Time had a way of moving uneven in the South Side. Some days stretched, heavy and endless. Others cracked past like a snap of fingers. Weeks blurred before Francis even realized how much had shifted.
First came Aunt Ginger.
She'd been nothing more than bones under the floorboards for years, but now she finally got her burial. A quiet one. No choir, no flowers that weren't picked half-dead from the corner store. Just a priest who looked half-drunk and Fiona clutching Debbie's hand while the kids stood in their mismatched coats.
The coffin went into the dirt without weight, like it didn't belong to anybody. Ginger had been long gone before any of them were even born. Still, Francis watched the dirt cover her box and thought, This is the end of a chapter we never wrote.
---
After the burial, things moved fast. Francis didn't wait. He had a lawyer lined up, a cheap but sharp guy who knew how to turn South Side scams into legal footing. The will was drafted, signed, and pushed through the courts before Ginger's so-called son could sniff around.
The papers named Francis as executor. The Gallagher house—the whole crooked, rotting skeleton of it—was theirs now. No one could pull it out from under them.
But Francis wasn't satisfied. The house still sagged, six kids stuffed into it like a matchbox. He wanted more.
So he made his next move.
A foreclosure property sat just two doors down. Boarded windows, cracked siding, a padlock dangling on the door like an afterthought. Francis bought it outright—cash he'd scraped together from the Alibi, from hustles, from money nobody asked about.
The house was gutted, rewired, patched. Francis swung hammers himself, Lip helped when he wasn't in school, even Carl dragged wood like he was carrying ammo for a war. Slowly, brick by brick, they made it livable.
Then Francis got crazy with it.
He had the two houses connected—literally. A bridge across the upstairs windows, wood planks reinforced with steel, a covered walkway so the kids could run back and forth like it was one giant house.
The Gallaghers finally had space. A real kitchen that didn't feel like a cage. Rooms where Carl and Ian didn't have to elbow each other in their sleep. A spot for Debbie and Liam away from the noise.
For the first time, Fiona let herself breathe.
---
But good things never came clean.
The next step was custody. Francis wanted it official. Wanted the state to stop sniffing around, wanted paperwork that said the kids were his responsibility. No more wondering if some suit would show up one day and scatter them into foster care.
That's when the problem hit.
The caseworker looked at him across a thin wooden desk, papers stacked high, the kind of woman who'd seen too many Gallaghers to be impressed by another one.
"Francis Gallagher," she said, squinting at the file. "You want custody of your siblings."
"That's right."
She flipped a page, her face flat. "You can't."
Francis's jaw tightened. "Why not?"
She tapped the paper with her pen. "Because you're on probation. Armed assault. You think I don't see this?"
Francis stayed silent.
She kept going. "You're managing a bar, which is questionable income. You've got no college degree, no stable long-term job. And here's the kicker—you've got a record. That alone bars you from being a guardian."
Francis leaned forward, voice low, steady. "You think Frank is a better option? That drunk who'd sell his kids for a six-pack?"
The woman's expression didn't budge. "Frank Gallagher is not on the table. But neither are you. If you push, I'll be forced to place them under state guardianship until Fiona can prove she's fit."
Francis bit down on his anger, hard enough his teeth ached.
---
That night, he sat in the kitchen while the kids slept upstairs. Fiona sat across from him, hair tied back, face drawn.
"They won't give me custody either," she admitted. "I've got no degree, no real job. Just the Alibi and odd work. They want someone with stability. Clean record. Proof of income."
Francis drummed his fingers on the table, eyes sharp but tired. "So what, we let them decide where our family goes?"
Fiona shook her head, fierce. "No. We keep doing what we've been doing. Feeding them. Getting them to school. Keeping the house standing. They can throw all the paperwork they want—we're not splitting."
Francis looked at her for a long moment, then finally smirked, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Guess that makes us outlaws. Again."
---
The days that followed were strange. The kids ran back and forth across the bridge between houses like it was a game. Carl claimed a room in the new house and started filling it with junk he said was "tactical gear." Debbie hung posters on the walls, trying to make her space look like a magazine. Lip buried himself in books, working harder than ever, maybe trying to prove Francis right. Ian stayed quiet, always glancing over his shoulder like Mickey Milkovich might come through the window any second.
And Francis… he kept moving. Papers, bar work, construction, hustles. He was a machine, grinding forward, but every time he thought about the custody papers, his stomach tightened.
On paper, they didn't belong to him. They didn't belong to Fiona. They belonged to nobody.
And that scared him more than anything.
---
One night, Francis stood outside, leaning against the bridge between the two houses. The South Side was quiet, stars faint above the haze. He lit a cigarette, the glow flaring against the dark.
Frank's words echoed in his head: You'll drown in bills before you even find a pencil to sign the papers.
Francis exhaled smoke, his eyes hard. "Not if I learn how to swim."
The sound of the kids laughing inside drifted out, faint and warm.
He didn't have custody. Not yet. But he had them. He had both houses. He had a plan.
And as long as he was standing, nobody was taking that away.