Page 14 of Atonement

I coughed a little as a ball of food stuck in my throat, and Joshua produced a cup which he filled with water from the tap. I drank gratefully and wiped my upper lip. “Then why did he do it again?”

“You said you hated him. And he couldn’t handle that, no matter how much he already knew it was true.”

The spoon clinked against the bottom of the bowl. It was plastic—no chance of forging a weapon—but the sound was metallic. “But he didn’t kill me.”

“Of course not. He couldn’t kill you, not after he’s lost everyone else he loves.”

I tapped the spoon again, this time against the side of the bowl. The sound was flatter there. “He doesn’t love me. If he did, he wouldn’t have left me the other day.” My voice shook a little as I scooped out the last bite of food and spooned it into my mouth. I sucked away the oats until all that remained on my tongue was the taste of hot metal.

“That’s what has me convinced he does. If he hated you, or was indifferent, he would have marched you over here and handed you over. Washed his hands of you. But he couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t handle staying with you, either.”

I set my spoon in the bowl and shoved away the tray, holding my hands over my mouth while I coughed. When I recovered, I folded them beneath my arms. “Well, now his feelings are going to get me killed.”

“I wanted to give you something to hold on to. When Conrad comes back.”

It would have been better to give me no hope at all. “Why are you telling me this?”

He looked at his feet, then leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “I’m not sure.”

I scooted back on the bed and picked up the blanket with one hand, covering the other with it. “You don’t have to do this.”

He sighed and picked up the tray. “I do, Madeline. I don’t expect you to understand, but it is what it is. I’ll do my best to give you a head’s up when something is coming. But all the cards are on the table now, at least with Meyer.” He paused as he turned, cast in shadow by the light behind him. “What comes next won’t take too long.”

He closed the door before I could ask what he meant.

I waited ten breaths, intentionally breathing too deeply, my head swimming slightly as I clenched my fists. When I was sure no one was coming back, when I believed I was truly alone, I uncurled my fingers one by one and looked at the shining silver key in my palm.

Maddie

I didn’t quite know what to do with the key, as it didn’t seem to fit anything in the room. The door had no lock on the inside, no opportunity for me to even try to pick it. It looked more like the key to a pair of handcuffs, but not once throughout this entire ordeal had either Schaf man put me in chains. Nevertheless, I kept it on me at all times, tucked deep into my back pocket.

Why Joshua had suddenly decided to help me, and in this seemingly ineffectual way, was the more pressing riddle knocking around my head. It seemed Meyer wasn’t the only one too afraid to stand up to Conrad in any meaningful way. But Joshua had no incentive to help me, except for perhaps a long-dormant sense of justice or an understanding of right and wrong. What would it take to stoke that fire at little hotter, remind him that I was a human in the hands of a monster?

I didn’t get long to think about it.

After my interaction with Joshua I finally opted to use the shower, peeling off the filthy clothes I’d been wearing for days and dropping them in a heap on the floor near the shower. I placed the key in the back pocket of a pair of pants I found in the cabinet beneath the sink before stepping under the water. My hair soaked up the water greedily as dried sweat and blood sloughed off my skin and ran down the drain. I finally took stock of each new bruise on my body, fingerprints that wrapped around my upper arm and the tender spot on the back of my head. Would my skin ever be undamaged again? Would there come a day I could look in the mirror and see only my complexion, unmarred by bruises both fresh and healing or blood dried to a dark brown flaking away from barely-sealed wounds? If I couldn’t find a way to get out of here, probably not. One thing was for sure, I would not be giving in to whatever Conrad demanded of me. He didn’t have a child to threaten in order to ensure my cooperation. If he wanted me, he’d have to beat me into unconsciousness first.

I stood under the water longer than was necessary, trying to find a few moments of peace while no one was watching or threatening my life. After so many lukewarm showers with Meyer those first days when I couldn’t be bothered to bathe myself, the hot water felt more like scalding on my shoulders, but I welcomed the burn. It was the kind of pain that chased away all the worries I had been holding in my shoulders over the past several days. What surprised me was that when I stepped out of the shower, water continued to fall down my face. I leaped back into the shower as quickly as I could, cranking the water as I hot as I could and shoving a ragged washcloth into my mouth so I could scream while the water crashed down around my ears.

I was alone. I thought I’d understood that before, but the evidence was too overwhelming now for me to push down beneath the more predominant fear and pain that had consumed me until now. When he walked out the door that morning and told me it didn’t matter, that Conrad would be after me one day soon. And he was right. I just thought that by the time he came, Meyer’s good sense would have returned and he’d be standing by my side to fight him off.

“I wonder if you’ll ever stop making a fool of me.”

“Fuck, I hope not.”

That had been the night everything changed. When we both caved to the string tugging us toward each other, instead of pulling hard in the opposite direction and hoping it would break. And for a few hours we’d been bound together tighter than any blood bond; held fast to each other by a shared history we hadn’t been aware of until it was too late. Even then, Meyer hadn’t truly believed we’d make it out of the situation together, or even in one piece. He hadn’t truly believed in me, inus, because everyone he’d loved in his life had either hurt or abandoned him. He settled for playing pretend for a couple of days. But I … I had been convinced. Now the rug had been ripped out from underneath me, and I wasn’t sure I’d survive the fall.

When my lungs hurt from the screaming and my head pulsed in time with my heartbeat from the force of my sobs, I turned off the water and exited the shower for good. The towels provided were scratchy and riddled with holes, nothing like the luxury Meyer had let me experience even when he was still tying me to the foot of his bed. I stepped into my new set of clothes as quickly as I could, not wanting to be caught naked. As I was drying my hair, the door to the main room opened, and I froze.

“Are you done with your little pity party, Madeline?”

I closed my eyes as a fresh tear tumbled down my cheek.

No time for that.

“What do you want?” I wiped away the tear and grabbed the brush that had miraculously traveled from Meyer’s house to mine along with my clothes, but my head was too tender as I pulled it through the knots and I resorted to detangling with my fingers.

“There is a visitor here to meet you.”

---