The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  The Fishers filed into the room one by one, as if drawn by a silent bell. They sat and bowed their heads. Aaron looked at me, a question in his eyes. When I didn’t respond, he began to read out loud from a German Bible.

  I’d never been very religious; and completely unawares, I’d been tossed into a household that literally structured itself on Christianity. Drawing in my breath, I stared at the newspaper and let the letters swim, trying not to feel like a heathen.

  Less than two minutes later, Katie got up and walked over to me. “I’ll be going to bed now,” she announced.

  I set aside the paper. “Then I will too.”

  * * *

  After coming out of the bathroom in my silk pajamas, I watched Katie sit on her bed in her long white nightgown and comb out her hair. Unpinned, it fell nearly to her waist and rippled with every stroke of the brush. I sat cross-legged on my own twin bed, my hand propped on my cheek. “My mother used to do that for me.”

  “Truly?” Katie said, looking up.

  “Yeah. Every single night, untangling all my knots. I hated it. I thought it was a form of torture.” I touched my short cap of hair. “As you can see, I got my revenge.”

  Katie smiled. “We don’t have a choice. We don’t cut our hair.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  Granted, hers was lovely—but what if, like me, she’d had to suffer snarls every day of her life? “What if you wanted to?”

  “Why would I? Then I’d be different from all the others.” Katie set down her brush, effectively ending the conversation, and crawled into bed. Leaning over, she extinguished the gas lamp, pitching the room into total darkness.

  “Ellie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What is it like where you live?”

  I considered for a moment. “Noisy. There are more cars, and they seem to be right outside the window all night long, honking and screeching to a stop. There are more people, too—and I’d be hard pressed to find a cow or chicken, much less sweet corn, unless you count the kind in the freezer section. But I don’t really live in Philadelphia anymore. I’m sort of in between residences, just now.”

  Katie was quiet for so long I thought she had fallen asleep. “No, you’re not,” she said. “Now you’re with us.”

  * * *

  When I woke up with a start, I thought I’d had the nightmare again, the one with the little girls from my last trial, but my sheets were still tucked neatly, and my heartbeat was slow and steady. I glanced at Katie’s bed, at the quilt tossed back to reveal her missing, and immediately got up. Padding downstairs barefoot, I checked in the kitchen and the living room before I heard the quiet click of a door and footsteps on the porch.

  She went all the way to the pond where I’d been earlier that day. I stayed behind, hidden, just close enough to be able to see and hear her. She sat down on a small wroughtiron bench set before the big oak tree, and closed her eyes.

  Was she sleepwalking again? Or was she meeting someone here?

  Was this where Katie and Samuel had their trysts? Was this where a baby had been conceived?

  “Where are you?” Katie’s whisper reached me, and I realized two things at once: that she was too lucid still to be asleep; and that I understood her words. “How come you’re hiding?”

  Clearly, she knew I had followed her. Who else would she be talking to in English?

  I stepped out from behind the willow and stood in front of her. “I’ll tell you why I’m hiding, if you tell me why you came out here in the first place.”

  Katie scrambled to her feet, her cheeks flushed with color. She looked so startled that I took a step back—right into the edge of the pond, wetting the edge of my pajama bottoms. “Surprise,” I said flatly.

  “Ellie! What are you doing up?”

  “I think that’s my question, actually. In addition to the following: Who were you expecting to meet here? Samuel, maybe? You two planning to get your story straight, before I corner him for a little interview?”

  “There is no story—”

  “For God’s sake, Katie, give it up! You had a baby. You’ve been charged with murder. I’ve been appointed as your legal defense, and you’re still sneaking around behind my back, in the middle of the night. You know, I’ve done this a lot longer than you have, and people don’t sneak around unless they have something to hide. Coincidentally, they also don’t lie unless they have something to hide. Guess which one of us fails on both counts?” Tears were rolling down Katie’s cheeks. Steeling myself, I crossed my arms. “You’d better start talking.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not Samuel. I’m not meeting him.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I’m telling you the truth!”

  I snorted. “Right. You’re not meeting Samuel; you just decided you needed a little fresh air. Or is this some midnight Amish custom I need to learn?”

  “I didn’t come out here because of Samuel.” She looked up at me. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You were talking to someone. You thought he was hiding.”

  Katie ducked her head. “She.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “She. The person I was looking for is a girl.”

  “Nice try, Katie, but you’re out of luck. I don’t see a girl. And I don’t see a guy, either, but something tells me if I give it five minutes a big, blond fellow is going to show up.”

  “I was looking for my sister. Hannah.” She hesitated. “You’re sleeping in her bed.”

  Mentally, I counted everyone I’d met that day. There had been no other young girl; and I found it difficult to believe that Leda would never have mentioned Katie’s siblings to me. “How come Hannah wasn’t at dinner? Or praying with you tonight?”

  “Because . . . she’s dead.”

  This time when I stepped back, both feet landed squarely in the pond. “She’s dead.”

  “Ja.” Katie raised her face to mine. “She drowned here when she was seven. I was eleven, and I was supposed to be watching her while we went skating, but she fell through the ice.” She wiped her eyes and her nose with the sleeve of her nightgown. “You . . . you wanted me to tell you everything, to tell you the truth. I come out here to talk to Hannah. Sometimes I see her, even. I didn’t tell anyone about her, because seeing ghosts, well, Mam and Dat would think I’m all ferhoodled. But she’s here, Ellie. She is, I swear it to you.”

  “Like you swear you never had that baby?” I murmured.

  Katie turned away from me. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. The only person who ever did was—”

  “Was who?”

  “Nobody,” she said stubbornly.

  I spread my arms. “Well, then, call out for her. Hey, Hannah!” I shouted. “Come and play.” I waited a moment for good measure, and then shrugged. “Funny, I don’t see anything. Imagine that.”

  “She won’t come with you here.”

  “Isn’t that convenient,” I said.

  Katie’s eyes were dark and militant, filled with conviction. “I am telling you that I’ve seen Hannah since she died. I hear her talking, when the wind comes. And I see her skating, right over the top of the pond. She’s real.”

  “You expect me to fall for this? To think you came out here because you believe in ghosts?”

  “I believe in Hannah,” Katie clarified.

  I sighed. “It seems to me you believe a lot of things that may not necessarily be true. Come back to bed, Katie,” I said over my shoulder, and left without waiting to see if she’d follow.

  * * *

  Once Katie was asleep, I tiptoed out of the room with my purse. Outside, on the porch, I withdrew my cell phone. Ironically, you could get a decent signal in Lancaster County—some of the more progressive Amish farmers had agreed to allow cellular towers on their land, for a fee that negated the need to grow a winter crop. Punching in several numbers, I waited for a familiar, groggy voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Coop,