Work Text:
I, Richard Campbell Gansey III, being of sound mind and body, do hereby declare that in the event of my death:
"You sure you need a will, son?" The lawyer looked at Gansey over his reading glasses, his eyebrows arched.
Gansey wasn't stupid. At least, not anymore. It might have taken him six months longer than it should have, but he'd finally put two and two together. Blue's comments about the 300 Fox Way death list plus her voice on his St. Mark's Day recording equaled the need for a will.
He didn't tell the lawyer any of that. "My father always says you can never be too careful." His father also said 'never go to a lawyer who advertises in the phone book,' but there wasn't a lot of choice in Henrietta. Gansey didn't have time to drive to DC just to visit a Dad-approved attorney who'd only try to change his mind.
His time was running out, and Gansey had things to do: a dead king to find, and friends to provide for.
The contents of the Gansey Family Trust shall pass to Helen L. Gansey, according to the terms of the trust.
Helen gripped her mother's hand tightly and dabbed at her eyes with a linen handkerchief. She nodded slightly, unsurprised. Dick's crazy dreams sent him trekking across Europe and digging up bones in rural Virginia, but he had always respected their family's wealth.
The lawyer looked at her as if he expected that she'd be happy to inherit enough money to buy a handful of successful sports franchises, but Helen ignored him. She had plenty of money. She had lost her baby brother.
The real property located at 1136 Monmouth Avenue in Henrietta, Virginia, I leave to Ronan N. Lynch, along with the contents and furnishings therein, with the exception of specific bequests enumerated below. All persons, living or dead, who currently reside at 1136 Monmouth Avenue are to be permitted to maintain residency therein in perpetuity.
Ronan shoved open the rusting iron door so hard that the wall shuddered and a shower of brick dust rained down on his head. Across the room, warm afternoon light spilled through the windows onto Gansey's still-rumpled bed, his miniature cardboard model of Henrietta, and his fucking houseplants.
Ronan wanted to break something. He wanted to scream and bleed and destroy everything, pour out his anger and pain until there was nothing left of Monmouth Manufacturing.
But those stupid, useless things were all he had left of Gansey.
He left the iron door open, went down to the first floor and demolished the old rusty boiler with a crowbar.
When he was finished, he was covered with sweat and grease and decades of unidentifiable industrial dust. The invisible knife lodged in his chest was still there, but at least the angry haze over his eyes had cleared.
"How'd it go?" asked Noah, who had definitely not been there before. Ronan wasn't even surprised by this shit anymore.
"You and me can live in this shithole forever," Ronan told him, flinging the crowbar at the twisted hulk of the old boiler. It landed with a loud clang.
"Just the two of us." Noah frowned and his face got a little more transparent, so that Ronan could see the pile of rubble behind him.
Ronan didn't dignify that with an answer. There had only ever been one reason to live at Monmouth, and that reason was gone.
I leave my books, papers and research materials to Adam Parrish, to aid him in his study of Central Virginia forest ecology and conservation.
There was no place in his room at St. Agnes for all those books and maps and notebooks, but Adam took them anyway. He spent money he didn't have to buy a thrift store bookshelf and used time he couldn't spare to organize them all in meticulous order, because that's what Gansey wanted. Did want. Had--
Would have wanted.
I leave my 1973 Chevrolet Camaro to Blue Sargent, for her personal use.
Crying wasn't sensible or practical or useful in any way, and Blue had always prided herself on all those qualities. Still, it was nearly an hour before she could see clearly enough to drive.
When she pressed her foot to the gas pedal, she remembered the way Gansey's hand had rested on her knee, guiding her through the downshift. Her foot faltered, and the engine sputtered and coughed.
She gritted her teeth and tried again.
The Pig was loud and bright-colored, unreliable and inefficient and unnecessarily large, but Blue was determined to drive it, and drive it well.
It was the absolute least she could do, now.
The sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000.00) shall be placed in an account to fund the creation of the Gansey Scholarship Fund, in order to provide for educational costs incurred by Adam Parrish and Blue Sargent, including but not limited to undergraduate and graduate tuition, books, housing, and attendant programs of study.
Blue and Adam exchanged identical looks, watery and exasperated. There was no way to refuse.
The 2013 Chevrolet Suburban and the remaining balance of my financial assets shall revert to my parents, Richard Campbell Gansey II and Diana Kellogg Gansey.
The lawyer removed his reading glasses and folded his hands on top of the short document, right over the spiky blue ink of Gansey's signature.
"Is that it?" Helen asked, her voice inhumanly steady.
"That's all there is."