Plain Truth Read online

  But that left no one else--no one but Katie herself. And here, in the very deepest part of the night, she pulled the quilt tighter around herself and let herself wonder if Dr. Polacci and Ellie might be right after all. If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?

  Katie rubbed her temples. She drifted off to sleep, borne along on the memory of the high, thin cry of a baby.

  The flashlight shining in her eyes woke Ellie. "For God's sake," she muttered, flinging a look at Katie, fast asleep, and then crossing to the window. If Samuel had come to tender an apology, it would have been nice for him to pick a time other than one in the morning. Ellie peered out the window, ready to give him a piece of her mind, and then realized that the man standing out in front of the house was Coop.

  After dressing quickly in the shirt and shorts she'd had on the previous day, Ellie hurried down to meet him. She put her finger to her lips when she stepped onto the porch, and walked a distance from the house. Folding her arms across her chest, she nodded at the flashlight. "Samuel tip you off to that trick?"

  "Levi," Coop said. "The kid's a real corker."

  "Did you come to show me that you understand Amish courting rituals?" As soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back. As if, after the way things had gone the other night, Coop might want to include her in anything even marginally resembling a courting ritual.

  He sighed. "I came to say I'm sorry."

  "In the middle of the night?"

  "I would have called, but damn if I couldn't find a listing for the Fishers. I had to find my handy-dandy flashlight and attend to the matter in person."

  Ellie felt a smile twitch at her lips. "I see."

  "No, you don't." He reached for her hand, pulling her down the path toward the pond. "I am truly sorry that things didn't work out for you with Stephen. I never meant to humiliate you."

  "Could have fooled me."

  "You hurt me once, El. Badly. I guess on some level I wanted to make you feel as rotten as I did back then." He grimaced. "Not very enlightened of me."

  Ellie faced him. "I wouldn't have asked you to help with Katie's case if I'd known you were still carrying a grudge, Coop. I thought after twenty years you would have moved past that."

  "But if I'd moved past that," Coop reasoned, "it would mean I'd moved past you."

  Ellie could feel the night closing in around her. Crazy, she thought, a pulse hammering at her throat. This is crazy. "I noticed up insanity," she blurted out.

  Coop nodded, accepting the quick change of subject, and Ellie's need for it. "Ah."

  "What does that mean?"

  He stuffed the flashlight under his arm and tucked his hands in his pockets, striking off again as Ellie followed. "You know what it means, because you've probably thought it through yourself. Katie's not insane. Then again, I suppose as her attorney you can tell the jury she's Queen Elizabeth, if that's bound to get her acquitted, and we all know she hasn't got a drop of royal blood in her, either."

  "What's harder to swallow, Coop: that a young, frightened girl snapped and smothered her baby without realizing what she was doing--or that a stranger came into the barn at two in the morning, after a girl had given birth two months shy of her due date, and murdered the baby while she was asleep?"

  "Insanity defenses rarely win, El."

  "Neither does reasonable doubt, when it looks absolutely unreasonable." They had reached the pond, and Ellie sank down onto the iron bench and drew up her knees. "Even if she didn't kill that baby, the best way to get her to walk is to convince the jury that she did, without cognitively knowing what she was doing. It's the most sympathetic defense I've got."

  "Hell, lawyers lie all the time," Coop said.

  She snorted. "You don't have to tell me. I've done it ... God, I can't even count by now."

  "You're damn good at it, too."

  "Yeah," Ellie said. "That I am."

  Coop reached for her hand. "Then how come it's eating you up inside?"

  She let the facade drop, the one she'd been holding in place since explaining to Katie that they were going to use the insanity defense to get her off, even though she wasn't insane.

  "You want me to tell you why it's killing you?" Coop said easily. "Because pleading insanity means Katie did it, even if she was cognitively off on Mars. And deep down, you just like Katie too much to want to admit that."

  Ellie sniffed. "You're way off base. You know what a client relationship is like--personal feelings don't enter into it. I've managed to keep a straight face while I told a jury that a child molester was a pillar of the community. I've made a serial rapist look like a choirboy. It's what I do. What I personally feel about my clients has nothing to do with what I say to defend them."

  "You're absolutely right."

  That stopped Ellie flat. "I am?"

  "Yeah. The issue here is that a long time ago, Katie stopped being a client. Maybe from the very start, even. She's related to you, however distantly. She's likable, young, confused--and you've fallen into the role of surrogate mother. But your feelings for her are a mystery, because for all intents and purposes she discarded something you'd kill to have--a child."

  Ellie squared her shoulders, ready to laugh this observation off, but found that no smart comment sprang to her lips. "Am I so easy to read?"

  "No need," Coop murmured. "I already know you by heart."

  "So how do I fix it? If I don't separate my personal relationship with her from my professional one, I'm never going to win her case."

  Coop smiled. "When are you going to learn that there are all kinds of ways to win?"

  "What do you mean?" she asked, wary.

  "Sometimes when you think you've lost, you actually wind up coming out far ahead." He grasped her chin in his hand, and kissed her lightly. "Just look at me."

  Ellie did. She saw the remarkable Caribbean green of his eyes, but more importantly, the history in them. She saw the little scar beneath his jaw that he'd gotten in a bicycle fall at age six. And the crease in his cheek that would cave into a dimple at the slightest hint of a smile.

  "I'm sorry for what I said to you the other night," Coop said. "And I think I'll even cover my ass by apologizing for what I just told you now, too."

  "I probably needed to hear it. And every now and then, to be slapped up the side of the head, most likely."

  "I should warn you now, I'm not that kind of man."

  She leaned toward him. "I know."

  Their kisses were frantic and close, as if they were intent on getting inside each other's skin. Coop's hands roamed over her back and her breasts. "God, I've missed you," he breathed.

  "It's only been five days."

  Coop stopped abruptly, then touched her face. "It's been forever," he said.

  With her eyes closed, she believed him. She could imagine the music of the Grateful Dead crackling across the courtyard, wafting through the open window of her dorm room, where she and Coop lay tangled on the narrow bed. She could still see the curtain of beads that hung in the doorway of the closet, a crystalline rainbow, and the beady eyes of the squirrel who perched on the windowsill, watching them.

  She felt him peel off her shirt and unsnap her shorts. "Coop," she said, suddenly nervous. "I'm not twenty anymore."

  "Damn." He continued to push her shorts down. "I guess that means I'm not, either."

  "No, really." She took his hand from the waistband of her shorts and brought it to her mouth. "I don't look like I used to look."

  He nodded sympathetically. "It's that scar, isn't it--the one from your pacemaker surgery?"

  "I didn't have pacemaker surgery."

  "Then what are you worried about?" He kissed her lightly. "El, if you weighed two hundred pounds and had grown hair on your chest, I wouldn't care. When I look at you, no matter what I should be seeing, I'm picturing a girl who's still in college-- because the minute I fell in love with you, time stopped."

  "I don't weigh