Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  “Because it was expected of me,” Katie said simply.

  “I expect it of you, too.”

  She shook her head. “If the deacon came to me and said he wanted me to make my things right because I’d been skinny-dipping in the pond, even if I hadn’t done it, I’d say yes.”

  “How?” Ellie exploded. “How can you let them railroad you like that?”

  “They don’t. I could stand up and say it wasn’t me skinny-dipping, I have a birthmark on my hip you didn’t see-but I never would. You saw what it was like in there-it’s much more embarrassing to talk about the sin than to just get the confession over with.”

  “But that’s letting the system walk all over you.”

  “No,” Katie explained. “That’s just letting the system work. I don’t want to be right, or strong, or first. I just want to be part of them again, as soon as I can.” She smiled gently. “I know it’s hard to understand.”

  Ellie willed herself to remember that the Amish system of justice was not the American system of justice, but that both had functioned rather well for hundreds of years. “I understand, all right,” she said. “It’s just that it’s not the real world.”

  “Maybe not.” Katie sidled out of the way of a car, one with a tourist hanging half out the window trying to photograph her from behind. “But it is where I live.”

  Katie stood anxiously at the end of the lane, holding a flashlight. She had taken risks before, especially where Adam was involved, but this would be the gamble of a lifetime. If anyone found her with this Englischer, she’d be in trouble for sure-yet Adam was leaving, and she could not let him go without taking this opportunity.

  In the end, Adam hadn’t gone to New Orleans to find his ghosts. He trans ferred the grant money to a whole different locale-Scotland-and reorganized his plans so that he’d leave in November. If Jacob noticed anything odd about the arrangement, it was Adam’s generous offer to let Jacob stay on as a housemate in spite of the change of circumstances. Jacob was so grateful not to have to move that he did not bother to see anything else-such as the ease with which his sister and his roommate conversed, or the way Adam sometimes steadied her with a hand on her back when they walked across the campus, or the fact that in all these months, Adam had not dated a single girl.

  A car approached, slowing at the end of every driveway. Katie wanted to wave, shout, make Adam see her, but instead she waited in the shadow of the bushes, stepping out into his headlights only when he came close. Adam turned off the car and got out, silently studying Katie’s clothes. Walking up to her, he touched the stiff organdy of her kapp, then gently pricked the ball of his thumb on the straight pin that held her dress together at the neck. She felt foolish, suddenly, dressed Plain-he was accustomed to her in jeans and sweaters. “You must be cold,” he whispered.

  She shook her head. “Not so much.”

  He started to slip off his coat, to give it to her, but she ducked away. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Adam looked over Katie’s head to the faint silver edge of the silo, jutting against a seamless sky. “I could go,” he said softly. “I could leave and we could pretend that I never came here after all.”

  In response, Katie reached for his hand. She lifted it, staring at the fine long fingers, stroking the softness of his palm. This was not a hand that had pulled reins and hauled feed. She brought it to her lips and kissed the knuckles. “No. I’ve been waiting for you for years.”

  She didn’t mean it the way Englischer girls would have, as an exaggeration, accompanied by a pout and a stamp of the foot. Katie’s words were literal, measured, true. Adam squeezed her hand, and let her lead him into the world where she’d grown up.

  Sarah watched her daughter chopping vegetables for dinner, and then turned her attention to setting the table. Tonight, and for many nights from now, Katie couldn’t eat at it-that was part of carrying out the letter of shunning. For the next six weeks, Sarah would have to live apart from her in the same house: pretend that Katie was no longer a large part of her life, give up praying with her, limit their conversation. Why, it was like losing a child. Again.

  Sarah frowned at her dining area: it was really one long table, with two bench seats on either side-as she was unable to have more children, there wasn’t much call for a bigger one. She looked over at Katie’s back, painfully stiff, as if she was trying to keep Sarah from noticing how very much this hurt.

  Sarah went into the living room and moved a gas lamp from a card table, one she sometimes pulled out when her cousins came over to play gin rummy. She dragged it by its front legs into the kitchen, and arranged the tables so that there was no more than an inch of space between them. She took a long, white cloth from the drawers of her china cabinet and billowed it over the two tables, so that when it came to rest, if you were not looking closely, you could not tell that it wasn’t one big rectangle. “There,” she said, smoothing it, moving the silverware that was set at Katie’s usual place over to a spot on the card table. She hesitated, then moved her own silverware closer to the edge of the regular table, closer to where Katie would sit to eat. “There,” she repeated, and went again to work at her daughter’s side.

  One of the chores that Ellie had been assigned was getting Nugget grain and water. The big quarter horse had scared her at first, but they seemed to have come to an understanding. “Hey, horse,” she said, sidling into the stall with the scoop of sweet grain. Nugget whinnied and stamped his foot, waiting for Ellie to get out the way so that he could settle down to business. “Don’t blame you,” she murmured, watching his heavy head bend to the fragrant, honeyed oats. “The food’s about the best thing this place has going.”

  She knew by now how well the Amish treated their buggy horses-after all, if a horse broke down you couldn’t take it into the local Ford dealer for a tune-up. Even Aaron, whose quiet stoicism still managed to catch her off guard, was gentle and patient with Nugget. Apparently quite a judge of horseflesh, he was occasionally asked to accompany a neighbor to the horse auctions held on Monday afternoons, just to offer his opinion.

  Ellie stretched out her hand tentatively-she was still a little afraid that those big square yellow teeth would clamp onto her wrist and never let go-and stroked the horse’s side. He smelled of dust and grass, a clean, mealy scent. Nugget pricked up his ears and snorted, then tried to wedge his nose beneath her armpit. Surprised, Ellie laughed, and patted his head as if he were a pet dog. “Cut it out,” she said, but she was smiling as she unlatched the hook of the nearly empty rubber water bucket from the eye on the wall and carried it outside to the hose.

  She had just turned the corner of the barn when someone snaked out and grabbed her, one hand clamped over her mouth. The bucket fell and bounced. Fighting down the quick surge of panic, Ellie bit down on the fingers that covered her mouth and an instant later drove her elbow into her abductor’s gut, all the while thanking God that Stephen had gotten her self-defense lessons for Christmas two years ago.

  She whirled around, her hands in a ready stance, and glared at the man, who was doubled over in pain. There was something vaguely familiar about him-the bright cap of his hair and the lithe, rangy spread of his body-and it annoyed Ellie that she could not put a name to the face.“Who the fuck are you?”

  One arm rubbing his middle, the man lifted his gaze. “Jacob Fisher.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have grabbed at me,” Ellie said a few minutes later, standing across from Katie’s brother in the hayloft of the barn. “It’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

  “I’ve been away for a while, but you rarely find black belts wandering around Amish farms.” Jacob’s smile dimmed. “You rarely find murdered babies, either.”

  She sat down on a bale of hay, trying to read his face. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “I’ve been out of town.”

  “So I realized. I assume that by now you know there have been charges brought against your sister?” Jacob nodded. “Has the prosecution’s detective f
ound you yet?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  Jacob shrugged. At his reluctant silence, Ellie braced her elbows on her knees. “Let’s get something straight right now,” she said. “I didn’t ask for this case; it sort of adopted me. I don’t know what your opinion is of lawyers in general, but I’m guessing that since you’ve lived English for some time, you assume we’re all sharks, like the rest of the free world. Frankly, Jacob, I don’t care if you think I’m Attila the Hun-I’m still the best chance your sister has of getting off. You should understand better than your Amish relatives how serious a charge this is against her. Whatever I can find out from you that helps your sister’s case will be held in the strictest confidence, and will help me decide what to do to defend her, but-no matter what you tell me-I’m still going to defend her. Even if you open up your mouth right now and tell me she killed that baby in cold blood, I’ll still try to get her off any way I can, and then get her the psychiatric help she needs. However, I’d like to think that you’re going to give me information that paints a slightly different scenario.”

  Jacob walked to the high window in the hayloft. “It’s beautiful here. Do you know that it’s been six years since I’ve been back?”

  “I know how hard this must be,” Ellie said. “But Katie never would have been charged if there wasn’t sufficient evidence for the police to believe she’d killed the baby.”

  “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant,” Jacob confessed.

  “I don’t think she admitted it to herself. Is there anyone you know of that she might have been intimate with?”

  “Well, Samuel Stoltzfus-”

  “Not here,” Ellie interrupted. “In State College.”

  Jacob shook his head.

  “Did she ever show any inclination to leave the Amish church like you did?”

  “No. She wouldn’t have been able to stand it, being cut off from our Mam and Dat. From everyone. Katie’s not . . . how can I say this? She used to come visit me, you know, and go to parties and eat Chinese food and wear jeans. But you can take a fish out of the pond and dress it up in sheep fur, and that’s never going to make it a lamb. And sooner or later, without that water, it’s going to die.”

  “You didn’t,” Ellie said.

  “I’m not Katie. I made a decision to leave the church, and once I made that decision, it led to other choices. I grew up Plain, Ms. Hathaway, but I’ve thrown a punch. I’ve taken theology courses that question the Bible. I’ve owned a car. All things that I never would have believed I could do.”

  “Wouldn’t the same hold true for Katie? Maybe she made a decision to stay Amish-and therefore found herself forced to do things you’d never believe she could do.”

  “No, because of one fundamental fact. When you’re English, you make decisions. When you’re Plain, you yield to a decision that’s already been made. It’s called gelassenheit-submitting to a higher authority. You give yourself up for God’s will. You give yourself up for your parents, for your community, for the way it’s always been done.”

  “That’s interesting, but it doesn’t stand up against the autopsy report of a dead infant.”

  “It does,” Jacob said firmly. “Committing a murder is the most arrogant act there is! To decide you have the power of God, to take someone else’s life.” He stared at Ellie, his eyes bright as beacons. “People think Plain folks are stupid, that they let the world walk all over them. But Plain folks-they’re smart; they just don’t know how to be selfish. They’re not selfish enough to be greedy, or pushy, or proud. And they’re certainly not selfish enough to kill another human being with intent.”

  “The Amish faith isn’t what’s on trial, here.”

  “But it should be,” Jacob countered. “My sister could not commit murder, Ms. Hathaway, simply because she’s Amish through and through.”

  Lizzie Munro narrowed her eyes behind her safety goggles, raised her arms, and blew ten rounds from her 9-millimeter Glock into the heart of the life-size target at the far end of the shooting range. As she reeled it forward to judge her marksmanship, George Callahan whistled and popped out his earplugs. “Glad to know you’re on our side, Lizzie. You’ve got a real gift.”

  She ran a finger appreciatively over the hole that had been blown into the target’s paper chest. “Yeah. And to think, my grandmother only wanted me to take up embroidery.” She holstered her gun and then rolled the kinks out of her shoulders.

  “Must say, I’m kind of surprised to see you here.”

  Lizzie raised a brow. “How come?”

  “Well, how many Amish do you plan to find armed and dangerous?”

  “Hopefully none,” Lizzie answered, sliding into her suit jacket. “I do this for relaxation, George. Beats decoupage.”

  He laughed. “We’ve got the pretrial hearing coming up next week.”

  “Five weeks flies when you’re having fun, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t call it fun,” George said. They walked out of the shooting range and began to stroll across the police academy’s lush grounds. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I just wanted to be sure we’d covered the state’s collective ass before I go in.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “I didn’t get squat from the brother, but I can go back and see if he’ll talk again. The evidence is fairly cut-and-dried. The only thing that’s missing is the donor of the sperm, but even that really doesn’t matter, since the motive’s there either way. If it was an Amish boy, then she killed the baby to keep from ruining her chances with the big blond boyfriend. If it was a regular kid from outside the community, then she killed the baby to keep from fessing up to a relationship with an outsider.”

  “We seized on Katie Fisher as a suspect quickly,” George mused. “I wonder if we overlooked someone.”

  “She was bleeding like a stuck pig; that’s why we seized on her,” Lizzie said. “She had that baby, and it was two months premature-so who else could have known it was her time? We already know she hid it from her parents, so they’re out of the picture. She wasn’t going to tell Samuel, since it wasn’t his baby. Even if she wanted to tell her brother or her aunt that the contractions had started, she couldn’t very well whip out her cell phone at two in the morning.”

  “We can tie her conclusively to birth, but not to murder.”

  “We’ve got motive and logic on our side. You know that ninety percent of murders are committed by someone with a personal relationship to the victim. Do you realize that number goes up to nearly a hundred percent when it’s a newborn involved?”

  George stopped, and laughed down at her. “You angling to be second chair, Lizzie?”

  “Conflict of interest. I’m already testifying for the state.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, because I think you could single-handedly convince a jury of Katie Fisher’s guilt.”

  Lizzie grinned up at him. “You’re right,” she said. “But everything I know I’ve learned from you.”

  In the wee hours of the morning, one of the cows had given birth. Aaron had been up most of the night, because the calf hadn’t been turned right. His arms hurt from being inside the cow, from the contractions that squeezed and bruised him. But look at what he had to show for it: this little wonder, black tumbled with white, wavering on its clothespin legs beside the supportive wall of its mother.

  He began to spread fresh hay in the pen as the calf suckled at its mother. In a day, the baby would be taken away and put on a bottle.

  You see, a small voice needled. Babies get taken from their mothers all the time.

  He managed to push the thought away just as Katie came in through the barn door. Fragrant steam rose from the mug of coffee she held out to him. “Oh, another calf,” she said, her eyes lighting. “Isn’t he a sweet one?”

  Aaron could recall his daughter with nearly every calf that had been born on the farm, and that was a goodly number. She’d bottle-fed the babies since she was nearly as tiny as the calves she was caring fo
r. Aaron could remember the first time he showed her how you could stick your finger in a calf’s mouth, where there were no upper teeth to bite. He could remember explaining how a calf’s tongue would curl around you and draw you in, sandpaper rough and powerfully strong. And he could remember the way her eyes widened when, that very first time, it was just as he’d said.

  As the head of this family, it had been his responsibility to teach his offspring the Plain way of life-how to give themselves up to God, how to navigate a path between what was right and what was wrong. He watched Katie kneel in the fresh hay, rubbing the crazy whorls of hair that still stuck in damp spirals on the calf’s back. It reminded him too much of what had happened weeks ago. Closing his eyes, he turned away from her.

  Katie stood slowly and spoke, her voice as wobbly as the newborn animal. “It’s been five days since the kneeling confession. Are you never gonna talk to me again, Dat?”

  Aaron loved his daughter; he wanted nothing more than to take her onto his lap like he had when she was just a little thing, and the world had been no bigger for her than the span of his own arms. But he was to blame for Katie’s sin and Katie’s shame, simply because he had not been able to prevent it. And it was his job, too, to see through the consequences-however painful they might be.

  “Dat?” Katie whispered.

  Aaron held up a hand, as if to ward her off. Then he picked up the coffee mug and turned away, heading out of the barn with the stooped shoulders and heavy gait of a much older, much wiser man.

  “Have you had enough?”

  Coop spoke over the litter of dishes on the table between them, and Ellie could not answer at first. She couldn’t eat another bite, but she had not had enough. She didn’t think she could ever get enough of the buzz and the chatter, the heady mix of society perfumes, the sound of cars jockeying about on the street below the rooftop restaurant.

  Ellie watched the light from the chandelier spring rainbows from her glass of chardonnay, and she grinned.