Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

“What does that mean?”

“It’s part of the Constitution. It means you have the right to remain silent, even though you’re on the stand, so that your words can’t be used against you. Understand?”

Katie nodded, and Ellie walked back to the defense table to sit down.

“Please tell us how you killed your baby,” George repeated.

Katie darted a glance at Ellie. “I take the Fifth,” she said haltingly.

“What a surprise,” George muttered. “All right, then. Let’s go back to the beginning. You lied to your father so that you could see your brother at college. You did this from the time you were twelve?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re eighteen now.”

“Yes, I am.”

“In six years’ time did your father ever find out you were visiting your brother?”

“No.”

“You would have just kept lying, wouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t lie,” Katie said. “He never asked.”

“In six years, he never asked how your weekend with your aunt went?”

“My father doesn’t speak of my aunt.”

“How lucky. Then, you lied to your brother about sleeping with his roommate?”

“He-”

“No, let me guess. He never asked, right?”

Confused, Katie shook her head. “No, he didn’t.”

“You never told Adam Sinclair he’d fathered a child?”

“He’d gone overseas.”

“You never told your mother about your pregnancy, or anyone else for that matter?”

“No.”

“And when the police came the morning after you gave birth, you lied to them as well.”

“I wasn’t sure it had actually happened,” Katie said, her voice small.

“Oh, please. You’re eighteen years old. You’d had sex. You knew you were pregnant, even if you didn’t want to admit it. You’ve seen countless women in your community have babies. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t know what had happened to you that night?”

Katie was crying silently again. “I can’t explain how my head was, except that it wasn’t working like normal. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I didn’t want to believe that it might not have been a dream.” She twisted the edge of her apron in her fists. “I know I’ve done something wrong. I know that it’s time for me to take responsibility for what happened.”

George leaned so close his words fell into her lap. “Then tell us how you did it.”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Ah. That’s right. Just like you figured that if you didn’t talk about your pregnancy, it would disappear. And like you didn’t tell people you murdered your baby, assuming they’d never find out. But that’s not the way things work, is it, Katie? Even if you don’t tell us how you killed your baby, he’s still dead, isn’t he?”

“Objection,” Ellie called out. “He’s badgering the witness.”

Katie hunched in the chair, sobbing openly. George’s eyes flickered over her once; then he turned dismissively. “Withdrawn. I’m through here.”

Judge Ledbetter sighed. “Let’s take fifteen. Ms. Hathaway, why don’t you take your client somewhere to compose herself?”

“Of course,” Ellie said, wondering how to help Katie pull herself together when she herself was falling apart.

The conference room was dark and dingy, with nonfunctioning fluorescent bulbs that spit and hissed and emitted no viable source of light. Ellie sat at an ugly wooden table, tracing a coffee stain that was likely as old as Katie. As for her client, she was standing near the chalkboard in the front of the room, weeping.

“I’d like to have some sympathy for you, Katie, but you asked for this.” Ellie pushed away from the table and turned her back. Maybe if she didn’t look at Katie, the sobs wouldn’t be quite so loud. Or upsetting.

“I wanted it to be over,” Katie stammered, her face swollen and red. “But it wasn’t like I expected.”

“Oh, no? What were you expecting-some movie-of-the-week where you break down and the jury breaks down right along with you?”

“I just wanted to be forgiven.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen right now. You just kissed your freedom good-bye, sweetheart. Forget about forgiveness from your church. Forget about seeing your parents, or having a relationship with Adam.”

“Samuel asked me to marry him,” Katie whispered miserably.

Ellie snorted. “You might want to let him know that conjugal visits are hard to come by in the state correctional facility.”

“I don’t want conjugal visits. I don’t want to have another baby. What if I-” Katie broke off suddenly and turned away.

“What if you what?” Ellie shot back. “Smother it in a moment of weakness?”

“No!” Katie’s eyes filled with tears again. “It’s that disease, that bacteria. What if it’s still in me? What if I give it to all of my babies?”

Above Ellie’s head, the bulb fizzed and popped. She slowly stared at Katie, from her obvious remorse to the way her fingers now clutched at the thick fabric of her bodice, as if this illness was something that might be scratched out of her. She thought of how Katie had once told her that you confessed to whatever the deacon charged you with. She thought of how a girl used to having others accuse her of sinning might hear the pathologist’s testimony and take the blame for something that was, in truth, an accident.

She looked at Katie, and saw the way her mind worked.

Ellie walked across the room and grasped her shoulders. “Tell me now,” she said. “Tell me how you killed your baby.”

“Your Honor,” Ellie began, “I’d like to redirect.”

She could feel George looking at her like she’d lost her mind, and for good reason: with a confession on the court record, there wasn’t too much Ellie could do to erase all the damage that had been done. She watched Katie take the stand again and shift restlessly in the seat, nervous and pale. “When the prosecutor asked you if you killed your baby, you said yes.”

“That’s right,” Katie answered.

“When he asked you to explain the method of homicide, you didn’t want to talk.”

“No.”

“I’m asking you now: Did you smother the baby?”

“No,” Katie murmured, her voice cracking wide open over the syllable.

“Did you intentionally end the baby’s life?”

“No. Never.”

“How did you kill your baby, Katie?”

She took a deep, rattling breath. “You heard the doctor. He said I killed him by having that infection, and passing it on. If I wasn’t the baby’s mother, he would have lived.”

“You murdered your baby by passing along listeria from your body?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you meant when you told Mr. Callahan you’d killed your baby?”

“Yes.”

“You told us before that in your church, if you sin, you have to confess in front of the other members.”

“Ja.”

“What’s that like?”

Katie swallowed. “Well, it’s terrifying, that’s what. First there’s the whole Sunday service. After the sermon comes a song, and then all the nonmembers, they leave. The bishop calls your name, and you have to get up and sit right in front of the ministers and answer their questions loud enough that the entire congregation can hear you. The whole time, everyone’s watching, and your heart is pounding so loud you can hardly hear the bishop talk.”

“What if you didn’t sin?”

Katie looked up. “What do you mean?”

“What if you’re innocent?” Ellie thought back to the conversation they’d had months ago, praying that Katie remembered too. “What if the deacon says you went skinny-dipping, and you didn’t?”

Katie frowned. “You confess anyway.”

“Even though you didn’t do it?”