Plain Truth
PRAISE FOR JODI PICOULT
â
[Plain Truth]
reads like a cross between the Harrison Ford movie
Witness
and Scott Turow's novel
Presumed Innocent
, with a dose of television's
The Practice
thrown in.'
â
Arizona Republic
âPicoult is a writer of high energy and conviction ⦠she forges a finely honed, commanding and cathartic drama.'
â
Booklist
âPicoult writes with a fine touch, a sharp eye for detail, and a firm grasp of the delicacy and complexity of human relationships.'
â
The Boston Globe
âThe novelist displays an almost uncanny ability to enter the skins of her troubled young protagonists.'
â
New York Times
âPicoult has the true storyteller's ability to evoke a world on the page and pull the reader into it.'
â
The Women's Review of Books
âEngrossing â¦
The Pact
is compelling reading, right up to the stunning courtroom conclusion.'
â
People
â [
Keeping Faith
] makes you wonder about God. And that is a rare moment, indeed, in modern fiction.'
âUSA Today
âPart thriller, part courtroom drama and part family portrait,
Perfect Match
is an intriguing “what if”.'
â
Sydney Morning Herald
Books by Jodi Picoult
Songs of the Humpback Whale
Harvesting the Heart
Picture Perfect
Mercy
The Pact
Keeping Faith
Plain Truth
Sale m Falls
Perfect Match
Second Glance
My Sister's Keeper
Vanishing Ac ts
The Tenth Circle
Nineteen Minutes
Change of Heart
Handle with Care
JODI PICOULT
Plain Truth
This edition first published in Australia and New Zealand by
Allen & Unwin in 2009
First published in Australia in 2000
First published in the United States in 2000 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Copyright © Jodi Picoult 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian
Copyright Act
1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia
www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74175 801 6
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my dad, Myron Picoult, who taught me to be an original
.
There are not many men in the world who can sneeze like a duck, spy hales of bay, make very bad puns ⦠and cherish their daughters so completely
.
I love you
.
Contents
O
nce again, I find myself indebted to so many people: Dr. Joel Umlas, Dr. James Umlas, and Dr. David Toub for their medical expertise; Dr. Tia Horner and Dr. Stuart Anfang for their explanations of forensic psychiatry and clinical interviews; Dr. Catherine Lewis and Dr. Neil Kaye, for helping me understand neonaticide; my father-in-law, Karl van Leer, who never once blinked when I called and asked about inseminating cows; Kyle van Leer, who saw a “cookie moon” and let me borrow it; Teresa Farina for the fast transcriptions; Dr. Eli2abeth Martin, for finding listeria and leading me through autopsies; Steve Marshall, who took me ghost hunting; Brian Laird, for the troll story; Allegra Lubrano, for finding obscure legal statutes whenever I called frantically to ask “a quick question”; Kiki Keating, attorney extraordinaire, for making the time to come with me to Lancaster and spending all those nights hunched over the tape recorder, brainstorming testimony; and Tim van Leer, for everything. Thanks also to Jane Picoult, who wanted her own sentence this time, for her insight and guiding comments. Thanks to Laura Gross for the same, and for possibly being the only person in the publishing business who wants me to write
faster
. To Emily Bestler and Kip Hakalaâhere's to the start of a beautiful relationship. And to Camille McDuffieâthe third time's a charm. I am indebted to the works of John Hostetler and Donald Kraybill, and to the people I met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, without whom this book could not have been written: Maribel Kraybill, Lt. Renee Schuler, and especially Louise Stoltzfus, a wonderful writer herself, whose contributions here were invaluable. Finally, many thanks to the Amish men, women, and children I met, who graciously opened their homes and their hearts and let me into their world for a little while.
I must be a Christian child
Gentle, patient, meek and mild;
Must be honest, simple, true
In my words and actions too â¦
Must remember, God can view
All I think, and all I do.
âAmish school verse
S
he had often dreamed of her little sister floating dead beneath the surface of the ice, but tonight, for the first time, she envisioned Hannah clawing to get out. She could see Hannah's eyes, wide and milky; could feel Hannah's nails scraping. Then, with a start, she woke. It was not winterâit was July. There was no ice beneath her palms, just the tangled sheets of her bed. But once again, there was someone on the other side, fighting to be free.
As the fist in her belly pulled tighter, she bit her bottom lip. Ignoring the pain that rippled and receded, she tiptoed barefoot into the night.
The barn cat yowled when she stepped inside. She was panting by now, her legs shaking like willow twigs. Lowering herself to the hay in the far corner of the calving pen, she drew up her knees. The swollen cows rolled their blue moon eyes in her direction, then turned away quickly, as if they knew better than to bear witness.
She concentrated on the hides of the Holsteins until their black spots shimmied and swam. She sank her teeth into the rolled hem of her nightgown. There was a funnel of pressure, as if she were being turned inside out; and she remembered how she and Hannah used to squeeze through the hole in the barbed wire fence by the creek's edge, pushing and angled, all knees and grunts and elbows, until by some miracle they'd tumble through.
It was over as suddenly as it had begun. And lying on the matted, stained hay between her legs was a baby.
Aaron Fisher rolled over beneath the bright quilt to stare at the clock beside the bed. There had been nothing, no sound to wake him, but after forty-five years of farming and milking, the smallest things could pull him out of sleep: a footfall in the corn, a change in the pattern of the wind, the rasp of a mother's tongue roughing a newborn calf.
He felt the mattress give as Sarah came up on an elbow behind him, the long braid of her hair curling over her shoulder like a seaman's rope.
“Was ist letz?”
What's the matter?
It was not the animals; there was a full month before the first cow was due to deliver. It was not a robber; there was too little noise. He felt his wife's arm slip around him, hugging his back to her front.
“Nix,”
he murmured. Nothing. But he did not know if he was trying to convince Sarah, or himself.
She knew enough to cut the cord that spiraled purple to the baby's belly. Hands shaking, she managed to reach the old scissors that hung on a peg near the pen's door. They were rusty and coated with bits of hay. The cord severed in two thick snips, and then began spurting blood. Horrified, she pressed her fingers to the ends, pinching it shut, wildly looking around for something to tie it off.
She rummaged in the hay and came up with a small length of baling twine, which she quickly tied around the cord. The bleeding slowed, then stopped. Relieved, she sank back on her elbowsâand then the newborn started to cry.
She snatched the baby up and rocked it tightly. With her foot, she kicked at the hay, trying to cover the blood with a clean layer. The baby's mouth opened and closed on the cotton of her nightgown, rooting.
She knew what the baby wanted, needed, but she couldn't do it. It would make this real.
So she gave the baby her pinkie finger instead. She let the small, powerful jaws suckle, while she did what she had been taught to do in times of extreme stress; what she had been doing for months now. “Lord,” she prayed, “please make this go away.”
The rustle of chains awakened her. It was still dark out, but the dairy cows' internal schedule had them rising at their individual stalls, their bags hanging blue-veined and round with milk, like full moons caught between their legs. She was sore and tired, but knew she had to get out of the barn before the men arrived to do the milking. Glancing down, she realized that a miracle had come to pass: the blood-soaked hay was fresh now, except for a small stain beneath her own bottom. And the two things she'd been holding when she fell asleepâthe scissors and the newbornâwere gone.
She pulled herself to her feet and glanced toward the roof, awed and reverent.
“Denke,”
she whispered, and then she ran out of the barn into the shadows.
Like all other sixteen-year-old Amish boys, Levi Esch no longer attended school. He'd gone through the eighth grade and was now in that limbo between being a child and being old enough to be baptized into the Amish faith. In the interim, he was a hired hand for Aaron Fisher, who no longer had a son to help him work his dairy farm. Levi had gotten the job through the recommendation of his older cousin Samuel, who'd been apprenticing with the Fishers now for five years. And since everyone knew that Samuel was probably going to marry the Fishers' daughter soon and set up his own farm, it meant Levi would be getting a promotion.
His workday started at 4:00
A.M
., as on all other dairy farms. It was still pitch-dark, and Levi could not see Samuel's buggy approach, but he could hear the faint jingle of tack and traces. He grabbed his flat-brimmed straw hat and ran out the door, then jumped onto the seat beside Samuel.
“Hi,” he said breathlessly.
Samuel nodded at him but didn't turn, didn't speak.
“What's the matter?” Levi teased. “Katie wouldn't kiss you good-bye last night?”
Samuel scowled and cuffed Levi, sending his hat spinning into the back of the buggy. “Why don't you just shut up?” The wind whispered at the ragged edge of the cornfield as they drove on in silence. After a while, Samuel pulled the buggy into the Fishers' front yard. Levi scuffed the toe of his boot into the soft earth and waited for Samuel to put the horse out to pasture before they headed into the barn.