Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

Jacob Fisher would simply have to wait.

“Why didn’t you tell me you have a brother?”

Katie’s hands froze on the hose that she was hooking up to the outside faucet. She looked away, and if I hadn’t known better I would have believed she was deciding whether or not to lie to me. “I had a brother,” she said.

“Rumor has it he’s alive and well and living in State College.” I tied the ends of the apron I’d borrowed from Sarah, shucked off my sneakers, and stepped into the rubber barn boots she’d loaned me. I wasn’t going to win any fashion awards, but then again, I was on my way to hose down heifers. “Rumor has it you visit him from time to time, too.”

Katie wrenched the faucet open, then tested the nozzle of the hose. “We don’t talk about Jacob here anymore. My father doesn’t like it.”

“I’m not your father.” Katie began walking into the field with the hose, and I fell into step behind her, swatting away a patch of mosquitoes that circled my face. “Isn’t it hard, visiting Jacob on the sly?”

“He takes me to movies. And he bought me a pair of jeans to wear. It’s not hard, because when I’m with him, I’m not Katie Fisher.”

I stopped walking. “Who are you?”

She shrugged. “Just anyone. Just any other girl in the world.”

“It must have been very upsetting when your father kicked him out of the house.”

Katie yanked again on the hose. “It was upsetting even before that, when Jacob was lying about his schooling. He should have just confessed at church.”

“Ah,” I said. “The way you’re going to. Even though you’re innocent.”

The mosquitoes hovered in an arc above Katie, a halo. “You don’t understand us,” she accused. “Just because you’ve lived here for ten days doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to be Plain.”

“Then make me understand,” I said, turning so that she had to stop, or walk around me.

“For you, it’s all about how you stand out. Who is the smartest, the richest, the best. For us, it’s all about blending in. Like the patches that make up a quilt. One by one, we’re not much to look at. But put us together, and you’ve got something wonderful.”

“And Jacob?”

She smiled wistfully. “Jacob was like a black thread on a white background. He made the decision to leave.”

“Do you miss him?”

Katie nodded. “A lot. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

At that, I turned. “How come?”

“The summer here, it’s busy. I was needed at home.”

More likely, I thought, she wouldn’t have been able to hide a pregnant belly in a pair of Levi’s. “Did Jacob know about the baby?”

Katie continued walking, tugging on the hose.

“Was it someone you met there, Katie? Some college boy, some friend of Jacob’s?”

She mulishly set her jaw, and finally we came to the pen where the one-year-old cows were kept. On days this hot, they were sprayed with water to be made more comfortable. Katie twisted the nozzle, letting the water trickle onto her bare feet. “Can I ask you something, Ellie?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you talk about your family? How could you move out here and not have to make a phone call to them saying where you’d be?”

I watched the cows milling in the field, lowering their heads to the fresh grass. “My mother’s dead, and I haven’t spoken to my father in a few years.” Not since I became a defense attorney, and he accused me of selling out my morals for money. “I never got married, and my boyfriend and I just ended our relationship.”

“How come?”

“We sort of outgrew each other,” I said, testing the answer on my lips. “Not surprising, after eight years.”

“How can you be boyfriend and girlfriend for eight years and not get married?”

How to describe the intricacies of 1990s dating to an Amish girl? “Well, we started out thinking we were right for each other. It took us that long to find out we weren’t.”

“Eight years,” she scoffed. “You could have had a whole bunch of kids by now.”

At the thought of all that time wasted, I felt my throat close with tears. Katie dipped her toe in the small puddle of mud forming beneath the nozzle of the hose, clearly embarrassed at having upset me. “You must miss him.”

“Not Stephen, so much,” I said softly. “Just that bunch of kids.”

I waited for Katie to make the connection, to say something about her own circumstances in relation to mine-but once again she surprised me. “You know what I noticed when I was with Jacob? In your world, people can reach each other in an instant. There’s the telephone, and the fax-and on the computer you can talk to someone all the way around the world. You’ve got people telling their secrets on TV talk shows, and magazines that publish pictures of movie stars trying to hide in their homes. All those connections, but everyone there seems so lonely.”

Just as I started to protest, Katie handed me the hose and hopped over the fence. Reaching for the nozzle again, she turned the water on and waved it over the cows, who bellowed and tried to dodge the spray. Then, with a grin, she turned the hose on me.

“Why, you little-!” Soaked from my hair to my ankles, I climbed the fence and started to run after her. The cows got between us, milling in circles. Katie shrieked as I finally grabbed the hose and saturated her. “Take that,” I laughed, then slipped on the wet grass and landed on my bottom in a slick of mud.

“Excuse me? I’m looking for Ellie Hathaway.”

At the sound of the deep voice, both Katie and I turned, the nozzle in my hand spraying the shoes of the speaker before he managed to jump out of the way. I stood up, wiping mud off my hands, and grinned sheepishly at the man on the other side of the heifer pen, a man staring at my boots and apron and the muck all over me. “Coop,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

Ten minutes later when I came downstairs fresh from a shower, I found Coop sitting on the porch with Katie and Sarah. A platter of cookies was on the wicker table, and Coop held a sweating glass of ice water in his hand. He stood up as soon as he saw me.

“Still a gentleman,” I said, smiling.

He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, and to my surprise a hundred memories rushed at me-the way his hair had always smelled of wood smoke and apples, the curve of his jaw, the imprint of his fingers splayed over my back. Dizzy, I stepped back and did my best not to look uncomfortable.

“These ladies have been kind enough to keep me company,” he said, and Katie and Sarah bent their heads together, whispering like schoolgirls.

Sarah came to her feet. “We’ll leave you to your caller,” she said, nodding at Coop as she walked back into the house. Katie headed toward the garden, and I sat down. After twenty years, Coop had grown into his looks. His features-just a little too sharp in college-had roughened with time, chiseling his skin with a scar here and a laugh line there. His black hair, which once hung to his shoulders, was neatly trimmed and feathered with gray. His eyes were still that clear pale green that I had only seen twice in my life: on Coop, and once from the window of a plane when I was traveling to the Caribbean with Stephen.

“You’ve aged well,” I said.

He laughed. “You make it sound like I’m a bottle of wine.” Leaning back in his chair, he grinned at me. “You look pretty good, yourself. Especially compared to about fifteen minutes ago. I’d heard defense litigation was a dirty business, but I never took it literally.”

“Well, it’s sort of like method acting. The Amish aren’t a particularly trusting lot, when it comes to outsiders. When I look like them, work with them, they open up.”