Page 50 of Atonement

“It’s only temporary, Anita. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“What the fuck do you mean, enjoy it?”

“You’re going to jail, dear sister. Shawn isn’t taking the fall for this.”

“No!” She began kicking, then put her legs against the door to Conrad’s rooms as soon as they got close enough. Joseph ran around to pull open the door, and then Joshua, Eva, and Anita all disappeared up the stairs.

We stood and listened as her protestations grew more and more faint, but eventually, they faded altogether, and we were left with a silence that grew heavier with each passing minute. When I finally looked at Joseph again, the look on his face told me he was barely holding back from attacking me.

Maddie saw it too. “Dad, we—”

“It’s okay,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Joseph, let’s go talk.”

His expression slipped a fraction, surprised by me taking control of the situation, but it smoothed back into his his mask of anger quickly enough. He nodded curtly and preceded me out of the room, but halted when he realized he didn’t know where to go in the house.

“This way,” I said, gesturing toward the front, and leading him to a sitting room that looked out over the front drive. It was the opposite direction of the room where I’d last seen my father.

I stood in front of one of the large windows, biting my lip as I gazed out at the trees blowing in the wind. They still held a lot of their leaves, but more fell with every gust. I tried to put my hands in my pockets, assumed the relaxed pose I would take if this were a business meeting and I was trying to talk down someone who wanted too hefty a price cut on our products. But my pockets were not where I expected them to be, far too low on the sweatpants I was wearing withSaint Agnes Preprunning up the sides in red.

So much for intimidating him. But that was the wrong track to take. I didn’t need to throw my power around with this man. I needed to throw myself at his feet and beg his forgiveness, not for anything I’d done to him but for what I’d done to the two people he loved the most.

“You wanted to talk? Start talking.”

I finally turned to face him, and found he had adopted the pose I had been trying to take on. I cleared my throat.

“There are a million things I wish I could do different. Starting with the night I brought Madeline here.”

He glared at me, not moving.

“I should have taken her home. I should have called you and had you come get her, then given you as much money as you needed to get out of the country and away from my father. It would have saved everyone a lot of heartache, myself included.”

I scrubbed my hands across my face, wishing I had a razor to shave with. My face itched, and I looked like a bum. If I’d known I’d have to defend myself to Madeline’s father today, I would have tried to clean up a little more.

“But I can’t apologize for it. I can’t because if I hadn’t brought her back here I never would have fallen in love with her. More importantly, she never would have fallen in love with me. She wouldn’t have shown me that there was a life beyond the bars of the gilded cage I’d lived in for thirty long years.”

I paused to swallow, running my hands up my face and through my hair as I shifted from foot to foot. His gaze didn’t soften an inch.Shit. “I fucked up, Joseph. I fucked up real bad. But I’m the luckiest bastard in the world, because somehow, your daughter still loves me. And I’ll spend the rest of my life being worthy of her, to prove she didn’t make a mistake giving her heart to me.”

He was silent for so long. Long enough that I thought maybe what I’d said had actually gotten through to him. And then he spoke.

“You think I can fucking let you be with my daughter because you think youloveher?” He crossed the room to me too quickly, finger pointing as if he wanted to stab me with it, but I didn’t back away. I wasn’t afraid of him. “Your monster of a father said he loved Eva, too. Told her that while he raped her day after day for years.”

“I know first hand just how evil my father was.”

It was as if he didn’t hear me. “And now you want to tell me that, what, you love each other? That’s not love, you piece of shit. It’s Stockholm Syndrome.”

“That’s not how it happened.” I could feel his anger whipping toward me like a hurricane. He was spinning around me so close to out of control, he nearly swept me up with him. But if I wanted him to believe me, I had to be in control of myself. In the past, I’d always let Conrad blow me over. There was no time for that now. I’d wasted thirty years cowering in fear, but I had the rest of my life now. The rest of my life with the woman I loved and who, impossibly, loved me back. I was going to make that count. “You weren’t here, Joseph. There was more that happened than you realized.”

“I don’t fucking care!” He was an inch away from my face, spittle flecking across my skin like sparks from a bomb fuse. But I didn’t move. “You’re not good enough for her, and nothing you can do can ever convince me otherwise.”

As if realizing how close he was to hitting me, he suddenly pulled back and walked across the room, his back to me. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized was sitting in the bottom of my chest, falling back a step before I got control of myself again and righted my posture.

“I understand why you hate me. I really do. But you need to at least get used to seeing me around, because I’m not going anywhere. And nothing you say will change how I feel about your daughter.”

There was a muffled cough by the door, and we both looked in unison to find Madeline standing just over the threshold. She gazed at her father lovingly before turning to me.

“Mom wants us in the study. We need to talk about what comes next.”

Maddie

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