Page 44 of Atonement

“Are you okay, little lamb?”

“Yeah.” His voice cracked, and he swallowed as he nodded to affirm his statement. “It’s just … my dad is dead.”

*

He made a move as if to crawl towards his father’s body, and Mom and I both reached for him at the same time. She fell to her knees in front of him, hands on his shoulders, as I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my forehead between his shoulder blades.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, and my mother soothed him equally, but he was already starting to shake.

“Get him out of here,” Mom said to me. “I’ll help Joshua clean up.”

“I can handle this myself.” Joshua’s voice was tight, but he didn’t sound resentful. He sounded very, very tired.

“I need to,” Mom said. “It’s important for me.”

I climbed to my feet and pulled Meyer with me. Both of us almost fell to the ground again as he stumbled, eyes still on his father’s body, but he wrestled his feet underneath his body and allowed me to lead him out of the room.

“You don’t like blood,” he said, dazed, and I looked at his chest and face. He was covered in the stuff. I thought it was all Conrad’s, but I couldn’t be sure. I needed to clean him up and see if he was hurt.

“It’s not bothering me,” I lied. “Let’s go to the bathroom.” Step by step, we stumbled out of the room where both of us had suffered more hurt than any one person should have to endure. In the foyer, I glanced around helplessly. Where did I need to go? I barely knew anything about this place.

“Upstairs,” he said, as if speaking to himself. “My bedroom. Mom was in there earlier, though.”

“That’s okay.” I led him up the staircase. “We’ll get clean. Then we can decide what to do next.” I had no clue how to proceed, but Meyer was obviously no use. I needed to keep it together long enough for him to fall asleep.

Somehow I got him upstairs and into his old bedroom without issue. The bathroom was just as ornate as I would have expected, more of what you would see in a master bedroom rather than a teenager’s. Leaving him leaning against the counter, I turned to the shower and started the water running. I had to turn around around suddenly at the sound of a loud bang, finding Meyer throwing open cabinets and tossing their contents behind him as he searched. He was trembling, still covered in his father’s blood, heedless of the shower running behind him and my hands as I tried to remove his filthy clothes.

“I need something,” he said, voice unsteady.

I knelt beside him and tried to still his hands. “Get clean, and you can have a drink.” I didn’t like it, but no way was I giving him pills.

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He pushed me aside as he finally came up with a nail cutter, extending the attached file. Everything clicked into place.

“Meyer, no…”

His voice was beyond cracked; it was completely broken. Tears sat on the edges of his eyes, barely held back from spilling over. “I have to, Madeline, you don’t understand. I can’t handle this right now. It’s either drugs or blood.”

“Kiss me instead,” I begged, reaching for his face, but he was finally taking off his shirt to get access to his upper arm, revealing still-healing cuts. My heart, already cracked from seeing him in such pain, fell open even further at the reminder of his ongoing torment.

“It won’t be enough,” he said, and pressed the sharp end of the nail file into his arm. I grabbed him and pulled, my strength combating his weakness just enough to pull it away from his skin.

“Meyer. This isn’t healthy. Your brain is fried. You can’t make any rational decisions right now.”

His head lolled to the side as he looked at me, but though his neck seemed unsteady, his eyes were resolute. “Maddie. I don’t fucking care.”

I wanted to pull my hair out. There was no talking him out of this, and I wasn’t strong enough to restrain him. “Let me clean it first. Please, Meyer, you’re covered in … someone else’s blood. It needs to be sanitized.”

He finally held still. “You won’t try to stop me?”

“No, I promise. And I’ll get a knife. It’ll be better than that dull thing. Just … wait a few minutes. Please.”

We stared at each other for an eternity, him debating whether or not I was telling the truth, before he finally set aside the nail file and sat back. “I’ll wait.”

“Five minutes,” I breathed, and ran out of the bathroom.

Finding a sharp knife in the kitchen wasn’t easy, everything was locked away, but I screamed and kicked at one of them until I was able to pry it open. A paring knife was missing, but I grabbed the next smallest one, and washed it quickly just in case. It was harder to find any first aid kit, but eventually I turned one up beneath a bunch of towels at the back of one of house’s many linen closets. I sprinted back to the bathroom as fast as I dared with a knife in my hands, and when I arrived I found Meyer in the shower with the door wide open, standing silently under the spray as his father’s blood washed off his body and down the drain. Water was spraying all over the floor, collecting in puddles and soaking into his cast-off clothes

“What did you find?”

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