by Jodi Picoult
He drew her toward a man taller even than Jacob, wearing the same black robe, but with a blue sash over his shoulders. “Adam!”
The man turned around and grinned. “Hey, that’s Dr. Sinclair to you.”
He was a little older than Jacob, this she could see from the lines around his eyes, which made her think he laughed often, and well. He had hair the color of a honeycomb, and eyes that almost matched. But what made Katie unable to look away was the absolute peace that washed over her when she met his gaze, as if this one Englischer had a soul that was Plain.
“Adam just got his Ph.D.,” Jacob explained. “He’s the one whose house I’m renting.”
Katie nodded. She knew that Jacob had moved out of undergraduate housing and into a small home in town, since he was staying on as a teaching assistant at Penn State. She knew that the man who owned the home was going away to do research. She knew there would be two weeks’ time when they were roommates, before the owner left on his trip. But she had not known his name. She had not known that you could stand this far away from a person and still feel as if you were pressed up tight against him, fighting to take a breath.
“Wie bist du heit,” she said, and then blushed, flustered that she had greeted him in Dietsch.
“You must be Katie,” he answered. “Jacob’s told me about you.” And then he held out his hand, an invitation.
Katie suddenly thought about Jacob’s stories of Hamlet and Holden Caulfield and Mr. Gatsby, and with perfect clarity understood how these studies of emotional conundrums might be just as useful in real life as learning how to plant a vegetable garden, or hanging out the laundry. She wondered what this man had mastered, to earn his Ph.D. With great deliberation, Katie took Adam Sinclair’s hand, and she smiled back.
* * *
After arriving home and having lunch, Aaron and Sarah went off to do what most Amish did on Sunday afternoons: visit relatives and neighbors. Ellie, having unearthed an entire set of Laura Ingalls’s Little House books, sat down to read. She was tired and irritable from the long morning, and the rhythmic clop of horses pulling buggies along the main road was beginning to bring on a migraine.
Katie, who had been cleaning the dishes, came into the living room and curled up in the chair beside Ellie. Eyes closed, she began to hum softly.
Ellie glared at her. “Do you mind?”
“Mind what?”
“Singing. While I’m reading.”
Katie scowled. “I’m not singing. If it’s bothering you, go somewhere else.”
“I was here first,” Ellie said, feeling like a seventh-grader. But she got to her feet and headed toward the door, only to find Katie following her. “For God’s sake, you have the entire living room now!”
“Can I ask you a question? Mam said you used to come visit Paradise in the summers, to stay on a farm like ours. Aunt Leda told her. Is it true?”
“Yes,” Ellie said slowly, wondering where this was leading. “Why?”
Katie shrugged. “It’s just that you don’t seem to like it much. The farm, I mean.”
“I like the farm just fine. I’m just not accustomed to having to baby-sit my clients.” At the wounded look that crossed Katie’s face, Ellie sighed inwardly. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for.”
Katie looked up. “You don’t like me.”
Ellie didn’t know what to say to that. “I don’t know you.”
“I don’t know you, either.” Katie scuffed the toe of her boot on the wooden floor. “On Sunday, we do things different here.”
“I’d noticed. No chores.”
“Well, we still have chores. But we also have time to relax.” Katie looked up at her. “I thought that maybe, it being Sunday, you and I could do things different, too.”
Ellie felt something tighten inside her. Was Katie going to suggest they skip town? Go find a pack of cigarettes? Give each other a few hours of no-holds-barred privacy?
“I was thinking that maybe we could be friends. Just for this afternoon. You could pretend that you met me coming to visit the farm you were at when you were a kid, instead of the way it really happened.”
Ellie put down her book. If she won Katie’s friendship and got the girl to open enough to spill out the truth, she might not need Coop to come evaluate her at all. “When I was a kid,” Ellie said slowly, “I used to be able to skip stones farther than any of my cousins.”
A smile blossomed over Katie’s face. “Think you still can?”
They jostled through the door and struck out across the field. At the edge of the pond, Ellie reached for a smooth, flat rock and tossed it, counting as it bounced five times over the water. She wiggled her fingers. “Haven’t lost the touch.”
Katie picked up her own stone. Four, five, six, seven skips. With a broad smile, she turned to Ellie. “Some touch,” she teased.
Ellie narrowed her eyes in concentration and tried again. A moment later, Katie did too. “Ha!” Ellie crowed. “I win!”
“You do not!”
“I beat you by a yard, fair and square!”
“That’s not what I saw,” Katie protested.
“Oh, right. And your eyewitness accounts these days are so accurate.” When Katie stiffened beside her, Ellie sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to separate from why I’m really here.”
“You’re supposed to be here because you believe me.”
“Not necessarily. A defense attorney is paid to make a jury believe whatever she says. Which may or may not be what her client has told her.” At Katie’s baffled expression, Ellie smiled. “It probably sounds very strange to you.”
“I don’t understand why the judge doesn’t just pick the person who’s telling the truth.”
Reaching for a piece of timothy grass, Ellie set it between her teeth. “It’s not quite as simple as that. It’s about defending people’s rights. And sometimes, even to a judge, things aren’t black and white.”
“It is black and white, if you’re Plain,” Katie said. “If you follow the Ordnung, you are right. If you break the rules, you get shunned.”
“Well, in the English world, that’s communism.” Ellie hesitated. “What if you didn’t do it? What if you were accused of breaking a rule, but you were perfectly innocent?”
Katie blushed. “When there’s a members’ meeting for discipline, the accused member has a chance to tell his story too.”
“Yeah, but does anyone believe him?” Ellie shrugged. “That’s where a defense attorney comes in—we convince the jury that the client may not have committed the crime.”
“And if he did?”
“Then he still gets acquitted. That happens sometimes, too.”
Katie’s mouth dropped open. “That would be lying.”
“No, that would be acting as a spin doctor. There are many, many different ways of looking at what’s happened to bring someone to trial. It’s only considered lying if the client doesn’t tell the truth. Attorneys—well, we can say just about anything we want as an explanation.”
“So . . . you would lie for me?”
Ellie met her gaze. “Would I have to?”
“Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”
Sitting up, Ellie crossed her legs. “Well, then. What haven’t you told me?”
A sparrow took off in flight, casting a shadow across Katie’s face. “It’s not our way to lie,” she said stiffly. “It’s why a Plain person can stand up for himself in front of the congregation. It’s why defense attorneys don’t have a place in our world.”
To her surprise, Ellie laughed. “Tell me about it. I have never in my life stuck out like such a sore thumb.”
Katie’s gaze traveled from Ellie’s running shoes to her sundress to the small, dangling earrings she wore. Even the way Ellie sat—as if the grass was too scratchy to let the backs of her legs rest upon it—was slightly uncomfortable. Unlike the hordes of people who streamed into Lancaster County to get a glimpse of the Amish, Ellie had never asked for this. She had done
Aunt Leda a favor, and it had mushroomed into an obligation.
Katie knew how she had felt, from her visits to Jacob. Putting on the costume of a worldly teenager had never made her one. Ellie might think she espoused individuality, but being yourself in a culture where other Englischers were busy being themselves was a far cry from being yourself in a culture where the people were all intent on being the same—but different from you.
A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.
“I can fix that,” Katie said aloud. With a big grin she reached into the lake, scooped up some water, and tossed it onto Ellie.
Sputtering, Ellie jumped up. “What did you do that for?”
“Wasser,” Katie said, splashing her again.
Ellie shielded herself with her hands. “What’s a what?”
“No, wasser. It’s Dietsch for water.”
After a moment, Ellie understood. She took this small gift and let it settle inside her. “Wasser,” she repeated. Then she pointed to the field. “Tobacco?”
“Duvach.”
Katie beamed when Ellie tried the word. “Gut! Die Koo,” she said, gesturing at a grazing Holstein.
“Die Koo.”
Katie held out her hand. “Wie bist du heit. It’s nice to meet you.”
Ellie slowly extended her own hand. She looked deeply into Katie’s eyes for the first time since she’d arrived at the district court yesterday. The lightness of the afternoon, of the Dietsch lesson, fell away until all the two women knew was the pressure of their palms against each other, the heady hum of the crickets, and the understanding that they were starting over. “Ich bin die Katie Fisher,” Katie said quietly.
“Ich bin die Ellie Hathaway,” Ellie answered. “Wie bist du heit.”
* * *
“I’m going to get the popcorn before the movie starts,” Jacob said, standing. When Katie began to rummage through her pockets for the money her Mam always sent along, Jacob shook his head. “My treat. Hey, Adam, keep an eye on her.”
Katie slouched in her seat, annoyed that her brother would think of her as a child. “I’m seventeen. Does he think I’m going to wander away?”
Beside her, Adam smiled. “He’s probably more worried that someone’s gonna steal his pretty little sister.”
Katie blushed to the roots of her hair. “I doubt it,” she said. She was unused to compliments that referred to her beauty, rather than a job well done. And she was uncomfortable being alone with Adam, who had been invited by Jacob to join them.
Katie did not wear a watch, and she wondered how long it would be until the film began. This would be her fourth movie, ever. It was supposed to be a love story—such a funny concept, for a two-hour movie. Love wasn’t supposed to be about a moment where you looked into a boy’s eyes and felt the world spin from beneath your feet; when you saw in his soul all the things that were missing in yours. Love came slow and surefooted and was made of equal measures of comfort and respect. A Plain girl wouldn’t fall in love, she’d sort of glance down and realize she was mired in it. A Plain girl knew she loved someone when she looked out ten years from now and saw that same boy standing beside her, his hand on the small of her back.
She was dragged from her thoughts by the sound of Adam’s voice. “So,” he said politely, “do you live in Lancaster?”
“In Paradise. Well, on the edge of it.”
Adam’s eyes lit up. “On the edge of Paradise,” he said, smiling. “Almost sounds like you’re in for a nasty fall.”
Katie bit her lower lip. She didn’t understand Adam’s jokes. Trying to change the conversation, she asked him if his degree was in English, like Jacob’s diploma.
“Actually, no,” Adam said. Was he blushing? “I work in paranormal science.”
“Para—”
“Ghosts. I study ghosts.”
If he’d taken off all his clothes at that moment, it couldn’t have shocked Katie more. “You study them?”
“I watch them. I write about them.” He shook his head. “You don’t have to say it. I’m sure you don’t believe in ghosts, like most of the free world. When I tell people what my doctorate is in, they think it’s from some TV correspondence course, with a minor in air-conditioning repair. But I came by it honestly. I started out as a physics major, theorizing about energy. Just think about it—energy can’t be destroyed, only converted into something different. So when a person dies, where does that energy go?”
Katie blinked at him. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly. It has to go somewhere. And that residue energy, every now and then, shows up as a ghost.”
She had to look into her lap, or else she was liable to confess to this man she hardly knew something she’d admitted to nobody. “Ah,” Adam said softly. “Now you think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t,” Katie said immediately. “I really don’t.”
“It makes sense, if you think about it,” he said defensively. “The emotional energy that comes from a tragedy impresses itself onto a scene—a rock, a house, a tree—just as if it’s leaving a memory. At the atomic level, all those things are moving, so they can store energy. And when living people see ghosts, they’re seeing the residue of energy that’s still trapped.” He shrugged. “There’s my thesis, in a nutshell.”
Suddenly Jacob reappeared, carrying a bucket of popcorn. He set it on Katie’s lap. “You telling her about your pseudo-academic pursuits?”
“Hey.” Adam grinned. “Your sister is a believer.”
“My sister is naïve,” Jacob corrected.
“That’s the other thing,” Adam said, ignoring him and turning to Katie. “You don’t bother trying to convince the disbelievers, because they’ll never understand. On the other hand, if a person’s ever had a paranormal experience—well, they practically go out of their way to find someone like me, who wants to listen.” He looked into her eyes. “We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.”
* * *
In the middle of the night, Ellie awakened to a low moan. Pushing away the folds of sleep, she sat up and turned toward Katie, who was tossing softly beneath her covers. Ellie padded across the floor and touched the girl’s forehead.
“Es dut weh,” Katie murmured. She suddenly threw back her covers, revealing two spreading, circular stains on the front of her white nightgown. “It hurts,” she cried, running her hands over the damp spots on her gown and the bedding. “There’s something wrong with me!”
Ellie had friends—more and more of them, lately—who had gone through childbirth. They had joked about the day that their milk came in, turning them into torpedo-breasted comic book characters. “There’s nothing wrong. This is perfectly natural, after having a baby.”
“I didn’t have a baby!” Katie shrieked. “Neh!” She shoved Ellie away, sending her sprawling on the hard floor. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht . . . mein hatz ist fol!”
“I can’t understand you,” Ellie snapped.
“Mein hatz ist fol!”
It was clear to her that Katie wasn’t even really awake yet, just terrified. Deciding not to deal with this on her own, she started out the bedroom door, only to run into Sarah.
It was a shock to see Katie’s mother in her bedclothes, her cornsilk hair hanging past her hips. “What is it?” she asked, kneeling at her daughter’s bedside. Katie’s hands were clamped over her breasts; Sarah gently drew them down and unbuttoned the nightgown.
Ellie winced. Katie was swollen, so rock-hard that a thin blue map of veins stood out, with tiny rivers of milk leaking from her nipples. At Sarah’s urging, Katie passively followed her to the bathroom. Ellie watched as Sarah matter-of-factly massaged her daughter’s painful breasts, coaxing a stream of milk into the sink.
“This is proof,” Ellie said flatly, finally. “Katie, look at your body. You did have a baby. This is the milk, for that baby.”
“Neh, lus mich gay,” Katie cried, now sobbing on the toilet se
at.
Ellie set her jaw and crouched down in front of her. “You live on a dairy farm, for God’s sake. You know what’s happening to you right now. You . . . had . . . a baby.”
Katie shook her head. “Mein hatz ist fol.”
Ellie turned to Sarah. “What is she saying?”
The older woman stroked her daughter’s hair. “That there’s no milk; and that there was no baby. Katie says this is happening,” Sarah translated, “because her heart’s too full.”
SIX
Ellie
Let me just make this perfectly clear: I can’t sew. Give me a needle and thread and a pair of trousers to be hemmed, and I am more likely than not to stitch the fabric to my own thumb. I throw out socks that get holes in the heels. I’d rather diet than let a seam out, and that’s really saying something.
This is all a way of prefacing that when Sarah invited me to the quilting session she was holding in the living room, I wasn’t suitably excited. Things had been strained between us since the previous night. This morning she had wordlessly handed Katie a long strip of white muslin to bind herself. An invitation to quilt was a concession of sorts, a welcome into her world that had previously not been extended. It was also a plea to just let last night pass for what it was.
“You don’t have to sew,” Katie told me, pulling me by the wrist into the other room. “You can just watch us.”
There were four women plus the Fishers: Levi’s mother, Anna Esch; Samuel’s mother, Martha Stoltzfus; and two cousins of Sarah’s, Rachel and Louise Lapp. These women were younger, and brought along their smallest children—one an infant still swaddled, the other a toddler who sat on the floor at Rachel’s feet and played with scraps of fabric.
The quilt was spread across the table with spools of white thread scattered over its top. The women looked up as I entered the room. “This is Ellie Hathaway,” Katie announced.
“Sie schelt an shook mit uns wohne,” Sarah added.
Out of deference to me, Anna responded in English. “How long will she be staying?”
