in his hands and kissing her on the nose.
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, and placed a second kiss on her lips. “But you’re doing the best you can, aren’t you? You don’t need to do anymore typing now, do you?”
Esmé shook her head. “No,” she replied, and sniffed. “I’m done for the night.”
“What I was able to gather from your account is that you only do these things when you’ve previously written something relating to death. Is that right?”
Esmé nodded, her oval face still cupped between her husband’s chubby hands.
“What I’m curious about,” Jerome went on, “is what brought all of this on in the first place.”
Esmé raised her hands and laid them on Jerome’s before answering. “It was during my lunch hour this afternoon,” she replied. “I was bored. So I decided to edit Annette Frazier’s Wikipedia page dedicated to her three dreadful Scottish Terriers.”
“The same ones that tried to bite Emma?”
“Yes! Did you know that each of those little beasts has its own room? Honestly! How neurotic can one woman be?”
“Isn’t Annette the one with curly blonde hair who always wears a navy-blue suit?” Jerome asked.
“No,” Esmé said. “That’s Melissa Reeves, my other co-worker. Annette is the irritatingly skinny one who’s always bragging about her husband the lawyer.” Esmé rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? She’s the mother of three children and still manages to maintain a size four.”
“Is that why you slandered her efforts, darling? Because you were jealous?”
Esmé huffed, and made an attempt to yank her top back down. As usual, Jerome caught her by the hands before she could succeed.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
Jerome stroked Esmé’s chin affectionately with his thumb before kissing her upon her perfectly petulant lips. “What was it you wrote on Annette’s Wikipedia page?” he asked. “That made you feel like you had to make up for it?”
Esmé shrugged. She was getting tired of discussing her strange symptoms with her husband. Jerome was probably only asking her questions to be polite, and not because he was actually interested. He probably thought she’d gone mad, and as soon as her back was turned he was going to contact her therapist.
“Just something about some dog she used to have that died,” Esmé replied nonchalantly. “She said it had some kind of kidney infection. When I altered the original sentence, I said its death was caused by getting run over by a clown car.”
She hoped Jerome wouldn’t think her too cruel, and was relieved when she saw that he was smiling back at her.
“You probably think I’ve lost my mind,” Esmé said. “Don’t you? Sitting here in your study, in the middle of the night, typing nonsense. And all because I feel so damn guilty over something no one else would give two thoughts about.”
Esmé knew that Jerome had only the purest of intentions, but the feeling of his hand on her stomach did little to reassure her. She was frustrated with herself for being weak and giving into something she didn’t understand, and for crying as if it mattered. She knew she had nothing to complain about: she lived in a luxurious and most expensive apartment in the city; she was married to the kindest and most handsome man in the world; she had two beautiful daughters and a well-paying job. In short, she led the sort of idyllic life envisioned only in fairytales.
Esmé was getting ready to announce that she was, at long last, ready for bed. Her mouth had just begun to form the words when she was interrupted by the petrified scream of her youngest child.
Esmé practically tumbled off Jerome’s lap in her attempt to race over to the door. With her husband trailing after her, she left the study and swept down the hallway to her youngest daughter’s bedroom.
With a flick of Esmé’s long-nailed finger to the switch by the door, a bright light revealed what was an almost blindingly pink room. Emma was sitting up in bed, her pink pinstripe comforter wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Her ebony locks hung in tangles and her shiny, blue eyes glistened with fear.
“Had a bad dweam,” Emma informed her parents. “Monstas.”
Esmé raced across the room and gathered the four-year-old into her arms. “Oh, Emma,” she said. “You must been so frightened…”
Her single eyebrow furrowing, Emma nodded as she nuzzled her into her mother’s shoulder. “Monstas scowy.”
“I’ll bet they were. But you’re safe now, darling. There aren’t any monsters in the penthouse.”
“How you know dat, Mommy?”
Jerome— who had been standing in the doorway observing his wife and stepdaughter —chose this moment to intervene. “Because your mother would never lie,” he confirmed, ruffling Emma’s hair.
“Well,” Esmé answered, and smiled sleepily at her husband. “I was going to say it’s because the doorman would never let a monster into the lobby. But Jerome’s answer is proof enough.”
“Do’ wanna go back to sweep,” said Emma. “Can’t. Too scared of monstas comin’ back.”
Esmé placed a kiss in the center of her daughter’s eyebrow. “Would you like to spend the rest of the night with Jerome and me?” Esmé asked.
Twirling her tiny finger around the strap of her mother’s camisole, Emma nodded.
While Esmé had been surrendering to the demons in her head, Emma had been trying to escape the ones in her nightmares.
As she looked down into her daughter’s big blue eyes, Esmé realized what she needed to do.
“Jerome,” she said. “I’m going to try my best not to let these thoughts take over me. I want to set an example for Emma. And the only way I’ll be able to do that is if I stop giving in.”
Jerome kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’ve never thought of you as anything less than brave,” he told her truthfully. “But being brave doesn’t mean you can’t be frightened, my darling. And I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you— even if it means staying up all night.”
“Then help me, Jerome. Help me be normal.”
Jerome smiled, the apples of his round cheeks pushing up the bases of his eyes so that he looked more adorable than ever. Had she not been holding Emma, Esmé would have thrown her arms around him.
Jerome placed a comforting hand on his wife’s waist. “Come along, my darlings,” he said. “It’s time for bed.”
It was the best suggestion Esmé had heard all night.
~The End~