Chapter Text
Ransom needed a ride.
It was his own fault really, on a number of levels. Certainly more levels than he'd have admitted the day he stepped inside the prison gates, over eight years ago. Nothing had been his fault then. In his estimation, everyone in his life had shared the blame for the predicament he found himself in. Everyone but Ransom. Especially that upstart bitch nurse. That's where his head had been.
On that day, his mental description of Marta Cabrera had been a good deal more colorful than 'upstart bitch', but that was then and this, he thought as he looked up at the darkening grey sky, was now.
He'd changed since that day. Evolved, he liked to think. Grown in some ways, and others? Well, that was some introspective shit he could waste time on when he wasn't shivering on an empty country road, the sun rapidly sinking toward the horizon behind a mess of clouds the color of steel and ash.
More specifically, Ransom's current lack of a ride stemmed from an over-abundance of misplaced faith in people who were by all accounts, by fucking blood, supposed to have his back. Sure, it had been his actions, his decisions, his greed that had led to a reduction in circumstances and/or reputation for all of them. Or at least to it happening when it did, because the old man changing his will hadn't been Ransom's fault. Not entirely, anyway.
No, it had been the whole sour lot of them that'd led Harlan to bequeath the entirety of the family fortune to his hot little nurse. Truth was, though, the senior Thrombey had cut any number of his brood out of the will over the years, then changed his mind again. It was almost a running joke between him and his eldest grandson. He'd already done it to Ransom twice, only to change his mind the next month when he was high off the success of another chart-topping stack of ink and dead trees. Plenty of times, he'd confided in Ransom that Joni or Walt were out.
That never lasted long either.
If Ransom had had even a little fucking patience, chances were the fickle old codger would've come around for the hundredth time before he kicked the bucket.
Or at the very least, Ransom would've kept what he had: the house, the car, the killer wardrobe.
The freedom.
But no. He'd gotten angry and greedy and oh-so-clever. He'd sat there in the Beemer, shouting obscenities and pounding the steering wheel, mind white-hot with anger at his arrogant prick of a grandfather getting taken in by some pretty little Brazilian nurse. A nurse who'd been utterly immune to Ransom's charms. She wasn't even wary of him, just acted like his best boyish smile didn't even register. Intellectually he knew it was probably just a protective shell of professionalism, someone going into the homes of people as entitled as the Thrombeys... someone who looked like her? It made all the sense in the world.
But when he'd been digging his nails into the soft leather of the steering wheel cover, ears ringing, vision vibrating in time with his pulse at the thought of all those millions, his millions going to her? Her resistance to his charm hadn't helped. He'd clenched his hands until his knuckles ached, thoughts of throttling her until her pink tongue lolled out filling his mind. One after another, every dark scenario Harlan ever cooked up ran through Ransom's mind, each of them happening to the old man, murder after clever bloody murder.
Some deep breaths and the worst of the rage had passed. He'd thrown the car into drive, ready to head home and get piss drunk on five-hundred dollar scotch or call one of the half a dozen disposable women he kept in rotation with good sex, expensive dinners, and playing hot and cold. He'd imagined Marta as a stranger, some gorgeous girl he'd charmed home from a bar, impressed with the five hundred dollar bottle of scotch, then when her back was turned, poured a glass of bargain basement well whiskey and watched her simper over how complex the flavors were. It was a little game he used to play with himself, and none of the women he'd pulled it on had known the difference, or at least they were too eager to get in his pants to call him on it.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, with the possible exception of Marta herself, that had been when Ransom had what he later described as his 'moment of clarity.'
His idea for the 'perfect crime'.
The simplicity of it. The old man peacefully drifting off into a cloud of opiate-laced oblivion, the nurse losing her millions because of her involvement. Sure, some suspicion would be thrown her way, but drug mix ups happened all the time. She wouldn't go to jail for it. He'd given himself a moment to imagine swooping in magnanimously, offering her an expensive lawyer paid for out of his own trust, her tan thighs spreading in gratitude.
A nice image, and that's all it should have been. He should have driven home. To this day, he still didn't entirely understand what possessed him to do what he did. He'd just been so fucking impressed with his own cleverness. So sure he could get away with it. So high on the idea that he, Ransom, the eternally worthless fuckup, would end up being the hero who saved the family fortune, and they'd never know. But he'd know. He would have that to silently hold over them for the rest of his life.
All that at the expense of just a few years, or maybe even months shaved off the end of an old man's life. Shitty ones at that. Half a dozen maladies had been poised to take Harlan down at any moment, or turn him into a drooling, pain-wracked shell of his former self. It had just been a question of which one would win the race. Really, Ransom had assured himself, he was doing his grandfather a favor. He was doing his family a favor. It was almost heroic, when you thought about it.
And so he hadn't driven home.
He'd done the deed, pocketed the life-saving antidote on the off chance she recognized his symptoms, and slipped away high on his own brilliance. At home, on his feather-soft sheets, he'd held the naloxone in one hand, his dick in the other, and edged to the thought of Marta crying hot, desperate tears on his shoulder, swearing that she hadn't done what they were accusing her of. He'd imagined her collapsing in relief the day his lawyers told her they'd gotten the charges dropped, pictured gathering her up in his arms and taking her home and watching those blow-up doll lips of hers stretched around his cock, wide eyes blinking up at him in gratitude. Spanish or possibly Portuguese obscenities pouring from her mouth as she rode him and all the while knowing that everything had worked out according to his perfect plan.
Of course, that wasn't how it had worked out.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be standing outside the gates of a state prison, waiting for the sky to open up and start pissing down icy rain. Waiting for the ride that clearly wasn't coming, and yes, that was entirely his fault. Even though he hadn't heard back from his mother or his father or his uncle or his cousin, all of whom he'd sent a letter with news of his early release date, some stupid, childish, hopeful pebble of optimism had led him to believe that at least one of them would be there to pick him up. To lord it over him, if nothing else.
But that too wasn't how it had worked out.
A fat drop landed on his nose, then a few more, pattering his buzzcut skull. He tugged up the hood of the grey, prison-issue sweatshirt, zipped his shitty jacket up to his throat, then shoved his hands in the front pockets and considered his options.
The bus stop a few dozen yards from the chain link gates was just a lopsided sign, not even a shitty little shelter. When the bus had rolled up, half an hour after the penitentiary disgorged a couple dozen of his fellow newly-minted ex-cons, a dozen or so had lined up and boarded. Another dozen or so had already been picked up, either by joyful clusters of family members already waiting with hugs and tears, a few solitary wives or girlfriends, or in Robbie's case, husband.
Robbie had offered him a ride into town. But Ransom had declined, and despite the bus driver telling him this was the last one of the day, he'd waved the woman off. Ransom had a ride, he'd told the woman.
Ransom, it turned out, did not have a ride.
Ransom needed a ride.
The patter turned into a stinging, soaking downpour. The closest town was nine miles in the direction the bus had gone, and if he started walking now, maybe he'd arrive before dusk turned to pitch black. Hitchhiking was a possibility, but on a road that passed a state prison, with an unkempt beard and a large frame he'd packed an additional forty or so pounds of muscle onto while inside, Ransom didn't think it was a very likely one.
And so, with a sigh, he turned east and started walking.
In his pocket he had his prison ID and a state issued debit card with $200 on it. His thin cloth jacket offered fuck all in the way of protection from the late November sleet, and within a few minutes, everything he wore was soaked through. As he trudged, a few cars sped by— a white minivan, something small and blue, a sleek black sedan going the wrong direction, a tractor trailer— all of them ignoring his extended thumb. He didn't blame them. He wouldn't pick him up either.
Time passed; hard to gauge how much, but too soon night approached and Ransom's feet were growing numb. A little while later, he stumbled and fell, scraping his knees on the sharp gravel, barely feeling it but knowing instinctively he'd drawn blood. He stayed there for a moment, on his hands and knees, trying to summon some of the white hot anger he'd had when he'd first gotten to prison, years ago. Or some of the determination he'd clung to, in the years after that, when he'd dedicated himself to making the most of his situation, as fucked as it was.
But none of that came to him. Instead, deep in his chest, he felt an echo of the rattling emptiness that had threatened to consume him that first, terrifying winter inside. He remembered with startling clarity just how it felt to want to give up. How warm and tempting that impulse could be, on the darkest, coldest night.
But.
He wasn't about to curl up here on the side of the road and freeze to death. Any second, he would put one foot on the ground, then the other, then force himself to stand and keep walking until he at least found some shelter. Any moment, Ransom was going to shove away the waves of self-pity that threatened to pull him under.
He'd survived worse. He was better than this. He was Harlan Thrombey's grandson, for fuck's sake, and he sure as hell wasn't about to wind up some tragic-slash-ironic footnote on the old man's Wikipedia page. More than that, he was Hugh Ransom Motherfucking Drysdale, and even if his family had abandoned him (with good reason, to be fair) this was not how his story was going to end.
And so he forced himself to his knees. Then his feet.
Then he saw the headlights. He knew it was probably pointless but he extended his thumb anyway, arm trembling as he held it aloft waiting for the car to pass.
Only, it didn't.
It slowed.
It rolled to a stop beside him. A tinted back window descended, revealing the warm light of the interior and a face. A woman's face.
Ransom blinked, sure he was seeing things.
Then she spoke, in a lilting accent that haunted his dreams all eight years, five months and twenty seven days he'd been inside those prison walls. "Do you need help?"
"Marta?" He croaked through chattering teeth.
"Ransom?"
"You've g-got to be fucking kidding me."
She just sat there, mouth in a surprised O, for several seconds, looking him up and down. "I didn't--we passed you earlier but I didn't recognize you in the dark..." She leaned forward, peering at his face. "With that beard, my goodness. I'm sorry about that."
"For what?"
She ignored his question, choosing instead to swing open the door and scoot to the far side of the back seat. "Get in."
He stared at her, wondering if perhaps he actually had curled up on the side of the road, and this was some hallucination firing across his synapses as it all shut down. If it was, he might as well ride this dream down into eternal slumber. And if it wasn't?
She leaned over and frowned out at him. "Don't be a stubborn fool, Ransom. Get in the car right now."
He obeyed, climbing stiffly into the back seat and, with a squelch, sitting beside her.
She clicked on a second, brighter, overhead light and looked him over. With a quick motion and a couple silver bracelets clanking on her wrist, she yanked back his hoodie, narrowing her eyes as she studied his face.
He winced at the assault of light. "H-hey," he said, teeth still chattering.
"Hey, yourself," she said in a scolding tone. "Your lips are blue. Henry, pop the trunk please." She disappeared out the door on her side, returning moments later with a black and red plaid blanket. Shutting the door behind her, she said, "Give me the jacket and the hoodie."
"What?"
"Close your door and take that off, it's drenched." She gestured impatiently.
He complied, stripping down to just his thin wet t-shirt, and before he could hand her the sodden jacket and hoodie, she snatched them away and shoved them down by her feet. Then, she fluffed out the blanket and arranged it over him, tucking it around him like he was some kind of invalid. He didn't have it in him to do anything but stare at her dumbly.
"Henry," she said, gesturing at the driver. "Home."
Once the car was in motion, Ransom found his words and although his shivering had intensified in the warmth of the car, he managed to get out, "What the f-fuck are you d-doing here?"
"Why aren't you at the bus station?"
"W-wanted to stretch my legs."
She scoffed and pulled on her seatbelt. With a pointed look she gestured for him to do the same. He wasn't about to fight her on that, so he pushed down the blanket and managed to catch the tab with his stiff hand, but it was still too numb to manage the buckle. After his fourth attempt, she took it from him and clicked it in, adjusting it across his chest before tugging the blanket back up. "You must've known they weren't coming."
"I don't know w-what you're talking about."
"I waited for you at the bus station. One of your friends told me you were still at the prison."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Which question is that?" She reached up and clicked off the overhead lights, leaving them bathed in only a dim hint of illumination coming from the dashboard up front.
He stared out his window for a few moments, watching the dark countryside whiz by. "Why are you here?"
"Meg called me. She was going to come. Joni found out and let the air out of her tires."
He snorted. "Still doesn't answer my question."
"No?"
"Not really."
"You have nowhere to go."
"That's not your problem. That is, in fact, the opposite of your problem."
"You're not making sense."
"Meg was going to come? Really?"
"That's what she told me."
He believed her. Of course he believed her. She couldn't lie. Something about the fact that someone in his family had wanted to be there for him broke him a little inside and for a while he sat there in silence beside her. As the heat finally penetrated his skin and his shivering lessened, the exhaustion of the day hit him full force. His eyelids grew heavy. While he thought up a witty retort, he decided to rest his eyes, just for a second.
*
A stranger's hand gripped his shoulder.
In an instant, he instinctively caught it, trapping it, squeezing viciously hard. A high pitched whimper brought him fully awake, eyes flying open to find Marta hovering over him from outside the car. Just as quickly he released her, watching warily as she waved off the driver. "I'm fine," she said, rubbing her hand. "He's fine, aren't you, Ransom."
"Peachy keen," he drawled, heart still pounding.
"Great, come on," she coaxed, stepping back from the door.
He started to ask where they were, then caught sight of the house. Harlan's house. Her house now. Something he didn't know was still raw shifted inside of him. She spoke in low tones with the driver as Ransom stiffly climbed out of the car, holding the blanket around himself with one aching hand. The rain had stopped. In one of the upstairs windows, he saw a familiar warm glow of a Tiffany lamp (authentic, natch) that'd been there since his childhood. He looked down and caught her watching him intently. "Why am I here, Marta?"
She pursed her lips. "You're here because I brought you here."
"Why?"
"You had nowhere else to go."
"Why would you give a shit about that?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
"Does it matter tonight?"
He examined her stubborn face for some sign of the trick of this. There had to be a catch. But, the woman did have a point. Catch or not, he wasn't going to suss anything out in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with wet clothes, no phone, and a two hundred dollar debit card to his name. "Guess not," he finally said.
As they headed into the house, the car pulled away, wheels crunching on the wet gravel drive. Inside, the place was quiet. He paused in the entryway and looked around, taking in the changes. Some things remained, but most of Harlan's morbid tchotchkes were nowhere to be seen. The wallpaper had been replaced by paint in hues of goldenrod and crimson and a deep, warm violet.
Marta unwound her long, colorblock scarf, the same one she'd always worn back when she was a nurse, if he wasn't mistaken, and hung it on a hook along with her coat. "Your shoes, please," she directed.
He looked down and saw that his ill-fitting canvas sneakers were caked with mud, as were his sweats, up to his knees.
"Your pants too, off with them."
A few flirtatious replies tickled the back of his mind but he was beyond rusty, and he didn't trust them to come out as anything other than pathetic. Besides, he was more or less past thinking this was some sort of trick, at least in the short term. He wouldn't put it past her to be doing this out of the frankly excessive goodness of her heart, but he was also well aware that some ulterior motive was probably a factor.
Either way, or some other way lying in wait to ambush him, tomorrow was something he was going to have to face, and doing it with hot food in his stomach and a night in a dry bed under his belt was the smartest play. For close to a decade, he'd been stuck in a place where he simultaneously had nothing to do but plan for the future, and very little control over the minute to minute, day to day, year to year of his life.
There were things he had learned. About other people. About himself. About what he was capable of. But if there was one thing prison had taught him, it was patience. And if there was a second, it was that when things were going in your favor, best not to fuck it up by opening your mouth.
So he stripped.
"Wait here," she said, not bothering to wait for a reply as she disappeared up the staircase. He complied, and as he did, a soft thump came from the direction of the parlor. Before he succumbed to curiosity, a fat, butterscotch-colored corgi waddled out of the room and toward him, across the familiar rug. It stopped at his feet, plopped its ample bottom on the floor and yawned up at him before flopping dramatically to one side.
"Hello," he said quietly.
The dog huffed at him.
"What's her deal?" he asked it.
It thumped its bushy tail on the floor a few times, then sighed.
Carefully, Ransom crouched beside the animal, wincing at the sting in his scraped knees. Most dogs hated him on sight, and he learned young to return the favor, but this one wasn't growling or even baring its teeth as he got close. Experimentally, he laid a hand on the fluffy rump and gave it a stroke. The dog responded by rolling to its back, exposing its creamy belly, tongue flopping out.
It felt like a trap, but Ransom gave the soft fur a pet anyway, then scratched at it as he'd seen others do until one of its legs kicked at the air.
"Are you a good boy?" he asked in a serious tone. "I guess we'll have to see."
A creak came from the stairs and he looked up to find Marta coming down with a quilt under one arm, a white box in her other hand. "Of course he is a good boy," she said dismissively. "There are no bad dogs, only bad owners."
With a final scratch under the fluffball's chin, Ransom rose.
"Kitchen," she said, strolling past him.
He followed.
This room had changed a little less, new mosaic backsplash and new bigger refrigerator, but more or less the same room where he'd stolen Fran's mom's warm cookies straight from the tray as a child. Marta pulled out one of the tall stools with square backs from the marble-top island and patted the seat, waiting until he slid on before dropping the quilt on the counter and pulling a pair of thick grey socks from between the folds. Those she deposited on his lap. The white box, with a red plus sign on the top, dropped beside the quilt, then she went about pulling containers from the massive, double-doored refrigerator.
He kept his eyes on her as he tugged the socks on, then pulled the quilt around his shoulders. The dog trotted in, nails clicking on the tile. Plopping down at Ransom's feet, it whined and eyed him hungrily. "Sorry, I got nothing," he murmured at it.
"Don't fall for his bullshit," she said without turning around. Ladling something that looked like stew from a plastic container into a saucepan, she added, "He had his dinner." A few clicks and the blue flame beneath the pan flared, then she turned to continue rummaging around the kitchen.
The dog snuffled at Ransom's toes where they perched on the stool's footrest, then gave them a few warm licks before waddling over to Marta. She bent to rub his head, then pulled a pair of bottles from the fridge, opened both, and slid one over to Ransom. He caught it and held it up to examine the label.
Beer. Jesus. He hadn't had beer in... since...
She tipped her bottle back and downed a couple gulps before setting it on the white and grey marble with a clink. "So," she said.
He took a tentative sip. The flavor exploded on his tongue, bitter and fizzy and yeasty. There had been days when he thought he'd never taste beer again. He took another, then replied evenly, "So."
"You're in need of a place to stay."
"You could say that."
"The terms of your parole require you find employment."
"That's what they tell me."
"My groundskeeper could use some help."
He blinked at her.
"And there are far more rooms in this place than I could possibly use."
He blinked at her again. She stared right back. Oh, she was serious. Conversationally, he asked, "Have you lost your goddamn mind?"
"Excuse me?"
He took another swig and set it down louder than he meant to. The dog replied to the clank with a whuff. "What is this? Some fucked up power trip? Are you that bored? Or trying to prove what a saint you are? I'd've thought you'd already--"
"I am no saint," she said slowly and calmly.
That calm was prickling his nerves, and his frustration with the day, his disappointment in his family and his looming sense of powerlessness all got the better of him. "I tried," he enunciated, as though to a very dim person, "to murder you, you stupid bitch."
She frowned, then with a slight roll of her eyes, she took another sip of her beer. "Except that you didn't."
He unclenched his jaw enough to grind out, "That's only because--"
"Ransom," she admonished. "Harlan kept detailed diaries going back a very long time. To before you were born. Did you know that?"
He did not. He knew the old man kept notebooks full of ideas and had written a memoir full of self-aggrandizing half-truths, but not diaries.
She continued. "I read them. Including the one from the summer you were his research assistant. Every single one of those knives is fake. Either rubber, or collapsible, or a prop from some famous movie, meant to bend or break. And you know that because you acquired another couple dozen of them for him that summer."
The stew started to bubble, so she turned the flame down to low, then pulled several paper towels off the roll and wetted them in the sink. As he watched, she came around to his side of the kitchen island and dragged over a shorter, regular chair from the table, arranging it in front of him. She sat and got to work dabbing at the half-coagulated scrapes on his knees. He watched dumbly as she cleaned away the blood, hissing at one pass that really stung. "Maybe I forgot," he grumbled.
She shot him a skeptical look. "You are a big man, Ransom. If you'd really wanted to kill me, or hurt me badly, you could've used your bare hands, and I doubt the policemen could've stopped you before you did damage. Would you hand me the box?"
He did as she asked.
She balanced it on her knees, pulling out cotton balls and a small bottle of disinfectant. As she dabbed at his cuts, she continued. "And so, what I believe is that you didn't want to hurt me. What you wanted in that moment was to see me frightened."
"If you say so."
"I'm not saying it's what's true. I'm saying it's what I believe." She dropped the second blood-stained cotton ball on the counter and neatly applied bandages to his knees before rising and putting her chair back under the table.
He took another drink from his bottle. "Even if you're right, and I'm not saying you are, nine years is a real long time."
"If you say so." She took two big bowls from the cupboard and ladled stew into both. She dropped in spoons, set one in front of Ransom and the other on the far side of the counter.
The rich, meaty fragrance wafting up made his mouth so wet he nearly drooled. Honestly, he couldn't remember the last time he smelled something so good. He blew on a spoonful to cool it and watched as she pulled a loaf of bread from the top of the refrigerator. She had to go up on her tiptoes, her nubbly, grey-blue sweater rising to reveal a sliver of tan back. As she turned to lay the loaf on the counter and cut a few thick slices, he turned his attention back where it belonged, the feast in front of him.
At the first mouthful he may have moaned, just a little, and only the piping hot temperature kept him from shoveling it non-stop until he hit the bottom of the bowl. She took her time buttering the slices of bread and slid one over to him on a paper towel, then nibbled at her own slice as she watched him. As it was, he burned his tongue but kept going, only coming up for air when he finished.
She pushed her untouched bowl across to him. "I'm not sure I understand your point, though."
A few more spoonfuls from the new bowl, half the slice of bread, a swig of beer to wash it down, and he said, angling the longneck at her, "My point is that maybe for those eight years I held a grudge. Maybe, I spent all that time thinking about snapping your neck."
"Hmm." She took another bite of bread and tilted her head as she chewed, regarding him evenly. "That doesn't sound very creative. I would think if you were plotting my murder, you'd be a little more clever than just snapping my neck. You are his grandson after all."
"Maybe I spent all my creative juices on thinking up ways to hurt you first."
"Oh?"
"Maybe," he said coolly, "Once I finish this soup I take my time hurting you, grab some valuables and disappear into the night."
"You could do that. He's certainly not much of a guard dog," she peered down at the corgi. "Are you Gordito?" She tore off a morsel of bread and dropped it on the floor for him with a smile, then looked back over at Ransom, clearly unbothered. "But my driver knows you're here. My mother knows you're here, and she agrees with you that this is a bad idea, by the way. Meg knows you're here. You could do whatever you wanted to me and I'm in no position to stop you. But then where would you go? On the run from the law? You're certainly not as famous as you were during the height of the scandal, but with a face like that, it's only a matter of time before someone recognizes you and you either go out in a blaze of glory, or they catch you and put you back in that sad little box for the rest of your life. Something tells me that isn't what you really want."
"That's a pretty big gamble you're taking."
"This is true."
"And what do you mean, a face like that?"
"Now you're fishing for compliments?"
He sat back and sputtered, crossing his arms over his chest. The quilt slipped off his shoulders, but in the warmth of the house, with his belly full of stew, he didn't mind. An additional wave of heat washed over him as her gaze slipped to his arms, his chest, then finally back to his face. "I'm still a convicted killer, Marta. People are dead because of me."
The warmth in her eyes hardened into something sober. "I know that."
"Do you?"
"Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Are you sorry for what you did?"
"What does that matter?"
"Answer the question."
"Are you talking about Harlan or the housekeeper."
"You know her name and now you're just trying to upset me."
"I--" he closed his mouth and gave her question the attention it merited. To say he'd had a long time to think while he was inside was an understatement. More than enough time to give him the opportunity to consider his actions and what led him to them, and come around to understanding how deeply fucked up he was to think that doing what he did was justified, that the reasons he had were enough.
To his surprise, he had actually taken that opportunity.
Harlan, he could almost make sense of. Harlan, at least, would've gotten a kick out of him almost getting away with it, only to be bested by Marta and Lieutenant Cornpone. Harlan, it took him longer to really regret.
But Fran. Fran he did because he was scared and angry at himself for letting his little funeral afternoon jaunt be seen. For forgetting Fran even existed while he executed his brilliant plan. But the truth was, all she'd seen was him fucking with the bag. Turns out, she had jack shit in that toxicology report, and he could just as easily have cried addiction. He could have claimed to be tempted by the sweet, sweet opiates but managed to leave the vials at the last second, ashamed by the thought of his poor dead grandfather's disappointment. Between his teenage stint in rehab (for different shit but who was keeping score) and Marta's confession, the waters were muddy enough. The arson was a loose thread but his shysters could've made it work.
Hell, if they'd nabbed him on the arson, he could've claimed he'd done that to protect Marta. That he'd carried a metaphorical torch for the pretty young woman ever since she'd come to work for his grandfather, and that he'd done it in his grandfather's name as much as any other reason. After all, the old man had slit his own throat to keep her from paying for her mistake. What was a little lighter fluid on a building empty of people?
Of course, that wasn't how it had worked out.
He wished he could have said the poor little rich junkie play hadn't occurred to him, but it had. It had also occurred to him that to execute it, he'd need to suffer through another round of his family acting deeply unsurprised at his backslide. Also, the plan depended on Marta keeping her mouth shut about her fuck up and following through with giving Ransom the cut he'd demanded at that pub. The idea that she'd still keep the lion's share of Harlan's millions, his family's millions, didn't sit well, but he hadn't been lying when he said fuck his family. And even if she hadn't followed through on the payout, he'd have kept what already had. He could have made that choice.
Or.
Ransom could choose to be clever again. He could stay the course on his original plan to frame the undeserving nurse, and that's just what he did. And that's just what fucked him up. He could almost hear his grandfather's words in his ear, "That's how you get caught. Pulling the same trick twice, and worse, not adapting to changing circumstances. Amateur hour, my boy. I thought you were better than that."
Fran hadn't deserved to die any more than Harlan, but more to the point, Fran hadn't needed to die. Ransom had another option but he chose not to take it. He could make up explanations for the rest of time, but the simple truth was, Ransom got greedy. Fran got dead. Benoit got his man. And now, nearly a decade later, Marta got to look him in the eye in a dimly lit kitchen and ask him for contrition.
It would be nice to believe he came to his remorse over Fran all on his own, some hard work of personal growth leading to enlightenment and the measured choice to atone for his sins and be a better man, but that would be bullshit.
The truth was, that first horrible winter in prison, the winter of 2020, he was still blaming Fran and Marta and his grandfather and Benoit for his predicament. He was sorry he got caught but he wasn't sorry he did it, he would've told you if he'd been in a sharing mood.
But then, he'd watched a plague he'd dodged that summer sweep through the prison a second time, this time mowing down old-timers and guards and tough men built like bulls alike, indiscriminate and merciless. He'd listened as night after night, for months, the sound of gasping, incessant coughs echoed through the cells. He'd said good night to his moderately-ill roommate, a dim-witted prick with a temper in on five counts of armed robbery, who nevertheless took the time to teach Ransom the basics of not just surviving but thriving on the inside. Early next morning, when Ransom got up to piss, Chet was cold.
It took the guards two hours to come see what Ransom was going on about.
The next day, alone in his cell, Ransom started coughing.
He didn't get a change of clothes for two weeks as he alternately shivered and burned. Day and night blended together and all he remembered from the worst of it was waking up over and over, unable to suck in enough air, feeling like he was drowning in his own phlegm with every crackling, rattling cough. Guards in full PPE left cold lunches just inside his door. When he managed to crawl over, everything tasted like cardboard at best, but he'd forced it down out of sheer spite. There was one time, when he'd been passed out on the concrete floor for he didn't know how long, parched with thirst and unable to force his body up to drink from the sink that he'd made do with the toilet.
It was, in retrospect, what one might call a low point.
When he wasn't delirious from fever, he had a lot of time to reflect on the choices that had led him there. At one point he became fixated on the memory of Fran's shitty tea. She always left the bag in too long and either put in too much sugar or none at all. He was pretty sure she fucked up his tea on purpose because he was such a prick to her. He wouldn't have been surprised to learn she spit in it.
Alone on the floor of his cell, knowing his survival was a coin toss since he'd already seen this thing take fitter men than him once it grabbed hold, he'd have given his left arm for a hot cup of Fran's shitty tea, spit included.
And yeah, okay, it was pretty fucked up that he didn't recognize Fran's worth as a fellow human-fucking-being until he was faced with the prospect of dying alone in a grim concrete box where no one gave a shit if he survived--no Tylenol, no soft blanket, no cool washcloth, no hot tea, no one washing the sheets gone stiff with sweat and god knew what else.
He'd thought of all the times he'd dropped shit on the floor in front of her, carelessly or just to amuse himself with her scrambling to clean it up. He'd thought of how much he used to hate hearing her in the other room, prattling on and on about her stupid fucking soap operas and would have given anything to have her there in his cell, chattering away, distracting him, just being another living human to lay eyes on and know he wasn't going to die alone.
He thought about the fear in her eyes when he held her down and shot her full of morphine. Every time he woke up and believed he might be dying, he thought, was this how she felt? How about this? How about now?
What he did to Harlan, that had been a matter of paper, glue, and patience. That happened at a remove, not even in the way Ransom intended, but in a dramatic, blood-spattered, self-administered coup de grâce that he knew in his bones his grandfather enjoyed. After the cancer scare of a few years before, Harlan had announced to Ransom that he had made peace with death. He'd prefer to stick around, mind you, but he'd lived a full life, and when the hour finally arrived, the old man said over a tumbler of contraindicated scotch, he had no fears about what lay on the other side. Knowing that helped grease the moral wheels as Ransom plotted his perfect crime.
But what Ransom did to Fran? It felt different. There was no triumph. No pleasure as he held her struggling body until it went limp. It was up close, and even though he didn't truly process the fear in her eyes at the time, he saw it. Later, as death edged him, dangling him over the abyss like Wile E. Coyote, he felt it. And understood it. And although he was an atheist before and after, he begged the universe at large to forgive him for what he'd done. He swore he'd make up for it, somehow, if only he could get better and get through his sentence and breath air as a free man. For a time, he would've settled for just breathing air. Just let him live, and he'd figure out a way to make it right.
Maybe something heard him. Maybe he just won the immune system coin flip, certainly wasn't through any significant effort on the part of the corporation who ran that correctional facility, but for whatever reason, one day, breathing wasn't so much of a struggle. A few days later, he was, well, not good as new. He was at least twenty pounds under the weight he'd been that fall. A three-minute walk to the cafeteria left him panting. The first time he actually tasted his applesauce again he came perilously close to tears.
As a well-behaved inmate with some level of presumed immunity, he'd been put to work in the hospital wing. He'd zipped bags. He'd learned up close what nurses did when they weren't keeping old men company with games of Go.
In time, modern medicine did its thing and the vaccines rolled out. An unconscionable amount of time later, the corporation who ran that correctional facility administered it. Time passed. More time passed. Ransom got strong, then stronger. He did his best to make good on the promise he made on the floor of his cell that dark winter. He made use of his cleverness.
He was, after all, Harlan Thrombey's grandson.
"Ransom?" Marta asked softly.
He snapped out of the memory and refocused on the present. On the face of the petite woman standing beside him, her soft hand on his bare shoulder. "Yeah. What was the question?"
She bit her plush lip, then asked, "Are you sorry for what you did?"
"Yeah," he said, voice hoarse.
"Do you intend to hurt anyone?"
"I've got no plans. Of any sort."
"Will you at least stay here for a few days?"
Covering her hand with his felt transgressive. He should just say yes, he knew that. He should say yes even if he didn't mean it, but something about the way she looked at him dragged the truth out of his throat, and he didn't think she was even trying. With a shrug, he confessed, "I don't deserve your help, Marta."
"What's that got to do with anything?" She squeezed his shoulder. "You need it. That's what matters to me, and I am not afraid of you. I know you, Ransom."
"That's a stupid thing to say." But he had to believe it, seeing as how she couldn't lie.
She scoffed at him. "Maybe you're not as complicated as you think you are."
"Maybe you're just naive."
"Do you really believe, after all that's happened, that I am naive?"
"I don't," he said slowly and clearly, as kindly as he could, "deserve your help."
"That may be true." She slid her hand from his shoulder and picked up the empty bowls in front of him. The spot where she'd been touching him felt cool without her. He watched as she rinsed the bowls and set them in the dishwasher. Finally, she said, "But will you stay here tonight?"
He shrugged, and apparently that was good enough for her.
"The groundskeeper gets here at eight. Breakfast is served at seven. You like blueberry pancakes, is that right?"
It was. He nodded. Then, his manners kicked in. "Thank you, by the way."
"You're welcome," she said briskly, not looking up as she continued to load dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. "The front guest room on the second floor is made up. You should give your knees a chance to scab up, take your shower in the morning."
"Marta?" He waited until she stopped and looked over at him. "Thank you."
Her expression gave him nothing. Pure placid shell of protective professionalism. "Good night, Ransom." She turned back to the dishwasher.
The path to the second floor guest room was one he'd trod more times than he could count. It was where he stayed the summer he worked as Harlan's research assistant. It was where he always stayed when he came here, from the time he was a little boy, scared by all the macabre decor and delighted by the flourishes like the hidden window. The scent that hit him when he opened the door, the same detergent, the same particular hint of mustiness, it all nearly overcame him with a feeling of homesickness. Except he was home.
Except he wasn't, was he? Because this was her home now.
His head swum with the length of the day and hairpin turns it had taken. He scrubbed his face with his hands and considered her ignoring her suggestion to skip the shower. Flopping face down on the bedspread was tempting. He'd hauled the quilt up here with him, he could just pull it over him and pass out. But more than exhaustion, he still felt dirty. The miasma of incarceration hung around his body. The thin, yellowed undershirt and threadbare boxers suddenly made his skin crawl and he couldn't shove them off fast enough.
Then, there he was. Naked.
The state was not unfamiliar. The view in the full-length mirror was. The mirror itself was one he'd preened in hundreds of times, an antique with beveled edges on the glass and baroque carvings in the polished walnut frame. But the view? You didn't get a lot of chances to admire yourself like this in prison, aside from the glimpses in the scratched up, smash-proof squares above the sinks in the communal bathrooms. He stroked his beard, which he'd seen enough times. Now, though, in the context of his refined surroundings, it looked more ragged than he remembered. Threads of white he hadn't noticed before stood out as he tilted his face this way and that to catch the light.
He turned and examined himself, spotted a couple of scars he'd forgotten about. No tattoos, except for a single, half-inch blue dash high on his right pec. Souvenir from the time half a dozen men who called themselves his kind tried to hold him down and mark him as part of their 'righteous brotherhood'.
The deepest marks, however, Ransom thought to himself in a hackneyed turn of phrase his grandfather would have laughed out of the room, weren't the ones you could see. He'd done things to keep the promise he'd made to the universe during his darkest hour. Things that might stretch the forgiveness of even the sainted Ms. Cabrera.
The stairs squeaked and he froze, hand on his stomach, thumbing a still-purple mark he'd gotten last year in a chow hall scrum that had nothing to do with him. The floorboards outside his door squeaked and fell silent. She was just on the other side. If she knocked, would he say come in, see if the sight of him might get a rise out of her since nothing else had? Or would it just be pity filling her glistening eyes.
The squeaking resumed and drew away, so he didn't have to make that decision. It ascended, then he heard it overhead. She slept in Harlan's room. That shouldn't surprise him, it was the master suite after all. But somehow it did. Had she redecorated? Nine years on, it couldn't remain some shrine to a man who'd be pushing 100 if he'd survived. Curiosity tugged at him. Curiosity and the novelty that he could leave this room whenever he liked.
More squeaks, then silence. She must be in bed now. What was she wearing? A few possibilities flicked across his mind and in response, there was an answering pulse of heat in his groin. He saw the twitch of interest in the mirror and turned away from it. In an act that was part defiance but a larger part laziness, he padded naked out of his room and across the thick carpet to the bathroom that sat directly across the landing. After a long, satisfying piss, he eyed the sparkling clean porcelain of the oversized clawfoot tub and shiny chrome of the wide showerhead, with its attached hand-held nozzle and dial on the side that spoke of many luxurious settings.
It was an upgrade from the simple nozzle with its powerful pressure he'd stood beneath so many nights here at the family home. He thought about how clean he could get under the hot spray. He could ignore her suggestion and take that shower, and the thought of unlimited hot water in a room with a lock on the door did tempt him. It wasn't like she could really begrudge him a desire to get clean. The scrapes on his knees weren't that deep, and he doubted there would be any consequences at all for disobeying her request.
On the other hand, she'd done so much for him already tonight. The least he could do in return was follow her instructions and return to his deeply tempting bed. So he crossed the landing, flicked off the lamp and crawled under the covers. The light of the nearly full moon cast spidery shadows through the bare branches outside and onto the ceiling. He watched them shift and sway. Storm must have passed.
His body was exhausted, but with all that had happened that day, his mind wouldn't stop racing. He knew of one surefire way to shut it up, but to be frank, despite the twitches of reflexive interest his body had shown in Marta that evening, he wasn't sure if he had the energy to finish. He decided to let his body make the choice for him. For a very brief moment, he reflected on the fact that jerking off to thoughts of his benefactor while under her roof, when she had shown his such kindness was...kinda shitty.
But what went on in his head was his business, and he was well aware that she'd been the number one most reliable star of his spank bank over the last decade, for better and for worse. So, dispassionately, he ran through some of the fantasies he'd had about Marta over the years to see if any of them sparked a reaction worth teasing out to its inevitable conclusion. He perused the unexpectedly soft ones and the plainly pornographic. The violent ones. The ones where his brilliant plan worked out better than he could have hoped for. The ones where she sobbed for mercy. The ones where he did the same.
He'd had a lot of time and at the beginning, a lot of anger. He'd also had an imagination his grandfather had complimented more than once. Not in his family's typical 'not living up to your potential why don't you make something of yourself you're better than this' schtick but with an authentic, if grudging, admiration. Though, Ransom was pretty sure Harlan wouldn't have approved of the use Ransom put it to all those nights, staring up at the sagging bottom of his cellmate's stained mattress.
Ransom didn't believe in ghosts, and it was a good thing too, because he was sure if Harlan could haunt him, he'd be a real pain in the ass. But he did have to wonder if Harlan were watching this right now, if he'd approve of Marta giving him this chance. If he'd be delighted at the awkward position it put Ransom in, or concerned for the safety of the soft-hearted heiress to whom he'd entrusted his legacy.
The prison library had gotten copies of her new editions. The old covers were always pieces of shit, if you asked Ransom. Harlan couldn't have cared less about the packaging of his precious words, especially since a Harlan Thrombey novel would top the best seller list if you swaddled it in plain brown paper. And Walt, well, Walt was cheap as fuck and wouldn't know good taste it bit him on his tightly-clenched bourgeois ass.
Marta had commissioned a whole new set of covers from a diverse array of young artists. They were in turns sexy, provocative, abstract minimalist, candid-seeming photographs and intricately inked black and white cartoons. It wasn't a coherent aesthetic by any conventional definition, but somehow it all felt of a piece. It felt fresh and yet still perfectly suited to the stories, from the most recent ones to those first published when Kennedy was in the White House. According to a profile in an old copy of People that made its way to the library, the new paint job upped the sales of Harlan's back catalog more than forty percent, though the old man's scandalous death was thought to be a factor as well.
And, in a move that must have had Walt grinding his teeth into stubs, she'd signaled a willingness to license film adaptations. Oh yes, things were going well for Ms. Cabrera, if the press was to be believed, the press that filtered its way into the prison, anyway. She looked good. She looked at peace.
Why she'd want to fuck that up by inviting his damaged ass into her home, he couldn't begin to imagine.
Ransom closed his eyes and decided that there was a right choice in this situation, and he was going to make it. He wasn't going to be the one to trip up this good thing she had going. A little charity was fine, but welcoming him into her life? That was a mistake.
Did he have plans to take revenge on her, slowly destroy the life she'd built and make her regret the day she'd ever heard the name Thrombey? Sure. He had enough to fill a filing cabinet. Early on, he'd applied his imagination with a singular white hot focus, and some of his ideas made him sick to even think about.
But now that he was out, did he want to execute any of those plans? No. Did he want to hurt her, also no. Did he know her odds for peace were better with him far, far away? In his bones, yes.
So.
Tomorrow he'd eat her breakfast and put on whatever clean clothes she provided, mutely play along with whatever plans she had for the day, then at his earliest possible convenience he'd slip away and get back to what he'd had planned when he'd stepped out of those prison gates not twelve hours earlier. Namely, finally become that self-made man his family members had always told him he could be. And oh by the way, figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do with the rest of his life.
With that decision made, a tension inside of him softened. Despite the obscene acrobatics he'd pondered, his dick remained soft as well. And so, despite the fact that his mattress was too yielding, the house too quiet, the enormity of his options tomorrow too much for his mind to gnaw at, a few minutes after he shut his eyes he was still as a corpse, breathing deep and steady until the sun rose the next morning.