Page 59 of Atonement

“You’re my brother! You’reourbrother!”

He turned his head to the side and stared out the window.

“Joshua, please, I don’t care about anything that happened.” Mom was the complete opposite of me, barely contained but still nonetheless under control. She appeared at my side, Dad’s arm around her shoulders comfortingly. How could he stand there and be so calm, when he almost attacked Meyer a few weeks ago? Joshua was as complicit as he had been, maybe more. But he didn’t confront Joshua at all, just whispered in my mom’s ear. She drew in a shuddering breath. “Can we go somewhere and talk? Just for a minute?”

I froze, waiting to see what he said. I was pissed enough at him as it was, but if he upset my mother even more, I was going to rip his head off. She couldn’t handle this, not after everything else. He was being so cruel and it didn’t even matter anymore. There was no one for him to impress.

He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “Fine.”

Mom visibly relaxed. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I could use a glass of wine.”

He nodded and opened the door, letting Mom and Dad walk out of the room ahead of them. Before he left he looked at me over his shoulder, just once, and then he turned away.

“I need a fucking shot,” I said the moment the door closed behind them.

Meyer nodded, drawing one hand down his face. He was pale as a ghost. “Yeah. Me too.”

He shot the executor a pointed look, and David bowed slightly before stepping out of the room through the same door. Meyer went to the wall and pulled at one of the paintings we hadn’t packed up yet, revealing a safe built into the drywall. He spun the dial on the front and it opened to reveal a stack of cash as well as a hefty decanter of amber liquid.

“This is at least twenty years old,” he said as he lifted it out. My eyes bugged as he simply slammed the safe shut again, ignoring the hundreds of thousands of dollars just sitting in the wall.

“How did you know the combination?”

“I found it the other day and I’ve been trying different numbers. It took awhile, but I figured it out.”

“What was it?”

He paused speaking as he poured us each a hefty measure. “My birthday.” He chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I didn’t even know he knew the date. We never celebrated.”

My heart broke a little more. “Oh, Meyer.” After all that monster had done to him, some corner of his heart still found one small way to be his father. Even if it was inconsequential.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” He downed the contents of his glass before handing the other one to me, then poured himself another. He stared at the liquor, swirling it around in the glass as if it could show him the future. Or maybe an alternate past, one where he had two parents who loved him and a sister who wasn’t a psychopath. “He probably just thought I’d never guess that was the combination. He was almost right. I tried everything else I could think of before I guessed it.”

I took a large drink from my glass, wincing reflexively as it went down. But the liquor was smooth, sliding down my throat as easily as water. I downed the rest and held out my glass, which Meyer refilled dutifully. We ambled over to the window with our drinks and looked out over the lawn. A few tiny flurries swirled in the wind, but nothing was sticking to the ground yet.

“Do you want to see the letter your mom wrote me?”

I started. “I didn’t think you had it anymore.”

“It was still in my office the day I went back.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. We both heard his unspoken words.The day I left you.

“Do youwantme to read it?”

He pondered as he drained the glass again, then set it on the windowsill. “Honestly, I’m not sure. It feels wrong to keep it from you. I want to give you something.”

“You keep it, Meyer. That was for you.” I raised his hand to my mouth and kissed it. “You don’t have to give it to me.”

He dropped my hand only to wrap his arm around my waist, holding me against his side. “Conrad put that stipulation in the will to keep any of us from getting money. He thought Joshua was in the wind, and we’d never find him. But Anita will be the real problem.”

“I can’t believe it.”I have a brother. One who’d grown up separate from both families he belonged to. A brother who saved me from drowning and then turned me over to Conrad, who held Meyer down while their father attacked him. And Conrad never had a clue.

“It makes sense now,” Meyer muttered. This thumb moves absently across my hip. “He sentmehis resume. I hadn’t even been looking for security. I thought at first Conrad had sent him to me, as a spy. But I couldn’t find any connection between the two of them. Because Conrad wasn’t using Joshua. Joshua was using me.” He was breathing too heavily. “I’ve been played my whole life.”

“Don’t panic,” I soothed, setting down my glass and placing my hand on his chest. “He’ll explain. Mom will figure it all out. For both of us.” Meyer didn’t look entirely convinced, but nodded and kissed me once.

I didn’t know if I would ever forgive Joshua for what he’d done, but then again, I’d spoken those words in the heat of anger before. This was my brother. Family I never knew I had. I’d grown up wondering why I didn’t have grandparents or cousins like the rest of my classmates, only to find out it was because my parents had been in hiding my entire life. And now I had a sibling. If he was willing to make an effort, to help my mom overcome the pain she suffered in losing him, I had to give him a chance.

The doors opened behind us, and when we turned around Mom, Dad, Joshua, and the executor were all walking back into the room. Mom’s eyes were red, but clear. I couldn’t read anything on Joshua’s face. He glanced at Meyer and me once, but said nothing. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth, a million questions on my tongue, but nothing came out.

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