Plain Truth (33 page)

TEN
Ellie

O
CTOBER

A
fter three months with the Fishers, I sometimes found it hard to believe that not so long ago, I thought a crimper had something to do with curling one's hair, and that being shocked referred to a person, rather than a bundle of wheat. Preparations for Katie's trial fell, unfortunately, in the middle of harvesting season, and any hopes I harbored about getting support from her family in the creation of our insanity defense were quickly put to rest. In Aaron Fisher's mind, getting the tobacco in on time and the silos filled were the household priorities.

And like it or not, I was part of that household.

I walked along behind Katie in the rich tobacco field, three acres so lush that they might have been a rice paddy. “This one,” she said, instructing me on which leaves were ready to pick.

“They all look the same to me,” I complained. “They're all green. Aren't you supposed to wait until things start to go brown before you pick them?”

“Not tobacco. Look at the size, here.” She snapped a leaf off and set it gently in a basket.

“Think of all the lung cancer, right here in this field,” I murmured.

But it didn't bother Katie. “It's a cash crop,” she said simply. “With dairy farming, it's hard to turn a profit.”

I bent down, ready to snap off my first leaf. “No!” Katie cried. “That's too small.” She held up another, larger leaf.

“Maybe I should just jump ahead to the next step. Stuffing it into pipes, or sticking the surgeon general's warning on the box.”

Katie rolled her eyes. “The next step is to hang it, and if you can't figure out the picking, I'm not going to let you get close to a five-foot-long sharpened stick.”

I laughed and bent to the plants again. As much as I hated to admit it, I was in better shape than I'd ever been in my life. My work as an attorney had always exercised my mind, but not my body; by default, living with the Fishers, I was stretching the limits of both. The Amish believed that hard physical labor was a basic tenet of living, and almost never employed outsiders as farmhands because they couldn't live up to the standard workday. Although Aaron had never said as much to me, I knew he was expecting me to break down in a citified, sobbing puddle, or sneak from the fields for a glass of lemonade before harvest was finished—things that would point to the obvious fact I wasn't one of them. All of which made me even more determined to do my share, if only to prove him wrong. To that end, I'd spent a week in early August standing bundles of wheat on end as the cutter spit them out, until my back was knotted and my skin was covered with chaff. I'd matched the rest of the family in that field, minute for minute. In my mind was the thought that if I earned Aaron's respect on familiar, fertile ground, I might earn his respect on my own turf.

“Ellie, are you coming or not?”

Katie stood with her hands on her hips, her full basket planted between her feet. I'd been picking leaves as my mind wandered too, because my own basket was nearly filled. God only knew if the tobacco I'd chosen was ready for harvest—I took some of the bigger leaves and stuck them on top, so Katie wouldn't notice. Then I followed her to the long shed that had been empty the few months I'd been living on the farm.

There were large gaps in the slatted walls of the shed, so that the air traveled through in a light breeze. I sat down on a hay bale beside Katie and watched her pick up a skewer as tall as she was. “You poke the leaves through the stem,” she instructed. “Like cranberries on string, for your Christmas trees.”

Now,
this
I could do. Balancing my own stick against the hay bale, I began to line the leaves up a few inches apart, so that they'd be able to dry. I knew that by the time we were finished, the small field of tobacco would be bare, all the leaves hanging on poles stacked to the rafters of this shed. In the winter, when I was long gone, the family would strip the tobacco and sell it down South.

Would Katie be here to help?

“Maybe when we're done with this, we could talk about the trial.”

“Why?” Katie said, her attention focused on piercing the stems of her leaves. “You're going to say what you want to, anyway.”

I let the comment roll off my back. In the months since Katie had been interviewed by the forensic psychiatrists, I had marched along with my insanity defense, although I knew it upset her. In her mind, she hadn't killed that baby, so an inability to recall the murder had nothing to do with insanity. Every time I asked her for her assistance—with lines of questioning, with the sequence of events of that horrible night—she turned away. Her skittishness about the defense had turned her into a wild card, which made me even more grateful I hadn't decided to go with reasonable doubt. For an insanity defense, Katie would never have to take the stand.

“Katie,” I said patiently. “I've been in a lot more courts than you have. You're going to have to believe me.”

She stabbed a leaf onto the end of the stick. “You don't believe me.”

But how could I? Her story, since the beginning of this farce, had changed several times. Either I could make the jury think that was due to dissociation, or they would simply assume she'd been lying. Intentionally, I speared a leaf through the midpoint, instead of the stem. “No,” Katie said, reaching for it. “You're doing it wrong. Watch.”

With relief, I settled down into letting her be the expert. With any luck, even without help from Katie I would have enough testimony from Dr. Polacci to get her acquitted. We worked side by side in silence, the dust motes rising in the glow that filtered through the shed's walls. When our baskets were almost empty, I looked up. “You want to pick some more?”

“Only if you want to,” Katie answered, deferring—as the Amish always did—to someone else's opinion.

The door to the shed flew open, the sun backlighting a tall man in a suit. It had to be Coop; although he usually dressed casually when he visited Katie, occasionally he drove straight from the office—and at any rate, he was the only male I could think of who'd be wearing anything other than suspendered trousers. I stood, a smile on my face as he walked inside.

“You,” Stephen said, grinning, “are one tough woman to find.”

For a moment I could not move. Then I set down the stick and managed to find my voice. “What are you doing here?”

He laughed. “Well, that's not quite the hello I was thinking of during the drive, but I can see you're meeting with a client.” Stephen offered his hand to Katie. “Hi there,” he said. “Stephen Chatham.” Glancing around the shed, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Is this some kind of occupational therapy?”

I could barely grasp the fact that Stephen was here. “It's a cash crop,” I said finally.

All the while, Katie was darting glances at me, wisely remaining silent. I could not look at Stephen without imagining Coop standing beside him. Stephen didn't have Coop's pale green eyes. Stephen looked too polished. Stephen's smile seemed practiced, instead of a flag unfurled.

“You know, I'm actually quite busy,” I hedged.

“The only case I see you actively working on involves ten-packs of Marlboro Lights. Which is why you ought to thank me. I'm guessing that access to law libraries in Amish country is limited at best, so I took the liberty of pulling some verdicts for you to look over.” He reached into a portfolio and extracted a thick sheaf of papers. “Three neonaticides that walked under Pennsylvania law. One of which, believe it or not, was an insanity defense.”

“How did you know I noticed up insanity?”

Stephen shrugged. “This case is generating a lot of buzz, Ellie. Word gets around.”

I was about to respond when Katie suddenly pushed between us, running from the shed without a backward glance.

Sarah invited Stephen to dinner, but he didn't want to accept the invitation. “Let me take you out,” he suggested. “We can go to one of those homey Amish places in town, if you want.”

As if, leaving this household, the first thing I'd want to do is eat the same thing all over again. “They're not Amish,” I said, just to be fractious. “Anyone who's truly Plain wouldn't advertise their religion on the sign.”

“Well, then, there's always McDonald's.”

I glanced into the kitchen, where Sarah and Katie were hard at work preparing dinner—a chore that I'd be helping with, had Stephen not arrived. Sarah peered over her shoulder at us, caught my eye, and turned away quickly in embarrassment.

Folding my arms across my chest, I said, “How come you can't eat here?”

“I just thought that you'd—”

“Well, you thought wrong, Stephen. I'd actually prefer to have dinner with the Fishers.” I could not say why, but it was important to me that Sarah and Katie know I'd rather be with them than Stephen. That they understand I wasn't pining to get away as quickly as possible.

Somehow, over the past few months, these people had become my friends.

Stephen held up his hands, crying peace. “Whatever you want, Ellie. Dinner with Ma and Pa Kettle will be just fine.”

“Oh, for God's sake, Stephen. Maybe they dress differently and pray more often than you do, but that doesn't mean that they can't hear you being an idiot.”

Stephen sobered quickly. “I didn't mean to offend anyone. I only figured after—what, four months here? You might be anxious for a little intellectual banter.” He took my hand, tugging me out of the range of the doorway, so that Sarah and Katie couldn't see us. “I've missed you,” he said. “Truth is, I wanted you all to myself.”

I saw him coming closer to kiss me and froze—a deer in the headlights, unable to stop what was about to happen. Stephen's mouth was warm on mine, his hands crossing the map of my back, but my mind was running. After eight years, how could being in Stephen's arms feel less comfortable than being in Coop's?

With a small, tight smile, I flattened my hands against Stephen's chest. “Not now,” I whispered. “Why don't you walk around the farm while I help with supper?”

An hour later, when the family gathered at the table, all my doubts about Stephen were laid to rest. He bowed his head solemnly at the silent prayer; he used his charm on Sarah until she couldn't pass him a serving dish without blushing the color of a plum; he talked about silage as if the subject interested him even more than the law. I should have known that this would be fine: the Fishers were generous and friendly; Stephen was a consummate actor. By the time Sarah served the main course—a pot roast, chicken pie, and turkey stroganoff—I had relaxed enough to take my first bite of food.

Katie was telling a hilarious story about the time the cows got out of the barn in the middle of a snowstorm when there was a knock at the door. Elam went to open it, but before the older man could get there, the visitor let himself in. “Hey,” Coop said, shrugging out of his coat. “Am I too late for dessert?”

Like me, he'd become an adopted member of the Fisher family. After the first month, even Aaron stopped objecting with mutinous silence when Sarah graciously offered him dinner on the days he met with Katie or visited me. His eyes lit on mine and warmed—that was all the contact we allowed each other, in front of others. Then he saw Stephen sitting next to me.

Stephen was already getting to his feet, one hand on my shoulder and the other extended. “Stephen Chatham,” he said, smiling quizzically. “Have we met?”

“John Cooper. And yes, I think we have,” Coop said, so smoothly I could have kissed him right then and there. “At the opera.”

“Symphony,” I murmured.

Both men looked at me.

“Coop's taken Katie on as a patient,” I explained.

“Coop,” Stephen repeated slowly, and I saw him making the synaptic connections: the abbreviated nickname, the snapshots jammed into the back of my college yearbook, the conversations we'd had under a blanket of darkness about our past lovers, when we were still safe and secure in each other's arms. “That's right. You knew Ellie from Penn.”

Coop looked at me reluctantly, as if he didn't trust himself to control whatever emotions might play across his face. “Yeah. It's been a while.”

I had never been more thankful for the Amish belief that intimate relationships were matters only for the interest of the two people involved. Katie was meticulously cutting the meat on her plate; Sarah found something to attend to in the kitchen; the other men began to discuss when they were planning to fill the silos. Drawing a deep breath, I sat down. “Well,” I said, my voice high and bright. “Who's hungry?”

Outside, a light wind whistled through the trees, playing them like pipes. Stephen and I walked beneath the overturned bowl of the sky, close enough to feel each other's body heat without actually touching. “The whole case is riding on the forensic psychiatrist,” I told him. “If the jury doesn't buy her, Katie's screwed.”

“Then let's hope the jury buys her,” Stephen said gallantly, when I knew he was thinking that we didn't have a prayer. “Maybe it won't come to that. Maybe I'll get a mistrial.” Stephen pulled the lapels of his coat up. “How's that?”

“I motioned for one on the grounds that Katie won't be tried by a jury of her peers.”

He smiled slyly. “Meaning there won't be a single Amish body among the twelve?”

“Yup.”

“I thought participation in the legal system was against their religion?”

“It might as well be. Like I said: she won't be tried by a jury of her peers.”

Stephen burst out laughing. “God, El. You're never gonna win it, but it's one hell of an appealable issue. This backwater judge isn't going to know what hit her.” He stepped in front of me in one smooth maneuver, so that I walked into his open arms. “You are something else,” he murmured against my ear.

Maybe it was the way I lighted in his embrace, or the millisecond it took my body to relax against his—something made Stephen draw back. He spread his hand against my cheek, curving his thumb along my jaw. “So,” he said softly. “It's like that?”