Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

She reached out and whispered, “Hannah?” But she was grabbing at nothing, shivering when Hannah’s transparent skirts swirled about her own booted feet.

A strong arm yanked her off the ice to the safety of the pond’s bank. “What the hell are you doing?” Jacob hissed. “Are you crazy?”

“Don’t you see it?” She prayed that he did, prayed that she wasn’t losing her mind.

“I don’t see anything,” Jacob said, squinting. “What?”

On the pond, Hannah lifted her arms to the night sky. “Nothing,” Katie said, her eyes shining. “It’s nothing at all.”

• • •

To say that the service lasted forever would not be much of an exaggeration. Ellie was stunned by the behavior of the children, who-having sat through the reading of the Scripture and two hours of the main sermon-barely made a peep. A small bowl of crackers and a glass of water had been passed from room to room for the parents who had little ones curled beside them. Ellie occupied herself by counting the number of times the preacher lifted his white handkerchief and wiped at his brow. In the aisle in front of Ellie, another handkerchief served as entertainment for a little girl, as her big sister folded it into mice and rag dolls.

She knew the service was drawing to a close because the general energy level in the room began to buzz again. The congregation rose for the benediction, and as the bishop mentioned Jesus’s name, they all fell again to their knees, leaving Ellie standing alone and aware. Sitting down beside Katie again, she felt the girl suddenly go stiff as a board. “What is it?” she whispered, but Katie shook her head, tight-lipped.

The deacon was speaking. Katie strained forward, listening, and then closed her eyes in relief. Several rows ahead, where Sarah was sitting, Ellie noticed her chin sag to her chest. Ellie put her hand on Katie’s knee and traced a question mark. “There will be no members’ meeting,” Katie murmured, the words laced with joy. “No disciplining to be done.”

Ellie regarded her thoughtfully. She must have nine lives, to have escaped the English legal system and the punitive channels of her own people too. After another hymn came the dismissal, three and a half hours after the service had begun. Katie ran off to the kitchen to set tables for the snack, Ellie trying to follow and getting woefully tangled between the greetings of others. Someone pushed her to a table where the ordained men were eating, inviting her to sit down. “No,” Ellie said, shaking her head. It was clear, even to her, that there was a pecking order, and that she shouldn’t be eating first.

“You are a visitor,” Bishop Ephram said, gesturing to the bench.

“I have to find Katie.”

She felt strong hands on her shoulders and looked up to find Aaron Fisher steering her back to the table. “It is an honor,” he said, meeting her eye, and without a sound Ellie sank onto the bench.

• • •

Graduation day at Penn State was like nothing Katie had ever seen-a pageant of color, punctuated by silver flashes of cameras that instinctively made her start. When Jacob marched up to receive his diploma in his stately black cap and gown, she clapped louder than anyone else around her. She was proud of him-a curiously un-Amish feeling, but valid all the same in this Englischer collegiate world. Impressively, it had only taken him five years-including the one he spent mastering the high school subjects he’d never learned. And although Katie herself didn’t see the purpose of going on past eighth grade with your schooling when you were going to grow up and manage a household anyway, she couldn’t deny that Jacob needed this. She had lain on the floor of his apartment and listened to him read aloud from his books, and before she could catch herself she’d been swept away by Hamlet’s doubts; by Holden Caulfield’s vision of his sister on that merry-go- round; by Mr. Gatsby’s lonely green light.

Suddenly the graduates tossed their hats in the air, like starlings scattering from the trees when the hammers rang out at a barn raising. Katie smiled as Jacob hurried toward her. “You did wonderful gut,” she said, and hugged him.

“Thanks for coming.” Lifting his head, Jacob suddenly called out a greeting to someone across the green. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

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.”