Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  I found her doing the ironing in the kitchen. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  She smoothed the arm of one of her father’s shirts-lavender-and pressed it flat with an iron that had been heated on the stove. Not for the first time, I realized that Katie would make the perfect wife-in fact, she’d been groomed for just that. If she was sentenced to life in prison, she’d never get that opportunity. “The county attorney offered you a plea bargain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a deal, basically. He reduces the charge and sentence, and in return you have to say you were wrong.”

  Katie flipped the shirt over and frowned. “And then we still go to trial?”

  “No. Then it’s over.”

  Katie’s face lit up. “That would be wonderful!”

  “You haven’t heard his terms,” I said dryly. “If you plead guilty to manslaughter, instead of Murder One, you’ll get a sentence of ten years in prison, instead of life. But with parole you’ll probably only have to be in jail half that time.”

  Katie set the iron on its edge on the stove. “I would still go to jail, then.”

  I nodded. “The risk in accepting the offer is that if you go to trial and get acquitted, you don’t go to jail at all. It’s like settling for something, when you haven’t seen what’s out there.” But even as I said it, I knew it was the wrong explanation. An Amishman took what he was given-he didn’t hold out for the best, because that would only come at someone else’s expense, someone who didn’t get the best.

  “Will you get me acquitted, then?”

  It always came down to this, with clients who were offered a plea. Before they ceded to my advice, they wanted the assurance that things were going to come out in our favor. In most cases of my career, I’d been able to say yes with fervor, with conviction-and I then went on to prove myself right.

  But this was not “most cases.” And Katie was no ordinary client.

  “I don’t know. I believe I could have gotten you off with temporary insanity. But with the abbreviated length of time I’ve had to prepare this new defense, I just can’t say. I think I can get you acquitted. I hope I can get you acquitted. But Katie . . . I can’t give you my word.”

  “All I have to do is say I was wrong?” Katie asked. “And then it’s over?”

  “Then you go to jail,” I clarified.

  Katie lifted the iron and pressed it so hard against the shoulder of her father’s shirt that the fabric hissed. “I think I will take this offer,” she said.

  I watched her run the iron over and between the buttonholes, this girl who had just decided to go to prison for a decade. “Katie, can I tell you something as your friend, instead of your lawyer?” She glanced up. “You don’t know what prison is like. It’s not only full of English people-it’s full of bad people. I don’t think this is the way to go.”

  “You don’t think like me,” Katie said quietly.

  I swallowed my reply and counted to ten before I let myself speak again. “You want me to accept the plea? I will. But first I’d like you to do something for me.”

  I’d been to the State Correctional Institution at Muncy before, courtesy of several female clients of mine who were still serving out their sentences. It was a forbidding place, even to a lawyer accustomed to the reality of prison life. All women sentenced in Pennsylvania went to the diagnostic classification center at Muncy, and then either stayed on to serve out their sentence or got moved to the minimum security institution at Cambridge Springs in Erie. But at the very least, Katie would spend four to six weeks here, and I wanted her to see what she was getting herself into.

  The warden, a man with the unfortunate name of Duvall Shrimp and the more unfortunate habit of staring at my breasts, gladly ushered us into his office. I gave no explanations for Katie, no matter how odd it seemed to have a young Amish girl sitting next to me while I asked for a generic tour of the facility, and to Duvall’s credit, he didn’t ask. He led us through the control booth, where the barred door slammed shut behind Katie and made her draw in her breath.

  The first place he took us was the dining hall, where long tables with benches framed a center aisle. A straggly line of women moved like a single snake at the serving counter, picking up trays filled with unappetizing lumps in different shades of gray. “You eat in the hall,” he said, “unless you’re in the restricted housing unit for disciplinary behavior, or one of the capital case inmates. They eat in their cells.” We watched factions of prisoners separate to different tables, eyeing us with undisguised curiosity. Then Duvall led us up a staircase, into the block of cells. A television mounted at the end of the hallway cast a puddle of colored light over the face of one of the women, who dangled her arms through the bars of the cell and whistled at Katie. “Whoo-ee,” she catcalled. “Ain’t you a little early for Halloween?”

  Other prisoners laughed and snickered, brazenly standing in their tiny cages like exhibits in a circus sideshow. They stared at Katie as if she was the one on display. As she walked past the last cell in the row, whispering a prayer beneath her breath, a prisoner spat, the small splat landing just beside Katie’s sneaker.

  In the exercise yard, Duvall grew chatty. “Haven’t seen you around. You been defending men instead of women?”

  “About even. You haven’t seen me around because my clients get acquitted.”

  He jerked his chin in Katie’s direction. “Who’s she?”

  I watched her walk the perimeter of the empty yard, stop at the corner, and view the sky, framed as it was by curls of razor wire. In the tower above Katie’s head were two guards, holding rifles. “Someone who believes in seeing the property before signing the lease,” I said.

  Katie approached us, pulling her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “That’s all,” Duvall said. “Hope it was everything you thought it was cracked up to be.”

  I thanked him and ushered Katie back to the parking lot, where she got into the car and sat in absolute silence for most of the two-hour trip. At one point she fell asleep, dreamed, and whimpered quietly. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I used the other to smooth her hair, soothe her.

  Katie woke up as we got off the highway in Lancaster. She pressed her forehead to the window and said, “Please tell George Callahan that I do not want his deal.”

  I finished the last words of my opening argument with a flourish and turned at the sound of clapping. “Excellent. Direct and persuasive,” Coop said, coming forward from the shadows in the barn. He gestured at the lazy cows. “Tough jury, though.”

  I could feel heat rising to my cheeks. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  He linked his hands at the small of my back. “Believe me. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

  With a shove on his chest, I pushed away. “Really, Coop. I have a trial tomorrow. I’ll be lousy company.”

  “I’ll be your audience.”

  “You’ll be a distraction.”

  Coop grinned. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Sighing, I started to walk back to the milk room, where my computer was glowing green. “Why don’t you go inside and let Sarah cut you a piece of pie?”

  “And miss all this excitement?” Coop leaned against the bulk milk tank. “I think not. You go on ahead. Do whatever you were going to do before I showed up.”

  With a measured glance, I sat down on the milk crate that served as my chair and began to review the witness list for tomorrow’s trial. After a moment, I rubbed my eyes and turned off the computer.

  “I didn’t say a word,” Coop protested.

  “You didn’t have to.” Standing, I offered him my hand. “Walk with me?”

  We wandered, lazy, through the orchard on the north side of the farm, where the apple trees stood like a coven of arthritic old women. The perfume of their fruit twisted around us, bright and sweet as ribbon candy. “The night before a trial, Stephen would cook steak,” I said absently. “Said th
ere was something primitive about devouring fresh meat.”

  “And lawyers wonder why they’re called sharks,” Coop laughed. “Did you eat steak, too?”

  “Nope. I’d get into my pajamas and lip-synch to Aretha Franklin.”

  “No kidding?”

  I tilted back my head and let the notes fill my throat. “R-E-S-P-EC-T!”

  “An exercise in self-esteem?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I just really like Aretha.”

  Coop squeezed my shoulder. “If you’d like, I can sing backup.”

  “God, I’ve been waiting my whole life for a guy like you.”

  He turned me in his arms and touched his lips to mine. “I certainly hope so,” he said. “Where are you going to go, El, when this is all over?”

  “Well, I . . . ” I didn’t know, actually. It was something I’d avoided thinking about: the fact that when I stumbled into Katie Fisher’s legal quandary, I’d been on the run myself. “I could go back to Philadelphia, maybe. Or stay at Leda’s.”

  “How about me?”

  I smiled. “You could stay at Leda’s too, I suppose.”

  But Coop was absolutely serious. “You know what I’m saying, Ellie. Why don’t you move in with me?”

  Immediately, the world began to close in on me. “I don’t know,” I said, looking him squarely in the eye.

  Coop stuffed his hands into his pockets; I could see how hard he was fighting to keep from making a disparaging comment about my treatment of him in the past. I wanted to touch him, to ask him to touch me, but I couldn’t do that. We had been standing on the edge of this point once before, a hundred years ago, and for all that the cliff looked the same and the drop just as steep; I still couldn’t catch my breath.

  But we were older, this time. I wasn’t going to lie to him. He wasn’t going to walk away. I reached out for an apple and handed it to him.

  “Is this supposed to be an olive branch, or are you feeling biblical?”

  “That depends,” I said. “Are we talking psalms or sacrificial offerings?”

  Coop smiled, a sweet conciliation. “Actually, I was thinking of Numbers. All that begetting.” He tangled his fingers with mine, leaned back into the soft grass, and pulled me down on top of him. With his hands angling my head, he kissed me, until I could barely hold a thought, much less a thread of my defense strategy. This was safe. This, I knew.

  “Ellie,” Coop whispered, or maybe I imagined it, “take your time.”

  “Okay,” I said, in my best impression of a prosecutor, “here’s my offer: You let me unhook that water bucket, and you’re looking at two to five. Carrots, I mean.”

  Nugget shook his heavy head and stomped at me, as belligerent as any defense attorney turning down a lousy plea bargain. “Guess we’re going to have to go to trial,” I sighed, and ducked into the stall. The horse shoved me with his nose, and I scowled at him. “Stubbornness sure runs in this family,” I muttered.

  In response, the rotten beast took a nip at my shoulder. Yelping, I dropped the water bucket and backed out of the stall. “Fine,” I said. “Go get your own damn drink.” I turned on my heel, but was stopped by a faint sound overhead, like the mew of a kitten.

  “Hello?” I called. “Anyone here?”

  When there was no response, I began to climb the narrow ladder to the hayloft, where the bales of hay and the grain for livestock were kept. Sarah was sitting in one corner, crying, her face buried in her apron to muffle the noise.

  “Hey,” I said gently, touching her shoulder.

  She started, hurriedly wiping her face. “Ach, Ellie. I just came up here for . . . for . . . ”

  “For a good cry. It’s all right, Sarah. I understand.”

  “No.” She sniffed. “I have to get back to the house. Aaron will be coming in for lunch soon”

  I forced her to meet my gaze. “I’m going to do my best to save her, you know.”

  Sarah turned away, staring out at the neat, symmetrical fields. “I should never have put her on that train to see Jacob. . . . Aaron was right all along.”

  “There was no way you could have known that Katie would meet an English boy and get pregnant.”

  “Couldn’t I?” Sarah said softly. “This is all my fault.”

  My heart went out to the woman. “She might have chosen to go on her own. It might have happened anyway.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I love my children. I love them, and look what’s happened.”

  Without hesitation, I embraced her. I could hear her words, hot against my collarbone. “I’m her mother, Ellie. I’m supposed to fix it. But I can’t.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then I’ll have to.”

  Getting to the trial was an exercise in politics. Leda and Coop and Jacob all arrived at the farm at about 6:30 A.M., each in a separate car. Katie and Samuel and Sarah were immediately shuttled to Coop’s car, because he was the only driver who had not been excommunicated. Neither Jacob nor Leda felt comfortable leaving their car on Aaron Fisher’s property, so Leda had to follow Jacob back to her house to drop off his Honda before they returned to pick me up. We had almost reached the point where I was certain we were going to be late when Aaron strode out of the barn, his eyes fixed on the passengers in Coop’s car.

  He’d made it clear that he would not attend the trial. Although the bishop would surely have understood Aaron’s involvement in this particular lawsuit, Aaron could not condone it himself. But maybe there was more to him than I’d thought. Even if his principles kept him from accompanying his daughter to her trial, he would not let her go without a proper good-bye. Coop unrolled the back window so that Aaron could stick his head inside and speak to Katie.

  But when he leaned close, all he said, softly, was, “Sarah, komm.”

  With downcast eyes, Katie’s mother squeezed her hand and then slipped from the car. She fell into place beside her husband, her eyes bright with tears that she did not let fall even as her husband turned her by the shoulders and led her back to the house.

  Leda was the first one to notice the vans. Sprawled across the parking lot of the superior court, they were crowned with satellite dishes and emblazoned with an alphabet soup of station call letters. Closer to the court-house was one row of reporters holding microphones and another row of cameramen rolling tape, facing each other as if they were getting ready to do the Virginia reel instead of comment on the fate of a young girl.

  “What on earth?” Leda breathed.

  “That’s debatable,” I muttered. “Reporters aren’t a human life form.”

  Suddenly Coop’s face appeared at my window. “What are they doing here? I thought you won that motion.”

  “I got the cameras removed from the courtroom itself,” I said. “Outside is anybody’s turf.” Since the day the judge had ruled, I hadn’t given much thought to the media issue-I’d been too busy trying to create a new defense. But it was naïve to think that just because the cameras would not be present meant that the interest in the story would likewise absent itself. I grabbed my briefcase and got out of the car, knowing that I had about two minutes before everyone realized who I was. Tapping on the rear window of Coop’s car, I pulled Katie’s attention from the knot of press.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s now or never.”

  “But-”

  “There’s no other way, Katie. Somehow we’re going to have to break right through them to walk up the steps to the courthouse. I know it’s not what you want, and it’s certainly not what I want, but we don’t have a choice.”

  Katie closed her eyes briefly before getting out of the car. Praying, I realized, and I wished in vain that she were asking God to make them all come down with a plague. Then, with a grace that belied her age, Katie stepped out and put her hand into mine.

  Awareness rolled like a tidal wave as one reporter after another caught sight of Katie’s kapp and apron. Cameras swiveled; questions fell around our feet like javelins. I could feel her wince at each flash; and I thought of Doria
n Gray’s portrait, the life draining out. Bewildered, she kept her face tucked down and trusted me to lead her up the stairs. “No comment,” I shouted, parting the reporters like the prow of a great ship, pulling Katie in my wake.

  I knew the building well enough after several visits, so I immediately took Katie to the nearest ladies’ room. Checking beneath the stalls to make sure they were empty, I leaned against the door to prevent anyone else coming in. “You’re all right?”

  She was shaking, and her eyes were wide with confusion, but she nodded. “Ja. It just wasn’t what I expected.”

  It wasn’t what I had expected either, and I had an obligation to tell her that it was going to get significantly worse before it got better, but instead I took a deep breath and managed to taste, deep in my lungs, the scent of Katie’s fear. Shoving her out of the way, I ran for the nearest stall and threw up until there was nothing left in my stomach.

  On my knees, with my face fired and hot, I pressed my forehead against the cool fiberglass wall of the stall. It was only by taking shallow breaths that I managed to turn and rip off a piece of toilet paper to wipe my mouth.

  Katie’s hand fell like a question on my shoulder. “Ellie, are you all right?”

  Nerves, I thought, but I wasn’t about to admit that to my own client. “Must have been something I ate,” I said, tossing Katie my brightest smile and getting to my feet. “Now. Shall we go?”

  Katie kept running her hands over the smooth, polished wood of the defense table. There were places the finish had been rubbed raw, worn by the hands of endless defendants who’d sat in the very same place. How many of them, I wondered, had truly been innocent?

  Courtrooms, before the fact of a trial, were not the bastions of serenity depicted on TV shows about the law. Instead, they were a bustle: the clerk shuffling for the right file, the bailiff blowing his nose in a spotted handkerchief, the people in the gallery talking headlines over Styrofoam cups of coffee. Today it was even louder than usual, and I could make out distinct sentences through the general buzz. Most involved Katie, who was on display just as surely as a zoo animal, removed from her natural habitat for the curiosity of others.