Plain Truth Read online

  I sat breathless on the edge of my chair, the hot damp weight of Louise’s sleeping girl on my chest, waiting to see who was going to come out the winner. “You know what I think, Sarah Fisher,” Rachel began, her eyes flashing, and before she could finish the rest of the sentence, she was interrupted by a loud ringing.

  The women, startled, began to look around them. With a sinking feeling I shifted the child to my left arm and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket with my free hand. The women watched, wide-eyed, as I punched a button and held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Good God, Ellie, I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Don’t you keep this thing on?”

  I was amazed the battery was even working after so long. And sort of hoping it would just quit, so that I wouldn’t have to speak to Stephen. The Amish women stared, their feud temporarily forgotten. “I have to take this call,” I said apologetically, and set the sleeping child into her mother’s arms.

  “A telephone?” Louise gasped, just as I left the room. “In the house?”

  I did not hear Sarah’s explanation. But by the time I was speaking to Stephen in the kitchen, I heard the wheels of the Lapp sisters’ buggy crunching out of the driveway.

  “Stephen, this isn’t the best time for me to talk.”

  “Fine, we don’t have to stay on long. I just need to know something, Ellie. There’s a ridiculous rumor running around town that you’re acting as a public defender for some Amish kid. And that the judge has you living on a farm.”

  I hesitated. Stephen would never have let himself get into a position like this. “I wouldn’t call myself a public defender,” I said. “We just haven’t negotiated a fee yet.”

  “But the rest? Christ, where are you, anyway?”

  “Lancaster. Well, just outside Lancaster, in Paradise Township.”

  I could picture the large blue vein in Stephen’s forehead, swelling visibly right now. “So this is what you call taking a breather?”

  “It was completely unexpected, Stephen-a family obligation I needed to take care of.”

  He laughed. “A family obligation? Would the Amish be second cousins, twice removed, or would I be confusing them with the Hare Krishnas on your mother’s side of the family? Come on, Ellie. You can tell me the truth.”

  “I am,” I gritted out. “This isn’t a ploy to get attention; it couldn’t be anything farther from that. In a long and convoluted way, I’m defending a relative of mine. I’m on the farm because it’s part of the bail agreement. That’s all.”

  There was a beat of silence. “I have to say, Ellie, it hurts that you felt like you had to keep this case a secret, instead of telling me what you were up to. I mean, if you were trying to build your reputation as a lawyer for sensational cases-and I do mean sensational in all definitions-I could have offered you advice, suggestions. Maybe even a leg up into my firm.”

  “I don’t want a leg up into your firm,” I said. “I don’t want sensational cases. And frankly, I can’t believe that you’ve turned this whole thing into a personal affront against you.” Glancing down, I noticed that my hand had curled itself into a fist. Finger by finger, I relaxed.

  “If this is the case I think it’s going to be, you’re going to need help. I could come out there as co-counsel; bring the firm on board.”

  “Thanks, Stephen, but no. My client’s parents barely approved one lawyer, much less a whole building full of them.”

  “I could come out anyway, and let you bounce some ideas off. Or we could just sit on the porch swing and drink lemonade.”

  For a moment, I was swayed. I could picture the freckles on the nape of Stephen’s neck, and the angle at which he cocked his wrist when he was brushing his teeth. I could almost smell the scent of him, coming from the closets and the dressers and the bedclothes. There was something so easy about it, so familiar-and the world I had moved myself into was foreign at every turn. Stopping at the end of the day to see something I recognized, someone I had loved, would put my business with Katie back into the place it was supposed to be: my work, rather than my life.

  I tightened my hand around the small phone and closed my eyes. “Maybe,” I heard myself whisper, “we ought to just wait and see what happens.”

  I found Sarah sitting alone in the living room, her head bowed over the quilt. “I’m sorry. For the phone.”

  She waved away my apology. “That was nothing. Martha Stoltzfus’s husband has one in his own barn, for business. Rachel was just getting on her high horse.” With a sigh, she came to her feet and began to gather the spools of thread. “Might as well tidy up here.”

  I took two corners of the fabric to help her fold it. “The quilting session seemed awfully short. I hope I wasn’t the cause of it.”

  “I think it would have been short today no matter what,” Sarah answered briskly. “I sent Katie out to hang the wash, if you’re looking for her.”

  I knew a dismissal when I heard one. I started out, but hesitated at the doorway that led to the kitchen. “Why would Rachel Lapp doubt Katie?”

  “I’d think you ought to be able to figure out that one.”

  “Well, I meant beyond the obvious. Especially since your bishop stood up for her . . .”

  Sarah set the quilt onto a shelf and turned to me. Although she was doing an admirable job of hiding her feelings, her eyes burned with shame that her friends had snubbed her own daughter. “We look alike. We pray alike. We live alike,” she said. “But none of these things mean we all think alike.”

  Great white sails snapped in the wind as they were secured to the laundry line. The sheets wrapped their wide arms around Katie as she tried to hang them, her apron flying out behind her as she muttered with a mouthful of clothespins and beat them back. When she saw me, she stepped away from the clothesline, tossing the extra pins into a pail. “Sure, you get here just when I’m done,” she complained, sitting down on the stone wall beside me.

  “You did fine without me.” On one line hung a rainbow of shirts and dresses: dark green, wine, lavender, lime. Beside these danced the black legs of men’s trousers. Sheets were stretched over the third clothesline, puffing out their swelled bellies. “My mother used to hang our laundry,” I said, smiling. “I remember poking sheets with a stick, pretending I was a knight.”

  “Not a princess?”

  “Hardly. They don’t have any fun.” I snorted. “I wasn’t going to wait around for some prince, when I could very well save myself.”

  “Hannah and me, we used to play hide-and-seek in the sheets. But we’d kick up the dirt, and they’d get streaked, and we’d have to wash them all over again.”

  Tipping my head back, I let the wind play over my face. “I used to believe that you could smell the sun on the sheets when you brought them in and made the beds.”

  “Oh, but you can!” Katie said. “The fabric soaks it up, in place of all the damp. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

  Newton’s laws of physics seemed a bit advanced for an eighth-grade education, which was when Katie, like most Amish children, had stopped attending organized school. “I didn’t know physics was part of the curriculum here.”

  “It’s not. It’s just something I heard.”

  Heard? From who? The local Amish scientist? Before I could ask her, she said, “I need to tend the garden.”

  I followed, then settled down to watch her snap off the beans and gather them into her apron. She seemed thoroughly absorbed in her work, so much so that she jumped when I spoke. “Katie, do you and Rachel usually get along?”

  “Ja. I watch little Joseph all the time for her. At quilting, sometimes even during church.”

  “Well, she sure didn’t treat you like the favored family baby-sitter today,” I pointed out.

  “No, but Rachel’s always one to listen to what other folks say, instead of finding out for herself.” Katie paused, her fingers wrapped around the stem of a bean. “I don’t care what Rachel says, because truth always comes to light s
ooner or later. But it makes me feel bad to think that I might have something to do with making my mother cry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Rachel’s words hurt her more than me. I’m all my Mam’s got, now. It’s up to me to be perfect.”

  Katie stood, the bounty in her apron sagging with its weight. She turned toward the house, only to see Samuel striding toward her.

  He took off his hat, his blond hair matted down by sweat. “Katie. How are you today?”

  “Wonderful gut, Samuel,” she said. “Just getting the beans for lunch.”

  “It’s a good crop you’ve got there.”

  I listened, standing at a distance. Where was the talk of intimacy? Or even a light touch at the elbow or back? Surely Samuel had heard about the argument at the quilting; surely he was here to comfort Katie. I did not know if this was how courting was done in their world; if Samuel was holding back because I was present; or if these two young people truly had nothing to say to each other-something odd, if in fact they had created a baby together.

  “Something came for you,” Samuel said. “If you want to take a look.”

  Ah, this was more like it-a private assignation. I lifted my eyes, waiting to hear what Katie had to say, and realized that Samuel had been speaking to me, not her.

  “Something came for me? No one even knows I’m here.”

  Samuel shrugged. “It’s in the front yard.”

  “Well. All right.” I smiled at Katie. “Let’s go see what my secret admirer shipped this time.” Samuel turned, taking Katie’s arm to lead her to the front of the house. Walking behind them, I watched as Katie very gently, very slowly, slipped from his grasp.

  A squat corrugated cardboard box sat on the packed dirt in front of the barn. “The police brought it,” Samuel said, staring at the covered carton as if he expected it to contain a rattlesnake.

  I hefted it into my arms. The discovery from the prosecutor was not nearly the volume of other cases I’d had in the past-this one small box contained everything the police had gathered, up to this point. But then again, you didn’t need a lot of proof for an open-and-shut case.

  “What is it?” Katie asked.

  She stood beside Samuel, that same sweet, bewildered look on her face. “It’s from the prosecution,” I told her. “It’s all the evidence that says you killed your baby.”

  Two hours later, I was surrounded by statements and documents and reports, none of which cast my client in a favorable light. There were holes in the case-for example, DNA testing had yet to prove that Katie was indeed the mother of the child, and the prematurity of the fetus cast doubt on its ability to survive outside the womb-but for the most part, the overwhelming evidence pointed to her. She’d been placed at the scene of the crime; she’d been tagged as someone who’d recently given birth; her blood was even found on the dead infant’s body. The secrecy with which she’d tried to give birth made the prospect of someone else coming along and killing the baby seem ludicrous. On the other hand, it did offer up a motive for the prosecution: when you try so diligently to hide the act of birth, you’re probably going to go to great lengths to hide the product of that act, as well. Which left the question of whether or not Katie was in her right mind when she’d committed the murder.

  The first thing I needed to do was file a motion for services other than counsel. The court could pay for a psychiatric professional, someone far less likely than me to take Katie on pro bono; and the sooner I wrote up the motion, the sooner I’d have that check in my hand.

  Getting off the bed, I knelt to reach beneath it for my laptop. The sleek black case slid along the polished wood floor, so wonderfully heavy with technology and synthetic fabric that it made me want to weep. I set it on the bed and unzipped it, lifting the hinged head of the computer and pressing the button to turn it on.

  Nothing happened.

  Muttering a curse, I rummaged in the pockets for the battery pack, and slipped it into the hardware. The computer booted up, beeped to alert me that the battery needed to be recharged, and then foundered to a bare, black screen.

  Well, it wasn’t the end of the world. I could work near an outlet until the battery recharged. An outlet . . . which didn’t exist anywhere in Katie’s house.

  Suddenly I realized what it meant to me, a lawyer, to be working on an Amish farm. I was supposed to create a defense for my client without any of the normal, everyday conveniences accessible to attorneys. Furious-at myself, at Judge Gorman-I grabbed for my cell phone to call him. I managed to dial the first three numbers, and then the phone went dead.

  “Jesus Christ!” I threw the phone so that it bounced off the bed. I didn’t even have a battery for it; I’d have to recharge it through the cigarette lighter on a car. Of course, the nearest car was Leda’s, a good twenty miles away.

  Leda’s. Well, that was one solution; I could do all my legal work over there. But it was a difficult solution, since Katie was not supposed to leave the farm. Maybe if I wrote the motion out by hand . . .

  Suddenly, I stilled. If I wrote the motion out by hand, or if I managed to get my phone working again and called the judge, he’d tell me that the conditions for bail weren’t working, and that Katie could cool her heels in jail until the trial. It was up to me to find a way out of this.

  With determination, I stood up and headed downstairs, toward the barn.

  From Katie I’d learned that the cows were not let out every day in the summer, it was too hot. So when I walked into the barn, the Holsteins chained to their stanchions lowed at me. One lurched to her feet, her udder huge and painfully pink, making me think of Katie the night before. Turning away, I walked between the two rows of cows, ignoring the occasional splash of urine into the grates behind them, hoping to find a way to make my computer work.

  I had noticed that if any rules were relaxed on an Amish farm, it was due to economic necessity. For example, in the pristine milk room, a twelve-volt motor stirred the milk in the refrigerated bulk tank; and the vacuum milking machines were powered by a diesel engine that ran twice a day. These “modern conveniences” were not worldly as much as practical; they kept the Amish in a competitive league with other suppliers of milk. I didn’t understand much about diesel fuel or engines, but who knew? Maybe one could be adapted to run a Thinkpad.

  “What are you doing?”

  At the sound of Aaron’s voice, I jumped, nearly striking my head on one of the steel arms of the bulk tank. “Oh! You scared me.”

  “You have lost something?” he asked, frowning at the corner where I’d been peering.

  “No, actually, I’m trying to find something. I need to charge a battery.”

  Aaron took off his hat and rubbed his forehead on the fabric of his shirt. “A battery?”

  “Yes, for my computer. If you want me to represent your daughter adequately in court, I’m going to have to prepare for her trial. That involves writing several motions beforehand.”

  “I write without a computer,” Aaron answered, walking away.

  I fell into step beside him. “You may, but that’s not what the judge will be expecting.” Hesitating, I added, “I’m not asking for an outlet in the house; or even for Internet access or a fax machine-both of which I use excessively before trial. But you must understand that it’s not fair to ask me to prepare in an Amish way, when the event I’m getting ready for is an English one.”

  For a long time, Aaron stared at me, his eyes dark and fathomless. “We will speak to the bishop about it. He is coming here today.”

  My eyes widened. “He is? For this?”

  Aaron turned away. “For other things,” he said.

  Without a word, Aaron herded me into the buggy. Katie was already waiting in the back, her expression a signal that she didn’t understand what was happening either. Aaron sat down on Sarah’s right side and picked up the reins, clucking to the horse to set it trotting.

  Another buggy pulled out behind us-the open carriage that Samuel and Levi drov
e to work. In a caravan we turned onto roads I had never traveled upon. They wound through fields and farms where the men were still working, and finally came to a stop at a small crossroads that was dotted with several other buggies.

  The cemetery was neat and small, each marker the same approximate size, so that the very oldest ones were differentiated from the newest only by the chiseled dates. A small group of Amish stood in the far corner, their black dresses and trousers brushing the earth like the wings of crows. As Sarah and Aaron stepped from the buggy, they moved in unison, in greeting.

  Too late, I realized that the Fishers were only their first stop. They circled me and Katie, touching her cheek and her arm and patting her shoulder. They murmured words of loss and sorrow, which sound the same in any language. In the distance, Samuel and Levi carried something from their wagon; the small, unmistakable shape of a coffin.

  Stunned, I broke away from the little group of relatives to stand beside Samuel. Toes to the edge of the grave, he stood looking down at the tiny wooden box. I cleared my throat, and he met my gaze. Why is no one sympathizing with you? I wanted to ask, but the words stuck fast.

  A car pulled slowly to a stop behind the carriages, and Leda and Frank got out, dressed in black. I looked down at my own jeans and T-shirt. If someone had mentioned to me that we’d be attending a funeral, I could have changed. But from the looks of things, no one had bothered to tell Katie this, either.

  She accepted the sympathies of her relatives, flinching slightly every time someone spoke to her, as if suffering a physical blow. The bishop and the deacon, men I recognized from the church service, came to stand beside the open grave, and the small group gathered around.

  I wondered what sense of responsibility had made Sarah and Aaron retrieve the body of an infant that they would not admit aloud was their grandchild. I wondered how Samuel felt to be standing on the fringe. I wondered what Katie made of all this, given her denial of the pregnancy altogether.

  With her mother firmly holding her hand, Katie stepped forward. The bishop began to pray, and everyone bowed their heads-everyone except Katie. She looked straight ahead, then at me, then at the buggies-anywhere but in that grave. Finally, she turned her face to the sky like a flower, and smiled softly, inappropriately, as the sun washed over her skin.