Page 42 of Atonement

“Oh God. Meyer, I don’t know if he’s dead.”

With the amount of blood on her, I doubted very much that he was up and walking around. “Let’s get you some clean clothes.”

“I can’t go back in there.”

“That’s okay. I’ll get you something of mine. Come with me.”

We walked down the staircase back to the main house, Eva leaning on my arm the entire time for support. I felt like a fraud, supporting her when I was about to shit myself with how afraid I was. What would I find when I went back to Conrad’s rooms? How was I going to dispose of his body without anyone finding out? Was Joshua gone, or would he show up suddenly and surprise me? A million questions ran through my mind at the speed of light, and I couldn’t do anything to slow them down. I shut off my brain and forced myself to get a grip. I could deal with those eventualities in a minute. Right now, Eva needed me.

She moved slowly, but somehow we made it back upstairs to my old bedroom. I dug up some more clothes from my high school days, holding them out to her like an offering.

“Use my bathroom,” I said. “Get cleaned up. I’ll make you some food.”

She stared at the floor. “We have to call the police.”

“Let’s deal with that in a second. I don’t particularly care what happens to his body.”

She nodded and went into the bathroom. I waited until I heard the water turn on in the shower, then sprinted from the room.

A quick look up and down the hallway showed no one had followed us here. Where was Joshua? I started to raise my wine bottle weapon again, then realized I had dropped it when I saw Eva. Shit. I should have picked up the knife. Seeing my mother covered in blood and nearly catatonic had shocked away my sense of self-preservation. I hadn’t even bothered to make sure Conrad was really dead before turning my back and leading her away.

No one could have lost that much blood and still survived.

I moved slowly down the hall, preparing for someone to lunge at me from one of the other rooms or come rushing from the other direction, but the house was as deathly silent as it had been when I entered. Back in the stairway to Conrad’s rooms, I waited once more, but again, there was nothing.

“Stay down, you son of a bitch,” I muttered. I was curious as to how she got the knife, but ultimately it was irrelevant. I doubted she’d stabbed him deep enough to kill him, but at least she’d drawn enough blood that he’d lost consciousness. All that was needed was for me to get back up there and finish the job.

The light in the hallway had turned off while we were gone, and waved my hand in front of the sensor to light it up again.

The knife was gone.

I spun around just as a ragged form lunged and sent me falling to the side, down the stairway. I grabbed onto Conrad as we tumbled over the worn wood, every bump sending pain shooting through my bruised body. When we hit the ground at the bottom, I shoved him away and scrambled to get to my feet. At first my legs wouldn’t comply, and I began to panic, thinking I would die here on the floor with a broken neck, unable to do anything to defend myself. He’d track down Maddie and bring her back here, then keep both her and Eva as his prizes until he got tired and put a bullet in each of their heads. Eventually the world stopped spinning around me, and I was able to get my legs underneath me, and I faced my father head on.

“You shouldn’t have come back, boy,” he growled. He was still bleeding, but the place he held on his chest was too far above where his heart was. Eva had missed. She had to have been panicked, hysterical, not properly aiming. She injured him enough to put him out of commission briefly, but he was certainly up and moving now. He threw the bloody paring knife to the side as he stalked toward me. “I was willing to let you go. Both of you. But you’re dead now.”

“Stop right there!” I pulled the gun out of my waist band and pointed it at him. He stopped, but the smile growing across his face was as menacing as ever. He resumed walking toward me, slower than before.

“You think you have the balls to shoot me?”

“I know I do,” I growled. In reality, I was almost glad he’d rendered the gun ineffective. When push came to shove, I still wasn’t sure I had the fortitude to pull the trigger on my own father, even though I’d come here with the intent to kill him. I had to figure it out, somehow, because he was almost within striking distance.

“Actually, I doubt that very much.”

He walked past the point of the gun and stopped next to it, staring at me as he panted through his pain.

“Go on then. Do it.”

I reared back my arm and swung.

The barrel of the gun caught him across the face, and he staggered to the floor again as he cursed me. His hand moved from his chest to his nose, now gushing red blood to match that coming from just above his heart.

“You’re a goddamn menace!” He screamed as I fell on him again, pinning him down with my hips and raising the gun to swing again. Even unable to fire, it was the best weapon I had with the knife halfway across the kitchen.

“And you’re the devil!” I brought the gun down on his skull this time, leaving a deep red mark.

He coughed, but never let up. “I gave you everything you could ever ask for! All the money in the world!”

“What I wanted was a parent!” I swung a third time, but fell back as he gathered his last bit of strength and pushed me off him. Just like that, our positions were reversed, with him on top trying to wrestle the gun from me. I closed my eyes and thrashed as his blood dripped onto my face, not wanting any part of him to contaminate me. And then he suddenly let go, and I was pinned to the ground by the same force that had taken me down the night before. Electricity running through my bones pinned me in place better than any shackles. And it wasn’t just five seconds this time, it was ten, and even when it was over I could barely breathe. Conrad stood slowly, leaning heavily on the counter to catch his balance.

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