Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

I grimaced. “Marvelous.”

“It will be,” Leda said, smiling. “I think you’re going to be surprised.”

The others had remained in the kitchen, leaving me alone with Leda in a living room of sorts. Bookshelves were filled with titles I could not make out-German, I assumed, from the lettering. On the wall was a carefully printed family tree, Leda’s name listed just above Sarah’s.

No television, no phone, no VCR. No Wall Street Journal sprawled across the couch, no jazz CD humming in the background. The house smelled of lemon wax and was warm to the point of suffocation. My heart began to pound in my chest. What had I gotten myself into?

“Leda,” I said firmly, “I can’t do this.”

Without responding, she sat down on the couch, a nondescript brown corduroy with lace antimacassars. When had I last seen those?

“You have to take me back with you. We’ll figure something out. I can come here from your place every morning. Or I can have an ex parte meeting with the judge to find an alternative.”

Leda folded her hands in her lap. “Are you really so afraid of them,” she asked, “or is it just that you’re afraid of yourself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I? Ellie, you’re a perfectionist. You’re used to taking charge and turning things to your own advantage. But all of a sudden you’re stuck in a place that’s as foreign to you as a Calcutta bazaar.”

I sank down beside her and buried my face in my hands. “At least I’ve read about Calcutta.”

Leda patted my back. “Honey, you’ve dealt with Mafia bosses, even though you aren’t part of the Mob.”

“I didn’t move in with Jimmy ‘the Boar’ Pisano while I was defending him, Leda.”

Well, she had nothing to say to that. After a moment she sighed. “It’s just a case, Ellie. And you’ve always been willing to do anything to win a case.”

We both looked into the kitchen, where Katie and Sarah-relatives of mine, once removed-stood side by side at the sink. “If it was just a case, I wouldn’t be here.”

Leda nodded, conceding that I’d gone out of my way-and realizing that she should go out of hers. “All right. I’ll give you some ground rules. Help without being asked; Plain folks put lots of store in what you do, and less in what you say. It won’t matter to them that you don’t know anything about farming or dairying-what counts is that you’re trying to lend a hand.”

“Forget farming-I know nothing about being Amish.”

“They won’t expect you to. And there’s nothing you need to know. They’re folks like you and me. Good ones and bad ones, easygoing ones and ones with tempers, some quick to help you out and others who’ll turn the other way when they see you coming. Tourists, they see the Amish as saints or as a sideshow. If you want this family to accept you, you just treat them like regular people.”

As if the recollection had hurt her, she stood suddenly. “I’m going to go,” Leda said. “As much as Aaron Fisher dislikes having you here, he dislikes having me here even more.”

“You can’t leave yet!”

“Ellie,” Leda said gently, “you’ll be fine. I survived, didn’t I?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You left.”

“Well, one day you will too. Just keep remembering that, and the day will be here sooner than you think.” She tugged me into the kitchen, where the conversation abruptly stopped. Everyone glanced up, slightly puzzled, it seemed, to find me still there. “I’m going to take off now,” Leda said. “Katie, maybe you could show Ellie your room?”

It struck me: this is what children do. When relatives come to visit, when friends of their own arrive, they take them into their own territory. Show off the dollhouse, the baseball card collection. Reluctantly, Katie forced a smile. “This way,” she said, starting for the stairs.

I gave Leda a quick, tight hug, and then turned toward Katie. I squared my shoulders and followed her. And no matter how much I wanted to, I did not let myself look back.

As I walked behind Katie, I noticed how heavily she leaned on the banister. She’d just had a baby, after all-most women were still hospitalized, yet here Katie was playing hostess. At the top of the landing, I touched her shoulder. “Are you . . . feeling okay?”

She stared at me blankly. “I am fine, thank you.” Turning, she led me to her bedroom. It was clean and neat, but hardly the room of a teenager. No Leonardo posters, no Beanie Babies scattered about, no collection of lip gloss jars littering the dresser. There was nothing, in fact, on the walls; the only individuality in the room came from the rainbow of quilts that covered the two twin beds.

“You can have that bed,” Katie said, and I went to sit down on it before her words registered. She expected me to stay in this room, her room, while I was living on the farm.

Hell, no. It was bad enough that I had to be here at all; if I couldn’t even have my privacy at night, all bets were off. I took a deep breath, fighting for a polite way to tell Katie that I would not, under any circumstances, be sharing a bedroom with her. But Katie was wandering around the room, touching the tall neck of the ladderback chair and smoothing her quilt, and then getting down on her hands and knees to look underneath the bed. Finally, she sat back on her heels. “They took my things,” she said, her voice small.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. Someone came in here and took my things. My night-gown. My shoes.”

“I’m sure that-”

She turned on me. “You’re sure of nothing,” she challenged.

Suddenly I realized that if I stayed in this room, sleeping beside Katie, I wouldn’t be the only one incapable of keeping secrets. “I was going to say that I’m sure the police searched your room. They must have found something to make them feel confident enough to charge you.” Katie sat down on her own bed, her shoulders slumped. “Look. Why don’t we start by having you tell me what happened yesterday morning?”

“I didn’t kill any baby. I didn’t even have a baby.”

“So you’ve said.” I sighed. “Okay. You may not like me being here, and I certainly could find a thousand other things I’d rather be doing, but thanks to Judge Gorman, you and I are going to be stuck with each other for some time. I have a deal with my clients: I won’t ask you if you committed the crime, not ever. And in return, you tell me the truth whenever I ask you anything else.” Leaning forward, I caught her gaze. “You want to tell me you didn’t kill that baby? Go right ahead. I couldn’t care less if you did or didn’t, because I’ll still stand up for you in court no matter what and not make a personal judgment. But lying about having the baby-something that’s been proven a fact-well, Katie, that just makes me angry.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I can count at least three medical experts who’ve already gone on record saying that your body shows signs of recent delivery. I can wave a blood test in your face that proves the same thing. So how can you sit here and tell me you didn’t have the baby?”

As a defense attorney, I already knew the answer-she could sit there and tell me because she believed it, one hundred percent. But before I even contemplated running with an insanity defense, I needed to make sure Katie Fisher wasn’t taking me for a ride. Katie didn’t act crazy, and she functioned normally. If this kid was insane, then I was Marcia Clark.

“How can you sit there,” Katie said, “and tell me you’re not judging me?”

Her words slapped me with surprise. I, the suave defense attorney, the one with a winning record and a list of credentials as long as my arm, had made the cardinal mistake of mentally convicting a client before the right to a fair trial. A fair trial in which I was supposed to represent her. She had lied about having the baby, and I couldn’t push that aside without wondering what else she might be lying about-a mindset that placed me more in line with a prosecutor than a defense attorney.