The Jodi Picoult Collection
Page 86
She fisted the afghan in her hands. “Well, it’s all going to be fine now.”
“Yeah.” George nodded slowly. “I think it is.”
* * *
Katie sat outside the judge’s chambers, running her fingers over the smooth seams of the wooden bench. She’d flatten her palm against a spot, buff it with her apron, and then do it all over again. Although being here today was considerably less upsetting than being here for the trial, she was still counting the minutes until she could leave.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
Katie glanced up as Adam sat down beside her. “Jacob told me about the plea.”
“Yes. And now it will be finished,” she said quietly, and both of them weighed the words, turned them over like stones, and set them down again.
“I’m going back to Scotland.” He hesitated. “Katie, you could—”
“No, Adam.” She shook her head, interrupting him. “I couldn’t.”
Adam swallowed, nodded. “I guess I knew that all along.” He touched the curve of her cheek. “But I also know that these past months, you’ve been there with me.” When Katie looked up, puzzled, he continued. “I find you, sometimes, at the foot of my bed, when I wake up. Or I notice your profile in the moorings of a castle wall. Sometimes, when the wind’s right, it’s like you’re calling my name.” He took her hand, traced the outline of her fingers. “I see you more clearly than I’ve ever seen any ghost.”
He lifted her palm, kissed the center, and closed her fingers around it. Then he pressed the fist tight to her belly. “Remember me,” Adam said thickly; and for the second time in Katie’s life, he left her behind.
* * *
“I’m glad to hear that you’ve come to an agreement,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Now let’s talk about time.”
George leaned forward. “We agreed to a capped plea, Your Honor, two and a half to five years. But I think it’s important to remember that whatever decision is reached here is going to send a message to society about neonaticide.”
“We agreed to a nolo,” Ellie specified. “My client is not admitting to this crime. She has repeatedly stated that she doesn’t know what happened that night, but for various reasons she’s willing to accept a guilty verdict. However, we’re not talking about a hardened felon. Katie has a commitment to the community, and she’s not going to be a repeat offender. She shouldn’t do a day of time, not even an hour. Sentencing her to a correctional facility sends the message that she’s like any common criminal, when you can’t even come close to comparing the two.”
“Something tells me, Ms. Hathaway, that you have a solution in mind.”
“I do. I think Katie’s a perfect candidate for the electronic monitoring program.”
Judge Ledbetter took off her half glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Mr. Callahan, we set an example for society by taking this case to trial and putting it in front of the press. I see no reason to shame the Amish community any more than the media attention already has, by sending one of their own into Muncy. The defendant will serve time—but in private. Which somehow seems like a little bit of poetic justice.” She scrawled her signature across the papers in front of her. “I’m sentencing Ms. Fisher to a year on the bracelet,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Case closed.”
* * *
The plastic cuff went under her stockings, because she wouldn’t be able to take it off for nearly eight months. It was three inches wide, implanted with a homing device. If Katie left Lancaster County, Ellie explained, it would beep, and the probation officer would find her in minutes. The probation officer might find her anyway, just for the heck of it, to make sure she was keeping herself out of trouble. Katie was officially a prisoner of the state, which means she had no rights to speak of.
But she got to stay on the farm, live her life, and go about her own business. Surely the sin of a small piece of jewelry could be overlooked when she was getting so much in exchange.
She and Ellie walked through the hallways, their shoes echoing in the silence. “Thank you,” Katie said softly.
“My pleasure.” Ellie hesitated. “This is a fair deal.”
“I know.”
“Even if it’s a guilty verdict.”
“That never bothered me.”
“Yeah.” Ellie smiled. “I suppose I’ll get over it, in another decade or so.”
“Bishop Ephram says that this was a good thing for the community.”
“How so?”
“It keeps us humble,” Katie said. “Too many English think we’re saints, and this will remind them we’re just people.”
They stepped outside together into the relative quiet of the afternoon. No reporters, no onlookers—it would be hours before the press got wind that the jury had been dismissed and the trial abruptly aborted, due to the plea bargain. Katie stopped at the top of the stairs, looking around. “This isn’t the way I pictured it.”
“What isn’t?”
“After.” She shrugged. “I thought that everything you talked about at the trial would help me understand what happened a little better.”
Ellie smiled. “If I do my job right, then I tend to make things muddier.”
A breeze, threaded with the cold of winter, blew the strings of Katie’s kapp across her face. “I’m never going to know exactly how he died, am I?” she asked softly.
Ellie linked her arm through Katie’s. “You know how he didn’t die,” she answered. “That may have to be enough.”
TWENTY
Ellie
It’s funny how you can accumulate so many things in such a small amount of time. I had come to East Paradise with a single suitcase, but now that it was time to pack up my things I could barely make them fit. Now, in addition to my clothes, there was my first and probably final attempt at a quilt, which would one day grace my child’s crib. There was the straw hat I’d bought at Zimmermann’s, a young boy’s broad-brimmed hat, but one that managed to keep the sun off my face when I was working in the fields. There were smaller things: a perfectly flat stone I’d found in the creek, a matchbook from the restaurant where I’d first had dinner with Coop, that extra pregnancy test in the two-for-one kit. And finally, there were the things that were too grand in scope to fit the confines of any luggage: spirit, humility, peace.
Katie was outside, beating rugs with the long handle of a broom. She’d unrolled her stockings to show Sarah the bracelet, and I made sure to explain its limitations. Coop would be here any minute with his car, to take me home.
Home. It would take some getting used to. I wondered how many mornings I’d wake at 4:30 A.M., imagining the soft sounds of the men going to the barn for the milking. How many nights I’d forget to set an alarm, sure that the rooster would do the job.
I also wondered what it would be like to flip through the channels of a TV again. To sleep beside Coop every night, his arm slung over me like an anchor. I wondered who my next client would be, and if I would often think of Katie.
There was a soft knock at the door. “Come on in.”
Sarah moved into the room, her hands tucked beneath her apron. “I came to see if you need any help.” Looking at the empty pegs on the walls, she smiled. “Guess you’ve pretty much taken care of it.”
“The packing wasn’t so hard. It’s leaving that’s going to be a challenge.”
Sarah sank down onto Katie’s bed, smoothing the quilt with one hand. “I didn’t want you here,” she said quietly. “When Leda first suggested it in the courtroom that day, I told her no.” She lifted her face, eyes following me as I finished cleaning up. “Not just because of Aaron, neither. I thought you might be one of those folks we get every now and then, looking to pretend they’re one of us because they think peace is something a body can learn.”
Her hand picked at a small imperfection in the quilt. “I figured out quick enough that you weren’t like that at all. And I have to admit that we’ve learned more from you, I think, than you ever could have learned from us.”
; Sitting down beside Sarah, I smiled. “That would be debatable.”
“You kept my Katie here with me. For that, you’ll always be special.”
Listening to this quiet, solemn woman, I felt a quick kinship. For a while, she had entrusted her daughter to me. More than ever, I understood that remarkable leap of faith.
“I lost Jacob, you see, and Hannah. I couldn’t lose Katie. You know how a mother would do anything, if it meant saving her child.”
My hand stole over my belly. “Yes, I do.” I touched her shoulder. “You did the right thing, having me defend Katie in court. No matter what Aaron or the bishop or anyone else told you, you shouldn’t doubt that.”
Sarah nodded, then pulled from beneath her apron a small packet wrapped in tissue paper. “I wanted to give you these.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, embarrassed that I had not thought of giving a gift, too, in return for the Fishers’ hospitality. I tore at the paper, and it fell away to reveal a pair of scissors.
They were heavy and silver, with a marked notch in one blade. They were polished clean, but a small loop of twine tied to the handle was dark and stiff with dried blood. “I thought you could take these away,” Sarah said simply. “I can’t give them back to Aaron, now.”
My mind reeled back to the medical examiner’s testimony, to the autopsy photos of the dead infant’s umbilicus. “Oh, Sarah,” I whispered.
I had based an entire legal defense on the fact that an Amish woman would not, could not, commit murder. And yet here was an Amish woman, holding out to me the evidence that incriminated her.
The light had been left on in the barn, because Sarah knew her daughter was pregnant all along. The scissors used to cut the cord, covered with blood, had been hidden. The baby had disappeared when Katie was asleep—and the reason she didn’t remember wrapping and hiding his body was because she had not been the one to do it.
My mouth opened and closed around a question that never came.
“The sun, it came up so quick that morning. I had to get back to the house before Aaron woke for the milking. I thought I’d be able to come back later—but I had to go. I just had to.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I was the one who sent her out to the English world in the first place—and I could see how she was changing. No one else noticed—not even Samuel—but once he did, well, I knew what would happen. I only wanted Katie to have the kind of life she’d always imagined having—one here, among all of us.
“But Aaron had sent Jacob away, and for much less than this. He would never have accepted that baby . . . and Katie would have been sent away, too.” Sarah’s eyes went to my abdomen, where my child lay safe. “You understand now, Ellie, don’t you? I couldn’t save Hannah, and I couldn’t save Jacob. . . . I had one last chance. No matter what, someone was going to leave me. So I chose. I did what I thought I had to do, to keep my daughter.” She bowed her head. “And I nearly lost her, all the same.”
Outside, a car horn sounded. I heard the door slam, and Coop’s voice tangling with Katie’s in the front yard. “Well.” Sarah wiped her eyes and got to her feet. “I don’t want you carrying that suitcase. Let me.” She smiled as she lifted it, testing its weight. “You bring that baby back so we can meet her, all right?” Sarah said, and setting down the suitcase, she put her arms around me.
I froze, unable to embrace her. I was an attorney; I was bound by the law. By duty, I needed to call the police, to tell the county attorney this information. And then Sarah would be tried for the same crime for which her daughter had been convicted.
Yet of their own volition, my hands came up to rest on Sarah’s back, my thumb brushing the edge of one of the straight pins that held her apron in place. “You take care,” I whispered, squeezing her tightly. Then I hurried down the stairs, outside to where the world was waiting.
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As part of Atria Books’s 10th Anniversary celebration, we asked some of our favorite writers to tell us about a book that they enjoy recommending to others.
Jodi Picoult recommends
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Gone with the Wind is the book that inspired me to become a writer. Imemorized long passages from it when I was twelve and would act out scenes, pretending to be both Rhett and Scarlett. It’s the first book I remember reading that made me realize words can create another world, and that fiction has a power to take us away. I loved how Margaret Mitchell did that, and I wanted to do the same thing. From that point on, I decided thateven if no one ever read anything I wrote, I would still write.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
For those who want to learn more about wolves, sponsor wolves, or contribute to The Wolf Centre and Foundation, where Shaun continues to work hard to understand more about wolves and wolf behavior: visit www.thewolfcentre.co.uk. I also highly recommend reading Shaun’s book The Man Who Lives with Wolves if you want to hear from a real-life (thankfully healthy) Luke Warren.
For more information on organ donation, see www.neob.org, www.organdonor.gov, and www.donatelife.net.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Jodi Picoult
Originally published in hardcover in 2000 by Pocket Books
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
March 2000 North Haverhill, New Hampshire
March 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
March 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
September 1999 North Haverhill, New Hampshire
Late March 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
April 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
July 1999 Loyal, New Hampshire
Late April 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
April 30, 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
May 1, 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
May 1, 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
November 1998 Loyal, New Hampshire
May 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
May 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
1989 New York City
June 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
June 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
June 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
The last week of June 2000 Salem Falls, New Hampshire
1979 New York City
June 29, 2000 Carroll County Jail New Hampshire
Later that day Carroll County Courthouse
1969 New York City
July 3, 2000 Carroll County Jail
July 5, 2000 Carroll County Courthouse
Reading Group Guide
To Tim, with love— so that the whole world will know how much you mean to me
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If I could cast a spell, like some of my protagonists in this novel, it would be one to acquire unlimited knowledge. After all, a novelist is only as good as her experts when it comes to learning about fields that are unknown to her. For this reason, I’d like to thank the following people: my doctors and psychiatric personnel-on-call, David Toub, MD; Jim Um
las, MD; Tia Horner, MD; Marybeth Durkin, MD; and Jan Scheiner; Betty Martin, for all toxicological information; Detective-Lieutenant Frank Moran, for police procedure following a sexual assault; Chris Farina, who took me behind the scenes at a diner; and Lisa Schiermeier, the DNA scientist who managed to teach a science-challenged gal like me genetics. Thanks to Aidan Curran for the egg pickup line; to Steve Ives for all things baseball and a keen editorial eye; to Diana and Duncan Watson for the BLT scene; to Teresa Farina for transcription under fire; and to Hal Friend for a virtual tour of the Lower East Side. I am indebted to the works of Starhawk and Scott Cunningham, from which I began to understand the Wiccan religion. Kiki Keating helped shape the beginnings of the judiciary plot here; Chris Keating provided the most incredibly prompt legal answers for the book that grew out of it; and Jennifer Sternick did such a fantastic job helping me craft the trial that I may never let her go as a legal consultant. Thanks to Laura Gross, Camille McDuffie, and Jane Picoult for their contributions in shaping and selling this novel. My sincere gratitude to JoAnn Mapson, whose private chapter-by-chapter workshop sessions made me believe in this book and turned it into something better than I even imagined. And last, but not least, I’d like to sing the praises of Kip Hakala and Emily Bestler at Pocket Books. If every author had the unflagging support and devotion of an editorial duo like these two, publishing would be a wonderful world indeed.
March 2000
North Haverhill,
New Hampshire
Several miles into his journey, Jack St. Bride decided to give up his former life.
He made this choice as he walked aimlessly along Route 10, huddling against the cold. He had dressed this morning in a pair of khaki pants, a white shirt with a nick in the collar, stiff dress shoes, a smooth-skinned belt—clothing he’d last worn 5,760 hours ago, clothing that had fit him last August. This morning, his blue blazer was oversized and the waistband of his trousers hung loose. It had taken Jack a moment to realize it wasn’t weight he’d lost during these eight months but pride.