Page 58 of Atonement

“It’s really a miracle I saved anything at all,” he’d say nonchalantly, as if he didn’t care that his childhood keepsakes had been destroyed. “On to the next one.”

There was one area we all avoided, the place no one wanted to volunteer to clean. We had to walk by the staircase every time we were in the kitchen, but the door was firmly shut. Not even Joshua would go up there. The ghosts of women Conrad had abused, both known and unknown, echoed down the stairs and warned us all away. No one mentioned cleaning up the blood, or hiring movers to handle the contents. I suspected Meyer would be satisfied to burn it all down without ever stepping foot up there again.

The executor, a surprisingly young man named David Wallace, came to the big house to read Conrad’s will as Thanksgiving approached. Anita was technically supposed to be present, but with her behind bars, we would have to make do with the only Schaf sibling left in the house. We led him into the study, the same room where Conrad took his last breath, and positioned David at the desk. We had to drag over a few chairs so Meyer, Mom, Dad, and me could all sit in front of the desk. Joshua stood behind us, hands folded over his chest.

“Thank you for having me here,” the executor said, pulling a manila folder from his briefcase and opening it across the empty desk. “After the will is read, of course, we may have to discuss any parts pertaining to Miss Schaf with her at her domicile.”

Meyer snorted in laughter. I slapped his arm, but I couldn’t help grinning along with him. It was too much fun to think of Anita languishing in a prison cell, forced to wear an orange jumpsuit and let her highlights and manicure go to shit.

David cleared his throat. “As I was saying…”

The will was dry as hell, a lot of pomp and circumstance about what a great man he’d been in his life. I didn’t realize he cared so much what people thought about him after he died. He certainly didn’t care enough to donate any money to charity, though.

“In terms of inheritance, there are certain conditions that must be met.” Meyer shifted in his seat. He could do without Conrad’s money; he’d earned more than enough through his own hard work. But this was the last opportunity for Conrad to show him any affection whatsoever. “In short, all of Conrad’s children must agree how to split the $500 million in remaining assets.”

Meyer grimaced. “That’ll be difficult. Anita is going to want far too much.”

David frowned and pointed to something on the paper. “It says here that Mr. Schaf had three children.”

We were all silent for a beat. “What?” I turned to Meyer. “Who else is there?”

“There isn’t anyone,” he said. He cocked his head as he thought. “Anita is the only one.”

I looked around the room wildly, as if expecting Meyer’s secret sibling to simply appear out of thin air and step forward to claim her inheritance, but of course there was no one in the room besides us. Meyer looked calm enough, but on my other side, Mom was practically vibrating, throat working as she held back a sob, or a scream.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “Conrad took him away the moment he was born.”

I gaped at her. There was no way. I had a half sibling? And she’d never told me? “Wait a second. You had another baby? While you were here?”

Dad was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before in his life. This information was clearly as new to him as it was to me. Mom reached for him subconsciously, gripping his fingers so tightly her knuckles turned white. “For all I know, Conrad had him killed. We’ll never find him.”

“I think he already found us,” Meyer said. I spun to stare at him, but he wasn’t looking at me or even my mother. He was staring behind us at Joshua.

“No,” I breathed. “I would have recognized him.” I squinted across the room at the man I’d spent so much time with over the past few weeks. We had similar hair and eye color, sure, but lots of people had brown hair and brown eyes.

Joshua just blinked at me before looking at Mom. She rose from her chair with Dad’s hands around her waist, holding her steady.

“I didn’t even get to hold you,” she said, and when her voice broke on the last word I knew it was true. Still, I couldn’t accept it.

“No. No, Mom, it’s not him. He betrayed us!”

“Because he wanted to destroy Conrad himself.” I hadn’t even noticed Meyer get to his feet. He walked around the chairs, his stride casual, but I could see from behind just how rigid his back was. He was making himself a shield between Joshua and my family. “Or maybe you wanted to hurt her—” he jerked his head a Mom— “as much as I did.”

No one said anything. I bit my tongue, willing it not to be true. If no one spoke, we’d never have to know for sure. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut.

“Your first guess,” Joshua said. His upper lip twitched, halfway to a sneer, before his impassive expression slipped into place.

I screamed. “No! You stood and watched while he tortured us, Joshua,allof us.” I tried to get up. I wanted to rush him, beat my fists against his chest. But my legs wouldn’t work. My knees were locked in place. “You could have helped us! We’re your family!”

“A family I never met.” He sounded like Meyer when I first met him. Voice hard as stone; face immovable even when confronted with the paint of others. “I don’t owe any of you anything.”

Mom was crying, trying to go to him, but Dad was still holding her back. She held out her hands as far as she could. “You have to understand. He didn’t want to keep you because you looked like me. He only cares about the children that get his genes. And your eyes…” She sobbed, doubling over in her pain. Through it all, Joshua just stood there impassively. “Your eyes were brown right from the beginning. I didn’t even get to hold you.”

Not a single trace of emotion crossed his face. He stood tall, as stern and uncompromising as ever, but in his eyes I thought I saw something. A flicker of understanding, of just how devastating this knowledge was. “It wasn’t personal,” he said. “Especially after I read the letter you gave Madeline, I knew you had no choice. But I had to stay focused on one thing.”

“We could have died!” I jumped over my chair as my legs finally began working again, giving Meyer a wide enough berth that he couldn’t grab me. “You knew the truth the entire time and you watched it all happen like none of it mattered!”

“I didn’t owe you anything,” he repeated, but I thought I saw something flash over his face for the briefest instant. I was one step away from him when Meyer finally got his hands around my arms.

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