Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  Samuel’s face burned with the memory, but he laughed. “I was nine years old,” he reasoned. “The bull weighed more than me.”

  Ephram stopped walking. “Whose fault was it?”

  “Fault?”

  “The kick. The fact that you got hurt at all.”

  Frowning, Samuel shrugged. “The bull’s, I suppose. I sure didn’t do it to myself.”

  “No. But if you’d been holding it tighter, what do you think might have happened?”

  “It wouldn’t have been able to get in a wild blow, you know that. Certainly, I learned my lesson. I’ve never been kicked again.” Samuel exhaled. He had work to do for Aaron. He didn’t have the patience for Ephram’s ramblings today. “Bishop,” he said, “you didn’t come here to talk to me about that bull.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  He jammed his hat on his head. “Aaron will be needing me by now.”

  Bishop Ephram put his hand on Samuel’s arm. “You’re right, Brother. Why should we talk about ancient history, after all? Once that bull kicked you, you got rid of it right away.”

  “No, I didn’t. You remember how big he got. He was a fine steer.” Samuel scowled. “By the time I put the money into the bank, I barely remembered that he’d kicked me at all.”

  The old man peered at him. “No. But when you were lying on your back in the pasture that day, howling and grabbing your privates, I bet you never would have guessed things could turn out so good in the end.”

  Samuel slowly swung his head toward the bishop. “You didn’t come here to talk about that bull,” he repeated softly.

  Bishop Ephram raised his brows. “Didn’t I?”

  Dr. Brian Riordan traveled by private jet, accompanied by two men who looked like football linebackers past their prime and a tiny mouse of a girl who jumped whenever he beckoned her to carry through some task on his behalf. He was well known in forensic psychiatry circles as being one of the foremost critics of the insanity defense, particularly when used to acquit murderers. He’d made his very strong beliefs known in trials all over the United States, and in fact kept a map in his office covered with brightly colored pins, signifying the court systems in which he’d had a hand in putting away a criminal who might otherwise have gotten off on pure sympathy.

  He also looked patently out of place on a farm.

  Compared to Dr. Polacci, Dr. Riordan was a formidable species. Even from the doorway of the kitchen, where Ellie could observe the interview, she could see Katie trembling.

  “Ms. Fisher,” Riordan said, after introducing himself, “I’ve been retained by the prosecution. What that means is that whatever you say to me will go to court. You cannot say something off the record; there’s no confidentiality. Do you understand?”

  Ellie listened as Riordan walked Katie through the birth, asking her to recount the events in the present tense. “It’s lying there,” Katie said softly, “right between my legs.”

  “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “A boy. A tiny, tiny boy.” She hesitated. “It’s moving around.”

  Ellie felt her face grow warm. She turned away, fanning herself with one hand.

  “Is it crying?” Riordan asked.

  “No. Not till I cut the cord.”

  “How do you cut it?”

  “My Dat keeps a pair of scissors hanging on a peg outside the calving pen. That’s what I use. And then there’s blood, all over the place, and I’m thinking that I won’t be able to clean this up, ever. I push down on the end of the cord, and tie it off . . . with twine, I think. Then it starts crying.”

  “The baby?”

  “Ja. It starts crying loud, real loud, and I try to hold him up against me to keep him quiet, but that doesn’t help. I rock it tight and give it my knuckle to suck on.”

  Ellie leaned against the wall. She pictured this fragile infant, rooting around the bodice of Katie’s nightgown. She imagined the little face, the translucent eyelids, and suddenly there was a weight in her arms, heavy as a lost opportunity. How could anyone’s actions, in this case, be defended? “Excuse me,” she announced, bustling into the kitchen. “I need a glass of water. Anyone else?”

  For her interruption, Riordan gave her a dirty look. Ellie concentrated on filling a glass without her hand shaking, on drinking just a little before she had to hear her client recount this baby’s death.

  “What happens next, Katie?” Riordan asked.

  Katie squinted, shook her head, then sighed. “I don’t know. I wish I did, I wish like you can’t imagine. But one minute I’m praying for the Lord to help me, and the next minute I’m waking up. The baby is gone.” Ellie bowed her head over the sink. “A miracle,” Katie added.

  Riordan stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “How long were you passed out in the barn?”

  “I don’t know. I guess about ten, fifteen minutes.”

  The psychiatrist folded his hands in his lap. “Did you kill the baby during that time?”

  “No!”

  “You’re sure?” She nodded emphatically. “Then what did happen to him?”

  No one had ever asked Katie before; as Ellie watched the girl struggle for an answer, she realized how shortsighted this had been. “I . . . don’t know.”

  “You must have an idea. Since someone killed that baby, and it wasn’t you.”

  “M-m-maybe it just died,” Katie stammered. “And someone hid it.”

  Ellie silently groaned. And maybe that was Katie’s subconscious doing a voluntary confession. “Do you think that’s what happened?” Riordan asked.

  “Someone could have come in and killed it.”

  “Does that seem likely to you?”

  “I-I’m not sure. It was sort of early . . .”

  “Middle of the night, I’d figure,” Riordan interjected. “Who would have known you were there giving birth?” He watched her wrestle with the question. “Katie,” he said firmly, “what happened to the baby?”

  Ellie watched the girl’s disintegration: the trembling lower lip, the welling eyes, the shaking spine, as Katie shook her head and repeatedly denied criminal responsibility. She waited for Riordan to do something to comfort Katie, but then realized that he’d already aligned his sympathies elsewhere. He’d been retained by the prosecution; it would be unethical for him to offer comfort when he’d been called in for the express purpose of helping to lock Katie away.

  Ellie approached her client and knelt. “Do you think we could take a minute?”

  She didn’t wait for Riordan’s response. Instead she slipped an arm around Katie’s shoulders, trying to ignore the way the girl had balled up her apron and now sat huddled over it, cradling it in her arms as if it were an infant.

  Riordan batted his eyes and adopted an impassioned falsetto. “Katie Fisher wasn’t there at the time of the baby’s death. Her body, maybe, but not her mind. At the time that infant died, she was in a mental fortress made of her own guilt.” He lowered his voice to his own natural tones and grinned at the county attorney. “Or something along those lines.”

  George laughed. “Does that psychoanalytic bullshit actually work at trials?”

  Riordan took a mint from a jar on the desk. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “You’re sure that when Hathaway noticed up insanity, she was thinking of dissociation?”

  “Trust me, it’s the designer defense tailored to neonaticide. Psychologically, the discrepancies between Katie’s story and the forensic evidence can be explained either by dissociation, or flat-out lying-and you can figure out which of those two options the defense is going to seize upon. But brief episodes of dissociation do not constitute insanity.”

  Riordan shrugged, popping a mint into his mouth. “The other thing about dissociative states is that if you give Ms. Hathaway enough rope, she’ll hang herself. There’s no way for her expert to prove that the dissociation was caused by the mental stress of giving birth, rather than the mental stres
s of committing murder. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing.”

  “I can go somewhere with this.” George grinned and leaned back in his chair.

  “Straight to the state prison.”

  George nodded. “Do we need to cover any of the psychological ramifications of being Amish?”

  Riordan stood, buttoned his jacket. “Why?” he said. “Murder’s murder.”

  As he kissed her, leaves rained down over them, spotting his back with the rich reds of the maples and the guinea gold of the oaks. Her shawl was spread over the crab grass like the wingspan of a great black hawk, providing a makeshift blanket. Katie moved her hands from Adam’s hair to his shoulders as he began to unfasten her dress. He gently speared each straight pin into the bark of the tree behind them, and she loved him for that-for being thoughtful enough to consider what this would be like for her, after.

  The apron came off, and her dress fell open. Katie closed her eyes, embarrassed, but then felt Adam bend to her breast, drawing on her through the fine cotton of her underwear. She held his head there; she imagined that he was drinking from the bowl of her heart.

  He had not said he loved her, but that did not matter. It was how he acted, how he treated her, that was a truer measure than any words he could say-deeds were the proof of affection for her people, not three little syllables that signified nothing. Adam would tell her when it was over; when it would not cheapen what was happening between them.

  Then he shed his own clothes. Just by looking now, you could not say that one was Plain and one was not. That was the last conscious thought Katie had, and then Adam pressed his body full against hers, the heat of his skin taking away her speech, her fears.

  He was heavy and full between her legs. With one hand, he lifted her knee, so that her body made a cradle for him. Then Adam looked down at her, his expression grave. “We can stop,” he whispered. “Right now, if you want.”

  Katie swallowed. “Do you want to stop?”

  “About as much as I’d like to be drawn and quartered.”

  She lifted her hips, an invitation, and felt him losing himself in her, stretching her so that it made her eyes smart. She thought of all the tourists who stood beneath the crossroads sign about five miles east, the one that said INTERCOURSE, PA, and how they’d giggle and point up at it while someone snapped their picture. She thought of her flesh giving way to Adam’s, the sweetest yielding of all. And then Adam reached between them and touched her. “Come with me,” he whispered.

  She thought he meant tomorrow, when he left for Scotland. She thought he meant forever. But then she felt her body spinning tighter and tighter, and scattering like the bright white seeds of a milkweed. As she caught her breath, more leaves fell on them, a benediction. Adam lay by her side, smiling and stroking her hip. “You okay?”

  Katie nodded. If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.

  He wrapped her in her shawl, and it made her feel physically ill. “No.” She pushed at his hands, shimmying away from the light wool. “I don’t want it.”

  Sensing the change in her, Adam drew her closer. “Listen, now,” he said firmly. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. However, the transgression wasn’t making love without the sanction of marriage. It was that for the first time in her life, Katie had put herself first. Put her own wants and needs above everything and everyone else.

  “Katie,” Adam said, his voice rough, “talk to me.”

  But she wanted him to speak. She wanted him to carry her far away from here, and hold her close all over again, and tell her that two worlds could be bridged with a look, with a touch. She wanted him to say that she belonged to him, and that he belonged to her, and that in the grand scheme of things that was really all that mattered.

  She wanted him to tell her that when you loved someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.

  Adam remained silent, searching her face. Katie felt the heat of him, of them, seeping between her thighs. They would not be going to Scotland together. They would not be going anywhere. She reached for her shawl and pulled it around her shoulders, knotting it just below the spot where her heart was breaking. “I think,” she said softly, “you’d better leave.”

  • • •

  Katie was finding it harder and harder to fall asleep. In those floating moments just before she drifted off, she would feel the scratch of hay under her thighs, or smell fear, or see the moon glinting off the stretched skin of her belly. She would think of the things she had told Dr. Polacci and Dr. Riordan and feel ill. And then she’d roll onto her side, to watch Ellie sleep, and feel even worse.

  She hadn’t expected to like Ellie. At first, Katie had been furious to find herself stuck with a jailer who didn’t trust her, to boot. But as uncomfortable as Katie might have found the situation, Ellie must have found it even more uncomfortable. This was not her home; these were not her people-and as she had pointed out several times, now, usually in fits of anger, this was not a situation of her own making.

  Well, it isn’t my fault, either, Katie thought. And yet she had seen that baby wrapped in the horse blankets. She had watched its coffin lowered into the ground. It was someone’s fault.

  Katie had not killed the baby, she knew this as well as she knew the sun would come up in the morning. But then, who had?

  There was once a homeless man who’d taken up shelter inside Isaiah King’s tobacco shed. But even if a vagrant had been in the barn that morning, he’d have no cause to take a newborn out of Katie’s arms, kill it, and hide it. Unless he was crazy, like Ellie was making her out to be.

  Katie knew that she would have sensed if someone else was in the barn that morning. And even if she hadn’t, the animals would have. Nugget would have been whinnying for a treat, like he always did when a person came to call; the cows would have been lowing in anticipation of milking. From the little bits and pieces Katie could recall, there had only been calm.

  Which meant someone had slipped in after her.

  She had racked her brain over and over, wishing for something she could give to Ellie on a silver platter, some piece of evidence so strong that it would make everything clear. But who would have cause to be up at that hour?

  Her father. The very thought shamed Katie. Her Dat sometimes came down to check on the cows due to deliver-but he was there to help give life, not take it away. Had he found Katie lying with a newborn-well, he would have been shocked, even angry. But justice for him would come from the church, not from his own hands.

  Samuel. If he’d come early for the milking, he might have found her asleep in the barn with the newborn. For sure, he’d have every right to be upset. Could he have hurt the baby before he realized what he’d done? Impossible, Katie thought, not Samuel. Samuel didn’t jump to conclusions; he thought slowly. And he was too honest to lie to the police. Suddenly Katie brightened, remembering another alibi for Samuel: he always brought along Levi. He wouldn’t have been alone in the barn long enough to commit a crime.

  But that left no one else-no one but Katie herself. And here, in the very deepest part of the night, she pulled the quilt tighter around herself and let herself wonder if Dr. Polacci and Ellie might be right after all. If you didn’t remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn’t?

  Katie rubbed her temples. She drifted off to sleep, borne along on the memory of the high, thin cry of a baby.

  The flashlight shining in her eyes woke Ellie. “For God’s sake,” she muttered, flinging a look at Katie, fast asleep, and then crossing to the window. If Samuel had come to tender an apology, it would have been nice for him to pick a time other than one in the morning. Ellie peered out the window, ready to give him a piece of her mind, and then realized that the man standing out in front of the house was
Coop.

  After dressing quickly in the shirt and shorts she’d had on the previous day, Ellie hurried down to meet him. She put her finger to her lips when she stepped onto the porch, and walked a distance from the house. Folding her arms across her chest, she nodded at the flashlight. “Samuel tip you off to that trick?”

  “Levi,” Coop said. “The kid’s a real corker.”

  “Did you come to show me that you understand Amish courting rituals?” As soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back. As if, after the way things had gone the other night, Coop might want to include her in anything even marginally resembling a courting ritual.

  He sighed. “I came to say I’m sorry.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “I would have called, but damn if I couldn’t find a listing for the Fishers. I had to find my handy-dandy flashlight and attend to the matter in person.”

  Ellie felt a smile twitch at her lips. “I see.”

  “No, you don’t.” He reached for her hand, pulling her down the path toward the pond. “I am truly sorry that things didn’t work out for you with Stephen. I never meant to humiliate you.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “You hurt me once, El. Badly. I guess on some level I wanted to make you feel as rotten as I did back then.” He grimaced. “Not very enlightened of me.”

  Ellie faced him. “I wouldn’t have asked you to help with Katie’s case if I’d known you were still carrying a grudge, Coop. I thought after twenty years you would have moved past that.”

  “But if I’d moved past that,” Coop reasoned, “it would mean I’d moved past you.”

  Ellie could feel the night closing in around her. Crazy, she thought, a pulse hammering at her throat. This is crazy. “I noticed up insanity,” she blurted out.

  Coop nodded, accepting the quick change of subject, and Ellie’s need for it. “Ah.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He stuffed the flashlight under his arm and tucked his hands in his pockets, striking off again as Ellie followed. “You know what it means, because you’ve probably thought it through yourself. Katie’s not insane. Then again, I suppose as her attorney you can tell the jury she’s Queen Elizabeth, if that’s bound to get her acquitted, and we all know she hasn’t got a drop of royal blood in her, either.”