Plain Truth (10 page)

Aaron looked down at the ground as he spoke gruffly. “Perhaps you would like to see the milking sometime.”

It was the closest he would come to an admission of gratitude. “Yes,” I said. “I would.”

Sarah made enough food to feed the whole Amish community, much less her own small household plus one live-in guest. She brought bowl after bowl to the table, chicken with dumplings and vegetables swimming in sauces, and meat that had been cooked to the point where it broke apart at the touch of a fork. There were relishes and breads and spiced, stewed pears. In the center of the table was a blue pitcher of fresh milk. Looking at all the rich choices, I wondered how these people could eat this way, three times a day, and not grow obese.

In addition to the three Fishers I'd met, there was an older man, who did not bother to introduce himself but seemed to know who I was all the same. From his features, I assumed he was Aaron's father, and that he most likely lived in the small apartment attached to the rear of the farmhouse. He bent his head, which caused all the others to bend their heads, a strange kinetic reaction, and began to pray silently over the food. Unsettled—when was the last time I'd said grace?—I waited until they looked up and began to ladle food onto their plates. Katie raised the pitcher of milk and poured some into her glass; then passed it to her right, to me.

I had never been a big fan of milk, but I figured that wasn't the smartest thing to admit on a dairy farm. I poured myself some and handed the pitcher to Aaron Fisher.

The Fishers laughed and talked in their dialect, helping themselves to food when their plates were empty. Finally, Aaron leaned back in his chair and let out a phenomenal belch. My eyes widened at the breach of etiquette, but his wife beamed at him as if that was the grandest compliment he could ever give.

I suddenly saw a string of meals like this one, stretching out for months, with me prominently cast as the outsider. It took me a moment to realize that Aaron was asking me something. In Pennsylvania Dutch.

“The chowchow,” I said in slow, careful English, following his gaze to the particular bowl. “Is that what you want?”

His chin went up a notch.
“Ja,”
he answered.

I flattened my hands on the table. “In the future, I'd prefer it if you asked me questions in my own language, Mr. Fisher.”

“We don't speak English at the supper table,” Katie answered.

My gaze never left Aaron Fisher's face. “You do now,” I said.

By nine o'clock, I was ready to climb the walls. I couldn't run out to Blockbuster for a video, and even if I could have, there was no TV or VCR for me to watch it on. An entire shelf of books turned out to be written in German—a children's primer, something called the
Martyr's Mirror
, and a whole host of other titles I could not have pronounced without butchering. Finally I discovered a newspaper written in English—
Die Botschaft
—and settled down to read about horse auctions and grain threshing.

The Fishers filed into the room one by one, as if drawn by a silent bell. They sat and bowed their heads. Aaron looked at me, a question in his eyes. When I didn't respond, he began to read out loud from a German Bible.

I'd never been very religious; and completely unawares, I'd been tossed into a household that literally structured itself on Christianity. Drawing in my breath, I stared at the newspaper and let the letters swim, trying not to feel like a heathen.

Less than two minutes later, Katie got up and walked over to me. “I'll be going to bed now,” she announced. I set aside the paper. “Then I will too.”

After coming out of the bathroom in my silk pajamas, I watched Katie sit on her bed in her long white nightgown and comb out her hair. Unpinned, it fell nearly to her waist and rippled with every stroke of the brush. I sat cross-legged on my own twin bed, my hand propped on my cheek. “My mother used to do that for me.”

“Truly?” Katie said, looking up.

“Yeah. Every single night, untangling all my knots. I hated it. I thought it was a form of torture.” I touched my short cap of hair. “As you can see, I got my revenge.”

Katie smiled. “We don't have a choice. We don't cut our hair.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

Granted, hers was lovely—but what if, like me, she'd had to suffer snarls every day of her life? “What if you wanted to?”

“Why would I? Then I'd be different from all the others.” Katie set down her brush, effectively ending the conversation, and crawled into bed. Leaning over, she extinguished the gas lamp, pitching the room into total darkness.

“Ellie?”

“Hmm?”

“What is it like where you live?”

I considered for a moment. “Noisy. There are more cars, and they seem to be right outside the window all night long, honking and screeching to a stop. There are more people, too— and I'd be hard pressed to find a cow or chicken, much less sweet corn, unless you count the kind in the freezer section. But I don't really live in Philadelphia anymore. I'm sort of in between residences, just now.”

Katie was quiet for so long I thought she had fallen asleep. “No, you're not,” she said. “Now you're with us.”

When I woke up with a start, I thought I'd had the nightmare again, the one with the little girls from my last trial, but my sheets were still tucked neatly, and my heartbeat was slow and steady. I glanced at Katie's bed, at the quilt tossed back to reveal her missing, and immediately got up. Padding downstairs barefoot, I checked in the kitchen and the living room before I heard the quiet click of a door and footsteps on the porch.

She went all the way to the pond where I'd been earlier that day. I stayed behind, hidden, just close enough to be able to see and hear her. She sat down on a small wrought-iron bench set before the big oak tree, and closed her eyes.

Was she sleepwalking again? Or was she meeting someone here?

Was this where Katie and Samuel had their trysts? Was this where a baby had been conceived?

“Where are you?” Katie's whisper reached me, and I realized two things at once: that she was too lucid still to be asleep; and that I understood her words. “How come you're hiding?”

Clearly, she knew I had followed her. Who else would she be talking to in English?

I stepped out from behind the willow and stood in front of her. “I'll tell you why I'm hiding, if you tell me why you came out here in the first place.”

Katie scrambled to her feet, her cheeks flushed with color. She looked so startled that I took a step back—right into the edge of the pond, wetting the edge of my pajama bottoms. “Surprise,” I said flatly.

“Ellie! What are you doing up?”

“I think that's my question, actually. In addition to the following: Who were you expecting to meet here? Samuel, maybe? You two planning to get your story straight, before I corner him for a little interview?”

“There is no story—”

“For God's sake, Katie, give it up! You had a baby. You've been charged with murder. I've been appointed as your legal defense, and you're still sneaking around behind my back, in the middle of the night. You know, I've done this a lot longer than you have, and people don't sneak around unless they have something to hide. Coincidentally, they also don't lie unless they have something to hide. Guess which one of us fails on both counts?” Tears were rolling down Katie's cheeks. Steeling myself, I crossed my arms. “You'd better start talking.”

She shook her head. “It's not Samuel. I'm not meeting him.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I'm telling you the truth!”

I snorted. “Right. You're not meeting Samuel; you just decided you needed a little fresh air. Or is this some midnight Amish custom I need to learn?”

“I didn't come out here because of Samuel.” She looked up at me. “I couldn't sleep.”

“You were talking to someone. You thought he was hiding.”

Katie ducked her head. “She.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She
. The person I was looking for is a girl.”

“Nice try, Katie, but you're out of luck. I don't see a girl. And I don't see a guy, either, but something tells me if I give it five minutes a big, blond fellow is going to show up.”

“I was looking for my sister. Hannah.” She hesitated. “You're sleeping in her bed.”

Mentally, I counted everyone I'd met that day. There had been no other young girl; and I found it difficult to believe that Leda would never have mentioned Katie's siblings to me. “How come Hannah wasn't at dinner? Or praying with you tonight?”

“Because … she's dead.”

This time when I stepped back, both feet landed squarely in the pond. “She's dead.”

“Ja.”
Katie raised her face to mine. “She drowned here when she was seven. I was eleven, and I was supposed to be watching her while we went skating, but she fell through the ice.” She wiped her eyes and her nose with the sleeve of her nightgown. “You … you wanted me to tell you everything, to tell you the truth. I come out here to talk to Hannah. Sometimes I see her, even. I didn't tell anyone about her, because seeing ghosts, well, Mam and Dat would think I'm all
ferhoodled
. But she's here, Ellie. She is, I swear it to you.”

“Like you swear you never had that baby?” I murmured.

Katie turned away from me. “I knew you wouldn't understand. The only person who ever did was—”

“Was who?”

“Nobody,” she said stubbornly.

I spread my arms. “Well, then, call out for her. Hey, Hannah!” I shouted. “Come and play.” I waited a moment for good measure, and then shrugged. “Funny, I don't see anything. Imagine that.”

“She won't come with you here.”

“Isn't that convenient,” I said.

Katie's eyes were dark and militant, filled with conviction. “I am telling you that I've seen Hannah since she died. I hear her talking, when the wind comes. And I see her skating, right over the top of the pond. She's real.”

“You expect me to fall for this? To think you came out here because you believe in ghosts?”

“I believe in Hannah,” Katie clarified.

I sighed. “It seems to me you believe a lot of things that may not necessarily be true. Come back to bed, Katie,” I said over my shoulder, and left without waiting to see if she'd follow.

Once Katie was asleep, I tiptoed out of the room with my purse. Outside, on the porch, I withdrew my cell phone. Ironically, you could get a decent signal in Lancaster County—some of the more progressive Amish farmers had agreed to allow cellular towers on their land, for a fee that negated the need to grow a winter crop. Punching in several numbers, I waited for a familiar, groggy voice.

“Yeah?”

“Coop, it's me.”

I could almost see him sitting up in bed, the sheets falling away. “Ellie? Jesus! After—what? two years? … You call me at … good God, is it three in the morning?”

“Two-thirty.” I'd known John Joseph Cooper IV for nearly twenty years, when we were at Penn together. No matter what time it was, he'd growl—but he'd forgive me. “Look, I need your help.”

“Oh, this isn't just a three
A.M
. social call?”

“You're not going to believe this, but I'm at an Amish family's home.”

“Ah, I knew it. You never really got over me, and you chucked it all for the simple life.”

I laughed. “Coop, I got over you a decade ago. Just about the time you got married, actually. I'm here as part of a bail provision for a client, who was charged with murdering her newborn. I want you to evaluate her.”

He exhaled slowly. “I'm not a forensic psychiatrist, Ellie. Just your run-of-the-mill suburban shrink.”

“I know, but … well, I trust you. And I need this off the record, a gut feeling, before I decide how I'm going to get her off.”

“You trust me?”

I drew in my breath, remembering. “Well. More or less. More, when the issue at hand doesn't involve me.”

Coop hesitated. “Can you bring her in on Monday?”

“Uh, no. She isn't supposed to leave the farm.”

“I'm making a
house call?”

“You're making a farm call, if it makes you feel any better.”

I could imagine him closing his eyes, flopping back down on his pillows. Just say yes, I urged silently. “I couldn't juggle my schedule until Wednesday at the earliest,” Coop said.

“That's good enough.”

“Think they'll let me milk a cow?”

“I'll see what I can do.”

I could feel his smile, even all these miles away. “Ellie,” he said, “you've got yourself a deal.”

FIVE

A
aron hurried into the kitchen and sat down at the table, Sarah turning in perfect choreography to set a cup of coffee in front of him. “Where is Katie?” he asked, frowning.

“She's asleep, still,” Sarah said. “I didn't think to wake her yet.”

“Yet? It's
Gemeesunndaag
. We have to leave, or we'll be late.”

Sarah flattened her hands on the counter, as if she might be able to smooth the Formica even further. She squared her shoulders and prepared to contradict Aaron, something she had done so infrequently in her marriage she could count the occasions on a single hand. “I don't think Katie should be going to church today.”

Aaron set down his mug. “Of course she'll go to church.”

“She's feeling
grenklich
, Aaron. You saw the look on her face all day yesterday.”

“She's not sick.”

Sarah sank down into the chair across from him. “People will have heard by now about this baby. And the
Englischer
.”

“The bishop knows what Katie said, and he believes her. If Ephram decides there is a need for Katie to make a confession, he'll come and talk to her here first.”

Sarah bit her lip. “Ephram believes Katie when she says she didn't kill that baby. But does he believe her when she says it isn't hers?” When Aaron didn't answer, she reached across the table and touched his hand. “Do you?”