Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  “It’s not a prerequisite, sir.”

  Aaron Fisher stared at the detective coldly, clearly. “It is for us.”

  It seemed to take forever to get through milking all forty cows, and it had nothing to do with the arrival of a second battalion of police officers. Samuel closed the pasture gate after letting out the heifers and walked toward the main house. He should go help Levi sweep out the barn one last time for the morning, but this once it would wait.

  He didn’t bother to knock. Just opened the door, as if the home was already his and the young woman inside at the stove also belonged to him. He stopped for a moment, watching the sun grace her profile and gild her honey hair, her movements quick and efficient as she fixed breakfast.

  “Katie,” Samuel said, stepping inside.

  She turned quickly, the spoon flying up in the batter bowl as she started. “Oh, Samuel. I wasn’t expecting you yet.” She peered around his shoulder, as if she might see an army behind him. “Mam said I ought to make enough for everyone.”

  Samuel walked forward and took the bowl, setting it on the counter. He reached for her hands. “You don’t look so good.”

  She grimaced. “Thanks for the compliment.”

  He drew her closer. “Are you okay?”

  Her eyes, when they met his, were the jewel blue of an ocean he had once seen on the cover of a travel magazine, and-he imagined-just as endlessly deep. They were what had first attracted him to Katie, across a crowded church service. They were what made him believe that, even years from now, he would do anything for this one woman.

  She ducked away from him and began to flip the pancakes. “You know me,” she said breathlessly. “I get nervous around these Englischers.”

  “Not so many. Only a handful of policemen.” Samuel frowned at her back in concern. “They may want to talk to you, though. They seem to want to talk to everyone.”

  She set the spatula down and turned slowly. “What did they find out there?”

  “Your mother didn’t tell you?”

  Katie slowly shook her head, and Samuel hesitated, torn between her trust in him to tell her the truth and the desire to keep her blissfully unaware for as long as possible. He ran his hands through his straw-colored hair, making it stand on end. “Well, they found a baby. Dead.”

  He saw her eyes widen, those incredible eyes, and then she sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Oh,” she whispered, stunned.

  In a moment he was at her side, holding her close and whispering that he would take her away from here, and to heck with the police. He felt her soften against him, and for a moment Samuel was triumphant-after so many days of being rebuffed, to finally come back to this. But Katie stiffened and drew away. “I don’t think this is the time,” she chided. She stood and turned off the stove’s gas burners, then folded her arms across her middle. “Samuel, I think I would like you to take me somewhere.”

  “Anywhere,” he promised.

  “I want you to take me to see this baby.”

  “It’s blood,” the medical examiner confirmed, kneeling in the calving pen in front of a small, dark stain. “And placenta. Not a cow’s, from the size of it. Someone had a baby recently.”

  “Stillborn?”

  He hesitated. “I can’t say without doing the autopsy-but my hunch says no.”

  “So it just . . . died?”

  “I didn’t say that, either.”

  Lizzie sat back on her heels. “You’re telling me someone intentionally killed this baby?”

  The man shrugged. “I guess that’s up to you to find out.”

  Lizzie calculated quickly in her mind. Given such a small window between the baby’s birth and death, chances were that the perpetrator of the crime was the infant’s mother. “What are we talking? Strangulation?”

  “Smothering, more likely. I should have a preliminary autopsy report by tomorrow.”

  Lizzie thanked him and wandered away from the scene the patrolmen were now securing. All of a sudden this was no longer an abandonment case, but a potential homicide. There was enough probable cause to get a warrant from a district judge for blood samples, evidence that might point a finger at the woman who had done this.

  She stopped walking as the barn door opened. A tall blond man-one of the farm help-stepped into the dim light with a young woman. He nodded at Lizzie. “This is Katie Fisher.”

  She was lovely, in that sturdy Germanic style that always made Lizzie think of fresh cream and springtime. She wore the traditional garb of the Old Order Amish: a long-sleeved dress, covered by a black apron that fell just below her knees. Her feet were bare and callused-it had always amazed Lizzie to see these Amish youth running down gravel roads without their shoes, but that was how they spent the summer. The girl was also so nervous that Lizzie could nearly smell her fear. “I’m glad you’re here, Katie,” Lizzie said gently. “I’ve been looking for you, so that I can ask you some questions.”

  At that, Katie moved closer to the blond giant beside her. “Katie was asleep last night,” he said. “She didn’t even know what happened until I told her.”

  Lizzie tried to gauge the girl’s response, but something had distracted her. She was staring over Lizzie’s shoulder into the tack room, where the medical examiner was supervising the removal of the baby’s body.

  Suddenly the girl wrenched away from Samuel and ran out the barn door, with Lizzie chasing her to the farmhouse porch.

  As reactions to death went, this was a violent one. Lizzie watched the girl trying to compose herself, and wondered what had prompted it. Had this been any ordinary teen, Lizzie would have taken such behavior as an indication of guilt-but Katie Fisher was Amish, which required her to filter her thoughts. If you were Amish, you could grow up in Lancaster County without television news broadcasts and R-rated movies, without rape and wife-beating and murder. You could see a dead baby and be honestly, horribly shocked by the sight.

  Then again, there had been cases in recent years; teenage mothers who’d hidden their pregnancies and after the birth had tied up the loose ends by getting rid of the newborn. Teenage mothers who were completely unaware of what they’d done. Teenage mothers who came in all shapes, all sizes, all religions.

  Katie leaned against a pillar and sobbed into her hands. “I’m sorry,” the girl said. “Seeing it-the body-it made me think of my sister.”

  “The one who died?”

  Katie nodded. “She drowned when she was seven.”

  Lizzie looked toward the fields, a green sea that rippled with the breeze. In the distance, a horse whinnied, and another answered. “Do you know what happens when you have a baby?” Lizzie asked quietly.

  Katie narrowed her eyes. “I live on a farm.”

  “I know. But animals are different from women. And if women do give birth, and don’t get medical attention afterward, they may be putting themselves in great danger.” Lizzie hesitated. “Katie, do you have anything you want to tell me?”

  “I didn’t have a baby,” Katie answered, looking directly at the detective. “I didn’t.” But Lizzie was staring at the porch floor. There was a small maroon smudge on the painted white planks. And a slow trickle of blood, running down Katie’s bare leg.

  TWO

  Ellie

  My nightmares were full of children. Specifically, six little girls-two dark-haired, four fair, their knees sticking out beneath the plaid uniform jumper of St. Ambrose’s School, their hands twisting in their laps. I watched them all grow up in an instant, you see; at the very moment a jury foreman acquitted my client, the elementary school principal who had molested them.

  It was my biggest triumph as a Philadelphia defense attorney; the verdict that put me on the map and had my phone ringing off the hook with calls from other well-bred community icons hoping to dance through the loopholes of the law to keep their own skeletons in their closets. The night after the verdict came back, Stephen took me out to Victor’s Café for a meal so expensive we could have bought a used car instea
d. He introduced me to the maître d’ as “Jeannie Cochran.” He told me that the two senior partners in his own firm, the most prestigious in the city, had invited me in to have a talk.

  “Stephen,” I said, amazed, “when I interviewed there five years ago, you told me you couldn’t have a relationship with a woman that worked at your firm.”

  He shrugged. “Five years ago, Ellie,” he said, “things were different.”

  He was right. Five years ago, I had still been building my career. Five years ago, I believed that the main beneficiary of an acquittal was my client, rather than myself. Five years ago, I could only dream of an opportunity like the one Stephen was offering in his firm.

  I smiled at him. “So what time’s the meeting?”

  Later, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. An attendant was there, waiting patiently beside a tray of complimentary makeup and hair spray and perfume. I went into a stall and started to cry-for those six little girls, for the evidence I had successfully suppressed, for the attorney I wanted to be years ago when I first graduated from law school-one so full of principle that I would never have taken this case, much less worked so hard to win it.

  I came out and ran the water to wash my hands. I hiked up the silk sleeves of my suit jacket and began to scrub, working lather between my fingers, into my nails. At a tap on my shoulder I turned to see the bathroom attendant handing me a linen towel. Her eyes were hard and dark as chestnuts. “Honey,” she said, “some stains ain’t never gonna come clean.”

  There was one more child in my nightmares, but I’d never seen its face. This was the baby I hadn’t had, and at the rate things were going, never would. People made fun of biological clocks, but they were inside women like me-although I’d never seen the ticking as a wake-up call, but rather as the prelude to a bomb. Hesitate, hesitate, and then-boom!-you’d blown all your chances.

  Did I mention: Stephen and I had lived together for eight years.

  The day after the principal of St. Ambrose’s was acquitted, he sent me two dozen red roses. Stephen walked into the kitchen as I was stuffing them into the trash.

  “What did you do that for?”

  I turned to him slowly. “Does it ever bother you? That once you’ve crossed the line, you can’t go back?”

  “Holy Christ, you’re talking like Confucius again. Just say what you mean, Ellie.”

  “I am. I just wanted to know if it gets you. Right here.” I pointed to my heart, still hurting. “Do you ever look at the people sitting across the courtroom, the ones whose lives were ruined by a person you know is guilty as hell?”

  Stephen picked up his coffee mug. “Someone’s got to defend them. That’s how our legal system works. If you’re such a bleeding heart, go work for the DA.” He pulled a rose out of the trash can, snapped off its stem, and tucked it behind my ear. “You’ve got to get your mind off this. What do you say you and I head out to Rehoboth Beach and bodysurf?” Leaning closer, he added, “Naked.”

  “Sex isn’t a Band-Aid, Stephen.”

  He took a step back. “Pardon me if I’ve forgotten. It’s been so long.”

  “I don’t want to have this discussion now.”

  “There isn’t one to have, El. I’ve already got a twenty-year-old daughter.”

  “But I don’t.” The words hung in the air, as delicate and arresting as a soap bubble the instant before it bursts. “Look, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to have the vasectomy reversed. But there are other ways-”

  “There aren’t. I’m not going to watch you poring over some sperm donor catalog at night. And I don’t want a social worker going through everything from my tax records to my underwear drawer trying to decide if I’m worthy enough to raise some Chinese kid who was left on a mountaintop to die of exposure-”

  “Stephen, just stop already! You’re out of control!”

  To my surprise, he quieted immediately. He sat down, tight-lipped and furious. “That was unnecessary,” he said finally. “I mean, Ellie, that really hurt.”

  “What?”

  “What you just said. God-you called me a fucking troll!”

  I met his gaze. “I said you were out of control.”

  Stephen blinked, then started to laugh. “Out of control-oh, God! I didn’t hear you.”

  When was the last time you did? I thought, but managed to curb the words before I spoke them.

  The law offices of Pfister, Crown and DuPres were located in downtown Philadelphia, sprawled across three floors of a modern glass-and-steel skyscraper. I spent hours dressing for my appointment with the partners, discarding four suits before I found the one that I believed made me look most confident. I used extra antiperspirant. I drank a cup of decaf, afraid that the real stuff would make my hands tremble. I mentally plotted the route to the building in my mind, and left nearly an hour for travel time, although it was only fifteen miles away.

  At exactly eleven o’clock I slid behind the wheel of my Honda. “Senior partner,” I murmured into the rearview mirror. “And anything less than $300,000 a year is unacceptable.” Sliding my sunglasses on, I headed for the highway.

  Stephen had left a tape in my car, a mix of what he liked to call his “kick-ass” music, which he listened to when he was en route to litigations. With a small smile, I pushed it in to play, letting the drums and the backbeat thrum through the car. I turned it up loud, so loud that when I changed lanes precipitously, I could barely hear the angry horn of the pickup I’d cut off.

  “Oops,” I murmured, flexing my hands on the steering wheel. Almost immediately, it jumped beneath my touch. I gripped it harder, but that only seemed to make the car buck like a mustang. A clear stream of fear pooled from my throat to my stomach, the quick panic that comes when you realize something has gone terribly wrong, something that it is simply too late to fix. In my rearview mirror I saw the truck looming closer, honking furiously, as my car gave a great shudder and stopped dead in the middle of sixty-mile-per-hour traffic.

  I closed my eyes, bracing for a crash that never came.

  I was still trembling thirty minutes later as I stood beside Bob, the namesake of Bob’s Auto Service, while he tried to explain what had happened to my car. “Basically, it melted,” he said, wiping his hands on his coveralls. “The oil pan cracked, the engine seized, and the internal parts glommed together.”

  “Glommed together,” I repeated slowly. “So how do you separate them?”

  “You don’t. You buy a new engine. You’re talking five or six thousand.”

  “Five or six-” The mechanic started to walk away from me. “Hey! What am I supposed to do until then?”

  Bob glanced at my suit, my briefcase, my heels. “Get a pair of Reeboks.”

  A telephone began to ring. “Shouldn’t you get that?” the mechanic asked, and I realized the sound was coming from the depths of my own briefcase. I groaned at the recollection of my appointment at the law office. I was already fifteen minutes late.

  “Where the hell are you?” Stephen barked when I answered the phone.

  “My car died. On the middle of the highway. In front of an oncoming truck.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Ellie, that’s why there are taxis!”

  I was shocked silent. No “My God, are you all right?” No “Do you need me to come help you?” I watched Bob shake his head over the twisted intestines of what used to be my engine and felt a strange peace settle over me. “I’m not going to be able to make it today,” I said.

  Stephen let out a deep sigh. “Well, I suppose I could convince John and Stanley to reschedule. Let me call you right back.”

  The line went dead in my hand. Absentmindedly I clicked it off, and then stepped up to my car again. “The good news,” Bob said, “is that after you replace the engine, you pretty much have a brand-new car.”

  “I liked my old car.”

  He shrugged. “Then pretend it’s your old car. With a brand-new heart.”

  I suddenly saw the truck that had been behind me on the
highway, swerving and beeping; the other cars that had parted around mine, a stone in a river. I smelled the hot, rippling asphalt that sank beneath my heels as I tiptoed, shaky, across the highway. I was not one to believe in fate, but this had been too close a call, too sure a sign; as if I literally needed to be stopped short before I realized that I’d been running in the wrong direction. After my car had broken down I had called the state police and several service stations, but I had never thought to call Stephen. Somehow, I had known that if I needed to be rescued, I was going to have to do it myself.

  The telephone began to ring again. “Good news,” Stephen said before I’d even given a greeting. “The Big Guys are willing to see you today at six o’clock.”

  That was the moment I knew I would be leaving.

  Stephen helped me load my things into the back of my car. “I completely understand,” he said, although he didn’t. “You want to take some time off before choosing your next big case.”

  I wanted to take some time off before choosing whether I ever wanted to take another case, period, but that was beyond Stephen’s realm of belief. You didn’t go to law school and make Law Review and work in the trenches to land the trial of a lifetime, only to question your own career choice. But on another level, Stephen couldn’t accept that I might be moving away for good. I knew this because I felt the same way. In our eight years together we had not married, but we hadn’t separated, either.

  “You’ll call me when you get there?” Stephen asked, but before I could answer, he kissed me. Our lips separated like a seam being ripped, and then I got into the car and drove away.

  I suppose other women in my position-by this I mean heartbroken, at odds, and recently given a large sum of money-might have chosen a different destination. Grand Cayman, Paris, even a soul-searching hike through the Rockies. For me, there was never any question that if I wanted to lick my wounds, I would wind up in Paradise, Pennsylvania. As a child, I’d spent a week there every summer. My great-uncle had a farm there and progressively sold off lots and parcels of land until he died, at which point his son Frank moved into the big house, planted grass where the field corn had been, and opened a woodworking shop. Frank was my father’s age, and had been married to Leda long before I was ever born.