The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  She stared at me blankly. “I am fine, thank you.” Turning, she led me to her bedroom. It was clean and neat, but hardly the room of a teenager. No Leonardo posters, no Beanie Babies scattered about, no collection of lip gloss jars littering the dresser. There was nothing, in fact, on the walls; the only individuality in the room came from the rainbow of quilts that covered the two twin beds.

  “You can have that bed,” Katie said, and I went to sit down on it before her words registered. She expected me to stay in this room, her room, while I was living on the farm.

  Hell, no. It was bad enough that I had to be here at all; if I couldn’t even have my privacy at night, all bets were off. I took a deep breath, fighting for a polite way to tell Katie that I would not, under any circumstances, be sharing a bedroom with her. But Katie was wandering around the room, touching the tall neck of the ladderback chair and smoothing her quilt, and then getting down on her hands and knees to look underneath the bed. Finally, she sat back on her heels. “They took my things,” she said, her voice small.

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know. Someone came in here and took my things. My nightgown. My shoes.”

  “I’m sure that—”

  She turned on me. “You’re sure of nothing,” she challenged.

  Suddenly I realized that if I stayed in this room, sleeping beside Katie, I wouldn’t be the only one incapable of keeping secrets. “I was going to say that I’m sure the police searched your room. They must have found something to make them feel confident enough to charge you.” Katie sat down on her own bed, her shoulders slumped. “Look. Why don’t we start by having you tell me what happened yesterday morning?”

  “I didn’t kill any baby. I didn’t even have a baby.”

  “So you’ve said.” I sighed. “Okay. You may not like me being here, and I certainly could find a thousand other things I’d rather be doing, but thanks to Judge Gorman, you and I are going to be stuck with each other for some time. I have a deal with my clients: I won’t ask you if you committed the crime, not ever. And in return, you tell me the truth whenever I ask you anything else.” Leaning forward, I caught her gaze. “You want to tell me you didn’t kill that baby? Go right ahead. I couldn’t care less if you did or didn’t, because I’ll still stand up for you in court no matter what and not make a personal judgment. But lying about having the baby—something that’s been proven a fact—well, Katie, that just makes me angry.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “I can count at least three medical experts who’ve already gone on record saying that your body shows signs of recent delivery. I can wave a blood test in your face that proves the same thing. So how can you sit here and tell me you didn’t have the baby?”

  As a defense attorney, I already knew the answer—she could sit there and tell me because she believed it, one hundred percent. But before I even contemplated running with an insanity defense, I needed to make sure Katie Fisher wasn’t taking me for a ride. Katie didn’t act crazy, and she functioned normally. If this kid was insane, then I was Marcia Clark.

  “How can you sit there,” Katie said, “and tell me you’re not judging me?”

  Her words slapped me with surprise. I, the suave defense attorney, the one with a winning record and a list of credentials as long as my arm, had made the cardinal mistake of mentally convicting a client before the right to a fair trial. A fair trial in which I was supposed to represent her. She had lied about having the baby, and I couldn’t push that aside without wondering what else she might be lying about—a mindset that placed me more in line with a prosecutor than a defense attorney.

  I had coolly defended the rights of rapists, murderers, and pedophiles. But because this girl had killed her own newborn, an act I simply could not get my head around, I wanted her to be locked away.

  I closed my eyes. Allegedly killed, I reminded myself.

  “Is it that you can’t remember?” I asked, deliberately softening my voice.

  Katie’s eyes met mine, wide and sea blue. “I went to sleep on Thursday night. I woke up Friday morning and came down to make breakfast. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You don’t remember going into labor. You don’t remember walking out to the barn.”

  “No.”

  “Is there anyone who saw you sleeping all night?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t awake to see.”

  Sighing, I rapped my hands on the mattress I was sitting on. “What about the person who sleeps here?”

  Katie’s face drained of color; she seemed far more upset by that question than by anything else I’d asked her. “No one sleeps there.”

  “You don’t remember feeling that baby come out of you,” I said, my voice growing thick with frustration. “You don’t remember holding it close, and wrapping it in that shirt.” We both glanced down, where I was cradling an imaginary infant in my arms.

  For a long minute, Katie stared at me. “Have you ever had a baby?”

  “This isn’t about me,” I said. But one look at her face told me she knew I wasn’t telling the truth, either.

  * * *

  There were pegs on the walls, but no closets. Katie’s dresses took up three of them, another three were empty on the opposite wall. My suitcase lay open on the bed, stuffed to the gills with jeans and blouses and sundresses. After a moment’s consideration, I pulled out a single dress, hung it on the peg, and then zipped the suitcase shut again.

  A knock came on the door as I was hauling my luggage to the corner of the room, behind a rocking chair. “Come on in.”

  Sarah Fisher entered, carrying a stack of towels that nearly obliterated her face. She set them down on a dresser. “You have found everything you need?”

  “Yes, thank you. Katie showed me around.”

  Sarah nodded stiffly. “Dinner’s at six,” she said, and she turned her back on me.

  “Mrs. Fisher,” I called out before I could stop myself, “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  The woman stopped in the doorway, her hand braced on the frame. “My name is Sarah.”

  “Sarah, then.” I smiled, a forced smile, but at least one of us was trying. “If there’s anything you’d like to ask me about your daughter’s case, please feel free.”

  “I do have a question.” She crossed her arms and stared at me. “Are you secure in your faith?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you Episcopalian? Catholic?”

  Speechless, I shook my head. “How does my religion have anything to do with the fact that I’m representing Katie?”

  “We get a lot of people coming through here who think they want to be Plain. As if that’s the answer to all the problems in their lives,” Sarah scoffed.

  Amazed at her audacity, I said, “I’m not here to become Amish. In fact, I wouldn’t be here at all, except for the fact that I’m keeping your daughter out of jail.”

  We stared at each other, a standoff. Finally, Sarah turned away, picking up a quilt on the end of one twin bed and refolding it. “If you aren’t Episcopalian or Catholic, what do you believe in?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Sarah hugged the quilt to her chest, surprised by my answer. She didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to: she was wondering how on earth I could possibly think that it was Katie who needed help.

  * * *

  After my confrontation with Sarah, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and then Katie came upstairs for a rest—something, I could tell, that was unprecedented in the household. To give Katie her privacy, I decided to explore the grounds. I stopped in the kitchen, where Sarah was already beginning to cook dinner, to tell her my plans.

  The woman couldn’t have heard a word I said. She was staring at my arms and legs as if I were walking around naked. Which to her, I guess, I was. Blushing, she whipped back to face the counter. “Yes,” she said. “You go on.”

  I walked along the raspberry patch, behind the silo, out toward the fields. I ve