Page 51 of Atonement

We all stared at the smear of blood on the floor, bits of brain and bone spread like jam on a hard piece of bread. Meyer had one hand on the small of my back, and his trembling reverberated up my spine. I reached behind me with both hands to grab his, squeezing his fingers as tightly as he could, until he fell still.

“I thought you were cleaning up,” I said, looking between Joshua and my mother. Joshua looked ready to fall over from exhaustion, but he was still helping. That was something.

“This is part of it,” Mom said. “If I’d managed to kill him with the knife, that would have been easier to explain away. But since there were … complications,” she looked at Joshua quickly and then back at me, “we had to improvise a little.”

“We didn’t want Meyer to be implicated in any of this,” Joshua said. His voice was much lower than usual, further evidence of his fatigue. “If the police found out—”

“That he was complicit in my daughter’s kidnapping?” Joseph hadn’t taken his eyes off Meyer since we entered the room. Even my puppy dog eyes, which usually served to placate him, had no effect at all. His anger filled the room like another person, taking up the space so recently vacated by Conrad. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much I could do at the moment. Mom placed her hand on his arm, but didn’t say anything.

“Well, yeah.” Joshua grimaced as he looked at his former employer. “That would extend the investigation considerably. We had to get rid of the bat and the gun completely. There will be no murder weapon for the police to find when they get here.”

“And when will they get here?” Meyer squeezed my hand as he spoke. His concern was me becoming a suspect. It made me love him even more. I overheard most of his conversation with my father, and it had taken most of my self control not to burst in there and physically separate them. The need for me to protect Meyer was still so strong, like a compulsion. But some spell over him had been broken the moment Conrad took his last breath. He’d been strong, even without the normal armor he used to protect himself. He stood up for both of us.

“About fifteen minutes, maybe less if they drive fast.”

Meyer sighed. “So, what’s our story?”

“The story is, none of us were here.” She swallowed, then took a deep breath. “Conrad asked Joshua to leave him for the evening, then when you and Maddie arrived the next morning to have breakfast with him, he was gone. All you found was this.” She gestured at the swath of remains on the floor. “You called Joshua, who then recommended we call the police.”

“And what are the police going to find?” I wrapped one arm around Meyer’s and leaned on him.

“They’re bringing cadaver dogs, who will trace his body to the pond back behind Meyer’s house.”

“And then they’ll do the autopsy and wonder who bashed in his head before shooting him.” Meyer looked like he was already thinking up ways to explain the wound, make sure I was never here, at least officially.

“No.” She shook her head. “Joshua made sure the man Conrad’s been bribing all these years is going to be taking lead on the investigation. He’ll make sure there’s no autopsy.”

“How do we know he won’t just arrest us?”

Joshua spoke next. “Because we’re going to give him a shit load of money not to. More than Conrad gave him in a year.”

“Great,” I grumbled. “More bribes.”

Joshua frowned. “It’ll keep you all out of a jail cell, so I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over it.”

I glared at him. “Why don’t you admit to it, Joshua? Save us all a whole lot of trouble.”

“Maybe you should just be grateful I’m helping with this absurd plan instead of turning you in,” he snapped, and a second later Meyer was physically holding me back from leaping at him, Mom was yelling at both of us, and Dad looked like he wanted to shoot everyone in the room.

“Both of you, get yourselves under control,” Dad yelled, but I barely heard him. Meyer was shouting as well, but I was too focused on getting to Joshua for daring to be so disrespectful after everything he’d helped put us through.

And then the doorbell rang.

We all fell silent in an instant, and Joshua quickly buttoned his shirt and tried to smooth away the wrinkles. Mom looked between the three of us. “Can you all be on board with this?”

“Yes,” we muttered in unison.

“Good.” She sighed in relief. “Meyer, you should probably go get the door.”

He nodded and sighed, turning stiff as he released me, the mask of a concerned son slipping into place as easily as a second skin.

“I’ll go with you,” I whispered, grabbing his hand as I followed him out of the room, and he smiled at me gratefully.

He seemed to know the man at the door, and judging by the cautious way they shook hands I figured this had to be the man Conrad had been bribing for the past several years in order to make sure his habits of enslaving teenagers for sex and beating his son didn’t get found out. The man stared at me for a moment, and Meyer sighed a little.

“Detective Brantley, this is my girlfriend, Madeline Sheppard.”

The detective smirked as he shook my hand, no doubt aware of the circumstances that led to me becoming Meyer’s ‘girlfriend’ in the first place, but I only found myself beaming. I stared up at Meyer, trying to keep my goofy grin from taking over my entire face and ruining the supposed solemnity of this situation. Meyer flashed me a quick grin before stepping between Detective Brantley and me, cutting off our handshake.

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