Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

Suddenly Adam stilled. His hands were shaking slightly as the rods jumped up and down. “There’s something . . . right here.”

Katie smiled. “A cement pillar.”

A dark shadow of disappointment passed over Adam’s face so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it. The rods began to jerk more forcefully. Adam wrenched away from the spot. “You think I’m making this up.”

“I don’t-”

“You don’t have to lie to me. I can see it on your face.”

“You don’t understand,” Katie began.

Adam thrust the rods at her. “Take these,” he challenged. “Feel it.”

Katie curled her hands over the warm spots his own hands had left. She stepped gingerly toward the place where Adam had been standing.

At first it was a shiver that ran up her spine. Then came an unspeakable sor row, falling over her like a fisherman’s net. Katie felt the rods tugging, as if some one was standing at the other end and grabbing onto them like a lifeline. She bit her lower lip, fighting to hold on, understanding that this restlessness, this unseen energy, this pain-this was a ghost.

Adam touched her shoulder, and Katie burst into tears. It was too much-the knowledge that the dead might still be here on earth; that all those years, all those times she’d seen Hannah, Katie hadn’t been losing her mind. She felt Adam’s arms close around her, and she tried to hold herself at a distance, embarrassed to find herself sobbing into his shirt. “Ssh,” he said, the way one would approach a wild, wary animal. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t all right. Was Hannah carrying around the same despair that Katie had sensed in Edye Fitzgerald? Was she still calling out for Katie to save her?

Adam’s lips were warm against Katie’s ear. “You felt her,” he whispered with awe, and Katie nodded against his palm.

Katie felt the quivering again, but this time it was coming from inside her. Adam’s eyes were bright, the blue you see when you twirl in a cornfield and fall dizzy onto your back to gaze up at the sky. With her heart pounding and her head spinning, she thought of Edye and John Fitzgerald. She thought of someone who would love her so, he’d spend eternity calling her name. “Katie,” Adam whispered, and bent his head.

She had been kissed before; dry, hard busses that felt like a bruise. Adam rubbed his mouth gently over hers, so that her lips tingled and her throat ached. She found herself leaning into him. He tasted of coffee and peppermint gum; he held her as if she was going to break.

Adam drew back suddenly. “My God,” he said, taking a step back. “Oh, my God.”

Katie tucked her hair behind her ear and blushed, staring at the ground. What had gotten into her? This was not the way for a Plain girl to carry on. But then, she wasn’t Plain now, was she? Wearing these clothes Jacob had gotten her; with her hair English-styled loose and free, she felt like someone entirely different. Someone who might believe in ghosts. Someone who might believe in love at first sight, in love that lasts forever.

Finally, gathering her courage, Katie looked up. “I’m sorry.”

Slowly, Adam shook his head. His mouth, his beautiful mouth, quirked at the corner. He lifted her palm and kissed the center of it, a token to hold tight and slip into her pocket as a keepsake. “Don’t be,” he said, and took her into his arms again.

Ellie stormed into the bedroom she shared with Katie, slamming the door behind her.

“Did she leave?”

The question stopped Ellie in her tracks. “Who?”

“The detective. The woman who drove up before.”

God, she had completely forgotten about Lizzie Munro roaming the farm. “As far as I know she’s out interviewing the goddamned herd,” Ellie snapped. “Sit up. You and I, Katie Fisher, are going to have a talk.”

Startled, Katie curled from her bed into a sitting position. “What-what’s the matter?”

“This is what’s the matter: The investigator for the prosecution is downstairs getting a precious commodity-facts-from your friends and relatives. And me, I’ve been cooling my heels here for a week, and can’t even get a straight answer out of you.” Katie opened her mouth, but Ellie silenced her by raising her hand. “Don’t. Don’t even think about saying that you’ve already told me the truth. You know that baby you didn’t have? Your boyfriend Samuel just told me that you didn’t sleep with him to conceive it.”

Katie’s eyes went wide, so that a ring of white shone around the blue irises. “Well, no. I wouldn’t do that before taking marriage vows.”

“Of course not,” Ellie said sarcastically. “So now we have a virgin birth.”

“I didn’t-”

“You didn’t have a baby! You didn’t have sex!” Ellie’s voice rose, shaking. “God, Katie, how do you expect me to defend you?” She stood above Katie, her anger flowing over the girl like heat. “You have a guy walking around out there devastated to find out that he’s not your one and only. You duck your head and yes, yes the bishop when he suggests that you might have had intercourse. But you sit here like some damn block of cement, unwilling to budge the tiniest bit to give me something to work with!”

Katie bent back under the force of Ellie’s wrath. She crossed her arms over her stomach and turned away from Ellie. “I love Samuel, I do.”

“And who else, Katie? Who else?”

“I don’t know.” By now she was sobbing. Her hands crept up to cover her face; her kapp became unpinned and fell to the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t know who it was!”

“We’re talking about a sexual partner, for God’s sake-not what cereal you had for breakfast a week ago. It’s not something that you typically forget!”

Katie wound herself into a fetal position on the bed, crying and rocking her body back and forth. “What aren’t you telling me?” Ellie asked. “Were you drunk?”

“No.”

“High?”

“No!” Katie buried her face in the pillow. “I don’t remember who touched me!”

Katie’s cries wound around Ellie’s chest, squeezing so tightly she could barely find the strength to breathe. With a groan of surrender, she sat down on the mattress and gathered the girl close, stroking her hair and whispering words of comfort.

Katie felt like a child in her arms. An overgrown toddler who’d knocked over a vase with a ball, never knowing that she’d done something that would make the rest of the world rear up and roar. A big child, but one just as lost, just as needy, just as desperate for forgiveness.

A terrible suspicion began to rise in Ellie, filling her heart and lungs and mind with a powerful and sudden rage. She clamped it down, calming herself before she lifted Katie’s chin. “Did someone rape you?”

Katie stared at her, her swollen eyes drifting closed. “I don’t remember,” she whispered.

For the first time since meeting Katie, Ellie believed what she was saying.

“Oh, Christ.” Lizzie lifted her loafer and stared at the muck and manure stuck to the sole. They just weren’t paying her enough for this interrogation, and Aaron Fisher could go hang for all she cared. She raised her head and sighed, then started off across the field again. Fisher, seeing her approach, pulled his team of mules to a stop.

“If you are looking for the way home,” Fisher said in accented English, “it’s that way.” He pointed toward the main road.

Lizzie bared her teeth at him. Just her luck to find an Amishman who fancied himself a stand-up comic. “Thanks, but I’ve already found what I’ve been searching for.”

That brought him up short. Lizzie let him stew a minute, imagining all the grisly pieces of evidence that might turn up in a murder investigation. “What would that be, Detective?”