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Once the police finally arrived and the initial adrenaline had worn off, Helen’s first thought was that she needed a lawyer—a good one. She voiced this concern as much to Blanc, who, to her surprise, waved it off with a literal swish of his hand. “No need to worry about that,” was all he said, before he took another drag of his cigar and turned back to the inspector.
Helen thought she had quite a lot to worry about, actually. She wanted to say that she was a Black woman who’d just taken down a multi-millionaire, that she had just lost a sister at the hands of a man who had claimed to be her friend. That while she was sure the Shitheads were well equipped with the best legal teams that Bron’s investments could afford, she wouldn’t go near them with a 10-foot pole. She opened her mouth to speak, but Blanc beat her to it.
“Miss Brand,” he said, voice gentle, a knowing look in his eye. “Don’t worry. I know a guy.”
“Well,” he corrected after a brief pause, “Not a guy, but. You’ll be in good hands.” He smiled at her, and Helen let herself believe him.
Marta Cabrera was simultaneously nothing and everything like the woman Helen had seen in the papers in the aftermath of the Thrombey fiasco. She sat in the house like she owned it—which she did—but on the edge, almost a figment of the imagination despite her name on the documents. “Miss Brand,” she said, ‘My house, my rules, my coffee’ mug in hand. “The detective told me to expect you.”
“Yes,” Helen nodded nervously. “I hope I’m not imposing.”
Marta smiled gently. “You’re not. It’s nice to meet you, Miss Brand.”
“You can call me Helen.”
Blanc, as it turned out, was right. Marta’s team was capable and kind, and they patiently explained to Helen the legal terms she didn’t fully understand. Meanwhile, Marta flit in and out of the room, a quiet but undeniably appreciated hum in the background. When the meetings with the lawyers ended, she came back with bags of takeout in her hands. “Remember,” Marta said, passing one of the bags to Helen, who took it gratefully, “they have nothing against you. You did nothing wrong.”
“I know.” Helen peeked inside the plastic. The smell of Chinese food was a welcome scent, and she reached for the disposable chopsticks, suddenly starving. “All of his friends are testifying against him, so. He has no one.”
“Well, that’s good.” Marta was looking at her. She looked away. “It doesn’t feel good, though.”
Marta shrugged. “It rarely does.” She was in the middle of opening up the takeout container, one hand absentmindedly rubbing at a spot on her chest, and Helen looked at her again, really looked at her, then. She could see that Marta understood, could see why Blanc had thought they ought to meet—they both had experienced all too well the sting of people whose loyalties could change on the drop of a dime, where even the swiftest act of justice rarely felt good. Marta began eating, and Helen quickly followed suit, conversation replaced with the scraping of chopsticks and the sliding of napkins.
“What do you do now?” Helen asked once there was only a bit of rice left in her container. She cleared her throat. “After nearly being kill—after it all, I mean?”
If Marta noticed the clumsy articulation of the question, she didn’t comment on it. With the empty takeout boxes in hand, she walked to the kitchen, Helen trailing behind. “I have a little garden out in the back,” she said as she threw away the trash, “and the plants need constant attention, so much of my time is spent on that. Plus therapy. Lots of therapy. Contrary to popular opinion, talking about your feelings does, in fact, make you feel better. Who knew?”
The unexpected wryness made Helen laugh, though she kept her eyes on the ground. “So, a green thumb and therapy. Got it. Anything else?”
“Helen.” When she looked up, Marta’s smile was gentle and empathetic. “It gets better,” she said. “Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or next month, but it will. Do you want to stay the night?”
To her surprise, (temporarily) living in an entirely different part of the country she had never traveled to before was not as big of a change as Helen thought it might’ve been. It was nice, actually. Since they were still living in the midst of a pandemic, she could attend the trial all the way from the little guest room Marta had cleared out for her, wrapped in a bathrobe with iced lemonade in hand. Faces she had seen in person two weeks prior were pixels now, although it was hard to miss the increasingly stony look on Miles Bron’s stupid face. In the end, it only took two hours for the jury to deliberate, and when the final verdict came through Helen thought maybe she ought to thank the Shitheads for backing her up, but as she looked at their solemn faces through the screen she found that the words couldn’t come out of her mouth. Peg and Whiskey weren’t as bad as the others, though, so she texted them privately to make sure they were okay. When she got the affirmative from both of them, she closed her laptop shut with a sigh and went downstairs, where Marta was in the middle of cooking; she had a colorful red and blue apron on. “How did it go?”
“60 years in prison for murder, attempted murder, fraud and blackmail.” The tiniest part of Helen did feel good to say it aloud. She collapsed into a nearby chair and took the plate of scrambled eggs Marta offered her. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Marta laughed. It was a soft, delicate thing, and Helen liked hearing it. “We move on, I suppose. Try to heal.”
“Try to heal.” She echoed doubtfully.
“Yes,” Marta said, as if it were as simple as that. “You can do it. I have full faith in you.”
Helen believed her, she did. She read books and watched movies and went on walks and even got a therapist like Marta had suggested but still, it was hard. Sometimes, she would join Marta in her garden, watching the other woman care for the plants like they were her literal children. Even with the summer heat, Helen enjoyed being there. It was almost as if the flowers were her friends, silent but supportive spectators to whatever she wanted to do next. She could take in the sun and count her steps without having to worry about a gun behind her back, and that was, all things considered, the safest she had felt in a while.
“Hey,” Marta said one day while Helen was in the library reading, “The detective wants to ask how you’re doing.” She held out the phone, where sure enough, Blanc was peering through the screen with his spectacles, a warm smile on his lips. Helen couldn’t help but smile back. “Hi, Detective.”
“Helen,” he said, and maybe she might’ve missed that familiar southern drawl a little. “How are you? Marta treating you well?”
He didn’t mean it like that, but Helen felt her cheeks warm anyway. Thankfully, Marta was long out of earshot, having retreated to give them space. “Yes, it’s great here. What about you? What have you been up to?”
“Oh, I just got back from the Bahamas. The case wasn’t nearly as exciting as yours, if you were wondering, but I managed to catch the idiot who did it in the end. I—” He was interrupted then by an off-screen yell, to which he simply rolled his eyes. “Don’t mind the noise, Philip’s still figuring out a new recipe. Some sort of scone, he claims.”
Helen chuckled. “Of course.” Blanc then continued talking about his time in the Bahamas, and she let him. It was nice to hear from him again, even if it was just through a screen. After a while, Marta returned and Helen gave her back the phone. She resumed her book and although she tried her best not to, could hear bits of their conversation in the background, catching traces of “pills”, “attempted murder” and “projectile vomit” here and there.
“How does your puke thing work, anyway?” The question couldn’t help but slip out of her mouth once Marta had hung up. “Shit, sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“It’s alright,” Marta said, setting down the phone. “To be honest, I still don’t know—why it happens, or how it works. A really bad reflex, I guess.”
“Some people would say it’s a good thing you can’t lie.”
Marta’s smile stiffened ever so slightly, a shift so minuscule Helen almost missed it. “Are you one of those people?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said, and she found that to be completely true. Marta still didn't look particularly happy, though, so she hurried to change the topic. “Do you and Blanc talk often?”
“Sometimes.” A shrug of the shoulders. “When he’s just finished a case, or the opposite—when he’s stuck, though knowing him, that rarely happens. You should’ve seen the state he was in when the pandemic first started. I think you did some good to him.”
“Yes, I’m sure he’s very pleased,” Helen remarked wryly, and Marta let out a soft huff of laughter before turning to leave. Helen watched her go, gaze only lingering for a few extra seconds before she turned back to her book.
“Fuck you.”
“Woah,” Helen put her hands up. She had just gotten back from her daily walk to find Marta standing at the kitchen island, glaring at something lying on the counter. It was the angriest she had ever seen her look, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed.
“Not you,” Marta said. She picked the thing up from the counter, which turned out to be a piece of paper. “It’s this. It’s Ransom again.”
“Again?”
Marta sighed, and Helen could see all the fight leave her. “He writes me letters from prison occasionally. Says he’s trying to be better, that he wants to be friends, stuff like that.”
Helen raised a brow. “Maybe he should’ve done that before he tried to frame you for murder.”
“Exactly!” Crumpling the letter up and tossing it into the open recycling bin, Marta sat down, eyes aimed at the ground. When she looked back up, Helen could see the hurt in them. “Before he—before everything, I’d really thought he was on my side. That finally, someone in that god awful family could see the truth.”
Helen thought of the Shitheads, people who’d only stood by her because the evidence against Miles had been overwhelming. Claire and Lionel and Birdie with their own agendas, the three who chose money and ego over friendship. Over doing the right thing. “Greed really rots us all, doesn’t it.”
Marta scoffed. “Understatement of the century.” But the hurt was disappearing from her eyes, a smile poking at the edge of her mouth, and before long, they were both doubled over, clutching their sides in laughter. Marta’s smile was bright and blinding, and Helen found that she couldn’t really look away.
A week after that, Marta introduced her to her family. The Cabreras were all very much alike, Helen thought as she watched the three of them putter around the kitchen, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. She had the very distinct impression that they were talking about her, although she couldn’t figure out why Marta’s ears were turning increasingly red and her voice was rising in defensive pitch.
Of course, however, there were still some core differences: Alice Cabrera was outspoken in a way her sister was not, and Sofia Cabrera could cook up a mean Cuban picadillo. When Helen thanked her for the meal and tried to help with the dishes, the woman simply smiled at her and shooed her off. With no other choice, Helen returned to the living room, where Marta was already seated, watching TV. “Your mother and sister,” she said. “They’re nice.”
“They’re annoying, that’s what they are,” Marta replied, in a tone that indicated otherwise. “But that’s family for you, I guess.” And all of a sudden Helen couldn’t help but think of Andi, of their rich bitch talk and dreams of going beyond their small Kentucky town, a dream only one of them had accomplished. She smiled, suddenly sad. “Yeah.”
“Hey,” Marta’s voice was soft. “I’m sorry, if that helps. Although—” she paused. “Speaking from personal experience, it probably doesn’t.” It was their first time acknowledging it, and Helen could feel Marta’s genuine empathy, of grieving losses that never fully go away.
“Thanks,” she said, and found that she meant it.
Before she knew it, two whole months had passed—the longest Helen had ever been away from home. Summer was coming to an end, and she was starting to get emails from the school district asking her if she was planning on returning for the school year.
She thought about it, and came to a conclusion. “I should get back to teaching,” she finally declared one night after dinner, elbows deep in dish soap. Marta was busy typing away on her laptop, but looked up at her words. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She swiped at a bit of soap that had landed in her hair. “It’s been two months since Greece. The school district needs me, and I miss teaching. A mutually beneficial relationship, if you will.”
“Helen—”
“And I know everything is still remote right now so I could technically work from anywhere, but I’ve imposed on you for far too long.”
“You haven’t been imposing,” Marta said, but those words made Helen realize just how long she had been—two months of living in a dead millionaire’s former mansion essentially letting the other woman take care of her. God, she was shameless. “No,” she said, “I have.”
“No.” Marta shook her head. “Trust me, you haven’t. It’s actually been quite nice having someone around. Someone who gets it.” Marta looked at her then, and for the first time Helen was struck by just how at home she had felt all this time. Marta, with her hair freshly wet from the shower, in a bathrobe and pajamas, suddenly being something—someone—she wanted.
She was struck by just how much that didn’t phase her.
Realistically, though—“Even if I haven’t been imposing, I need to go back. At least for a little bit.” There was so much she had to do, unopened mail and overcurious neighbors and emotional baggage waiting for her back in Kentucky. Things she needed to see through first.
“I understand,” Marta said, sounding like she did. “Just know that it wasn’t a burden, having you here.”
So Helen booked a ticket home, emailed the district to let them know that yes, she was planning on returning, and busied herself with packing and sending Zoom links to the parents. When the day came, Marta was waiting for her by the end of the foyer. “You’ll always have a home with me,” she said. “Safe travels, Helen Brand.”
“Thank you, Marta Cabrera.” Helen looked at her one final time, and as she stepped into the taxi, knew that they would see each other again.