by Jodi Picoult
She wiped her sweating palms on her apron and waited for Ellie to start asking her questions. She had hoped that when they came to this moment, Ellie would make it easier—maybe Katie would even have been able to pretend it was just the two of them, having a talk down by the pond. But Ellie had barely spoken a word to her all morning. She’d been sick in the bathroom, had a cup of chamomile tea, and told Katie it was time to go without ever meeting her gaze. No, Ellie would be giving her no quarter today.
Ellie buttoned her suit jacket and stood up. “Katie,” she said gently, “do you know why you’re here today?”
Katie blinked. Her voice, her question—it was tender, full of sympathy. Relief washed over her, she started to smile—and then she looked into Ellie’s eyes. They were just as hard and angry as they had been the night before. This compassion—it was all part of an act. Even now, Ellie was only trying to get her acquitted.
Katie took a deep breath. “People think I killed my baby.”
“How does that make you feel?”
Once again, she saw that tiny comma of a body lying between her legs, slick with her own blood. “Bad,” she whispered.
“You know that the evidence against you is strong.”
With a glance at the jury, Katie nodded. “I’ve been trying to follow what’s been said. I’m not sure I understand it all.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“The way you English do things is very different than what I’m used to.”
“How so?”
She thought about this for a minute. The confession, that was the same, or she wouldn’t be sitting up here now. But the English judged a person so that they’d be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that they’d be justified in welcoming her back. “Where I’m from, if someone is accused of sinning, it’s not so that others can place blame. It’s so that the person can make amends and move on.”
“Did you sin when you conceived your child?”
Instinctively, Katie adopted a humble demeanor. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t married.”
“Did you love the man?”
From beneath lowered lashes, Katie scanned the gallery to find Adam. He was sitting on the edge of his seat with his head bowed, as if this was his confession as well. “Very much,” Katie murmured.
“Were you accused of that sin by your community?”
“Yes. The deacon and the bishop, they came and asked me to make a kneeling confession at church.”
“After you confessed to conceiving a child out of wedlock, what happened?”
“I was put in the bann for a time, to think about what I’d done. After six weeks, I went back and promised to work with the church.” She smiled. “They took me back.”
“Katie, did the deacon and minister ask you to confess to killing your child?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Katie folded her hands in her lap. “That charge wasn’t laid against me.”
“So the people in your own community did not believe you guilty of the sin of murder?” Katie shrugged. “I need a verbal response,” Ellie said.
“No, they didn’t.”
Ellie walked back to the defense table, her heels clicking on the parquet floor. “Do you remember what happened the night you gave birth, Katie?”
“Bits and pieces. It comes back a little at a time.”
“Why is that?”
“Dr. Cooper says it’s because my mind can’t take too much too soon.” She worried her bottom lip. “I kind of shut down after it happened.”
“After what happened?”
“After the baby came.”
Ellie nodded. “We’ve heard from a number of different people, but I think the jury would like to hear you tell us about that night. Did you know you were pregnant?”
Katie suddenly felt herself tumble backward in her mind, until she could feel beneath her palms the hard, small swell of the baby inside. “I couldn’t believe I was,” she said softly. “I didn’t believe it, until I had to move the pins on my apron because I was getting bigger.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. I pushed it out of my head, and concentrated on other things.”
“Why?”
“I was scared. I didn’t want my parents to know what had happened.” She took a deep breath. “I prayed that maybe I’d guessed wrong.”
“Do you remember delivering the baby?”
Katie cradled her hands around her abdomen, reliving the burning pains that burst from her back to her belly. “Some of it,” she said. “The pain, and the way the hay pricked the skin on my back . . . but there are blocks of time I can’t picture anything at all.”
“How did you feel at the time?”
“Scared,” she whispered. “Real scared.”
“Do you remember the baby?” Ellie asked.
This was the part she knew so well, it might have been engraved on the backs of her eyelids. That small, sweet body, not much bigger than her own hand, kicking and coughing and reaching out for her. “He was beautiful. I picked him up. Held him. I rubbed his back. He had . . . the tiniest bones inside. His heart, it beat against my hand.”
“What were you planning to do with him?”
“I don’t know. I would have taken him to my mother, I guess; found something to wrap him in and keep him warm . . . but I fell asleep before I could.”
“You passed out.”
“Ja.”
“Were you still holding the baby?”
“Oh, yes,” Katie said.
“What happened after that?”
“I woke up. And the baby was gone.”
Ellie raised her brows. “Gone? What did you think?”
Katie wrung her hands together. “That this had been a dream,” she admitted.
“Was there evidence to the contrary?”
“There was blood on my nightgown, and a little in the hay.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to the pond and washed off,” Katie said. “Then I went back to my room.”
“Why didn’t you wake anyone up, or go to a doctor, or try to find that baby?”
Her eyes brightened with tears. “I don’t know. I should have. I know that now.”
“When you woke up the next morning, what happened?”
She wiped her hand across her eyes. “It was like nothing had changed,” she said brokenly. “If everyone had looked a little different; if I’d felt poorly, maybe I wouldn’t have . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she looked away. “I thought that maybe I’d made it all up, that nothing had happened to me. I wanted to believe that, because then I wouldn’t have to wonder about where the baby was.”
“Did you know where the baby was?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember taking it anywhere?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember waking up with the baby in your arms at any time?”
“No. After I woke up, he was already gone.”
Ellie nodded. “Did you plan to get rid of the baby?”
“No.”
“Did you want to get rid of the baby?”
“Not once I’d seen him,” Katie said softly.
Ellie was now standing only a foot away. Katie waited for her question, waited to speak the words she had come here to say. But with a nearly imperceptible shake of her head, Ellie turned to the jury. “Thank you,” she said. “Nothing further.”
* * *
Frankly, George was baffled. He’d expected more flashes of brilliance from Ellie Hathaway in a direct examination of her client, but she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. More importantly, neither had the witness. Katie Fisher had said what anyone would expect her to say—none of which added up to Ellie’s disclaimer in chambers this morning.
He smiled at Katie. “Good morning, Ms. Fisher.”
“You can call me Katie.”
“Katie, then. Le
t’s pick up where you just left off. You fell asleep holding the baby, and when you woke up, he was gone. You were the only eyewitness that night. So tell us—what happened to that baby?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear leaking from one corner. “I killed him.”
George stopped in his tracks. The gallery erupted in confusion, and the judge rapped her gavel for quiet. Turning to Ellie, George lifted his palms in question. She was sitting at the defense table, looking almost bored, and he realized this had not been a surprise to her. Meeting his gaze, she shrugged.
“You killed your baby?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
He stared at the girl on the stand, looking powerfully beaten as she curled into herself in misery. “How did you do it?”
Katie shook her head.
“You must answer the question.”
She clenched her hands around her middle. “I just want to make my things right.”
“Hang on now. You just confessed to killing your baby. Now I’m asking you to tell us how you killed him.”
“I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I can’t.”
George turned to Judge Ledbetter. “Approach?”
The judge nodded, and Ellie walked up beside him to the bench. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
“Ms. Hathaway?”
Ellie raised a brow. “Ever hear of the Fifth Amendment, George?”
“It’s a little late,” the prosecutor said. “She’s already incriminated herself.”
“Not necessarily,” Ellie said coolly, although she and George both realized she was lying through her teeth.
“Mr. Callahan, you know very well that the witness can take the Fifth whenever she chooses.” The judge turned to Ellie. “However, she needs to ask for it by name.”
Ellie glanced at Katie. “She doesn’t know what it’s called, Your Honor. She just knows she doesn’t want to say anything else about this.”
“Your Honor, Ms. Hathaway can’t speak for the witness. If I don’t hear the defendant officially plead the Fifth, I’m not buying it.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “May I have a moment with my client?” She walked to the witness stand. Katie was shaking like a leaf, and with no small degree of shame Ellie realized that was partly because she expected a tirade. “Katie,” she said quietly. “If you don’t want to talk about the crime, all you have to do is say in English, ‘I take the Fifth.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s part of the Constitution. It means you have the right to remain silent, even though you’re on the stand, so that your words can’t be used against you. Understand?”
Katie nodded, and Ellie walked back to the defense table to sit down.
“Please tell us how you killed your baby,” George repeated.
Katie darted a glance at Ellie. “I take the Fifth,” she said haltingly.
“What a surprise,” George muttered. “All right, then. Let’s go back to the beginning. You lied to your father so that you could see your brother at college. You did this from the time you were twelve?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re eighteen now.”
“Yes, I am.”
“In six years’ time did your father ever find out you were visiting your brother?”
“No.”
“You would have just kept lying, wouldn’t you?”
“I didn’t lie,” Katie said. “He never asked.”
“In six years, he never asked how your weekend with your aunt went?”
“My father doesn’t speak of my aunt.”
“How lucky. Then, you lied to your brother about sleeping with his roommate?”
“He—”
“No, let me guess. He never asked, right?”
Confused, Katie shook her head. “No, he didn’t.”
“You never told Adam Sinclair he’d fathered a child?”
“He’d gone overseas.”
“You never told your mother about your pregnancy, or anyone else for that matter?”
“No.”
“And when the police came the morning after you gave birth, you lied to them as well.”
“I wasn’t sure it had actually happened,” Katie said, her voice small.
“Oh, please. You’re eighteen years old. You’d had sex. You knew you were pregnant, even if you didn’t want to admit it. You’ve seen countless women in your community have babies. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t know what had happened to you that night?”
Katie was crying silently again. “I can’t explain how my head was, except that it wasn’t working like normal. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I didn’t want to believe that it might not have been a dream.” She twisted the edge of her apron in her fists. “I know I’ve done something wrong. I know that it’s time for me to take responsibility for what happened.”
George leaned so close his words fell into her lap. “Then tell us how you did it.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Ah. That’s right. Just like you figured that if you didn’t talk about your pregnancy, it would disappear. And like you didn’t tell people you murdered your baby, assuming they’d never find out. But that’s not the way things work, is it, Katie? Even if you don’t tell us how you killed your baby, he’s still dead, isn’t he?”
“Objection,” Ellie called out. “He’s badgering the witness.”
Katie hunched in the chair, sobbing openly. George’s eyes flickered over her once; then he turned dismissively. “Withdrawn. I’m through here.”
Judge Ledbetter sighed. “Let’s take fifteen. Ms. Hathaway, why don’t you take your client somewhere to compose herself?”
“Of course,” Ellie said, wondering how to help Katie pull herself together when she herself was falling apart.
* * *
The conference room was dark and dingy, with nonfunctioning fluorescent bulbs that spit and hissed and emitted no viable source of light. Ellie sat at an ugly wooden table, tracing a coffee stain that was likely as old as Katie. As for her client, she was standing near the chalkboard in the front of the room, weeping.
“I’d like to have some sympathy for you, Katie, but you asked for this.” Ellie pushed away from the table and turned her back. Maybe if she didn’t look at Katie, the sobs wouldn’t be quite so loud. Or upsetting.
“I wanted it to be over,” Katie stammered, her face swollen and red. “But it wasn’t like I expected.”
“Oh, no? What were you expecting—some movie-of-the-week where you break down and the jury breaks down right along with you?”
“I just wanted to be forgiven.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen right now. You just kissed your freedom good-bye, sweetheart. Forget about forgiveness from your church. Forget about seeing your parents, or having a relationship with Adam.”
“Samuel asked me to marry him,” Katie whispered miserably.
Ellie snorted. “You might want to let him know that conjugal visits are hard to come by in the state correctional facility.”
“I don’t want conjugal visits. I don’t want to have another baby. What if I—” Katie broke off suddenly and turned away.
“What if you what?” Ellie shot back. “Smother it in a moment of weakness?”
“No!” Katie’s eyes filled with tears again. “It’s that disease, that bacteria. What if it’s still in me? What if I give it to all of my babies?”
Above Ellie’s head, the bulb fizzed and popped. She slowly stared at Katie, from her obvious remorse to the way her fingers now clutched at the thick fabric of her bodice, as if this illness was something that might be scratched out of her. She thought of how Katie had once told her that you confessed to whatever the deacon charged you with. She thought of how a girl used to having others accuse her of sinning might hear the pathologist’s testimony and take the blame for something that was, in truth, an accident.
She looked at Katie, and saw the way her mind w
orked.
Ellie walked across the room and grasped her shoulders. “Tell me now,” she said. “Tell me how you killed your baby.”
* * *
“Your Honor,” Ellie began, “I’d like to redirect.”
She could feel George looking at her like she’d lost her mind, and for good reason: with a confession on the court record, there wasn’t too much Ellie could do to erase all the damage that had been done. She watched Katie take the stand again and shift restlessly in the seat, nervous and pale. “When the prosecutor asked you if you killed your baby, you said yes.”
“That’s right,” Katie answered.
“When he asked you to explain the method of homicide, you didn’t want to talk.”
“No.”
“I’m asking you now: Did you smother the baby?”
“No,” Katie murmured, her voice cracking wide open over the syllable.
“Did you intentionally end the baby’s life?”
“No. Never.”
“How did you kill your baby, Katie?”
She took a deep, rattling breath. “You heard the doctor. He said I killed him by having that infection, and passing it on. If I wasn’t the baby’s mother, he would have lived.”
“You murdered your baby by passing along listeria from your body?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you meant when you told Mr. Callahan you’d killed your baby?”
“Yes.”
“You told us before that in your church, if you sin, you have to confess in front of the other members.”
“Ja.”
“What’s that like?”
Katie swallowed. “Well, it’s terrifying, that’s what. First there’s the whole Sunday service. After the sermon comes a song, and then all the nonmembers, they leave. The bishop calls your name, and you have to get up and sit right in front of the ministers and answer their questions loud enough that the entire congregation can hear you. The whole time, everyone’s watching, and your heart is pounding so loud you can hardly hear the bishop talk.”
“What if you didn’t sin?”
Katie looked up. “What do you mean?”
“What if you’re innocent?” Ellie thought back to the conversation they’d had months ago, praying that Katie remembered too. “What if the deacon says you went skinny-dipping, and you didn’t?”