Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  I worried a button on my cardigan, unsure of what to say. “Once, when Stephen and I had been together, oh, I don’t know-six years?-I got the flu. He brought me breakfast in bed-eggs, toast, coffee. It was sweet of him, but he’d brought the coffee with cream and sugar. And for six years, every day, I’d been sitting down across from him and drinking it black.”

  “What did you do?”

  I smiled faintly. “Thanked him up one side and down another, and dated him for two more years,” I joked. “What other choice did I have?”

  “There are always choices, Ellie. You just don’t like to see them.”

  I pretended not to hear Coop. Staring out over the tobacco field, I watched fireflies decorating the greenery like Christmas lights in July. “That’s duvach,” I said, remembering the Dietsch word Katie had taught me.

  “Changing the topic,” Coop said. “Good old Ellie.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You heard me.” He shrugged. “You’ve been doing it for years.”

  Eyes narrowing, I turned toward him. “You have no idea what I’ve been doing-”

  “That,” he interrupted, “was not my choice.”

  I crossed my arms, annoyed. “I understand this is a professional hazard for you, but some people prefer not to drag up the past.”

  “Still touchy about what happened?”

  “Me?” I laughed, incredulous. “For someone who says he’s forgiven me, you sure as hell harp on our history together.”

  “Forgiving and forgetting are two completely different things.”

  “Well, you’ve had twenty years to put it out of your mind. Maybe you could manage to do that for the length of time you’re involved with my client.”

  “Do you really think I’m driving way the hell out here twice a week to meet pro bono with some Amish girl?” Coop reached out and cupped my cheek with his palm, my anger dissolving in the time it took to draw a startled breath. “I wanted to see you, Ellie. I wanted to know if you’d gotten what you wanted all those years ago.”

  He was so close now that I could see the sparks of gold in his green eyes. I could feel his words on my skin. “You take your coffee black,” he whispered. “You brush your hair a hundred strokes before you go to bed. You break out in hives if you eat raspberries. You like to shower after you make love. You know all the words to ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ and you keep quarters in your pockets at Christmastime, to give to the Salvation Army Santas.” Coop’s hand slid to the back of my neck. “What did I leave out?”

  “A-T-T-Y,” I whispered. “My ATM password.”

  I leaned toward him, tasting him already. Coop’s fingers tightened, massaging, and as I closed my eyes I thought how many stars there were here, how deep the night sky was, how this was a place where you could lose yourself.

  Our lips had just touched when we broke apart again, startled by the sound of footsteps running down the driveway.

  We had followed Katie on foot for nearly a mile now, stumbling along in silence so that she wouldn’t see us. She was the one who was carrying the flashlight, however, so we were clearly at a disadvantage. Coop held my hand, squeezing it in warning when he saw a branch in our path, a rock, a small rut in the road.

  Neither of us had spoken a word, but I was certain that Coop was thinking the same thing I was: Katie was off to meet someone she didn’t want to meet with me around. Which left Samuel out of the running, and cast into perfect light the absent, unknown father of her baby.

  I could see a farmhouse rising in a gray mountain just beyond us, and wondered if that was where Katie’s lover lived. But before I could speculate any further, Coop yanked me to the left, into a small fenced yard that Katie had entered. It took a moment to realize that the small, white stones were actually grave markers-we were in the cemetery where Sarah and Aaron had buried the body of the dead infant.

  “Oh, my God,” I breathed, and Coop’s hand came up to cover my mouth.

  “Just watch her.” His words fell softly into my ear. “This could be the wall tumbling down.”

  We crouched at a distance, but Katie seemed oblivious, anyway. Her eyes were wide and slightly glazed. She propped the flashlight against another marker, so that it formed a spotlight as she knelt down on the freshly packed grave and touched the headstone.

  STILLBORN, just as Leda said it read. I watched Katie’s finger trace each letter. She hunched over-was she crying? I started toward her, but Coop held me back.

  Katie lifted what looked like a small hammer and a chisel, and touched it to the stone. She pounded once, twice.

  Coop couldn’t stop me this time. “Katie!” I called, running toward her, but she did not turn around. I squatted beside her and gripped her shoulders, then pulled the chisel and hammer out of her hands. Tears were running down her face, but her expression was perfectly blank. “What are you doing?”

  She looked at me with those vacant eyes, and then suddenly reason rose up behind them. “Oh,” she squeaked, covering her face with her hands. Her body began to shake uncontrollably.

  Coop swung her into his arms. “Let’s get her home,” he said. He started toward the cemetery gate, Katie sobbing against his chest.

  I knelt at the grave, gathering the chisel and the hammer. Katie had managed to chip off some of the carving on the stone. A pity for Aaron and Sarah, who had paid dearly for that marker. I traced the remaining letters: STILL.

  “Maybe she was sleepwalking,” Coop said. “I’ve had patients whose sleep disorders wreaked havoc on their lives.”

  “I’ve been sleeping in the same room with her for two weeks, and I haven’t seen her get up once to even go to the bathroom.” I shivered, and he slid his arm around me. On the small wooden bench at the edge of the Fishers’ pond, I moved infinitesimally closer.

  “Then again,” he hypothesized, “maybe she’s starting to realize what happened.”

  “I’m missing the logic here. Why would admitting that you’d been pregnant lead to defacing a gravestone?”

  “I didn’t say she admitted it to herself. I said she’s starting to take in some of the proof we’ve been throwing at her, and in some way, she’s trying to reconcile it. Unconsciously.”

  “Ah. If the headstone for the baby isn’t there, the baby never existed.”

  “You got it.” He exhaled slowly, then said thoughtfully. “There’s enough here, Ellie. You’ll be able to find a forensic shrink who’ll back you up on an insanity defense.”

  I nodded, wondering why Coop’s support didn’t make me feel any better. “You’re going to keep talking to her, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll do whatever I can to break the fall, when it comes. And it’s coming.” He smiled gently, adding. “As your psychiatrist, I have to tell you that you’re getting too personally involved in this case.”

  That made me smile. “My psychiatrist?”

  “With pleasure, ma’am. Can’t think of anyone else I’d rather treat.”

  “Sorry. I’m not crazy.”

  He kissed a spot behind my ear, nuzzling. “Yet,” he murmured. He turned me in his arms, letting his mouth travel over my jaw and my cheek before resting lightly against my lips. With a little shock I realized that after all these years, after all this time, I still knew him-the Morsecode pattern of our kisses, the places his hands would fall on my back and my waist, the feel of his hair as my fingers combed through it.

  His touch brought back memories and left a litter of new ones. My heart pumped hard against Coop’s chest; my legs twined over his. In his arms, I was twenty again, the whole world spread in front of me like a banquet.

  I blinked and suddenly the pond and Coop came back into focus. “Your eyes are open,” I whispered into his mouth.

  He stroked my spine. “The last time I closed them, you disappeared.” So I kept my eyes wide, too, and was stunned by the sight of two things I’d never thought to see: myself, coming full circle; and the ghost of a girl who walked on water.

 
; I pulled back in Coop’s arms. Hannah’s ghost? No, it couldn’t be.

  “What is it?” Coop murmured.

  I leaned into him again. “You,” I said. “Just you.”

  NINE

  Sometimes, when Jacob Fisher was sitting in the tiny closet-sized office he shared with another graduate student in the English department, he pinched himself. It was not so long ago, really, since he had hidden Shakespearean plays under bags of feed in the barn; since he had stayed up all night reading by the beam of a flashlight, only to stumble through his chores the next morning, drunk with what he’d learned. And now here he was, surrounded by books, paid to analyze and teach to young men and women with the same stars in their eyes that Jacob had had.

  He settled in with a smile, happy to be back at work after two weeks out of town, assisting a professor emeritus on a summer lecture circuit. At a knock on his door, he glanced up from the anthology he was highlighting. “Come in.”

  The unfamiliar face of a woman peeked around the edge of the door. “I’m looking for Jacob Fisher.”

  “You found him.”

  Too old to be one of his students; plus, students didn’t tend to dress in business suits. The woman brandished a small wallet, flashing ID. “I’m Detective-Sergeant Lizzie Munro. East Paradise Township police.”

  Jacob gripped the arms of his chair, thinking of all the buggy accidents he’d seen growing up in Lancaster County, all the farm machinery that had accidentally caused death. “My family,” he managed, his mouth gone dry as the desert. “Did something happen?”

  The detective eyed him. “Your family is healthy,” she said after a moment. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Jacob nodded and gestured to the other grad student’s desk chair. He hadn’t had news of his family in nearly three months, what with summer being so busy and Katie unable to come. He’d been meaning to call his Aunt Leda, just to keep in touch, but then he got wrapped up in his work and dragged off on the lecture tour. “I understand you grew up Amish, in East Paradise?” the detective asked.

  Jacob felt the first prick of unease on his spine. Being English for so long had made him wary. “Do you mind if I ask what this is in reference to?”

  “A felony was allegedly committed in your former hometown.”

  Jacob closed the anthology he’d been reading. “Look, you guys came to talk to me after the cocaine incident too. I may not be Amish anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m supplying drugs to my old friends.”

  “Actually, this has nothing to do with the narcotics cases. Your sister has been charged with murder in the first degree.”

  “What?” Gathering his composure, he added, “Clearly, there’s been a mistake.”

  Munro shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger. Were you aware of your sister’s pregnancy?”

  Jacob could not keep the shock from his face. “She . . . had a baby?”

  “Apparently. And then she allegedly killed it.”

  He shook his head. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Yeah? You ought to try my line of work. How long since you last saw your sister?”

  Calculating quickly, he said, “Three, four months.”

  “Before that did she visit you on a regular basis?”

  “I wouldn’t say regular,” Jacob hedged.

  “I see. Mr. Fisher, did she develop any friendships or romantic interests when she was visiting you?”

  “She didn’t meet people here,” Jacob said.

  “Come on.” The detective grinned. “You didn’t introduce her to your girlfriend? To the guy whose chair I’m sitting on?”

  “She was very shy, and she spent all her time with me.”

  “You were never apart from her? Never let her go to the library, or shopping, or to the video store by herself?”

  Jacob’s mind raced. He was thinking of all the times, last fall, that he’d left Katie in the house while he went off to class. Left her in the house that he was subletting from a guy who delayed his research expedition not once, but three times. He looked impassively at the detective. “You have to understand, my sister and I are two different animals. She’s Amish, through and through-she lives, sleeps, and breathes it. Visiting here for her-it was a trial. Even when she did come in contact with outsiders here, they had about as much effect on her as oil on water.”

  The detective flipped to a blank page in her notebook. “Why aren’t you Amish anymore?”

  This, at least, was safe ground. “I wanted to continue my studies. That goes against the Plain way. I was working as a carpentry apprentice when I met a high school English teacher who sent me off with a stack of books that might as well have been gold, for all I thought they were worth. And when I made the decision to go to college, I knew that I would be excommunicated from the church.”

  “I understand this caused some strain in the relationship between you and your parents.”

  “You could say that,” Jacob conceded.

  “I was told that to your father, you’re as good as dead.”

  Tightly, he answered, “We don’t see eye to eye.”

  “If your father banished you from the household for wanting a diploma, what do you think he would have done if your sister had a baby out of wedlock?”

  He had been part of this world long enough to understand the legal system. Leaning forward, he asked softly, “Which one of my family members are you accusing?”

  “Katie,” Munro said flatly. “If she’s as Amish as you say she is, then it’s possible she was willing to do anything-including commit murder-to stay Amish and to keep your father from finding out about that baby. Which includes hiding the pregnancy, and then getting rid of the baby when it was born.”

  “If she’s as Amish as I say she is, then that would never happen.” Jacob stood abruptly and opened the door. “If you’ll excuse me, Detective, I have work to do.”

  He closed the door and stood behind it, listening to the detective’s retreating footsteps. Then he sat down at his desk and picked up the telephone. “Aunt Leda,” he said a moment later. “What in the world is going on?”

  By the time the church service drew to a close that Sunday, Katie was light-headed, and not just from the pressing summer heat, intensified by so many bodies packed into one small home. The bishop called a members’ meeting, and as those who hadn’t been baptized yet filed out to play in the barn, Ellie leaned close to her. “What are they doing?”

  “They have to leave. So do you.” She saw Ellie staring at her trembling hands, and she hid them under her thighs.

  “I’m not budging.”

  “You must,” Katie urged. “It will be easier that way.”

  Ellie stared at her in that wide-eyed owl way that sometimes made Katie smile, and shook her head. “Tough beans. Tell them to take it up with me.”

  In the end, though, Bishop Ephram seemed to accept that Ellie was going to sit in on the members’ meeting. “Katie Fisher,” one of the ministers said, calling her forward.

  She didn’t think she was going to be able to stand, her knees were knocking so hard. She could feel eyes on her: Ellie’s, Mary Esch’s, her mother’s, even Samuel’s. These people, who would bear witness to her shame.

  It didn’t matter whether or not she’d had a baby, when you got right down to it. She had no intention of discussing her private matters in front of the congregation, in spite of what Ellie had tried to explain to her about a Bill of Rights and kangaroo courts. Katie had been brought up to believe that rather than defend yourself, you’d best step up and take the medicine. With a deep breath, she walked to the spot where the ministers were sitting.

  When she knelt on the floor, she could feel the ridge of the oak boards pressing into her skin and she gloried in this pain, because it kept her mind off what was about to happen. As she bowed her head, Bishop Ephram began to speak. “It has come to our attention that the young sister has found herself in a sin of the flesh.”

  Every part of Kat
ie was on fire, from her face to her chest to the very palms of her hands. The bishop’s gaze was on her. “Is this offense true?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and she might have imagined it, but she could have sworn that in the silence she heard Ellie’s defeated sigh.

  The bishop turned to the congregation. “Do you agree to place Katie under the bann for a time as she considers her sin and comes to repentance?”

  Each person in the room got a vote, a hand in meting out her punishment. It was rare, in cases like this, that someone wouldn’t agree-after all, it was a relief to see a sinner confessing and beginning the process of healing. “Ich bin einig,” she heard: I am agreed; each member repeating the words in succession.

  Tonight, she would be shunned. She would have to eat at a separate table from her family. She would spend six weeks in the bann; still spoken to and loved, but for all that, also apart and alone. With her head bowed, Katie could pick out the soft voices of her baptized girlfriends, the reluctant sigh of her own mother, the stiff resolve of her father. Then she heard the voice that she knew best of all, the deep, rough rumble of Samuel. “Ich bin . . .” he said, stumbling. “Ich bin . . .” Would he disagree? Would he stand up for her, after all that had passed?

  “Ich bin einig,” Samuel said, as Katie let her eyes drift shut.

  The church service had been held at a nearby farm, so Ellie and Katie opted to walk home. Ellie slung her arm around the girl’s shoulders, trying to cheer her up. “It’s not like you’ve got a scarlet A on your chest,” she joked.

  “A what?”

  “Nothing.” Pressing her lips together, Ellie said softly, “I’ll eat with you.”

  Katie flashed her a brief, grateful look. “I know.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments, Ellie scuffing at rocks in the path. Finally she turned to Katie. “I’ve got to ask you something, and it’s going to make you angry. How come you’re willing to admit in front of a whole congregation that you had a baby, but you can’t do the same for just me?”