Plain Truth

by Jodi Picoult

  Katie dropped several into a small jelly jar. "You said you used to fish when you were a kid, here on the farm."

  "Yeah," I said. "But that was a thousand years ago."

  She smiled up at me. "You always do that. Make yourself out to be some old woman."

  "Get back to me when you're thirty-nine, and tell me how you feel." I walked at her side, the rods canted over my shoulder.

  The creek was running strong, thanks to a few days of rain. The water tumbled over rocks, forked around sticks. Katie sat down at the water's edge and took a worm out of the jar, then reached for one of the poles. "When Jacob and I used to have fishing contests, I always caught the biggest-- Ouch!" Drawing back her hand, she popped her thumb into her mouth to suck away the blood. "That was stupid of me," she said a moment later.

  "You're tired." She lowered her eyes. "We all do crazy things when we care about someone," I said carefully. "So you waited up all night. So what?" I reached for a worm, swallowed, and baited my own hook. "When I was your age, I got stood up before my senior prom. I bought a hundred-and-fifty-dollar strapless dress that wasn't beige or cream, mind you, but ecru, and I sat in my room waiting for Eddie Bernstein to pick me up. Turns out he'd asked two girls to the dance and decided that Mary Sue LeClare was more likely to put out."

  "Put out?"

  I cleared my throat. "Um, it's an expression. For having sex."

  Katie's brows rose. "Oh, I see."

  Uncomfortable, I dunked my line into the water. "Maybe we should talk about something else."

  "Did you love him? Eddie Bernstein?"

  "No. The two of us were always vying for highest grade-point average, so we got to know each other pretty well. I didn't fall in love until I got to college."

  "Why didn't you get married then?"

  "Twenty-one is awfully young to get married. Most women like to have a few years to get to know themselves, before getting to know marriage and children."

  "But once you have a family, there's so much more you learn about yourself," Katie pointed out.

  "Unfortunately, by the time I came around to that way of thinking, my prospects had dimmed."

  "What about Dr. Cooper?"

  I dropped my fishing rod, then grabbed it up again. "What about him?"

  "He likes you, and you like him."

  "Of course we do. We're colleagues."

  Katie snorted. "My father has colleagues, but he doesn't sit a little too close to them on the porch swing, or smile extra long at something they've said."

  I scowled at her. "I would think that you, of all people, would respect my right to privacy regarding my own personal affairs." Affairs, I thought. Wrong word.

  "Is he coming here today?"

  I started. "How would you know that?"

  "Because you keep looking up the driveway, like I did last night."

  Sighing, I decided to come clean. If nothing else, maybe it would spur her to honesty. "Coop was the boy in college. The one I didn't marry when I was twenty-one."

  She suddenly leaned back to pull a thrashing sunfish out of the brook. Its scales caught the sunlight; its tail thumped between Katie and me. She lifted it with her thumb in its mouth, and set it into the water for a second chance.

  "Which one of you quit?" she asked.

  I didn't pretend to misunderstand. "That," I said softly, "would have been me."

  "I wasn't feeling well at dinner," Katie told us, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond Coop's shoulder. "Mam told me to go on up and lie down, and she'd clean the dishes."

  Coop nodded, encouraging. He'd been here for two hours now, interviewing Katie about the night of the alleged murder. To my great surprise, Katie was being cooperative, if not forthcoming.

  "You felt sick," Coop prompted. "Was it a headache? Stomachache?"

  "It was chills all over, with a headache. Like the flu."

  I hadn't had children myself, but those symptoms seemed to suggest a virus rather than impending labor. "Did you fall asleep?" Coop asked.

  "Ja, after a little bit. And then I woke up in the morning."

  "You don't remember anything between the time you went to bed sick, and the time you woke up in the morning?"

  "No," Katie said. "But what's so strange about that? I don't usually remember anything between when I fall asleep and I wake up, except a dream every now and then."

  "Did you feel sick when you woke up?"

  Katie blushed furiously. "A little."

  "The same headache and chills?"

  She ducked her head. "No. It was my time of the month."

  "Katie, was the flow heavier than usual?" I asked, and she nodded. "Did you have cramps?"

  "Some," she admitted. "Not bad enough to keep me from doing my chores."

  "Were you sore?"

  "You mean like my muscles?"

  "No. Between your legs."

  After a sidelong look at Coop, she murmured to me, "It burned a little bit. But I thought it was maybe part of the flu."

  "So," Coop said, clearing his throat, "you got up and did your chores?"

  "I started to cook breakfast," Katie answered. "There was something big going on down at the barn, and then the Englischer police came, and Mam stuck her head in long enough to tell me to make extra food for them." She stood up, pacing the length of the porch. "I didn't go into the barn until Samuel came to tell me what was happening."

  "What did you see?"

  Her eyes were bright with tears. "The tiniest baby," she whispered. "Oh, the very tiniest one I'd ever seen."

  "Katie," Coop said softly, "had you seen that baby before?"

  She gave her head a quick shake, as if she was trying to clear it.

  "Did you touch the baby?"

  "No."

  "Was it wrapped up?"

  "In a shirt," she whispered. "So that just his face was showing, and it looked like he was sleeping, like Hannah used to look when she was in her crib."

  "If the baby was wrapped up, if you never touched it ... how do you know it was a boy?"

  Katie blinked at Coop. "I don't know."

  "Try hard, Katie. Try to remember the moment you knew it was a boy."

  She shook her head, crying harder now. "You can't do this to me," she sobbed, and then she turned on her heel and ran.

  "She'll come back," I said, staring off in the direction Katie had fled. "But it's nice that you're worried."

  Coop sighed and leaned back on the porch swing. "I pushed her to the edge," he said. "Came right up against that world she's been living in in her mind. She had to shut down, or else concede that her logic doesn't work." He turned to me. "You believe she's guilty, don't you?"

  It was the first time since I'd been here that anyone had actually put the question to me. The Fisher family, their Amish friends and relatives--everyone in the community seemed to treat Katie's murder charge as some bizarre finger-pointing that they had to simply accept, but not believe. However, I wasn't looking at a girl I'd known all my life--just a mountain of evidence that seemed damning. From the police reports to my recent discussion with the neonatal pathologist, everything I had seen so far suggested that Katie had either actively or passively caused the death of her child. The concealment of the pregnancy--that was premeditation. The threat of losing Samuel, as well as her parents' respect; the fear of being excommunicated-- that was motive. The ongoing denial of hard facts--well, my gut feeling was that with an upbringing like Katie's, it was the only way to deal with something she'd known damn well was wrong.

  "I have three choices for my defense, Coop," I said. "Number one: she did it and she's sorry, and I throw her on the mercy of the court. But that would mean putting her on the stand, and if I do, they'll know she's not sorry at all--hell, she doesn't even believe she committed the crime. Number two: she didn't do it, someone else did. A nice defense, but highly unlikely, given that it was a premature birth that occurred in secret at two in the morning. And number three: she did it, but she was dissociating at the time, and
she can't really be convicted of a crime if she wasn't mentally there."

  "You believe she's guilty," Coop repeated.

  I couldn't look him in the eye. "I believe this is my only chance to get her off."

  Aaron and I walked into the barn in the later afternoon--me heading for my computer, Aaron intent on delivering feed to the cows. Suddenly, he stopped beside me. The barn was charged with the scent of something about to happen. One of the ballooned cows in the calving pen was bellowing, a tiny hoof sticking out from between her hind legs. Swiftly, Aaron reached for a pair of long rubber kitchen gloves and went into the pen, pulling at the hoof until a miniature white face emerged beside a second hoof. Aaron tugged and tugged, and I watched with wonder as the calf emerged bloody, with the sound of a seal being broken.

  It landed, sprawled, on the hay. Aaron knelt before it and brushed a blade of straw over its face. The little nose wrinkled, snee2ed, and then the calf was breathing, standing, nuzzling its mother's side. Peering under its leg, Aaron grinned. "It's a heifer," he announced.

  Well, of course it was. What was he expecting--a whale?

  As if he could read my mind, he laughed. "A heifer," he repeated. "Not a bull."

  Peeling off his gloves, he got to his feet. "How's that for a miracle?"

  The mother rasped her tongue along the wet whorls of her baby's hide. Mesmerized, I stared. "That'll do just fine," I murmured.

  When she heard that Mary Esch was hosting a singing, Katie got down on her knees and begged to be allowed to go. "You can come along," she said, just in case that was liable to sway me. "Please, Ellie."

  I knew, from what she'd told Coop and me, that this was a social event. It would give me an opportunity to see Katie react around other Amish boys, boys who might have been the father of her baby. So, five hours later, I was sitting beside Katie on the front bench of the buggy, en route to a hymn sing. I'd ridden in the Fisher buggy before, but it hadn't seemed quite so precarious from the backseat. Gripping the edge, I asked, "How long have you been driving?"

  "Since I was thirteen." She caught my gaze and grinned. "Why? Wanna take the reins?"

  There was something about Katie tonight--a sparkle, a hope--that made my eyes keep coming back to her. After we arrived, she tied up the horse beside a batch of other buggies, and we went inside the barn. Mary kissed Katie on the cheek and whispered something that made Katie cover her mouth and laugh. I tried to blend into the background and stared at the girls with their creamy complexions and their rainbow-colored dresses, the boys with their fringed bangs and furtive glances. I felt like a chaperone at a high school dance--overbearing, critical, and uncomfortably old. And then I saw a familiar face.

  Samuel stood with a group of slightly older boys; the ones, I assumed, that had been baptized like him yet still remained single. His back was to Katie, and he was listening to another boy's conversation--from the looks of it, a rude story about either a fat woman or a horse. When the group broke into laughter, Samuel smiled faintly, then walked off.

  The teenagers began to drift toward two long picnic tables. The first had a bench of girls sitting opposite a bench of boys. The second was reserved for couples: girls and boys sat side by side, their entwined hands hidden in the folds of the girl's skirt. A young woman I had never met approached me. "Ms. Hathaway, can I show you to a seat?"

  I had been expecting a barrage of questions about my identity, but I should have known better. The power of word of mouth was mighty in the Amish community; these kids had heard about me for nearly two weeks. "Matter of fact," I said, "I just might stand back here and watch."

  The girl smiled and took a seat at the singles table, whispering to her friend, who then glanced at me from beneath her lashes. Katie sat at the end of the couples table, leaving a spot beside her. As if nothing at all had happened the night before, she smiled at Samuel as he came toward the table.

  He kept walking.

  With Katie watching every step, Samuel slid into a spot at the singles' table. Nearly every pair of eyes followed his progress, then darted back to Katie, but no one said a word. Katie bowed her head, her neck drooping low as a cygnet's, her cheeks bright.

  As the high notes of a hymn rose toward the ceiling, as the mouths of the girls rounded with sound and the voices of boys grew magically deeper, I took a slow step toward the couples table. I climbed over the bench seat and sank down beside Katie, who did not look at me. I placed my hand, palm facing up, on her knee and counted: a quarter note, a half, a full measure before she took what I was offering.

  With my back turned, I never would have been able to identify them as Amish teens. The buzz and chatter, the giggling, the clink of glasses and plates as the snacks were served, all seemed familiar and English. Even the dark and shifting shapes in the corners--couples looking for a spot to get closer--and the odd pair who wandered outside, their faces burning with an internal fever, seemed far more suited to my world than Katie's.

  Katie sat like a queen bee on a stool, surrounded by loyal girlfriends speculating on the cause of Samuel's defection. If she was being comforted by them, it wasn't working. She looked shell-shocked, as if two consecutive nights of rebuff were too much for her to accept.

  Then again, she was having trouble accepting more than one fact of life these days.

  Suddenly the group of girls cleaved and fell back in two halves. Hat in his hands, Samuel stepped forward toward Katie. "Hello," he said.

  "Hello."

  "Could I take you home?"

  Some of the girls patted Katie's back, as if to say that they knew it would come out all right the whole time. Katie kept her face averted. "I have my own buggy. And Ellie's with me."

  "Maybe Ellie could drive home herself."

  That was my cue to speak up. I stepped forward from where I had been shamelessly eavesdropping and smiled. "Sorry, guys. Katie, you're welcome to a private moment, but only if it doesn't involve me, a swaybacked mare, and a set of reins."

  Samuel glanced at me. "My cousin Susie said she'd drive you back to the Fishers', if you're willing. And then I can take her back home after."

  Katie waited, yielding to my wishes. "All right," I sighed. I wondered if Susie was even old enough to have a learner's permit in my world.

  I watched Katie climb into the open buggy Samuel had brought. I hauled myself into the family carriage we'd arrived in, beside a slip of a girl with thick Coke bottle glasses who was my designated driver. Just before they drove off, Katie waved to me and smiled nervously.

  The ride home was a long, silent fifteen minutes. Susie was far from the budding conversationalist; she seemed to have been struck dumb by her close proximity to someone who wasn't Amish. When she asked to use the bathroom just as we arrived at the Fishers', I jumped at the sound of her voice. "Sure," I said. "Go on inside."

  It wasn't good hostessing, but I wasn't about to leave before Katie arrived. Just in case.

  I sat in the buggy, because I had no idea how to unhook the horse from its traces. A moment later, the light clop of hooves on packed dirt announced the arrival of Samuel's horse.

  I should have let them know I was there. Instead I sank into the dark recesses of the buggy, waiting to hear what Katie and Samuel had to say.

  "Just tell me." Samuel's voice was so soft I would not have heard it if not for the wind that carried it close. "Tell me who it was." At Katie's silence, he began to grow frustrated. "Was it John Lapp? I've seen him staring at you. Or Karl Mueller?"

  "It was no one," Katie insisted. "Stop it."

  "It was someone! Someone touched you. Someone held you. Someone made that baby!"

  "There was no baby. There was no baby!" Katie's voice rose in pitch, in volume, and then I heard a thump as she jumped down from the buggy and ran into the house.

  I stepped out of my hiding spot and sheepishly looked at Samuel, and Susie, who'd collided with Katie at the door of the Fishers' home.

  "There was a baby," Samuel whispered to me.

  I nodded.
"I'm sorry."

  E. Trumbull Tewksbury arrived shortly after lunchtime, wearing his G-man aviator sunglasses and his buzz cut and his black suit. He looked around the farm as if he was scoping it for assassins or terrorists, and then asked where he could set up. "The kitchen," I said, leading him inside, to where Katie was already waiting.

  A former FBI man, Bull now administered lie detector tests in the private sector. Basically, he was a suitcase for hire. He'd come out before on my behalf to clients' homes with his portable equipment, and exuded enough of his past training to invite both an air of solemnity for the occasion, and a vague threat suggesting that--criminal or not--the client had better be telling the truth.

  Of course, this was probably the first time he'd had to get the thumbs-up from an Amish bishop to administer a test, what with the requisite tape recorder and microphone and battery pack that was part and parcel of a lie detector. But, since church permission had been granted, even Aaron was grudgingly leaving us alone. It was just me, Katie, and for moral support, Sarah, holding tight to her daughter's hand.

  "Breathe deeply," I said, leaning closer to Katie. She was absolutely terrified, like several of my former clients. Of course, I didn't know if that was due to guilt, or because she had never seen so many bells and whistles in one place. However, since the machine reacted to nerves, Katie's fear had to be nipped in the bud, no matter what was causing it.

  "I'm just going to be asking you some questions," Bull said. "You see here? This is just a little bitty tape recorder. And this part is a microphone." He tapped it with his fingernail. "And this thing, it's no different from those earthquake seismographs."

  Katie's fingers were white where they held Sarah's hand. Beneath her breath she was whispering in the dialect, words that were becoming familiar to me after many evenings with the Fishers: "Unser Vater, in dem Himmel. Dein Name werde geheiliget. Dein Reich komme. Dein Wille geschehe auf Erden wie im Himmel."

  In all my years of practice, I'd never had a client reciting the Lord's Prayer before a lie detector test.

  "Just relax," I said, patting her arm. "All you have to do is say yes or no."

  In the end, it wasn't me who managed to calm Katie down. It was Bull himself, who--bless his Pentagonal heart--struck up a distracting conversation about Jersey cows and the cream content of their milk. Watching her mother chat with the strange man about a familiar topic, Katie's shoulders softened, then her spine, then finally her resolve.