Plain Truth (14 page)

This is all a way of prefacing that when Sarah invited me to the quilting session she was holding in the living room, I wasn't suitably excited. Things had been strained between us since the previous night. This morning she had wordlessly handed Katie a long strip of white muslin to bind herself. An invitation to quilt was a concession of sorts, a welcome into her world that had previously not been extended. It was also a plea to just let last night pass for what it was.

“You don't have to sew,” Katie told me, pulling me by the wrist into the other room. “You can just watch us.”

There were four women plus the Fishers: Levi's mother, Anna Esch; Samuel's mother, Martha Stoltzfus; and two cousins of Sarah's, Rachel and Louise Lapp. These women were younger, and brought along their smallest children—one an infant still swaddled, the other a toddler who sat on the floor at Rachel's feet and played with scraps of fabric.

The quilt was spread across the table with spools of white thread scattered over its top. The women looked up as I entered the room. “This is Ellie Hathaway,” Katie announced.

“Sie schelt an shook mit uns wohne,”
Sarah added.

Out of deference to me, Anna responded in English. “How long will she be staying?”

“As long as it takes for Katie's case to come to trial,” I said. As I sat down, Louise Lapp's little girl tottered to a standing position and lunged for the bright buttons on my blouse. To keep her from falling, I caught her up in my arms and swung her onto my lap, running my fingers up her belly to make her smile, reveling in the sweet, damp weight of a child. Her sticky hands grasped my wrists, and her head tipped back to reveal the whitest, softest crease in her neck. Too late, I realized that I was being overly friendly with the child of a woman who most likely did not trust me with her daughter's care. I looked up, prepared to apologize, and found all the women now regarding me with considerable esteem.

Well, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. As the women bent to their stitches, I played with the little girl. “Do you care to sew?” Sarah asked politely, and I laughed.

“Believe me, you'd rather I didn't.”

Anna's eyes sparkled. “Tell her about the time you stitched Martha's quilt to your apron, Rachel.”

“Why bother?” Rachel huffed. “You do a wonderful
gut
job telling the story yourself.”

Katie idly threaded a needle and bowed her head over a square of white batting, making small, even stitches without the benefit of a ruler or a machine. “That's amazing,” I said, honestly impressed. “They're so tiny, they almost seem to disappear.”

“No better than anyone else's,” Katie said, her cheeks reddening at the praise.

The sewing continued quietly for a few moments, women gracefully dipping toward and lifting from the quilt like gazelles coming to drink from a pool of water. “So, Ellie,” Rachel asked. “You are from Philadelphia?”

“Yes. Most recently.”

Martha snipped off the end of a piece of thread with her teeth. “I was there, once. Went in by train. Whole lot of people hurrying around to go nowhere fast, if you ask me.”

I laughed. “That's pretty much right.”

Suddenly a spool of thread tumbled from the table and landed square on the head of the infant, sleeping in a small basket. He flailed and began to cry, loud, unstoppable sobs. Katie, who was closest, reached out to quiet him.

“Don't you touch him.”

Rachel's words fell like a stone into the room, stilling the hands of the women so that their palms floated over the quilt like those of healers. Rachel secured her needle by weaving it through the fabric and then lifted her son against her chest.

“Rachel Lapp!” Martha scolded. “What is the matter with you?”

She would not look at Sarah or Katie. “I just don't think I want Katie around little Joseph right now, is all. Much as I care for Katie, this here is my son.”

“And Katie's my daughter,” Sarah said slowly.

Martha rested her arm on Katie's chair. “She's very nearly my daughter, too.”

Rachel's chin lifted a notch. “If I'm not welcome here—”

“You're welcome, Rachel,” Sarah said quietly. “But you are not allowed to make my Katie feel unwelcome in her own house.”

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 ama2ed 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 babysitter 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 sooner 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.