Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

As the train pulled into State College, Katie pressed her face to the window, searching the sea of English faces for her brother. She was used to folks who were not Plain, of course, but even on the most busy thoroughfares in East Paradise she would see at least one or two others dressed like her, speaking her language. The people waiting on the platform were dressed in a dizzying splash of colors. Some of the women were wearing tiny tops and shorts that left almost all of their bodies bare. With horror, she noticed one young man with a ring in his nose and one in his ear and a chain connecting the two.

She did not see Jacob.

When she stepped off the train, she pivoted in a slow circle, frightened of being swallowed up by so much movement. Suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Katie?”

She turned to see her brother, and flushed with surprise. Of course she had overlooked him. She’d been expecting Jacob in his wide-brimmed straw hat, his black trousers with suspenders. This Jacob was clean-shaven, wearing a short- sleeved plaid shirt and khaki pants.

Then she was in his arms, hugging him so tightly that she only now realized how lonely she had been at home without him. “Mam misses you,” Katie said breathlessly. “She says I have to tell her every last thing.”

“I miss her too.” Jacob draped his arm around her shoulders and steered Katie through the crowd. “I think you’ve grown a foot.” He led his sister to a parking lot, to a small blue car. Katie stopped behind it and stared. “It’s mine,” Jacob said softly. “Katie, what did you expect?”

The truth is, she hadn’t expected anything. Except that the brother she had loved, the one who had turned his back on his religion so that he could study at college, might be living the same life he’d left . . . only somewhere other than East Paradise. This-the strange clothing, the tiny vehicle-made her wonder if her father had not been right all along to believe that Jacob could not continue his schooling and still be Plain in his heart.

Jacob opened the door for her and then got into the car himself. “Where does Dat think you are today?”

The day that Jacob had been excommunicated by the Amish church was the same day he’d died, in his father’s unforgiving eyes. Aaron Fisher would not coun tenance Katie visiting Jacob any more than he would approve of the letters her mother wrote Jacob and had Katie secretly post. “Aunt Leda’s.”

“Very smart. There’s no way he’ll stomach talking to her long enough to find out it’s a lie.” Jacob smiled wryly. “We shunned have to stick together, I guess.”

Katie folded her hands in her lap. “Is it worth it?” she asked quietly. “Is college everything you wanted?”

Jacob studied her for a long moment. “It’s not everything, because you all aren’t here.”

“You could come back, you know. You could come back anytime and make a confession.”

“I could, but I won’t.” At Katie’s frown, Jacob reached across the console and tugged at the long strings of her kapp. “Hey. I’m still the guy who pushed you into the pond when we went fishing. Who put a frog in your bed.”

Katie smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if you changed, come to think of it.”

“That’s my girl,” Jacob laughed. “I have something for you.” He reached into the backseat and withdrew a bundle wrapped in butcher paper and tied with red ribbon. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but when you come here, I want it to be a holiday for you. An escape. So that maybe you don’t have to make the same all-or-nothing choice that I did.” He watched her fingers pick at the bow and open the package to reveal a pair of soft leggings, a bright yellow T-shirt, and a cotton cardigan embroidered with a festival of flowers.

“Oh,” Katie said, drawn in spite of herself. Her fingers traced the fine needle work on the collar of the sweater. “But I-”

“For while you’re here. Walking around in your regular clothes is only going to make it harder on you. Wearing these-well, no one’s ever gonna know, Katie. I thought maybe you could pretend for a while, when you visit. Be like me. Here.” He flipped down the visor in front of Katie to reveal a small mirror, then held the cardigan up so that she could see the reflection.

She blushed. “Jacob, it’s beautiful.”

Even Jacob was astounded at how that one awed admission seemed to make his sister look like someone else, like the kind of person he had grown up keeping at a distance. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”

Lizzie called the county attorney’s office on her car phone, en route to the hospital. “George Callahan,” the voice on the other end announced brusquely.

“Imagine that. I got the head honcho himself. Where’s your secretary?”

George laughed, recognizing her voice. “I don’t know, Lizzie. Taking a powder, I guess. You want to come take over her job?”

“Can’t. I’m too busy busting people for the DA to prosecute.”

“Ah, I have you to thank for that. My own little feeder source for job security.”

“Well, consider yourself secure: we found a dead baby in an Amish barn here, and things aren’t adding up. I’m on my way to the hospital to check out a possible suspect-but I wanted to let you know there may be an arraignment in your near future.”

“How old and where was it found?” George asked, all business now.

“Hours old, a newborn. It was underneath a pile of blankets,” Lizzie said. “And according to everyone we interviewed at the scene, no one had given birth recently.”

“Was the baby stillborn?”

“The ME doesn’t think so.”

“Then I’m assuming the mother dropped the kid and left,” George deduced. “You said you have a lead?”

Lizzie hesitated. “This is going to sound crazy, George, but the eighteen-year-old Amish girl who lives on the farm, who swore up one side and down another that she wasn’t pregnant, is in the hospital right now bleeding out vaginally.”

There was a stunned silence. “Lizzie, when was the last time you booked an Amish person for a crime?”

“I know, but the physical evidence points to her.”

“So you have proof?”

“Well, I haven’t-”

“Get some,” George said flatly. “And then call me back.”

The physician stood near the triage desk, explaining to the newly arrived OB/GYN what she was likely to find in the ER.

“Sounds like uterine atony, and retained products of conception,” the obstetrician said, glancing at the patient’s chart. “I’ll do an exam, and we’ll get her up to the OR for a D&C. What’s the status of the baby?”

The ER doctor lowered his voice. “According to the paramedics who brought her in, it didn’t survive.”

The obstetrician nodded, then disappeared behind the curtain where Katie Fisher still lay.

From her vantage point in a bank of lackluster plastic chairs, Lizzie came to her feet. If George wanted proof, then she’d get it. She thanked God for plainclothes detectives-no uniformed officer had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting confidential information out of a doctor without a subpoena-and approached the physician. “Excuse me,” she said, worrying her hands in the folds of her shirt. “Do you know how Katie Fisher’s doing?”

The doctor glanced up. “And you are?”

“I was at the house when she started bleeding.” It wasn’t a lie, really. “I just wanted to know if she’s going to be all right.”

The physician nodded, frowning. “I imagine she’ll be just fine-but it would have been considerably safer for her if she’d come to the hospital to have her baby.”

“Doctor,” Lizzie said, smiling, “I can’t tell you what it means to hear you say that.”