Plain Truth Read online

  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."

  SEVENTEEN

  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.

  Ellie had defended guilty clients, even several who had patently lied to her, but somehow she could not recall ever feeling so betrayed. She fumed up the drive, furious at Katie for her deception, at Leda for leaving them three miles away, at her own sorry physical shape that left her breathless after a short jog.

  This is not personal, she reminded herself. This is strictly business.

  She found Katie at the pond. "You want to tell me what you meant back there?" Ellie asked, bending down and breathing hard.

  "You heard me," Katie said sullenly.

  "Tell me why you killed the baby, Katie."

  She shook her head. "I don't want to make excuses anymore. I just want to tell the jury what I told you, so this can be over."

  "Tell the jury?" Ellie sputtered. "Over my dead body."

  "No," Katie said, paling. "You have to let me."

  "There is no way in hell that I'm going to let you get up on that stand and tell the court you killed your baby."

  "You were willing to let me testify before!"

  "Amazingly enough, your story was different then. You said you wanted to tell the truth, to tell everyone you didn't commit murder. It's one thing for me to put you on as a witness if you don't contradict everything else my strategy has built up; it's another thing entirely to put you on so that you can commit legal suicide."

  "Ellie," Katie said desperately. "I have to confess."

  "This is not your church!" Ellie cried. "How many times do you need to hear that? We're not talking six weeks of suspension, here. We're talking years. A lifetime, maybe. In prison." She bit down on her anger and took a deep breath. "It was one thing to let the jury see you, listen to your grief. To hear you say you were innocent. But what you told me just now ..." Her voice trailed off; she looked away. "To let you take the stand would be professionally irresponsible."

  "They can still see me and hear me and listen to my grief."

  "Yeah, all of which goes down the toilet when I ask you if you killed the baby."

  "Then don't ask me that question."

  "If I don't, George will. And once you get on the stand, you can't lie." Ellie sighed. "You can't lie--and you can't say outright that you killed that baby, either, or you've sealed your conviction."

  Katie looked down at her feet. "Jacob told me that if I wanted to talk in court, you couldn't stop me."

  "I can get you acquitted without your testimony. Please, Katie. Don't do this to yourself."

  Katie turned to her with absolute calm. "I will be a witness tomorrow. You may not like it, but that's what I want."

  "Who do you want to forgive you?" Ellie exploded. "A jury? The judge? Because they won't. They'll just see you as a monster."

  "You don't, do you?"

  Ellie shook her head, unable to answer.

  "What is it?" Katie pressed. "Tell me what you're thinking."

  "That it's one thing to lie to your lawyer, but it's another to lie to your friend." Ellie got to her feet and dusted off her skirt. "I'll write up a disclaimer for you to sign, that says I advised you against this course of action," she said coolly, and walked away.

  "I don't believe it," Coop said, bringing together the corners of the quilt that he was folding with Ellie. It was a wedding ring pattern, the irony of which had not escaped him. Several other quilts, newly washed, flapped on clotheslines strung between trees, huge kaleidoscopic patterns of color against a darkening sky.

  Ellie walked toward him, handing him the opposite ends of the quilt. "Believe it."