by Jodi Picoult
"I'm ... I'm sorry ..." Samuel hunched around his shame, hugging his arms to his chest. "I didn't mean ..." He buried his face in his shirt and tried to keep the tears from coming. He was not a good Christian, not at all. Not only had he just attacked poor Mary Esch; he could not accept Katie's confession. Forgive her? He couldn't even get past the bare facts of it.
Mary's soft hand lit on his shoulder. "Samuel, let's just go home." He felt the buggy jostle as she jumped down and switched places with him, so that she could drive.
Samuel wiped hastily at his eyes. "I'm not feeling so wonderful gut," he admitted.
"No kidding," Mary said with a little smile. She reached over and patted his hand. "You'll see," she said with sympathy. "Everything is going to be all right."
*
Superior Court Judge Phil Ledbetter turned out to be emale.
It took Ellie nearly a full thirty seconds to absorb that fact, as she sat in the judge's chambers with George Callahan for the pretrial hearing. Phil--or Philomena, as her brass nameplate said--was a small woman with a tight red perm, a no-nonsense pinch to her mouth, and a voice with a chirp to it. Her broad desk was littered with photos of her children, all four of whom had the same trademark red hair. This was not, on the whole, good for Katie. Ellie had been banking on a male judge, a judge who would know nothing about childbirth, a judge who would feel vaguely uncomfortable skewering a young girl being tried for neonaticide. A female judge, on the other hand, who knew what it was like to carry a child and hold it in your arms the minute it came into the world, would be more likely to hate Katie at first sight.
"Ms. Hathaway, Mr. Callahan, why don't we get started?" The judge opened the file on the desk in front of her. "Is discovery complete?"
"Yes, Your Honor," said George.
"Do either of you have any motions to file? Ah, here's one from you, Ms. Hathaway, about barring the press from the courtroom. Why don't we deal with this one right now?"
Ellie cleared her throat. "It's contrary to my client's religion to be in court at all, Your Honor. But even out of the sphere of the courtroom, the Amish are averse to photography. It's their way of taking the Bible to the letter," she explained. '"You shall not make for yourself a graven image or a likeness of anything. ' Exodus 20:4."
George interrupted. "Your Honor, didn't we separate church and state about two centuries ago?"
"It's more than that," Ellie continued. "The Amish think that if a photograph is taken of you, you might take yourself too seriously or try to make a name for yourself, which goes against their spirit of humility." She looked hard at the judge. "My client is already compromising her religious principles to come to trial, Your Honor. If we have to go through this farce at all, we can at least make it comfortable for her."
The judge turned. "Mr. Callahan?"
George shrugged. "Heck, yes. Let's make it comfortable for the defendant. And while we're at it, why not give the prisoners in the State Pen featherbeds and a gourmet chef? With all due respect to Ms. Hathaway, and to her client's religion, this is a public trial, a public murder. The press has first-amendment rights to report it. And Katie Fisher gave up certain constitutional rights when she violated some of the major ones." He turned to Ellie. "Forget graven images--what about 'Thou shalt not kill'? If she didn't want notoriety, she shouldn't have committed murder."
"No one's proved that she has," Ellie shot back. "Frankly, Your Honor, this is a religious matter, and Mr. Callahan is walking a fine line between derision and defamation. I think--"
"I know what you think, counsel; you've made yourself painfully clear. The press will be allowed into the courtroom, but cameras and video equipment will be barred." The judge turned a page in the file. "Something else leaps out at me, Ms. Hathaway. There's obvious speculation, due to the nature of the alleged crime, that you might be considering a plea of insanity. As I'm sure you know, the deadline's passed for noticing up a defense."
"Your Honor, those deadlines can be extended for good cause, and I need a forensic psychiatrist to look at my client before I consider any theories of defense at all. However, you haven't yet ruled on my motion for services other than counsel."
"Oh, yes." The judge lifted a piece of paper edged with rosebuds down the margins--bubble-jet printer stationery that Leda apparently used to print the file from Ellie's disk. "I must say, this is the prettiest motion I've ever had filed."
Ellie groaned silently. "I apologize for that, Your Honor. My current working conditions are ... less than ideal." At George's snicker, she turned resolutely toward the judge. "I need the State to pay for an evaluation before I notice up anything."
"Hey," George said, "if you get a forensic shrink, then I get a forensic shrink. I want the girl evaluated for the State."
"Why? I'm just asking for the money to pay a psychiatrist, so that I can come to a conclusion about how to defend my client. I'm not saying I'm running an insanity defense yet. All I'm admitting to is that I'm an attorney, not a psychiatrist. If I decide to go with insanity, I'll turn over the reports and you can have your own shrink look at my client, but as it stands, I won't let her be seen by any state psychiatrist until I notice up that defense."
"You can have your psychiatrist," the judge said. "How much do you need?"
Ellie scrambled to recall a typical fee. "Twelve hundred to two thousand."
"All right. Consider yourself funded with a two-thousand-dollar cap, unless I hear cause for more than that. If there are any other motions due, I want them within thirty days. We'll have our final pretrial in six weeks. Does that give you two enough time?"
Ellie and George murmured their assent, and the judge rose. "If you'll excuse me, I'm due in court." She breezed past, leaving them alone in chambers.
Ellie shuffled her papers together while George clicked his pen and hooked it back inside his suit jacket pocket. "So," he said, smirking. "How's the milking going?"
"You oughtta know, farm boy."
"I may be a country lawyer, Ellie, but I got my degree in Philly, just like you."
Ellie stood. "George, do me a favor and find someplace to go. I've seen enough horse's asses in the past few weeks."
George laughed and picked up his portfolio, then held the door open for Ellie. "If I had as shitty a case as you do, I guess I'd be in a foul mood, too."
Ellie walked past him. "Don't guess," she said. "You're bound to be wrong."
Coop had asked Katie to walk him through the days leading up to the birth, hoping to jar a memory, although in an hour's time there had been no major breakthroughs. He leaned forward. "So you were doing the wash. Tell me what it felt like when you bent down to reach into that basket of wet clothes."
Katie closed her eyes. "Good. Cool. I took one of my Dat's shirts and rubbed it on my face, because I was so hot."
"Was it hard to bend down?"
She frowned. "It hurt my back. I felt a crick in it, like I sometimes do before it's my time of the month."
"How long had it been since your time of the month?"
"A long time," Katie admitted. "I thought about that when I hung my drawers up to dry."
"You knew that skipping menses was a sign of pregnancy," Coop said gently.
"Ja, but I'd been late before." Katie picked at the hem of her apron. "I kept telling myself that."
Coop's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because ... because I ..." Katie's face contorted, reddened.
"Tell me," he urged.
"When I first missed my time," Katie said, tears streaming down her cheeks, "I told myself not to worry about it. And then I stopped worrying, for a little while. But I was so tired, I could barely stay awake after dinner. And when I put on my apron, I had to work hard to make the straight pins go through the same holes as always." She took a shuddering breath. "I thought--I thought I might be--but I wasn't big like my Mam with Hannah." Her hands moved to her belly. "This was nothing."
"Did you ever feel something moving inside you? Kicking?"
; Katie was silent for so long Coop was about to ask another question. Then, suddenly, her voice came, quiet and sad. "Sometimes," she confessed, "it would wake me up at night."
Coop lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Katie, on that day you hung the laundry, on that day your back hurt so much, what did you know?"
She looked into her lap. "That I was pregnant," she breathed.
Coop stilled at the admission. "Did you tell your mother?"
"I couldn't."
"Did you tell anyone?"
She shook her head. "The Lord. I asked Him to help me."
"What time that night did you wake up with cramps?"
"I didn't."
"All right," Coop said. "Then when did you go out to the barn?"
"I didn't."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Katie, you knew you were pregnant when you went to sleep that night."
"Yes."
"Did you think you were pregnant the next morning?"
"No," Katie answered. "It was gone. I just knew all of a sudden."
"Then something must have happened between that night and the next morning. What happened?"
Katie blinked back fresh tears. "God answered my prayers."
By silent agreement, neither Ellie nor Coop spoke of the fiasco in his apartment a few nights earlier. They were colleagues, polite and professional, and as Ellie listened to Coop talk about his session with Katie, she tried not to feel as if something was missing.
In the privacy of the barn, Coop watched the wheels turn in Ellie's mind as she analyzed Katie's admission of pregnancy. "She cried?"
"Yeah," Coop answered.
"That would be evidence of remorse."
"She cried, but not about the baby--about the mess she'd gotten into. Plus, she's still amnesiac about how she became pregnant. And instead of a birth, we have divine intervention."
Ellie smiled a little. "Well, that would be a novel defense."
"What I'm saying, Ellie, is that you shouldn't be throwing a victory party just yet. She hid a pregnancy, and today she admitted to it. First off, that's shady. Often amnesia victims present false memories--the story they've heard from the press and from the family, and worse, once they tell it they believe this new story fiercely, when it may not be accurate at all. But, just for the hell of it, let's say that Katie's on the square here, and truly did just remember being pregnant. Maybe there will be more admissions, as her defense mechanisms break down. But maybe there won't be. What just happened is therapeutic for Katie, but not for you and your defense--no one ever doubted that she had the baby, except for Katie herself. And hiding a pregnancy isn't normal, but it's not outside the range of the law, either."
"I know what she's on trial for," Ellie snapped. "I know you do," Coop said. "But does she?"
Adam stood behind her, his hands fisted over her own on the dowsing rods. "You ready?" he whispered, as a barn owl cried. They stepped forward, walking the perimeter of the pond, their shoes crunching on the dry field grass. Katie could feel Adam's heart pounding, and she wondered why he too seemed on edge; wondered what on earth he had to lose.
The rods began to shake and jump, and Katie instinctively drew back against Adam. He murmured something she did not hear, and together they fought to hold onto the sticks. "Take me back there," he said, and Katie closed her eyes.
She imagined the cold of that day, how you could pinch together your nostrils and feel them stick, how when you removed your mittens to lace up your skates, your fingers grew thick and red as sausages. She imagined the whoop of delight Hannah had let out when she skated off to the center of the pond, shawl flying out behind her. She imagined her sister's bright blond hair glinting through her kapp. Most of all, she remembered the feel of Hannah's hand in hers when they walked down the slippery hill to the pond, small and warm and utterly trusting in Katie's ability to keep her from falling.
The pressure on the dowsing rods stopped, and Katie opened her eyes when Adam sucked in his breath. "She looks just like you," he whispered.
Hannah skated away from them, making figure eights about six inches above the surface of the water. "The pond was higher then," Adam said. "That's why she seems to be floating."
"You see her," Katie murmured, her heart lifting. She dropped the dowsing rods and threw her arms around Adam. "You can see my sister!" Belatedly suspicious, she drew back to quiz him. "What color are her skates?"
"Black. And they look like hand-me-downs."
"And her dress?"
"Kind of green. Light, like sherbet."
Adam led her to the bench at the edge of the pond. "Tell me what happened that night."
Katie painted with words: Jacob's escape to the barn, the spangles on the figure-skating champion she'd been dreaming about, the scrape of Hannah's blades on the thin patches of ice. "I was supposed to be looking out for her, and instead all I could think of was me," she said finally, miserably. "It was my fault."
"You can't think that. It was just something horrible that happened. " He touched Katie's cheek. "Look at her. She's happy. You can feel it."
Katie lifted her face to his. "You've already told me that the ones who come back, the ones who become ghosts, have pain left behind. If she's so happy, Adam, why is she still here?"
"What I told you," Adam gently corrected, "is that the ones who come back have an emotional connection to the world. Sometimes it's pain, sometimes it's anger ... but Katie, sometimes it's just love." His words rose softly between them. "Sometimes they stay because they don't want to leave someone behind."
She remained perfectly still as Adam bent toward her. She waited for him to kiss her, but he didn't. He stopped just a breath away, fighting for the willpower to keep from touching her.
Katie knew he would be leaving the next day, knew that he moved in a world that would never be her own. She placed her palms on his cheeks. "Will you haunt me?" she whispered, and met his lips halfway.
Katie was cleaning the tack used by the mules and by Nugget when a voice startled her.
"They made you pick up my chores," Jacob said sadly. "I never even thought to ask you about it."
Her hand at her throat, she whirled around. "Jacob!"
He opened his arms, and she flew into them. "Does Mam know--"
"No," he said, cutting her off. "And let's keep it that way." He hugged her tightly and then held her at arm's length. "Katie, what's happened?"
She buried her face against his chest again. He smelled of pine and ink, and was so solid, so strong for her. "I don't know," she murmured. "I thought I did, but now I can't be sure."
She felt Jacob distance himself again, and then his eyes dipped down to her apron. "You had ... a baby," he said uneasily, then swallowed. "You were pregnant when you last saw me."
She nodded and bit her lower lip. "Are you awful mad about it?"
He slid his hand down her arm and squeezed her hand. "I'm not mad," he said, sitting down on the edge of a wagon. "I'm sorry."
Katie sat beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder. "I am too," she whispered.
Mary Esch came visiting on Sunday, wearing Rollerblades and bearing a Frisbee. Ellie could have run up and hugged the girl. It was just what Katie needed in light of these newfound recollections about the baby--a moment to just be a teenager again, without any responsibilities. While Ellie washed the dishes from lunch, Mary and Katie ran around the front yard, their skirts belling as they leaped into the air to snatch the neon disc.
Hot and winded, the girls collapsed on the grass outside the kitchen window, which Ellie had opened to catch the faint breeze. She could hear snatches of conversation drifting up over the rush of the faucet: "... seen the fly that landed on Bishop Ephram's nose," "... asked about you," "... not so lonely, not really."
Mary closed her eyes and rubbed the cold glass of a root beer bottle against her forehead. "I think it's hotter than any summer I ever remember," she said.
"No." Katie smiled. "You just put things out of your mind wh
en they're not right in front of you, is all."
"Still, it's awful hot." She put down the bottle and fluted her skirt over her bare toes, unsure of what else to say.
"Mary, has it got so bad that all we can talk about is the weather?" Katie said quietly. "Why don't you ask me what you really want to ask?"
Mary looked into her lap. "Is it awful, being shunned?"
Katie shrugged. "It's not so bad. The mealtimes are tough, but I have Ellie with me, and my Mam tries to make it all work out okay."
"And your Dat?"
"My Dat isn't so good at trying to make it all work out," she admitted. "But that's how he is." She took her friend's hand. "In six weeks, it'll all go back to being the way it was."
If anything, this made Mary look even more upset. "I don't know about that, Katie."
"Well, sure you do. I've made my things right. Even if Bishop Ephram asks me to step down at communion time, I won't have to be under the bann."
"That's not what I mean," Mary murmured. "It's the way others might act."
Katie slowly turned. "If they can't forgive my sin, they shouldn't be my friends."
"For some people, it's going to be harder to pretend nothing happened."
"It's the good Christian thing to do," Katie said.
"Ja, but it's hard to be Christian when it was your girl," Mary answered quietly. She fiddled with the strings of her kapp. "Katie, I think Samuel might want to see someone else."
Katie felt the air go out of her, like a pillow punched in the middle. "Who told you that?"
Mary did not answer. But the red burn in her friend's cheeks, the obvious discomfort at bringing up the very private notion of a beau, made Katie reali2e exactly what had happened. "Mary Esch," she whispered. "You wouldn't."
"I didn't want to! I pushed him away after he tried to kiss me!"
Katie got to her feet, so angry she was shaking. "Some friend you are!"
"I am, Katie. I came here so you wouldn't have to hear it from someone else."
"I wish you hadn't."
Mary nodded slowly, sadly. She pulled her socks from the bellies of her Rollerblades and buckled the skates onto her feet. Gliding smoothly out of the driveway, she did not look back.
Katie held her elbows tight at her sides. Any movement, she thought, and she might fly apart in a thousand different pieces. She heard the screen door open and slam, but she remained staring over the fields, where Samuel was working with her father.