Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

The judge frowned at him. “No need to be a cosmopolitan snob, counselor. All right, then. We’ll reconvene tomorrow at ten A.M. Court is adjourned.”

Suddenly a wall of people surrounded us: Leda, Coop, Jacob, Samuel, and Adam Sinclair. Coop slid his arm around my waist and whispered, “I hope she has your brains.”

I didn’t answer. I watched Jacob trying to crack jokes that would make Katie smile; Samuel standing tight as a bowstring and careful not to let his shoulder brush against Adam’s. For her part, Katie was attempting to keep up a good front, but her smile stretched across her face like a sheet pulled too tight. Was I the only one who noticed that she was about to fall apart?

“Katie,” Adam said, stepping forward, “do you want to take a walk?”

“No, she does not,” Samuel answered.

Surprised, Adam turned. “I think she can speak for herself.”

Katie pressed her fingers to her temples. “Thank you, Adam, but I have plans with Ellie.”

This was news to me, but one look at the desperate plea in her eyes and I found myself nodding. “We need to go over her testimony,” I said, although if I had my way there wasn’t going to be any testimony from her at all. “Leda will drive us back. Coop, can you manage to get everyone else home?”

We left the way we had on Friday: Leda drove to the rear of the court-house to pick Katie and me up at the food service loading dock. Then we circled to the exit at the front of the building, passing all the reporters who were still waiting for Katie to appear. “Honey,” Leda said a few minutes later. “That doctor you put on the stand was something else.”

I was looking into the little vanity mirror above the passenger seat, rubbing off circles of mascara beneath my eyes. Behind me, in the backseat, Katie turned to stare out the window. “Owen’s a good guy. And an even better pathologist.”

“That bacteria stuff . . . was it real?”

I smiled at her. “He wouldn’t be allowed to make it up. That’s perjury.”

“Well, I bet you could win the case on that doctor’s testimony alone.”

I glanced into the mirror again, trying to catch Katie’s eye. “You hear that?” I asked pointedly.

Her lips tightened; other than that, she gave no indication that she’d been listening. She kept her cheek pressed to the window, her eyes averted.

Suddenly Katie opened the car door, causing Leda to swerve off the road and come to a screeching stop. “My stars!” she cried. “Katie, honey, you don’t do that when we’re still moving!”

“I’m sorry. Aunt Leda, is it all right if Ellie and I walk the rest of the way?”

“But that’s a good three miles!”

“I could use the fresh air. And Ellie and me, we have to talk.” Katie smiled fleetingly. “We’ll be okay.”

Leda looked to me for approval. I was wearing my black flats-not heels, granted, but still not my first choice for hiking shoes. Katie was already standing outside the car. “Oh, all right,” I grumbled, tossing my briefcase into the seat. “Can you drop this off in the mailbox?”

We watched her taillights disappear down the road, and then I turned to her, arms crossed. “What’s this about?”

Katie started walking. “I just wanted to be alone for a bit.”

“Well, I’m not leaving-”

“I meant alone with you.” She stooped to pick a tall, curly fern growing along the side of the road. “It’s too hard, with the rest of them all needing a piece of me.”

“They care about you.” I watched Katie duck beneath an electric fence to walk through a field milling with heifers. “Hey-we’re trespassing.”

“This is Old John Lapp’s place. He won’t mind if we take a shortcut.”

I picked my way through the cow patties, watching the animals twitch their tails and blink sleepily at us as we marched across their turf. Katie bent down to pick tufted white dandelions and dried milkweed pods. “You ought to marry Coop,” she said.

I burst out laughing. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me alone? Why don’t we worry about you first, and deal with my problems after the trial.”

“You have to. You just have to.”

“Katie, whether I’m married or not, I’ll still have the baby.”

She flinched. “That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“Once he’s gone,” she said quietly, “you don’t get him back again.”

So that was what had her so upset-Adam. We walked in silence for a while, ducking out the other side of the pasture’s electric fence. “You could still make a life with Adam. Your parents aren’t the same people they were six years ago, when Jacob left. Things could be different.”

“No, they couldn’t.” She hesitated, trying to explain. “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean the Lord has it in His plan for you to be together.” All of a sudden we stopped walking, and I realized two things at once: that Katie had led me to the little Amish cemetery; and that her raw emotions had nothing to do with Adam at all. Her face was turned to the small, chipped headstone of her child, her hands clenching the posts of the picket fence. “People I love,” she whispered, “get taken from me all the time.”

She started crying in silence, wrapping her arms around her middle. Then she bent forward, keening in a way she had not the whole time I had known her: not when she was charged with murder, not when her infant was buried, not when she was shunned. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t, Katie.” I gently touched her shoulder, and she turned into my arms.

We stood in the lane, rocking back and forth in this embrace, my hands stroking her spine in comfort. The wild weeds Katie had gathered were strewn around our feet, an offering. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated, choking on the words. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

My blood froze, my hands stilled on her back. “Didn’t mean to do what?”

Katie lifted her face. “To kill him.”

By the time Katie ran up the driveway, a stitch in her side, the men were doing the milking. She could hear the sounds coming from the barn and she found herself drawn to them. Around the edge of the wide door she could see Levi pushing a wheelbarrow; Samuel stooping to attach the pump to the udders of one of the cows. A suck, a tug, and the thin white fluid began to move through the hose that led to the milk can.

Katie clapped her hand over her mouth and ran to the side of the barn, where she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach.

She could hear Ellie calling out as she limped her way up the drive. Ellie couldn’t run as fast as she could, and Katie had shamelessly used that advantage to escape.

Slinking along the side of the barn, Katie edged toward the nubby, harvested fields. They were not much use for camouflage now, but they would put distance between her and Ellie. Lifting her skirts, she ran to the pond and hid behind the big oak.

Katie held out her hand, examining her fingers and her wrist. Where was it now, this bacteria? Was there any left in her, or had she passed it all on to her baby?

She closed her eyes against the image of her newborn son, lying between her legs and crying for all he was worth. Even then, she’d known something was wrong. She hadn’t wanted to say it out loud, but she had seen his whole chest and belly work with the effort to draw in air.

But she hadn’t been able to do anything about it, just like she hadn’t been able to keep Hannah from going under, or Jacob from being sent away, or Adam from leaving.

Katie looked at the sky, etched with sharp detail around the naked branches of the oak. And she understood that these tragedies would keep coming until she confessed.