The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  * * *

  By the time the church service drew to a close that Sunday, Katie was light-headed, and not just from the pressing summer heat, intensified by so many bodies packed into one small home. The bishop called a members’ meeting, and as those who hadn’t been baptized yet filed out to play in the barn, Ellie leaned close to her. “What are they doing?”

  “They have to leave. So do you.” She saw Ellie staring at her trembling hands, and she hid them under her thighs.

  “I’m not budging.”

  “You must,” Katie urged. “It will be easier that way.”

  Ellie stared at her in that wide-eyed owl way that sometimes made Katie smile, and shook her head. “Tough beans. Tell them to take it up with me.”

  In the end, though, Bishop Ephram seemed to accept that Ellie was going to sit in on the members’ meeting. “Katie Fisher,” one of the ministers said, calling her forward.

  She didn’t think she was going to be able to stand, her knees were knocking so hard. She could feel eyes on her: Ellie’s, Mary Esch’s, her mother’s, even Samuel’s. These people, who would bear witness to her shame.

  It didn’t matter whether or not she’d had a baby, when you got right down to it. She had no intention of discussing her private matters in front of the congregation, in spite of what Ellie had tried to explain to her about a Bill of Rights and kangaroo courts. Katie had been brought up to believe that rather than defend yourself, you’d best step up and take the medicine. With a deep breath, she walked to the spot where the ministers were sitting.

  When she knelt on the floor, she could feel the ridge of the oak boards pressing into her skin and she gloried in this pain, because it kept her mind off what was about to happen. As she bowed her head, Bishop Ephram began to speak. “It has come to our attention that the young sister has found herself in a sin of the flesh.”

  Every part of Katie was on fire, from her face to her chest to the very palms of her hands. The bishop’s gaze was on her. “Is this offense true?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and she might have imagined it, but she could have sworn that in the silence she heard Ellie’s defeated sigh.

  The bishop turned to the congregation. “Do you agree to place Katie under the bann for a time as she considers her sin and comes to repentance?”

  Each person in the room got a vote, a hand in meting out her punishment. It was rare, in cases like this, that someone wouldn’t agree—after all, it was a relief to see a sinner confessing and beginning the process of healing. “Ich bin einig,” she heard: I am agreed; each member repeating the words in succession.

  Tonight, she would be shunned. She would have to eat at a separate table from her family. She would spend six weeks in the bann; still spoken to and loved, but for all that, also apart and alone. With her head bowed, Katie could pick out the soft voices of her baptized girlfriends, the reluctant sigh of her own mother, the stiff resolve of her father. Then she heard the voice that she knew best of all, the deep, rough rumble of Samuel. “Ich bin . . .” he said, stumbling. “Ich bin . . .” Would he disagree? Would he stand up for her, after all that had passed?

  “Ich bin einig,” Samuel said, as Katie let her eyes drift shut.

  * * *

  The church service had been held at a nearby farm, so Ellie and Katie opted to walk home. Ellie slung her arm around the girl’s shoulders, trying to cheer her up. “It’s not like you’ve got a scarlet A on your chest,” she joked.

  “A what?”

  “Nothing.” Pressing her lips together, Ellie said softly, “I’ll eat with you.”

  Katie flashed her a brief, grateful look. “I know.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments, Ellie scuffing at rocks in the path. Finally she turned to Katie. “I’ve got to ask you something, and it’s going to make you angry. How come you’re willing to admit in front of a whole congregation that you had a baby, but you can’t do the same for just me?”

  “Because it was expected of me,” Katie said simply.

  “I expect it of you, too.”

  She shook her head. “If the deacon came to me and said he wanted me to make my things right because I’d been skinny-dipping in the pond, even if I hadn’t done it, I’d say yes.”

  “How?” Ellie exploded. “How can you let them railroad you like that?”

  “They don’t. I could stand up and say it wasn’t me skinny-dipping, I have a birthmark on my hip you didn’t see—but I never would. You saw what it was like in there—it’s much more embarrassing to talk about the sin than to just get the confession over with.”

  “But that’s letting the system walk all over you.”

  “No,” Katie explained. “That’s just letting the system work. I don’t want to be right, or strong, or first. I just want to be part of them again, as soon as I can.” She smiled gently. “I know it’s hard to understand.”

  Ellie willed herself to remember that the Amish system of justice was not the American system of justice, but that both had functioned rather well for hundreds of years. “I understand, all right,” she said. “It’s just that it’s not the real world.”

  “Maybe not.” Katie sidled out of the way of a car, one with a tourist hanging half out the window trying to photograph her from behind. “But it is where I live.”

  * * *

  Katie stood anxiously at the end of the lane, holding a flashlight. She had taken risks before, especially where Adam was involved, but this would be the gamble of a lifetime. If anyone found her with this Englischer, she’d be in trouble for sure—yet Adam was leaving, and she could not let him go without taking this opportunity.

  In the end, Adam hadn’t gone to New Orleans to find his ghosts. He transferred the grant money to a whole different locale—Scotland—and reorganized his plans so that he’d leave in November. If Jacob noticed anything odd about the arrangement, it was Adam’s generous offer to let Jacob stay on as a housemate in spite of the change of circumstances. Jacob was so grateful not to have to move that he did not bother to see anything else—such as the ease with which his sister and his roommate conversed, or the way Adam sometimes steadied her with a hand on her back when they walked across the campus, or the fact that in all these months, Adam had not dated a single girl.

  A car approached, slowing at the end of every driveway. Katie wanted to wave, shout, make Adam see her, but instead she waited in the shadow of the bushes, stepping out into his headlights only when he came close. Adam turned off the car and got out, silently studying Katie’s clothes. Walking up to her, he touched the stiff organdy of her kapp, then gently pricked the ball of his thumb on the straight pin that held her dress together at the neck. She felt foolish, suddenly, dressed Plain—he was accustomed to her in jeans and sweaters. “You must be cold,” he whispered.

  She shook her head. “Not so much.”

  He started to slip off his coat, to give it to her, but she ducked away. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Adam looked over Katie’s head to the faint silver edge of the silo, jutting against a seamless sky. “I could go,” he said softly. “I could leave and we could pretend that I never came here after all.”

  In response, Katie reached for his hand. She lifted it, staring at the fine long fingers, stroking the softness of his palm. This was not a hand that had pulled reins and hauled feed. She brought it to her lips and kissed the knuckles. “No. I’ve been waiting for you for years.”

  She didn’t mean it the way Englischer girls would have, as an exaggeration, accompanied by a pout and a stamp of the foot. Katie’s words were literal, measured, true. Adam squeezed her hand, and let her lead him into the world where she’d grown up.

  * * *

  Sarah watched her daughter chopping vegetables for dinner, and then turned her attention to setting the table. Tonight, and for many nights from now, Katie couldn’t eat at it—that was part of carrying out the letter of shunning. For the next six weeks, Sarah would have to live apart from her in the same house: pretend that