Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

Samuel tightened his fingers on his knees, almost to the point of pain. “I want to marry Katie Fisher,” he repeated. “And I will. But you should know something else right now-I was not the father of her baby.”

My favorite place on the farm was the milk room. Thanks to the bulk refrigeration tank, it stayed cool, even at the hottest times of the day. It smelled like ice cream and winter, and the white walls and spotless floor made it a fine place to sit down and think. Once the inverter had charged the batteries of my laptop, I’d take my computer there to do my work.

It was where Leda found me when she decided to grace me with a visit ten days after I’d become an official resident of the Fisher farm. As I sat typing with my head bowed, the first things that came into my range of vision were her Clark sandals-something I hadn’t seen in a while. The Amish women who didn’t wear boots wore the ugliest sneakers I’d ever seen in my life, no doubt some bulk lot even Kmart couldn’t stand on its shelves. “It’s about time,” I said, not bothering to lift my head.

“Now, I couldn’t come any quicker, and you know that,” Leda said.

“Aaron would have gotten over it.”

“It wasn’t Aaron. It was you. If I hadn’t given you a chance to get your feet wet, you would have crawled into the trunk of my car and stowed away like a fugitive.”

I snorted. “Well, you’ll be thrilled to know that not only have my feet gotten wet, they’ve also gotten stuck in the mud, nearly run over by a buggy, and come this close to being urinated on by a heifer.”

Laughing, Leda leaned against the stainless steel sink. “Bet Marcia Clark didn’t have details like that in her book.”

“Fabulous. The best-seller I eventually write will be shrink-wrapped with the Farmer’s Almanac.”

Leda smiled. “I hear Katie got a clean bill of health?”

I nodded. We had gone to the doctor for a checkup yesterday, and the OB had pronounced Katie healing well. Physically, she would be fine. Mentally-well, that was still up in the air.

I closed the file I’d been working on and popped the disc from its drive. “You couldn’t have timed this better. Guess who’s about to become my paralegal?”

She held up her hands to ward me off. “Don’t even think it, honey. The most I know about the law is that possession is nine-tenths of it.”

“But you know how to use a computer. You used to send me e-mail.” I sighed, thinking of how long it would be before I could access my account. “I need you to print a file and deliver it to the superior court. Needless to say, my laser printer’s not running.”

“I’m surprised you even have your computer here. How upset did Aaron get?”

“The bishop took the decision out of his hands. He’s very supportive of Katie.”

“Ephram’s a good man,” Leda said faintly, her mind far away. “He was very kind to me when I was excommunicated. It meant a lot to Aaron and Sarah to have him come to the baby’s funeral.”

I shut off the computer, unplugged it from the inverter, and stood. “Why’d they do that? Have a funeral, I mean.”

Leda shrugged. “Because the baby was their responsibility.”

“It was Katie’s.”

“A lot of Amish folks will have a service for a stillborn baby.” She hesitated, then looked at me. “That’s what it says on the stone-Stillborn. I suppose that was the only way Aaron and Sarah could live with what’s happened.”

I thought about a girl who might have been sexually assaulted, and then might completely block the incident and the aftereffects-including a pregnancy-out of her mind. “According to the ME, that baby wasn’t stillborn, Leda.”

“According to the prosecutor, Katie killed the baby. I don’t believe that either.”

I scuffed my sneaker along the cement floor of the milk room, contemplating how much I should confide in her. “She might have,” I said carefully. “I’m going to have a psychiatrist come out and talk to her.”

Leda blinked. “A psychiatrist?”

“Katie’s not only denying the pregnancy and the birth-but also the conception. I’m beginning to wonder if she might have been raped.”

“Samuel is such a fine boy, he-”

“The baby wasn’t Samuel’s. He’s never had sex with Katie.” I took a step forward. “Look, this has nothing to do with the defense. In fact, if Katie was raped, it gives her an emotional motive to want to get rid of the newborn. I just think that Katie might need someone to talk to-someone more qualified than me. For all I know, Katie comes in contact with the guy every single day, and God only knows how that’s affecting her.”

Leda was quiet for a moment. “Maybe the man wasn’t Amish,” she said finally.

I rolled my eyes. “Why not? Samuel may be one thing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some Amish boy out there who got carried away in the heat of the moment and forced Katie to do something she didn’t want to. And besides, I can count on one hand the number of English people Katie’s talked to since I’ve been here.”

“Since you’ve been here,” she repeated.

Leda was shifting in her seat, a miserable mottled flush rising over her cheeks. Clearly, being on the farm had clouded my mind, or I would have realized that with an excommunicated aunt, Katie probably had more access to worldly people and places than most Amish girls. “What haven’t you told me?” I said quietly.

“Once a month she goes to State College on the train. To the university. Sarah knows about it, but they tell Aaron that Katie’s come to visit me. I’m her cover, and since Aaron isn’t about to come to my house to check up on his daughter, I’m a good one.”

“What’s at the university?”

Leda exhaled softly. “Her brother.”

“How on earth do you expect me to defend Katie when no one’s willing to cooperate?” I exploded. “My God, Leda, I’ve been here nearly two weeks, and nobody bothered to mention that Katie has a brother she visits once a month?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t intentional,” Leda hurried to explain. “Jacob was excommunicated, like me, because he wanted to continue his schooling. Aaron took the high road, and said if Jacob left the church, he wouldn’t be his son any longer. His name isn’t mentioned in the house.”

“What about Sarah?”

“Sarah’s an Amish wife. She yields to her husband’s wishes. She hasn’t seen Jacob since he left six years ago-but she secretly sends Katie as her emissary, once a month.” Leda jumped as the automatic stirring machine came to life, mixing the milk in the bulk tank. She raised her voice over the hum of the battery that powered it. “After Hannah, she couldn’t have any more children. She’d had a batch of miscarriages between Jacob and Katie, anyway. And she couldn’t stand the thought of losing Jacob like she’d lost Hannah. So, indirectly, she didn’t.”

I thought of Katie taking the train all the way to State College by herself, wearing her kapp and her pinned dress and her apron, attracting stares. I imagined her fresh-faced innocence lighting the room at a frat party. I pictured her fighting off the groping hands of a college boy, who at nineteen knew more about the ways of the world than Katie would learn in a lifetime. I wondered if Jacob knew that Katie had been pregnant; if he could tell me the father of the baby. “I need to talk to him,” I said, wondering whether it would be faster to drive or take the train.

Then I groaned. I couldn’t go; I had Coop coming sometime this afternoon to interview Katie.

If I had learned anything in ten days, it was that the Amish way was slow. Work was painstaking, travel took forever, even church hymns were deliberate and lugubrious. Plain people didn’t check their watches twenty times a day. Plain people didn’t hurry; they just took as much time as it needed for something to be done.