The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Were you sore?”

  “You mean like my muscles?”

  “No. Between your legs.”

  After a sidelong look at Coop, she murmured to me, “It burned a little bit. But I thought it was maybe part of the flu.”

  “So,” Coop said, clearing his throat, “you got up and did your chores?”

  “I started to cook breakfast,” Katie answered. “There was something big going on down at the barn, and then the Englischer police came, and Mam stuck her head in long enough to tell me to make extra food for them.” She stood up, pacing the length of the porch. “I didn’t go into the barn until Samuel came to tell me what was happening.”

  “What did you see?”

  Her eyes were bright with tears. “The tiniest baby,” she whispered. “Oh, the very tiniest one I’d ever seen.”

  “Katie,” Coop said softly, “had you seen that baby before?”

  She gave her head a quick shake, as if she was trying to clear it.

  “Did you touch the baby?”

  “No.”

  “Was it wrapped up?”

  “In a shirt,” she whispered. “So that just his face was showing, and it looked like he was sleeping, like Hannah used to look when she was in her crib.”

  “If the baby was wrapped up, if you never touched it . . . how do you know it was a boy?”

  Katie blinked at Coop. “I don’t know.”

  “Try hard, Katie. Try to remember the moment you knew it was a boy.”

  She shook her head, crying harder now. “You can’t do this to me,” she sobbed, and then she turned on her heel and ran.

  * * *

  “She’ll come back,” I said, staring off in the direction Katie had fled. “But it’s nice that you’re worried.”

  Coop sighed and leaned back on the porch swing. “I pushed her to the edge,” he said. “Came right up against that world she’s been living in in her mind. She had to shut down, or else concede that her logic doesn’t work.” He turned to me. “You believe she’s guilty, don’t you?”

  It was the first time since I’d been here that anyone had actually put the question to me. The Fisher family, their Amish friends and relatives—everyone in the community seemed to treat Katie’s murder charge as some bizarre finger-pointing that they had to simply accept, but not believe. However, I wasn’t looking at a girl I’d known all my life—just a mountain of evidence that seemed damning. From the police reports to my recent discussion with the neonatal pathologist, everything I had seen so far suggested that Katie had either actively or passively caused the death of her child. The concealment of the pregnancy—that was premeditation. The threat of losing Samuel, as well as her parents’ respect; the fear of being excommunicated—that was motive. The ongoing denial of hard facts—well, my gut feeling was that with an upbringing like Katie’s, it was the only way to deal with something she’d known damn well was wrong.

  “I have three choices for my defense, Coop,” I said. “Number one: she did it and she’s sorry, and I throw her on the mercy of the court. But that would mean putting her on the stand, and if I do, they’ll know she’s not sorry at all—hell, she doesn’t even believe she committed the crime. Number two: she didn’t do it, someone else did. A nice defense, but highly unlikely, given that it was a premature birth that occurred in secret at two in the morning. And number three: she did it, but she was dissociating at the time, and she can’t really be convicted of a crime if she wasn’t mentally there.”

  “You believe she’s guilty,” Coop repeated.

  I couldn’t look him in the eye. “I believe this is my only chance to get her off.”

  * * *

  Aaron and I walked into the barn in the later afternoon—me heading for my computer, Aaron intent on delivering feed to the cows. Suddenly, he stopped beside me. The barn was charged with the scent of something about to happen. One of the ballooned cows in the calving pen was bellowing, a tiny hoof sticking out from between her hind legs. Swiftly, Aaron reached for a pair of long rubber kitchen gloves and went into the pen, pulling at the hoof until a miniature white face emerged beside a second hoof. Aaron tugged and tugged, and I watched with wonder as the calf emerged bloody, with the sound of a seal being broken.

  It landed, sprawled, on the hay. Aaron knelt before it and brushed a blade of straw over its face. The little nose wrinkled, sneezed, and then the calf was breathing, standing, nuzzling its mother’s side. Peering under its leg, Aaron grinned. “It’s a heifer,” he announced.

  Well, of course it was. What was he expecting—a whale?

  As if he could read my mind, he laughed. “A heifer,” he repeated. “Not a bull.”

  Peeling off his gloves, he got to his feet. “How’s that for a miracle?”

  The mother rasped her tongue along the wet whorls of her baby’s hide. Mesmerized, I stared. “That’ll do just fine,” I murmured.

  * * *

  When she heard that Mary Esch was hosting a singing, Katie got down on her knees and begged to be allowed to go. “You can come along,” she said, just in case that was liable to sway me. “Please, Ellie.”

  I knew, from what she’d told Coop and me, that this was a social event. It would give me an opportunity to see Katie react around other Amish boys, boys who might have been the father of her baby. So, five hours later, I was sitting beside Katie on the front bench of the buggy, en route to a hymn sing. I’d ridden in the Fisher buggy before, but it hadn’t seemed quite so precarious from the backseat. Gripping the edge, I asked, “How long have you been driving?”

  “Since I was thirteen.” She caught my gaze and grinned. “Why? Wanna take the reins?”

  There was something about Katie tonight—a sparkle, a hope—that made my eyes keep coming back to her. After we arrived, she tied up the horse beside a batch of other buggies, and we went inside the barn. Mary kissed Katie on the cheek and whispered something that made Katie cover her mouth and laugh. I tried to blend into the background and stared at the girls with their creamy complexions and their rainbow-colored dresses, the boys with their fringed bangs and furtive glances. I felt like a chaperone at a high school dance—overbearing, critical, and uncomfortably old. And then I saw a familiar face.

  Samuel stood with a group of slightly older boys; the ones, I assumed, that had been baptized like him yet still remained single. His back was to Katie, and he was listening to another boy’s conversation—from the looks of it, a rude story about either a fat woman or a horse. When the group broke into laughter, Samuel smiled faintly, then walked off.

  The teenagers began to drift toward two long picnic tables. The first had a bench of girls sitting opposite a bench of boys. The second was reserved for couples: girls and boys sat side by side, their entwined hands hidden in the folds of the girl’s skirt. A young woman I had never met approached me. “Ms. Hathaway, can I show you to a seat?”

  I had been expecting a barrage of questions about my identity, but I should have known better. The power of word of mouth was mighty in the Amish community; these kids had heard about me for nearly two weeks. “Matter of fact,” I said, “I just might stand back here and watch.”

  The girl smiled and took a seat at the singles’ table, whispering to her friend, who then glanced at me from beneath her lashes. Katie sat at the end of the couples’ table, leaving a spot beside her. As if nothing at all had happened the night before, she smiled at Samuel as he came toward the table.

  He kept walking.

  With Katie watching every step, Samuel slid into a spot at the singles’ table. Nearly every pair of eyes followed his progress, then darted back to Katie, but no one said a word. Katie bowed her head, her neck drooping low as a cygnet’s, her cheeks bright.

  As the high notes of a hymn rose toward the ceiling, as the mouths of the girls rounded with sound and the voices of boys grew magically deeper, I took a slow step toward the couples’ table. I climbed over the bench seat and sank down beside Katie, who did not look at me. I placed my hand,