Jodie Picoult: Plain Truth

Katie nodded. “She drowned when she was seven.”

Lizzie looked toward the fields, a green sea that rippled with the breeze. In the distance, a horse whinnied, and another answered. “Do you know what happens when you have a baby?” Lizzie asked quietly.

Katie narrowed her eyes. “I live on a farm.”

“I know. But animals are different from women. And if women do give birth, and don’t get medical attention afterward, they may be putting themselves in great danger.” Lizzie hesitated. “Katie, do you have anything you want to tell me?”

“I didn’t have a baby,” Katie answered, looking directly at the detective. “I didn’t.” But Lizzie was staring at the porch floor. There was a small maroon smudge on the painted white planks. And a slow trickle of blood, running down Katie’s bare leg.

My nightmares were full of children. Specifically, six little girls-two dark-haired, four fair, their knees sticking out beneath the plaid uniform jumper of St. Ambrose’s School, their hands twisting in their laps. I watched them all grow up in an instant, you see; at the very moment a jury foreman acquitted my client, the elementary school principal who had molested them.

It was my biggest triumph as a Philadelphia defense attorney; the verdict that put me on the map and had my phone ringing off the hook with calls from other well-bred community icons hoping to dance through the loopholes of the law to keep their own skeletons in their closets. The night after the verdict came back, Stephen took me out to Victor’s Café for a meal so expensive we could have bought a used car instead. He introduced me to the maître d’ as “Jeannie Cochran.” He told me that the two senior partners in his own firm, the most prestigious in the city, had invited me in to have a talk.

“Stephen,” I said, amazed, “when I interviewed there five years ago, you told me you couldn’t have a relationship with a woman that worked at your firm.”

He shrugged. “Five years ago, Ellie,” he said, “things were different.”

He was right. Five years ago, I had still been building my career. Five years ago, I believed that the main beneficiary of an acquittal was my client, rather than myself. Five years ago, I could only dream of an opportunity like the one Stephen was offering in his firm.

I smiled at him. “So what time’s the meeting?”

Later, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. An attendant was there, waiting patiently beside a tray of complimentary makeup and hair spray and perfume. I went into a stall and started to cry-for those six little girls, for the evidence I had successfully suppressed, for the attorney I wanted to be years ago when I first graduated from law school-one so full of principle that I would never have taken this case, much less worked so hard to win it.

I came out and ran the water to wash my hands. I hiked up the silk sleeves of my suit jacket and began to scrub, working lather between my fingers, into my nails. At a tap on my shoulder I turned to see the bathroom attendant handing me a linen towel. Her eyes were hard and dark as chestnuts. “Honey,” she said, “some stains ain’t never gonna come clean.”

There was one more child in my nightmares, but I’d never seen its face. This was the baby I hadn’t had, and at the rate things were going, never would. People made fun of biological clocks, but they were inside women like me-although I’d never seen the ticking as a wake-up call, but rather as the prelude to a bomb. Hesitate, hesitate, and then-boom!-you’d blown all your chances.

Did I mention: Stephen and I had lived together for eight years.

The day after the principal of St. Ambrose’s was acquitted, he sent me two dozen red roses. Stephen walked into the kitchen as I was stuffing them into the trash.

“What did you do that for?”

I turned to him slowly. “Does it ever bother you? That once you’ve crossed the line, you can’t go back?”

“Holy Christ, you’re talking like Confucius again. Just say what you mean, Ellie.”

“I am. I just wanted to know if it gets you. Right here.” I pointed to my heart, still hurting. “Do you ever look at the people sitting across the courtroom, the ones whose lives were ruined by a person you know is guilty as hell?”

Stephen picked up his coffee mug. “Someone’s got to defend them. That’s how our legal system works. If you’re such a bleeding heart, go work for the DA.” He pulled a rose out of the trash can, snapped off its stem, and tucked it behind my ear. “You’ve got to get your mind off this. What do you say you and I head out to Rehoboth Beach and bodysurf?” Leaning closer, he added, “Naked.”

“Sex isn’t a Band-Aid, Stephen.”

He took a step back. “Pardon me if I’ve forgotten. It’s been so long.”

“I don’t want to have this discussion now.”

“There isn’t one to have, El. I’ve already got a twenty-year-old daughter.”

“But I don’t.” The words hung in the air, as delicate and arresting as a soap bubble the instant before it bursts. “Look, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to have the vasectomy reversed. But there are other ways-”

“There aren’t. I’m not going to watch you poring over some sperm donor catalog at night. And I don’t want a social worker going through everything from my tax records to my underwear drawer trying to decide if I’m worthy enough to raise some Chinese kid who was left on a mountaintop to die of exposure-”

“Stephen, just stop already! You’re out of control!”

To my surprise, he quieted immediately. He sat down, tight-lipped and furious. “That was unnecessary,” he said finally. “I mean, Ellie, that really hurt.”

“What?”

“What you just said. God-you called me a fucking troll!”

I met his gaze. “I said you were out of control.”

Stephen blinked, then started to laugh. “Out of control-oh, God! I didn’t hear you.”

When was the last time you did? I thought, but managed to curb the words before I spoke them.

The law offices of Pfister, Crown and DuPres were located in downtown Philadelphia, sprawled across three floors of a modern glass-and-steel skyscraper. I spent hours dressing for my appointment with the partners, discarding four suits before I found the one that I believed made me look most confident. I used extra antiperspirant. I drank a cup of decaf, afraid that the real stuff would make my hands tremble. I mentally plotted the route to the building in my mind, and left nearly an hour for travel time, although it was only fifteen miles away.

At exactly eleven o’clock I slid behind the wheel of my Honda. “Senior partner,” I murmured into the rearview mirror. “And anything less than $300,000 a year is unacceptable.” Sliding my sunglasses on, I headed for the highway.

Stephen had left a tape in my car, a mix of what he liked to call his “kick-ass” music, which he listened to when he was en route to litigations. With a small smile, I pushed it in to play, letting the drums and the backbeat thrum through the car. I turned it up loud, so loud that when I changed lanes precipitously, I could barely hear the angry horn of the pickup I’d cut off.

“Oops,” I murmured, flexing my hands on the steering wheel. Almost immediately, it jumped beneath my touch. I gripped it harder, but that only seemed to make the car buck like a mustang. A clear stream of fear pooled from my throat to my stomach, the quick panic that comes when you realize something has gone terribly wrong, something that it is simply too late to fix. In my rearview mirror I saw the truck looming closer, honking furiously, as my car gave a great shudder and stopped dead in the middle of sixty-mile-per-hour traffic.