Plain Truth Read online

  "According to the prosecutor, Katie killed the baby. I don't believe that either."

  I scuffed my sneaker along the cement floor of the milk room, contemplating how much I should confide in her. "She might have," I said carefully. "I'm going to have a psychiatrist come out and talk to her."

  Leda blinked. "A psychiatrist?"

  "Katie's not only denying the pregnancy and the birth--but also the conception. I'm beginning to wonder if she might have been raped."

  "Samuel is such a fine boy, he--"

  "The baby wasn't Samuel's. He's never had sex with Katie." I took a step forward. "Look, this has nothing to do with the defense. In fact, if Katie was raped, it gives her an emotional motive to want to get rid of the newborn. I just think that Katie might need someone to talk to--someone more qualified than me. For all I know, Katie comes in contact with the guy every single day, and God only knows how that's affecting her."

  Leda was quiet for a moment. "Maybe the man wasn't Amish," she said finally.

  I rolled my eyes. "Why not? Samuel may be one thing, but that doesn't mean there isn't some Amish boy out there who got carried away in the heat of the moment and forced Katie to do something she didn't want to. And besides, I can count on one hand the number of English people Katie's talked to since I've been here."

  "Since you've been here," she repeated.

  Leda was shifting in her seat, a miserable mottled flush rising over her cheeks. Clearly, being on the farm had clouded my mind, or I would have realized that with an excommunicated aunt, Katie probably had more access to worldly people and places than most Amish girls. "What haven't you told me?" I said quietly.

  "Once a month she goes to State College on the train. To the university. Sarah knows about it, but they tell Aaron that Katie's come to visit me. I'm her cover, and since Aaron isn't about to come to my house to check up on his daughter, I'm a good one."

  "What's at the university?"

  Leda exhaled softly. "Her brother."

  "How on earth do you expect me to defend Katie when no one's willing to cooperate?" I exploded. "My God, Leda, I've been here nearly two weeks, and nobody bothered to mention that Katie has a brother she visits once a month?"

  "I'm sure it wasn't intentional," Leda hurried to explain. "Jacob was excommunicated, like me, because he wanted to continue his schooling. Aaron took the high road, and said if Jacob left the church, he wouldn't be his son any longer. His name isn't mentioned in the house."

  "What about Sarah?"

  "Sarah's an Amish wife. She yields to her husband's wishes. She hasn't seen Jacob since he left six years ago--but she secretly sends Katie as her emissary, once a month." Leda jumped as the automatic stirring machine came to life, mixing the milk in the bulk tank. She raised her voice over the hum of the battery that powered it. "After Hannah, she couldn't have any more children. She'd had a batch of miscarriages between Jacob and Katie, anyway. And she couldn't stand the thought of losing Jacob like she'd lost Hannah. So, indirectly, she didn't."

  I thought of Katie taking the train all the way to State College by herself, wearing her kapp and her pinned dress and her apron, attracting stares. I imagined her fresh-faced innocence lighting the room at a frat party. I pictured her fighting off the groping hands of a college boy, who at nineteen knew more about the ways of the world than Katie would learn in a lifetime. I wondered if Jacob knew that Katie had been pregnant; if he could tell me the father of the baby. "I need to talk to him," I said, wondering whether it would be faster to drive or take the train.

  Then I groaned. I couldn't go; I had Coop coming sometime this afternoon to interview Katie.

  If I had learned anything in ten days, it was that the Amish way was slow. Work was painstaking, travel took forever, even church hymns were deliberate and lugubrious. Plain people didn't check their watches twenty times a day. Plain people didn't hurry; they just took as much time as it needed for something to be done.

  Jacob Fisher would simply have to wait.

  "Why didn't you tell me you have a brother?"

  Katie's hands froze on the hose that she was hooking up to the outside faucet. She looked away, and if I hadn't known better I would have believed she was deciding whether or not to lie to me. "I had a brother," she said.

  "Rumor has it he's alive and well and living in State College." I tied the ends of the apron I'd borrowed from Sarah, shucked off my sneakers, and stepped into the rubber barn boots she'd loaned me. I wasn't going to win any fashion awards, but then again, I was on my way to hose down heifers. "Rumor has it you visit him from time to time, too."

  Katie wrenched the faucet open, then tested the nozzle of the hose. "We don't talk about Jacob here anymore. My father doesn't like it."

  "I'm not your father." Katie began walking into the field with the hose, and I fell into step behind her, swatting away a patch of mosquitoes that circled my face. "Isn't it hard, visiting Jacob on the sly?"

  "He takes me to movies. And he bought me a pair of jeans to wear. It's not hard, because when I'm with him, I'm not Katie Fisher."

  I stopped walking. "Who are you?"

  She shrugged. "Just anyone. Just any other girl in the world."

  "It must have been very upsetting when your father kicked him out of the house."

  Katie yanked again on the hose. "It was upsetting even before that, when Jacob was lying about his schooling. He should have just confessed at church."

  "Ah," I said. "The way you're going to. Even though you're innocent."

  The mosquitoes hovered in an arc above Katie, a halo. "You don't understand us," she accused. "Just because you've lived here for ten days doesn't mean you know what it's like to be Plain."

  "Then make me understand," I said, turning so that she had to stop, or walk around me.

  "For you, it's all about how you stand out. Who is the smartest, the richest, the best. For us, it's all about blending in. Like the patches that make up a quilt. One by one, we're not much to look at. But put us together, and you've got something wonderful."

  "And Jacob?"

  She smiled wistfully. "Jacob was like a black thread on a white background. He made the decision to leave."

  "Do you miss him?"

  Katie nodded. "A lot. I haven't seen him in a while."

  At that, I turned. "How come?"

  "The summer here, it's busy. I was needed at home."

  More likely, I thought, she wouldn't have been able to hide a pregnant belly in a pair of Levi's. "Did Jacob know about the baby?"

  Katie continued walking, tugging on the hose.

  "Was it someone you met there, Katie? Some college boy, some friend of Jacob's?"

  She mulishly set her jaw, and finally we came to the pen where the one-year-old cows were kept. On days this hot, they were sprayed with water to be made more comfortable. Katie twisted the nozzle, letting the water trickle onto her bare feet. "Can I ask you something, Ellie?"

  "Sure."

  "Why don't you talk about your family? How could you move out here and not have to make a phone call to them saying where you'd be?"

  I watched the cows milling in the field, lowering their heads to the fresh grass. "My mother's dead, and I haven't spoken to my father in a few years." Not since I became a defense attorney, and he accused me of selling out my morals for money. "I never got married, and my boyfriend and I just ended our relationship."

  "How come?"

  "We sort of outgrew each other," I said, testing the answer on my lips. "Not surprising, after eight years."

  "How can you be boyfriend and girlfriend for eight years and not get married?"

  How to describe the intricacies of 1990s dating to an Amish girl? "Well, we started out thinking we were right for each other. It took us that long to find out we weren't."

  "Eight years," she scoffed. "You could have had a whole bunch of kids by now."

  At the thought of all that time wasted, I felt my throat close with tears. Katie dipped her toe in the small puddle of mud