The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  She fisted the afghan in her hands. “Well, it’s all going to be fine now.”

  “Yeah.” George nodded slowly. “I think it is.”

  * * *

  Katie sat outside the judge’s chambers, running her fingers over the smooth seams of the wooden bench. She’d flatten her palm against a spot, buff it with her apron, and then do it all over again. Although being here today was considerably less upsetting than being here for the trial, she was still counting the minutes until she could leave.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Katie glanced up as Adam sat down beside her. “Jacob told me about the plea.”

  “Yes. And now it will be finished,” she said quietly, and both of them weighed the words, turned them over like stones, and set them down again.

  “I’m going back to Scotland.” He hesitated. “Katie, you could—”

  “No, Adam.” She shook her head, interrupting him. “I couldn’t.”

  Adam swallowed, nodded. “I guess I knew that all along.” He touched the curve of her cheek. “But I also know that these past months, you’ve been there with me.” When Katie looked up, puzzled, he continued. “I find you, sometimes, at the foot of my bed, when I wake up. Or I notice your profile in the moorings of a castle wall. Sometimes, when the wind’s right, it’s like you’re calling my name.” He took her hand, traced the outline of her fingers. “I see you more clearly than I’ve ever seen any ghost.”

  He lifted her palm, kissed the center, and closed her fingers around it. Then he pressed the fist tight to her belly. “Remember me,” Adam said thickly; and for the second time in Katie’s life, he left her behind.

  * * *

  “I’m glad to hear that you’ve come to an agreement,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Now let’s talk about time.”

  George leaned forward. “We agreed to a capped plea, Your Honor, two and a half to five years. But I think it’s important to remember that whatever decision is reached here is going to send a message to society about neonaticide.”

  “We agreed to a nolo,” Ellie specified. “My client is not admitting to this crime. She has repeatedly stated that she doesn’t know what happened that night, but for various reasons she’s willing to accept a guilty verdict. However, we’re not talking about a hardened felon. Katie has a commitment to the community, and she’s not going to be a repeat offender. She shouldn’t do a day of time, not even an hour. Sentencing her to a correctional facility sends the message that she’s like any common criminal, when you can’t even come close to comparing the two.”

  “Something tells me, Ms. Hathaway, that you have a solution in mind.”

  “I do. I think Katie’s a perfect candidate for the electronic monitoring program.”

  Judge Ledbetter took off her half glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Mr. Callahan, we set an example for society by taking this case to trial and putting it in front of the press. I see no reason to shame the Amish community any more than the media attention already has, by sending one of their own into Muncy. The defendant will serve time—but in private. Which somehow seems like a little bit of poetic justice.” She scrawled her signature across the papers in front of her. “I’m sentencing Ms. Fisher to a year on the bracelet,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Case closed.”

  * * *

  The plastic cuff went under her stockings, because she wouldn’t be able to take it off for nearly eight months. It was three inches wide, implanted with a homing device. If Katie left Lancaster County, Ellie explained, it would beep, and the probation officer would find her in minutes. The probation officer might find her anyway, just for the heck of it, to make sure she was keeping herself out of trouble. Katie was officially a prisoner of the state, which means she had no rights to speak of.

  But she got to stay on the farm, live her life, and go about her own business. Surely the sin of a small piece of jewelry could be overlooked when she was getting so much in exchange.

  She and Ellie walked through the hallways, their shoes echoing in the silence. “Thank you,” Katie said softly.

  “My pleasure.” Ellie hesitated. “This is a fair deal.”

  “I know.”

  “Even if it’s a guilty verdict.”

  “That never bothered me.”

  “Yeah.” Ellie smiled. “I suppose I’ll get over it, in another decade or so.”

  “Bishop Ephram says that this was a good thing for the community.”

  “How so?”

  “It keeps us humble,” Katie said. “Too many English think we’re saints, and this will remind them we’re just people.”

  They stepped outside together into the relative quiet of the afternoon. No reporters, no onlookers—it would be hours before the press got wind that the jury had been dismissed and the trial abruptly aborted, due to the plea bargain. Katie stopped at the top of the stairs, looking around. “This isn’t the way I pictured it.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “After.” She shrugged. “I thought that everything you talked about at the trial would help me understand what happened a little better.”

  Ellie smiled. “If I do my job right, then I tend to make things muddier.”

  A breeze, threaded with the cold of winter, blew the strings of Katie’s kapp across her face. “I’m never going to know exactly how he died, am I?” she asked softly.

  Ellie linked her arm through Katie’s. “You know how he didn’t die,” she answered. “That may have to be enough.”

  TWENTY

  Ellie

  It’s funny how you can accumulate so many things in such a small amount of time. I had come to East Paradise with a single suitcase, but now that it was time to pack up my things I could barely make them fit. Now, in addition to my clothes, there was my first and probably final attempt at a quilt, which would one day grace my child’s crib. There was the straw hat I’d bought at Zimmermann’s, a young boy’s broad-brimmed hat, but one that managed to keep the sun off my face when I was working in the fields. There were smaller things: a perfectly flat stone I’d found in the creek, a matchbook from the restaurant where I’d first had dinner with Coop, that extra pregnancy test in the two-for-one kit. And finally, there were the things that were too grand in scope to fit the confines of any luggage: spirit, humility, peace.

  Katie was outside, beating rugs with the long handle of a broom. She’d unrolled her stockings to show Sarah the bracelet, and I made sure to explain its limitations. Coop would be here any minute with his car, to take me home.

  Home. It would take some getting used to. I wondered how many mornings I’d wake at 4:30 A.M., imagining the soft sounds of the men going to the barn for the milking. How many nights I’d forget to set an alarm, sure that the rooster would do the job.

  I also wondered what it would be like to flip through the channels of a TV again. To sleep beside Coop every night, his arm slung over me like an anchor. I wondered who my next client would be, and if I would often think of Katie.

  There was a soft knock at the door. “Come on in.”

  Sarah moved into the room, her hands tucked beneath her apron. “I came to see if you need any help.” Looking at the empty pegs on the walls, she smiled. “Guess you’ve pretty much taken care of it.”

  “The packing wasn’t so hard. It’s leaving that’s going to be a challenge.”

  Sarah sank down onto Katie’s bed, smoothing the quilt with one hand. “I didn’t want you here,” she said quietly. “When Leda first suggested it in the courtroom that day, I told her no.” She lifted her face, eyes following me as I finished cleaning up. “Not just because of Aaron, neither. I thought you might be one of those folks we get every now and then, looking to pretend they’re one of us because they think peace is something a body can learn.”

  Her hand picked at a small imperfection in the quilt. “I figured out quick enough that you weren’t like that at all. And I have to admit that we’ve learned more from you, I think, than you ever could have learned from us.”

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