Plain Truth (47 page)

“Then why did your father disown you?” Ellie asked.

“I've thought a lot about that, Ms. Hathaway. I'd have to say that he was doing it out of a sense of personal failure, as if it were his fault that I didn't want to follow in his footsteps. And I think he was terrified that if Katie continued to be exposed to me on a regular basis, I'd somehow corrupt her by introducing her to the English world.”

“Tell us about your relationship with your sister.”

Jacob grinned. “Well, I don't imagine it's that much different than anyone else with a sibling. Sometimes she was my best buddy, and other times she was the world's greatest pain in the neck. She was younger than me by several years, so it became my responsibility to watch over her and teach her how to do certain things around the farm.”

“Were you close?”

“Very. When you're Amish, family is everything. You're not only together at every meal—you're working side-by-side to make a living.” He smiled at Katie. “You come to know someone awfully well when you get up with them at four-thirty every morning to shovel cow manure.”

“I'm sure you do,” Ellie agreed. “Were you two the only children?”

Jacob looked into his lap. “For a while, we had a little sister. Hannah drowned when she was seven.”

“That must have been hard for all of you.”

“Very,” Jacob agreed. “Katie and I were minding her at the time, so we always felt the blame fell on our shoulders. If anything, that brought us even closer.”

Ellie nodded in sympathy. “What happened after you were excommunicated?”

“It was like losing a sister all over again,” Jacob said. “One day Katie was there to talk to, and the next she was completely beyond my reach. Those first few weeks at school, I missed the farm and my parents and my horse and courting buggy, but most of all, I missed Katie. Whenever anything had happened to me in the past, she was the one I'd share it with. And suddenly I was in a new world full of strange sights and sounds and customs, and I couldn't tell her about it.”

“What did you do?”

“Something very un-Amish: I fought back. I contacted my aunt, who'd left the church when she married a Mennonite. I knew she'd be able to get word to my mother and to Katie, without my father hearing about it. My mother couldn't come to see me—it wouldn't be right for her to go against her husband's wishes—but she sent Katie as a goodwill ambassador, about once a month for several years.”

“Are you telling me that she sneaked out of the house, lied to her father, and traveled hundreds of miles to stay with you in a college dormitory?”

Jacob nodded. “Yes.”

“Come on now,” Ellie scoffed. “Going to college is forbidden by the church—but behavior like Katie's is condoned?”

“At the time, she wasn't baptized yet—so she wasn't breaking any of the rules by eating with me, socializing with me, driving in my car. She was just staying connected to her brother. Yes, she hid her trips from my father—but my mother knew exactly where she was going, and supported it. I never saw it as Katie trying to lie and hurt our family; to me, she was doing the best she could to keep us together.”

“When she came to State College for these visits, did she become—” Ellie smiled at the jury. “Well, for lack of a better term—a party animal?”

“Far from it. First off, she felt like she stood out like a sore thumb. She wanted to hole up in my apartment and have me read to her from the books I was studying. I could tell she was uncomfortable dressed Plain around all the college students, so one of the first things I did was buy her some ordinary English clothing. Jeans, a couple of shirts. Things like that.”

“But didn't you say that dressing a certain way is one of the rules of the church?”

“Yes. But, again, Katie hadn't been bapti2ed Amish yet, so she wasn't breaking any rules. There's a certain level of experimentation that Plain folks expect from their children before they settle down to take the baptismal vow. A taste of what's out there. Teenagers who've been brought up Amish will dress in jeans, or hang out at a mall, go to a movie—maybe even drink a few beers.”

“Amish
teens do this?”

Jacob nodded. “When you're about fifteen or sixteen and you come into your running-around years, you join a gang of peers to socialize with. Believe me, many of those Plain kids take up stuff that's a lot riskier than the few things Katie experienced with me at Penn State. We weren't doing drugs, or getting drunk, or party hopping. I wasn't doing that myself, so I certainly wouldn't have been dragging my sister along. I worked very hard to get into college, and I made some wrenching decisions in order to go. My primary reason for being at Penn State was not to fool around, but to learn. Mostly, that's what Katie spent time doing with me.” He looked at his sister. “When she came to see me, I considered it a privilege. It was a piece of home, brought all the way to where I was. The last thing I would have wanted to do was scare her away.”

“You sound like you care very much for her.”

“I do,” Jacob said. “She's my sister.”

“Tell us about Katie.”

“She's sweet, kind, good. Considerate. Selfless. She does what needs to be done. There is no doubt in my mind that she'll be a terrific wife, a wonderful mother.”

“Yet today she's on trial for murdering an infant.”

Jacob shook his head. “It's crazy, is all. If you knew her, if you knew how she'd been brought up, you'd realize that the very thought of Katie murdering another living being is ridiculous. She used to catch spiders crawling up the walls in the house, and set them outside instead of just killing them.” He sighed. “There's no way for me to make you understand what it means to be Plain, because most people can't see past the buggies and the funny clothes to the beliefs that really identify the Amish. But a murder charge—well, it's an English thing. In the Amish community there's no murder or violence, because the Amish know from the time they're babies that you turn the other cheek, like Christ did, rather than take vengeance into your own hands.”

Jacob leaned forward. “There's this little acronym I was taught in grade school—it's J-O-Y. It's supposed to make Plain children remember that
Jesus
is first,
Others
come next, and
You
are last. The very first thing you learn as an Amish kid is that there's always a higher authority to yield to—whether it's your parents, the greater good of the community, or God.” Jacob stared at his sister. “If Katie found herself with a hardship, she would have accepted it. She wouldn't have tried to save herself at the expense of another person. Katie's mind just wouldn't have gone there; wouldn't have even conjured up killing that baby as some kind of solution—because she doesn't know how to be that selfish.”

Ellie crossed her arms. “Jacob, do you recognize the name Adam Sinclair?”

“Objection,” George said. “Relevance?”

“Your Honor, may I approach?” Ellie asked. The judge motioned the two lawyers closer. “If you give me a little leeway, Judge, this line of questioning will eventually make itself clear.”

“I'll allow it.”

Ellie posed the question a second time. “He's my absentee landlord,” Jacob answered. “I rent a house from him in State College.”

“Did you have a personal relationship prior to your business relationship?”

“We were acquaintances.”

“What was your impression of Adam Sinclair?”

Jacob shrugged. “I liked him a lot. He was older than most of the other students, because he was getting his doctorate. He's certainly brilliant. But what I really admired in him was the fact that—like me—he was at Penn State to work, rather than play.”

“Did Adam ever have the chance to meet your sister?”

“Yes, several times, before he left the country to do research.”

“Did he know that Katie is Amish?”

“Sure,” Jacob said.

“When was the last time you spoke to Adam Sinclair?”

“Almost a year ago. I send my rent checks to a property management company. As far as I know, Adam's still in the wilds of Scotland.”

Ellie smiled. “Thank you, Jacob. Nothing further.”

George tucked his hands in his pockets and frowned at the open file on the prosecution's table. “You're here today to help your sister, is that right?”

“Yes,” Jacob said.

“Any way you can?”

“Of course. I want the jury to hear the truth about her.”

“Even if it means lying to them?”

“I wouldn't lie, Mr. Callahan.”

“Of course not,” George said expansively. “Not like your sister did, anyway.”

“She didn't lie!”

George raised his brows. “Seems to be a pattern in your family—you're not Amish, your sister's not acting Amish; you lied, she lied—”

“Objection,” Ellie said dispassionately. “Is there a question in there?”

“Sustained.”

“You lied to your father before you were excommunicated, didn't you?”

“I hid the fact that I wanted to continue my schooling. I did it for his own peace of mind—”

“Did you tell your father you were reading Shakespeare in the loft of the barn?”

“Well, no, I—”

“Come on, Mr. Fisher. What do you call a lie? Hiding something? Not being truthful? Lying by omission? None of this rings a bell for you?”

“Objection.” Ellie stood. “Badgering the witness.”

“Sustained. Please watch yourself, counselor,” Judge Led-better warned.

“If it wasn't a lie, what was it?” George rephrased.

A muscle jumped in Jacob's jaw. “I was doing what I had to do to study.”

George's eyes lit up. “You were doing what you had to do. And you recently said that your sister, the defendant, was good at doing what needs to be done. Would you say that's an Amish trait?”

Jacob hesitated, trying to find the snake beneath the words, poised and ready to strike. “The Amish are very practical people. They don't complain, they just take care of what needs taking care of.”

“You mean, for example, the cows have to get milked, so you get up before dawn to do it?”

“Yes.”

“The hay needs to be cut before the rain comes, so you work till you can barely stand up?”

“Exactly.”

“The baby's illegitimate, so you murder and dispose of it before anyone knows you made a mistake?”

“No,” Jacob said angrily. “Not like that at all.”

“Mr. Fisher, isn't it true that the saintly Amish are really no better than any of us—prone to the same flaws?”

“The Amish don't want to be saints. They're people, like anyone else. But the difference is that they try to lead a quiet, peaceful Christian life … when most of us”—he looked pointedly at the prosecutor—”are already halfway down the road to hell.”

“Do you really expect us to believe that simply growing up among the Amish might make a person unable to entertain a thought of violence or revenge or trickery?”

“The Amish might entertain these thoughts, sir, but rarely. And they'd never act on them. It just goes against their nature.”

“A rabbit will chew off its leg if it's caught in a hunting trap, Mr. Fisher, although no one would call it carnivorous. And although you were raised Amish, lying came quite naturally to you when you decided to continue your studies, right?”

“I hid my studies from my parents because I had no choice,” Jacob said tightly.

“You always have a choice. You could have remained Amish, and not gone to college. You chose to take what your father left you with—no family—in return for following your own selfish desires. This is true, isn't it, Mr. Fisher?”

Jacob looked into his lap. He felt, rolling over him, the same wave of doubt that he'd struggled with for months after leaving East Paradise; the wave that he once thought he'd drown beneath. “It's true,” he answered softly.

He could feel Ellie Hathaway's eyes on him, could hear her voice silently reminding him that whatever the prosecutor did, it was about Katie and not himself. With determination, he raised his chin and stared George Callahan down.

“Katie's been lying to your father for six years now?”

“She hasn't been lying.”

“Has she told your father she's been visiting you?”

“No.”

“Has she told your father that she's staying with your aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Has she indeed been staying with your aunt?”

“No.”

“And that's not a lie?”

“It's … misinformation.”

George snorted. “Misinformation? That's a new one. Call it what you will, Mr. Fisher. So the defendant
misinformed
your father. I assume she
misinformed
you too?”

“Never.”

“No? Did she tell you she was involved in a sexual relationship?”

“That wasn't something she—”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

“I never asked. I'm not sure she admitted it to herself.”

George raised his brows. “You're an expert psychiatrist now?”

“I'm an expert on my sister.”

The attorney shrugged, making it clear what he thought of that. “Let's talk about these destructive Amish gangs. Your sister belonged to one of the faster gangs?”

Jacob laughed. “Look, this isn't the Sharks and the Jets, with rumbles and territories. Just like English teenagers, most Amish kids are good kids. An Amish gang is simply a term for a group of friends. Katie belonged to the Sparkies.”

“The Sparkies?”

“Yes. They're not the most straitlaced gang in Lancaster County—that would be the Kirkwooders—but they're probably second or third.” He smiled at the prosecutor. “The Ammies, the Shotguns, the Happy Jacks—those are the gangs that are, as you put it, more destructive. They tend to attract kids who get a lot of attention for acting out. But I don't think Katie even frater-ni2es with young people from any of those groups.”