by Jodi Picoult
“We can tie her conclusively to birth, but not to murder.”
“We’ve got motive and logic on our side. You know that ninety percent of murders are committed by someone with a personal relationship to the victim. Do you realize that number goes up to nearly a hundred percent when it’s a newborn involved?”
George stopped, and laughed down at her. “You angling to be second chair, Lizzie?”
“Conflict of interest. I’m already testifying for the state.”
“Well, that’s a shame, because I think you could single-handedly convince a jury of Katie Fisher’s guilt.”
Lizzie grinned up at him. “You’re right,” she said. “But everything I know I’ve learned from you.”
* * *
In the wee hours of the morning, one of the cows had given birth. Aaron had been up most of the night, because the calf hadn’t been turned right. His arms hurt from being inside the cow, from the contractions that squeezed and bruised him. But look at what he had to show for it: this little wonder, black tumbled with white, wavering on its clothespin legs beside the supportive wall of its mother.
He began to spread fresh hay in the pen as the calf suckled at its mother. In a day, the baby would be taken away and put on a bottle.
You see, a small voice needled. Babies get taken from their mothers all the time.
He managed to push the thought away just as Katie came in through the barn door. Fragrant steam rose from the mug of coffee she held out to him. “Oh, another calf,” she said, her eyes lighting. “Isn’t he a sweet one?”
Aaron could recall his daughter with nearly every calf that had been born on the farm, and that was a goodly number. She’d bottle-fed the babies since she was nearly as tiny as the calves she was caring for. Aaron could remember the first time he showed her how you could stick your finger in a calf’s mouth, where there were no upper teeth to bite. He could remember explaining how a calf’s tongue would curl around you and draw you in, sandpaper rough and powerfully strong. And he could remember the way her eyes widened when, that very first time, it was just as he’d said.
As the head of this family, it had been his responsibility to teach his offspring the Plain way of life—how to give themselves up to God, how to navigate a path between what was right and what was wrong. He watched Katie kneel in the fresh hay, rubbing the crazy whorls of hair that still stuck in damp spirals on the calf’s back. It reminded him too much of what had happened weeks ago. Closing his eyes, he turned away from her.
Katie stood slowly and spoke, her voice as wobbly as the newborn animal. “It’s been five days since the kneeling confession. Are you never gonna talk to me again, Dat?”
Aaron loved his daughter; he wanted nothing more than to take her onto his lap like he had when she was just a little thing, and the world had been no bigger for her than the span of his own arms. But he was to blame for Katie’s sin and Katie’s shame, simply because he had not been able to prevent it. And it was his job, too, to see through the consequences—however painful they might be.
“Dat?” Katie whispered.
Aaron held up a hand, as if to ward her off. Then he picked up the coffee mug and turned away, heading out of the barn with the stooped shoulders and heavy gait of a much older, much wiser man.
* * *
“Have you had enough?”
Coop spoke over the litter of dishes on the table between them, and Ellie could not answer at first. She couldn’t eat another bite, but she had not had enough. She didn’t think she could ever get enough of the buzz and the chatter, the heady mix of society perfumes, the sound of cars jockeying about on the street below the rooftop restaurant.
Ellie watched the light from the chandelier spring rainbows from her glass of chardonnay, and she grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Coop asked.
“Me,” Ellie said, a laugh bubbling up from inside her. “I feel like I ought to keep checking my shoes for manure.”
“Five weeks on a farm doesn’t quite make you Daisy Mae. Besides, your dress is considerably more flattering than bib overalls.”
Ellie fluttered her hands over her waist and her hips, reveling in the feel of the silk shantung against her skin. She never would have believed Leda capable of picking something so simple and sexy off the rack at Macy’s, but then again, lots of things had been surprising her lately. Including the sidelong glances that Sarah and Katie had given each other at lunch, clearly in on a secret they did not care to share with Ellie. And including the unexpected arrival of Coop, taking her breath away with his dark suit and silk tie and small bouquet; thoughtful enough to have carted along Leda as a conspirator who came bearing formal wear and high heels and who was resolved to play warden for Katie while Coop took Ellie to dinner in Philadelphia.
The wine—it made her limbs loose and liquid, made her feel that a hummingbird had taken the place of her heart. “I can’t believe we drove two hours to a restaurant,” Ellie murmured. It was a gorgeous one, to be sure, with a Saturday-night orchestra and the lights of the city rising in its floor-to-ceiling windows—but the thought of Coop traveling all the way to the Fishers’, and then all the way back to Philly, made Ellie feel things she was not ready to feel.
“One and a half hours, actually,” Coop corrected. “And hey, it took some time to find a place that served decent chowchow.”
Ellie groaned. “Oh, please, don’t mention that dish.”
“Maybe some pickled tripe would hit the spot?”
“No,” she laughed. “And if you even think the word ‘dumpling’ I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”
Coop glanced at her empty plate, which had once had a perfectly grilled piece of swordfish upon it. “I take it the fruits of the sea aren’t big in the Fisher household?”
“If Sarah can’t put it in a thick, rich sauce, it doesn’t get to the table. I’m going to gain so much weight there I won’t fit into my suits when it comes time to go to trial.”
“Ah, but that’s the point. You have to get fat enough for the judge to believe that you never slipped away from that farm, not even for a low-cal lunch.”
Ellie stretched in her seat like a cat. “I like slipping away from the farm,” she said. “I needed to slip away. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “My dinner companions are never this entertaining. You’re certainly the first one who’s mentioned manure.”
“You see? Already I’ve lost my edge. Maybe I ought to do what Katie suggested.”
“What did Katie suggest?”
“She said—let me make sure I get this right—that if I knew I wanted a good-night kiss, I should make sure to bump up against you on the turns, and comment on your horse.”
Coop burst out laughing. “This is what you two talk about?”
“We’re just a couple of girls having a slumber party.” Ellie smiled widely. “Have I told you what a fine horse you have?”
“You know, I don’t believe you have.”
Ellie leaned forward. “Quite the stud.”
“I’ve got to get you drinking more often.” Coop stood, tugging on her hand. “I want to dance with you.”
Ellie let herself be dragged upright. “But that’ll mean the ball’s going to come to an end,” she moaned. “I’ll turn back into a pumpkin.”
“Only if you keep eating Sarah’s dumplings.” Coop pulled her close, and began to turn her slowly around the dance floor.
Ellie rested her head beneath his chin. Their hands were twined like ivy, growing up between their hearts; and his thumb grazed the bare skin of her shoulder. She closed her eyes as his lips grazed her temple, and let herself be led in gentle circles. For a moment she stopped thinking of Katie, of the trial, of her defense, of anything but the incredible heat of Coop’s hand on her back. The melody stopped, and as the musicians put down their instruments for a break and couples left the parquet floor, Ellie and Coop remained in each other’s arms, simply staring.
“I think I might like
to see where you stable that horse,” Ellie murmured.
Coop regarded her carefully. “It’s not much of a barn, as barns go.”
“I don’t mind.”
And he smiled so brilliantly that she basked in it, that she did not notice how the temperature had dropped even after they were outside and driving to his apartment with the windows rolled down. She sat as close to him as the console would allow, their hands tangled on the stick shift. When they reached his home, Coop turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, apologizing from the very first moment. “It’s sort of a mess. I didn’t know—”
“It’s all right.” Ellie stepped into the room carefully, as if too heavy a footfall might shatter the magic. She took in the glass of cola, flat, sweating a ring on the glass coffee table; the psychiatric journals littering the floor like lily pads; the running shoes knotted together at the laces and hung over the rungs of a ladderback chair. None of the furniture matched.
“Kelly got most of it,” he said quietly, reading her mind. “These were the things she didn’t want.”
“I think I remember the coffee table from college.”
Ellie walked to the bookshelf, to the state-of-the-art stereo system. “They say you can tell a lot about a person from their CD collection,” Coop said. “You trying to figure me out?”
“Actually, I’m looking at the wires. It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many of them.” She touched her finger to a small photograph, one that showed Ellie hanging upside down from the limb of an apple tree, a limb above the one Coop himself had been sitting on to take the photo. “I remember this from college, too,” she said softly. “You still have it?”
“I dug it out, recently.”
“You kept telling me to stop laughing,” Ellie murmured. “And I kept telling you to take the damn picture before my shirt crept up again and I flashed the world.”
Coop grinned. “And I said—”
“‘What’s the matter with that?’” Ellie interrupted. “What was the matter, Coop?”
“I’ve thought about it,” he said, loosely linking his arms behind her. “And for the life of me, El, I can’t remember.” He slid his hands up her sides. His kiss, open-mouthed, breathed fire into her. Ellie tugged his shirt from the back of his pants and skimmed her palms over the muscles of his back, pushing closer and closer until she felt his heart balanced just above hers.
They fell together onto the couch, scattering a stack of papers. His hands tangled in her hair, pulling her down, as she worked at his belt and zipper. Coop tightened his embrace. “Can you feel that?” he whispered. “My body remembers you.”
And just like that, she was eighteen again, pinned like a butterfly beneath Coop’s confidence. Back then, she’d loved him so much and so well that it took months to realize that what Coop made her feel was not necessarily what she wanted. Back then, she had told him a lie to let him down easy, one that hurt all the more because it was so far from the truth: that she did not love him enough. “I can’t do this,” she said out loud, the words that she didn’t have the strength to utter when she was in college. She pushed at Coop’s chest, at his legs, so that she was sitting up on the end of the couch, clutching the bodice of her dress together.
Reason came back to him by degrees. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t.” Ellie couldn’t even look at him. “I’m so sorry. I ought to just . . . go.”
His jaw tightened. “What’s the excuse this time?”
“I have to get back to Katie.”
“It’s not me you need to keep your distance from, it’s your little Amish client. You’re her lawyer, Ellie. Not her mother.” Coop snorted. “You’re not scared of some judge or bail contingency. You’re terrified that for once in your life you’ll start something, and you won’t get it right.”
“You don’t know anything about—”
“For Christ’s sake, Ellie, I know more about you than you do. Straight A’s, dean’s list, Phi Beta Kappa. You’ve turned cartwheels to get the toughest cases, and you’ve won nearly every one—even the ones that make you sick to think about. You never got married, just stayed in a relationship you should have gotten out of years ago, because you didn’t really care enough about it to give a shit if it got screwed up. You’re perfectly willing to leave me with blue balls as long as it means you don’t risk getting in over your head, because then you’d have a vested interest in the outcome, and frankly, we don’t have a successful track record. You’re a classic type-A perfectionist, and you’re unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.”
By the time Coop finished, he was yelling. Ellie stood and hobbled around, trying to find her heels. Her head hurt, nearly as much as her heart. “Don’t you psychoanalyze me.”
“You know what your problem is? If you never go out on that limb, you’re missing a hell of a view.”
Ellie managed to jam her feet into her shoes and find her purse. “You flatter yourself,” she said evenly.
“Is it just me, Ellie, or do you lead all guys on and then do a complete turnaround? What kind of power did Stephen have over you, to keep you from running away all those years?”
“He didn’t love me!” As the words exploded in the still room, Ellie turned her back on Coop. She had been many things to Stephen—a roommate, a legal sounding board, a sexual partner—but never the one to share his life. And because of that, she’d never felt suffocated. She’d never felt the way she’d felt twenty years earlier, with Coop. “There,” she said, her voice shaking. “Is that what you wanted to hear?” Stricken, Ellie made her way to the door. “Don’t bother getting up. I’ll find my own ride back.”
Coop stared at her, at the pain that seemed to flow from an untapped source, pain that filled the confines of his small apartment long after she’d gone.
* * *
Once, before Samuel had been baptized in the church, he’d driven an automobile. One of his friends, Lefty King, had bought one secondhand and kept it hidden behind his father’s tobacco shed, where the old man pretended it didn’t exist every time he came across it. Samuel had marveled at the fluid ride, at the amazing fact that you could idle in neutral without the car running toward the edge of the road to graze.
He was thinking of that car tonight, as he took Mary Esch home in his courting buggy. There was but a slice of moon, the kind Mam used to say looked like a cookie almost all eaten up, which gave him the perfect cover for what he had in mind.
Thing about Mary was, she didn’t stop talking. She was his third cousin, so it hadn’t seemed too strange when he’d come and asked her to go for an ice cream. And Samuel guessed she was pretty enough, with hair as dark and rich as a newly plowed field and a tiny ribboned bow of a mouth. But the reason Samuel had picked her, out of all the others, was that she was Katie’s best friend, and this was the closest he could come to her.
Himmel, she was chattering on now about her little brother Seth, who’d fallen into the pig trough that afternoon when he was trying to tightrope-walk on the fence that edged the pen. Samuel clucked to his horse and pulled gently on the reins, so that the buggy stopped at a small turnaround at the top of the hill.
Mary was talking so fast and furious it took her a minute to see that they weren’t moving. “Why did you stop?” she asked.
Samuel shrugged. “Thought it was a nice night.”
She looked at him a little strangely, and for good reason. The sky was a thick, cloudy soup, the only visible light coming from that tiny bite of moon. “Samuel,” she said, her gaze going all milky the way girls’ eyes sometimes could, “is it that you need someone to talk to?”
He felt his heart swelling like the blacksmith’s bellows, fit to burst from his chest. Do it now, he told himself, or you never will. “Mary,” he said, and then he hauled her into his arms, grinding his mouth hard against hers.
She wasn’t Katie, that was his only thought. She didn’t taste like Katie, like vanilla, and the size of her was
all wrong in his arms, and when he pushed harder the enamel of their teeth scraped. He groped for her breast, aware that she was trying to shove him back and getting frightened, but also aware that at least once, someone had done this and more to his Katie.
“Samuel!” Mary broke away from him with a mighty effort and scrambled to the far end of the courting buggy. “What on earth has gotten into you?”
Her face was blotched, her eyes wide and terrified. Good God, had he done that to her? Was this what he’d been brought to?
“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 female.
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.
