Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

He kept walking.

With Katie watching every step, Samuel slid into a spot at the singles’ table. Nearly every pair of eyes followed his progress, then darted back to Katie, but no one said a word. Katie bowed her head, her neck drooping low as a cygnet’s, her cheeks bright.

As the high notes of a hymn rose toward the ceiling, as the mouths of the girls rounded with sound and the voices of boys grew magically deeper, I took a slow step toward the couples table. I climbed over the bench seat and sank down beside Katie, who did not look at me. I placed my hand, palm facing up, on her knee and counted: a quarter note, a half, a full measure before she took what I was offering.

With my back turned, I never would have been able to identify them as Amish teens. The buzz and chatter, the giggling, the clink of glasses and plates as the snacks were served, all seemed familiar and English. Even the dark and shifting shapes in the corners-couples looking for a spot to get closer-and the odd pair who wandered outside, their faces burning with an internal fever, seemed far more suited to my world than Katie’s.

Katie sat like a queen bee on a stool, surrounded by loyal girlfriends speculating on the cause of Samuel’s defection. If she was being comforted by them, it wasn’t working. She looked shell-shocked, as if two consecutive nights of rebuff were too much for her to accept.

Then again, she was having trouble accepting more than one fact of life these days.

Suddenly the group of girls cleaved and fell back in two halves. Hat in his hands, Samuel stepped forward toward Katie. “Hello,” he said.

“Hello.”

“Could I take you home?”

Some of the girls patted Katie’s back, as if to say that they knew it would come out all right the whole time. Katie kept her face averted. “I have my own buggy. And Ellie’s with me.”

“Maybe Ellie could drive home herself.”

That was my cue to speak up. I stepped forward from where I had been shamelessly eavesdropping and smiled. “Sorry, guys. Katie, you’re welcome to a private moment, but only if it doesn’t involve me, a sway-backed mare, and a set of reins.”

Samuel glanced at me. “My cousin Susie said she’d drive you back to the Fishers’, if you’re willing. And then I can take her back home after.”

Katie waited, yielding to my wishes. “All right,” I sighed. I wondered if Susie was even old enough to have a learner’s permit in my world.

I watched Katie climb into the open buggy Samuel had brought. I hauled myself into the family carriage we’d arrived in, beside a slip of a girl with thick Coke bottle glasses who was my designated driver. Just before they drove off, Katie waved to me and smiled nervously.

The ride home was a long, silent fifteen minutes. Susie was far from the budding conversationalist; she seemed to have been struck dumb by her close proximity to someone who wasn’t Amish. When she asked to use the bathroom just as we arrived at the Fishers’, I jumped at the sound of her voice. “Sure,” I said. “Go on inside.”

It wasn’t good hostessing, but I wasn’t about to leave before Katie arrived. Just in case.

I sat in the buggy, because I had no idea how to unhook the horse from its traces. A moment later, the light clop of hooves on packed dirt announced the arrival of Samuel’s horse.

I should have let them know I was there. Instead I sank into the dark recesses of the buggy, waiting to hear what Katie and Samuel had to say.

“Just tell me.” Samuel’s voice was so soft I would not have heard it if not for the wind that carried it close. “Tell me who it was.” At Katie’s silence, he began to grow frustrated. “Was it John Lapp? I’ve seen him staring at you. Or Karl Mueller?”

“It was no one,” Katie insisted. “Stop it.”

“It was someone! Someone touched you. Someone held you. Someone made that baby!”

“There was no baby. There was no baby!” Katie’s voice rose in pitch, in volume, and then I heard a thump as she jumped down from the buggy and ran into the house.

I stepped out of my hiding spot and sheepishly looked at Samuel, and Susie, who’d collided with Katie at the door of the Fishers’ home.

“There was a baby,” Samuel whispered to me.

I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

E. Trumbull Tewksbury arrived shortly after lunchtime, wearing his G-man aviator sunglasses and his buzz cut and his black suit. He looked around the farm as if he was scoping it for assassins or terrorists, and then asked where he could set up. “The kitchen,” I said, leading him inside, to where Katie was already waiting.

A former FBI man, Bull now administered lie detector tests in the private sector. Basically, he was a suitcase for hire. He’d come out before on my behalf to clients’ homes with his portable equipment, and exuded enough of his past training to invite both an air of solemnity for the occasion, and a vague threat suggesting that-criminal or not-the client had better be telling the truth.

Of course, this was probably the first time he’d had to get the thumbs-up from an Amish bishop to administer a test, what with the requisite tape recorder and microphone and battery pack that was part and parcel of a lie detector. But, since church permission had been granted, even Aaron was grudgingly leaving us alone. It was just me, Katie, and for moral support, Sarah, holding tight to her daughter’s hand.

“Breathe deeply,” I said, leaning closer to Katie. She was absolutely terrified, like several of my former clients. Of course, I didn’t know if that was due to guilt, or because she had never seen so many bells and whistles in one place. However, since the machine reacted to nerves, Katie’s fear had to be nipped in the bud, no matter what was causing it.

“I’m just going to be asking you some questions,” Bull said. “You see here? This is just a little bitty tape recorder. And this part is a microphone.” He tapped it with his fingernail. “And this thing, it’s no different from those earthquake seismographs.”

Katie’s fingers were white where they held Sarah’s hand. Beneath her breath she was whispering in the dialect, words that were becoming familiar to me after many evenings with the Fishers: “Unser Vater, in dem Himmel. Dein Name werde geheiliget. Dein Reich komme. Dein Wille geschehe auf Erden wie im Himmel.”

In all my years of practice, I’d never had a client reciting the Lord’s Prayer before a lie detector test.

“Just relax,” I said, patting her arm. “All you have to do is say yes or no.”

In the end, it wasn’t me who managed to calm Katie down. It was Bull himself, who-bless his Pentagonal heart-struck up a distracting conversation about Jersey cows and the cream content of their milk. Watching her mother chat with the strange man about a familiar topic, Katie’s shoulders softened, then her spine, then finally her resolve.

The tape began to turn incrementally. “What’s your name?” Bull asked.

“Katie Fisher.”

“Are you eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“Do you live in Lancaster?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been baptized Amish?”

“Yes.”

I listened to the preliminary questions I’d drafted from my seat beside Bull, a seat where I could see the needle on the lie detector and the printout of responses. So far, nothing was out of the ordinary. But nothing he’d asked so far could be considered a provocative question, either. This went on for a few minutes, loosening Katie’s tongue up, and then we began to get down to the real reason we were all here.

“Do you know Samuel Stoltzfus?”

“Yes,” Katie said, her voice a little more thready.

“Did you have sexual relations with Samuel Stoltzfus?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been pregnant?”