Plain Truth Read online

  He shook his head. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."

  "Yeah? You ought to try my line of work. How long since you last saw your sister?"

  Calculating quickly, he said, "Three, four months."

  "Before that did she visit you on a regular basis?"

  "I wouldn't say regular," Jacob hedged.

  "I see. Mr. Fisher, did she develop any friendships or romantic interests when she was visiting you?"

  "She didn't meet people here," Jacob said.

  "Come on." The detective grinned. "You didn't introduce her to your girlfriend? To the guy whose chair I'm sitting on?"

  "She was very shy, and she spent all her time with me."

  "You were never apart from her? Never let her go to the library, or shopping, or to the video store by herself?"

  Jacob's mind raced. He was thinking of all the times, last fall, that he'd left Katie in the house while he went off to class. Left her in the house that he was subletting from a guy who delayed his research expedition not once, but three times. He looked impassively at the detective. "You have to understand, my sister and I are two different animals. She's Amish, through and through--she lives, sleeps, and breathes it. Visiting here for her--it was a trial. Even when she did come in contact with outsiders here, they had about as much effect on her as oil on water."

  The detective flipped to a blank page in her notebook. "Why aren't you Amish anymore?"

  This, at least, was safe ground. "I wanted to continue my studies. That goes against the Plain way. I was working as a carpentry apprentice when I met a high school English teacher who sent me off with a stack of books that might as well have been gold, for all I thought they were worth. And when I made the decision to go to college, I knew that I would be excommunicated from the church."

  "I understand this caused some strain in the relationship between you and your parents."

  "You could say that," Jacob conceded.

  "I was told that to your father, you're as good as dead."

  Tightly, he answered, "We don't see eye to eye."

  "If your father banished you from the household for wanting a diploma, what do you think he would have done if your sister had a baby out of wedlock?"

  He had been part of this world long enough to understand the legal system. Leaning forward, he asked softly, "Which one of my family members are you accusing?"

  "Katie," Munro said flatly. "If she's as Amish as you say she is, then it's possible she was willing to do anything--including commit murder--to stay Amish and to keep your father from finding out about that baby. Which includes hiding the pregnancy, and then getting rid of the baby when it was born."

  "If she's as Amish as I say she is, then that would never happen." Jacob stood abruptly and opened the door. "If you'll excuse me, Detective, I have work to do."

  He closed the door and stood behind it, listening to the detective's retreating footsteps. Then he sat down at his desk and picked up the telephone. "Aunt Leda," he said a moment later. "What in the world is going on?"

  By the time the church service drew to a close that Sunday, Katie was light-headed, and not just from the pressing summer heat, intensified by so many bodies packed into one small home. The bishop called a members' meeting, and as those who hadn't been baptized yet filed out to play in the barn, Ellie leaned close to her. "What are they doing?"

  "They have to leave. So do you." She saw Ellie staring at her trembling hands, and she hid them under her thighs.

  "I'm not budging."

  "You must," Katie urged. "It will be easier that way."

  Ellie stared at her in that wide-eyed owl way that sometimes made Katie smile, and shook her head. "Tough beans. Tell them to take it up with me."

  In the end, though, Bishop Ephram seemed to accept that Ellie was going to sit in on the members' meeting. "Katie Fisher," one of the ministers said, calling her forward.

  She didn't think she was going to be able to stand, her knees were knocking so hard. She could feel eyes on her: Ellie's, Mary Esch's, her mother's, even Samuel's. These people, who would bear witness to her shame.

  It didn't matter whether or not she'd had a baby, when you got right down to it. She had no intention of discussing her private matters in front of the congregation, in spite of what Ellie had tried to explain to her about a Bill of Rights and kangaroo courts. Katie had been brought up to believe that rather than defend yourself, you'd best step up and take the medicine. With a deep breath, she walked to the spot where the ministers were sitting.

  When she knelt on the floor, she could feel the ridge of the oak boards pressing into her skin and she gloried in this pain, because it kept her mind off what was about to happen. As she bowed her head, Bishop Ephram began to speak. "It has come to our attention that the young sister has found herself in a sin of the flesh."

  Every part of Katie was on fire, from her face to her chest to the very palms of her hands. The bishop's gaze was on her. "Is this offense true?"

  "Yes," she whispered, and she might have imagined it, but she could have sworn that in the silence she heard Ellie's defeated sigh.

  The bishop turned to the congregation. "Do you agree to place Katie under the bann for a time as she considers her sin and comes to repentance?"

  Each person in the room got a vote, a hand in meting out her punishment. It was rare, in cases like this, that someone wouldn't agree--after all, it was a relief to see a sinner confessing and beginning the process of healing. "Ich bin einig," she heard: I am agreed; each member repeating the words in succession.

  Tonight, she would be shunned. She would have to eat at a separate table from her family. She would spend six weeks in the bann; still spoken to and loved, but for all that, also apart and alone. With her head bowed, Katie could pick out the soft voices of her baptized girlfriends, the reluctant sigh of her own mother, the stiff resolve of her father. Then she heard the voice that she knew best of all, the deep, rough rumble of Samuel. "Ich bin ..." he said, stumbling. "Ich bin ..." Would he disagree? Would he stand up for her, after all that had passed?

  "Ich bin einig," Samuel said, as Katie let her eyes drift shut.

  The church service had been held at a nearby farm, so Ellie and Katie opted to walk home. Ellie slung her arm around the girl's shoulders, trying to cheer her up. "It's not like you've got a scarlet A on your chest," she joked.

  "A what?"

  "Nothing." Pressing her lips together, Ellie said softly, "I'll eat with you."

  Katie flashed her a brief, grateful look. "I know."

  They walked in silence for a few moments, Ellie scuffing at rocks in the path. Finally she turned to Katie. "I've got to ask you something, and it's going to make you angry. How come you're willing to admit in front of a whole congregation that you had a baby, but you can't do the same for just me?"

  "Because it was expected of me," Katie said simply.

  "I expect it of you, too."

  She shook her head. "If the deacon came to me and said he wanted me to make my things right because I'd been skinny-dipping in the pond, even if I hadn't done it, I'd say yes."

  "How?" Ellie exploded. "How can you let them railroad you like that?"

  "They don't. I could stand up and say it wasn't me skinny-dipping, I have a birthmark on my hip you didn't see--but I never would. You saw what it was like in there--it's much more embarrassing to talk about the sin than to just get the confession over with."

  "But that's letting the system walk all over you."

  "No," Katie explained. "That's just letting the system work. I don't want to be right, or strong, or first. I just want to be part of them again, as soon as I can." She smiled gently. "I know it's hard to understand."

  Ellie willed herself to remember that the Amish system of justice was not the American system of justice, but that both had functioned rather well for hundreds of years. "I understand, all right," she said. "It's just that it's not the real world."

  "Maybe not." Katie sidled out of the way