Plain Truth

ELEVEN

Judge Philomena Ledbetter watched the attorney fumble her pen for the third time since she’d entered chambers. For a big-city legal eagle, Ellie Hathaway seemed as skittish as a lawyer knee-deep in her first litigation-all the more bizarre, given the fact that just yesterday, she’d been confident and competent. “Counselor,” the judge said, “you called us back for a discussion?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I felt there was a need for more argument before the trial. Certain . . . circumstances have come to light.”

Sitting on her right, George Callahan snorted. “In the ten hours since we last met?”

Judge Ledbetter ignored his comment. She wasn’t too thrilled herself to be called in on short notice and forced to juggle her schedule to make accommodations. “Would you care to elaborate, Ms. Hathaway?”

Ellie swallowed. “I would not normally do this, I want to say that up front. And this is not my choice. Due to confidentiality I can’t say everything, but my client believes-that is, I believe . . .” She cleared her throat. “I need to withdraw my defense of guilty but mentally ill.”

“Excuse me?” George said.

Ellie straightened her spine. “In its place, we’re entering a plea of not guilty.”

Judge Ledbetter frowned. “I’m sure you know that at this point-”

“Believe me, I know everything. I don’t have a choice, Your Honor. In order to keep my ethical obligations to the court and to my client, I have to do this. I’m just trying to give you as much notice as I’ve had.”

Predictably, George exploded. “You can’t do this three and half weeks before the trial!”

“Why should it make any difference to you?” Ellie snapped. “You were supposed to be trying to prove all along she wasn’t insane-and now I’m telling you you’re right. This isn’t about me screwing up your prosecution, George; it’s about me screwing up my own defense.” Taking a deep breath, she turned toward the judge. “I’d like more time to prepare, Your Honor.”

The judge raised her brows. “Wouldn’t we all, Ms. Hathaway,” she said dryly. “Well, I’m sorry, but you’re on the docket for three and half weeks from now, and this is your decision.”

With a terse nod, Ellie gathered her things and stormed out of chambers, leaving both the county attorney and the judge wondering what had just transpired.

Ellie hurried out of the judge’s chambers and through the hallways of the superior court, then burst through the front doors of the building and stopped dead, staring at the bleak, bare arms of the trees and the overcast sky. She had absolutely no idea what to do next. Her mind was running a million places at once-damn good thing, since she had less than a month to mount a defense that was a 180-degree reversal of what she’d been planning.

She set down her briefcase so that it lolled against her ankle, and slowly sank to the courthouse steps. Then, squandering time she could ill afford, she wondered how she was going to manage to win when she was coming from so far behind.

It took Ellie a half hour to track down Jacob, who had spent the night in Lancaster-but not at his parents’ home. Leda opened the door at Ellie’s knock, a smile on her face, but Ellie shoved right past her, her gaze locked on the young man swilling milk from the carton in front of the open refrigerator. “You little shit,” she growled.

Jacob started, spilling milk on the front of his flannel shirt. “What?”

“You’re supposed to be helping me, dammit. You’re supposed to tell me anything you can that might help your sister’s case.”

“I did!”

“Does the name Adam Sinclair fall into that category?”

Leda stepped forward to keep Ellie from jumping at Jacob again, but not before Ellie saw the flat dimming of the eyes that comes with being found out. He stayed his aunt, telling her it was all right, and then turned to Ellie. “What about Adam?”

“He was your roommate?”

“And my landlord.”

Ellie crossed her arms. “And the father of Katie’s child.”

Jacob ignored Leda’s gasp. “I didn’t know for sure, Ellie. I just suspected.”

“A suspicion would have been nice to know-oh, about three months ago. God, is anyone going to be straight with me before we get to trial?”

“I thought you were using an insanity defense,” Leda said.

“Talk to your niece about that.” Ellie turned to Jacob. “All I know is, she goes out with you for two hours last night, comes home, and refuses to let me defend her the way I want to. What the hell did you say?”

Jacob closed his eyes. “I wasn’t talking about her,” he groaned. “I was talking about me.”

Ellie could feel a headache coming on. “Keep going.”

“I told Katie the reason I came back was the same reason I left in the first place-I couldn’t live a lie. I couldn’t let people pretend I was something I really wasn’t. Six years ago, all I wanted was book learning, but I let people think I was happy being Plain. And now, I’m an associate professor, but what I miss more than anything is my family.” He looked up at Ellie, stricken. “When Hannah drowned, I thought it was my fault. I should have been out there watching the two of them, but I was hiding in the barn, trying to read. I said to Katie that for the second time in my life, I was watching my sister go under-but this time the sister was her, and this time I was hiding what happened when she came to visit me.”

“Then you knew she got pregnant when-”

“I didn’t know. I suspected as much, after talking to you and the prosecution’s investigator.” He shook his head. “I didn’t mean for Katie to take me literally. I just wanted her to see it my way.”

“Well, you succeeded,” Ellie answered flatly. “She’s modeling herself after her honest brother now. She wants to confess on the witness stand, and pretend the jury’s her congregation.”

“But I told her the insanity defense was a good one!”

“Apparently, that part of the conversation didn’t leave quite as strong an impression.” Ellie steepled her hands in front of her. “I need to know where to find Adam Sinclair.”

“I haven’t been in touch with him-even my rent checks go to a property management agency. Sinclair’s been out of the country since last October,” Jacob said. “And he hasn’t been in contact with Katie to even know about the pregnancy.”

“If you haven’t been in touch with him, then how do you know he’s still gone? Or that Katie hasn’t been writing to him all this time?”

Without a word, Jacob got off the chair and walked upstairs. He returned a minute later holding a stack of letters, bound with a rubber band. “They come to my place every two weeks, like clockwork,” he said. “To Katie, care of me. The return address hasn’t changed. The postmark’s from Scotland. And I know Katie hasn’t been writing to him because I never gave her a single one of these.”

Torn between professional curiosity and personal affront for Katie, Ellie bristled. “This is a federal offense, you know.”

“Great. You can defend me after you’re through with Katie.” Jacob pushed his hands through his hair and sat down again. “I didn’t do it to be a jerk. I was trying, actually, to be a hero. I just didn’t want Katie to have to face what I did when I decided to go English-turning her back on our folks and finding her way in a place that’s so big and unfamiliar it can keep you awake all night. I didn’t know Katie was pregnant, but even I could see that she was attracted to Adam-she hung around him like a puppy-and I knew that if the feeling was fueled, eventually Katie was going to have to make a choice between two worlds. I thought that if there was a clean break when he left, she’d forget about him, and everything would work out for the best.”

“Does your sister know you have these letters?”

Jacob shook his head. “I was going to tell her last night. But she was so upset already, about the trial coming up so fast, that it seemed like one extra heartache.” He grimaced, flexed his hands on the edge of the table. “I suppose I should give them to her today.”

Ellie stared at the neat, block type that formed the letters of Katie’s name. At the thin-skinned blue airmail stationery, folded and stamped and sealed. “Not necessarily,” she said.

• • •

Technically, Ellie should have dragged Katie into Philadelphia with her, but at this point she’d managed to screw up the legal process so much that bending the requirements for Katie’s bail couldn’t possibly get her into any greater trouble. She didn’t even know why she was driving toward Philly, actually, until she pulled into the parking lot of the medical complex where Coop’s office was located.

The address was familiar, but Ellie had never been there before. She found herself standing in front of the directory, touching her finger to the brass plate stamped with Coop’s name. In his office, when a pretty young secretary asked to help her, a stab of jealousy took Ellie’s breath away. “He’s with a patient,” the woman said. “Would you care to wait?”

“Please.” Ellie took a seat and began to leaf through a magazine that was six months old, without seeing a single page.

After a few minutes there was a buzz on the secretary’s intercom, a muted conversation, and then Coop opened the door to the inner sanctum. “Hi,” he said, his eyes dancing. “I hear this is an emergency.”

“It is,” Ellie replied, feeling better than she had since Katie had turned the world upside down. She followed Coop in and let him close the door. “I need urgent medical attention.”

He took her into his arms. “Well, you know, I’m a psychiatrist. I treat the mind.”

“You treat all of me,” Ellie said. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

When Coop kissed her, Ellie clung to him, rubbing her cheek against the crisp flat of his shirt. He eased her onto his lap in one of the overstuffed armchairs.

“Now, what would Dr. Freud have to say about this?” she murmured.

Coop shifted, his erection strong beneath her legs. “That a cigar isn’t always a cigar.” He groaned, then tumbled her into the chair as he stood up to pace. “I’ve only got a ten-minute window before the next patient arrives, and I’d rather not tempt fate.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“I was hoping for a freebie,” Ellie confessed.

“Well, I’d be happy to take you up on that later-”

“I meant a clinical consult, Coop. My head’s a mess.” She buried her face in her hands. “I’m no longer using an insanity defense for Katie.”

“How come?”

“Because it goes against her code of morality,” Ellie said sarcastically. “I’m just so glad I get to defend the first alleged murderer in history with an unshakable sense of ethics.” She got up and walked to the window. “Katie told me who the baby’s father was-a professor friend of Jacob’s who never knew about the pregnancy. And now that she’s turned over this new leaf of honesty, she won’t let me get up there and say she dissociated and killed the baby, since she swears it’s not the truth.”

Coop whistled. “You couldn’t convince her-”

“I couldn’t say anything. I’m not dealing with a client who understands the way courts operate. Katie believes with all her heart that she can say her piece and she’ll be pardoned. Why shouldn’t she? That’s the way it works in her church.”

“Let’s assume that it’s the truth, that she didn’t kill the baby,” Coop said.

“Well, there are some other unalienable truths, too. Like the fact that the baby was born alive, and that it somehow was found dead and hidden.”

“Okay. So what does that leave you with?”

Ellie sighed. “Someone else killed it-which, as we’ve already discussed, is virtually impossible to use as a defense.”

“Or else the baby died on its own.”

“And walked, postpartum, to the tack room to bury itself under a stack of blankets?”

Coop smiled faintly. “If Katie wanted that baby, and woke up to find it dead, maybe that was the point when she lost touch with reality. Maybe she got rid of the corpse in a dissociative state, and can’t remember now.”

“Concealment of death is still a crime, Coop.”

“But not of nearly the same proportion,” he pointed out. “There’s a pathos to trying to keep from consciously admitting a loved one’s death that doesn’t come into play if you also caused that death.” He shrugged. “I’m no lawyer, El, but it looks to me like you’ve got one thing to go with-that the baby died on its own, and that was what Katie’s mind tried to cover up. And you’ve got to have some expert you can pull out of your hat who’ll twist the autopsy report, right? I mean, she gave birth early. What premature infant is going to make it without an incubator and lights and the services of a neonatal ICU?”

Ellie tried to turn that strategy over in her mind, but her thoughts kept snagging on something that stuck out as sharp and as stubborn as a splinter. It had been accepted, from the autopsy report forward, that Katie had delivered at thirty-two weeks. And no one-Ellie included-had bothered to question that. “How come?” she asked now.

“How come what?”

“How come Katie, a healthy eighteen-year-old girl in better physical shape than most women her age, went into premature labor?”

Dr. Owen Zeigler looked up as Ellie distracted him for the tenth time with a tremendously loud crunch of pork rinds. “If you knew what those did to your body, you wouldn’t eat them,” he said.

“If you knew when the last time I ate was, you wouldn’t bother me.” Ellie watched him hunch over the autopsy report again. “So?”

“So. In and of itself prematurity isn’t an issue. Preterm labor is a fairly frequent occurrence, there’s no good treatment for it, and OBs don’t know what causes it most of the time. In your client’s case, however, the preterm labor was most likely caused by the chorioamnionitis.” Ellie stared at him blankly. “That’s a pathological diagnosis, not a bacteriological one. It basically means that there was marked acute inflammation of the amniotic membranes and villi.”

“Then what caused the chorioamnionitis? What does the ME say?”

“He doesn’t. He implies that the fetal tissues and the placenta were contaminated, so the cause wasn’t isolated and identified.”

“What usually causes chorioamnionitis?”

“Sexual intercourse,” Owen said. “Most of the infectious agents that cause it are bacteria living in the vagina on a regular basis. Put two and two together-” He shrugged.

“What if intercourse wasn’t a viable option?”

“Then an infectious agent entering by another route-like the mother’s bloodstream or a urinary tract infection-would have caused it. But is there evidence to support that?” Owen tapped a page of the autopsy. “This keeps catching my eye,” he admitted. “The liver findings were overlooked. There’s necrosis-cell death-but no evidence of inflammatory response.”

“Translation for those of us who don’t speak pathologese?”

“The ME thought that the liver necrosis was based on asphyxia-a lack of oxygen-his assumed cause of death. But it’s not-those lesions just don’t make sense; they point to something other than asphyxia. Sometimes you see hemorrhagic necrosis due to anoxia, but pure necrosis is unusual.”

“So where do you see that?”

“With congenital heart abnormalities, which this baby didn’t have-or with an infection. Necrosis might occur several hours before the body can mount an inflammatory response to an infection that a pathologist is able to see-and it’s possible the baby died before that happened. I’ll get the tissue blocks from the ME and do a Gram’s stain to see what I come up with.”

Ellie’s hand stopped midway to her mouth, the pork rind forgotten. “Are you saying it’s possible that the baby died of this mystery infection, and not asphyxia?”

“Yeah,” the pathologist said. “I’ll let you know.”

That night, there was going to be a frost. Sarah had heard from Rachel Yoder, who’d heard from Alma Beiler, whose rheumatoid arthritis swelled her knees to the size of melons every year before the first drop of temperature. Katie and Ellie were sent out to the garden to pick the remaining vegetables-tomatoes and squash and carrots as thick as a fist. Katie gathered the food in her apron; Ellie had taken a basket from inside the house. Ellie peered under the broad-backed leaves of the zucchini plant, looking for strays that had made it this far into the harvest season. “When I was little,” she mused, “I used to think that babies came from vegetable patches like this.”

Katie smiled. “I used to think babies came from getting poked with needles.”

“Vaccines?”

“Mmm-hmm. That’s how the cows got pregnant; I’d seen it done.” Ellie had, too; artificial insemination was the safest way to breed the milking herd. Katie laughed out loud. “Boy, did I kick up a fuss when my Mam took me to get a measles shot.”

Ellie chuckled, then sawed a squash off a vine with a knife. “When I found out for real about babies, I didn’t believe it. Logistically, it didn’t seem like it would work.”

“I don’t think so much about where babies come from now,” Katie murmured. “I wonder about where they go.”

Rocking back on her heels, Ellie gingerly set down the knife. “You’re not going to make another confession right now, are you?”

Smiling sadly, Katie shook her head. “No. Your defense strategy is safe.”

“What defense strategy?” Ellie muttered, and at Katie’s panicked glance she scrambled to cover her own words. “I’m sorry. I just don’t quite know what I’m going to do with you now.” Ellie sank down between the rows of bean plants, picked bare weeks ago. “If I had never walked into that courtroom-if I had let you try to defend yourself the way you wanted-you would have been declared incompetent to stand trial. You would have been acquitted, most likely, with the promise of psychiatric care.”

“I’m not incompetent, and you know it,” Katie said stubbornly.

“Yes, and you’re not insane. We’ve already had this conversation.”

“I’m also honest.”

“Amish?” Ellie said, hearing incorrectly. “I think the jury will get that, given your clothes.”

“I said honest. But I’m Amish, too.”

Ellie yanked at the curly head of a carrot. “They might as well be synonyms.” She tugged again, and as the root came flying out of the ground, she suddenly realized what she’d said. “My God, Katie, you’re Amish.”

Katie blinked at her. “If it’s taken you this many months to notice, I don’t-”

“That’s the defense.” A grin spread over Ellie’s face. “Do Amish boys go to war?”

“No. They’re conscientious objectors.”

“How come?”

“Because it isn’t our way to be violent,” Katie replied.

“Exactly. The Amish live according to the literal teachings of Christ. That means turning the other cheek just like Jesus-not just on Sundays, but every single minute of the day.”

Puzzled, Katie said, “I don’t understand.”

“Neither will the jury, but they will by the time I’m finished,” Ellie said. “You know why you’re the first Amish murder suspect in East Paradise, Katie? Because-quite simply-if you’re Amish, you don’t commit murder.”

Dr. Owen Zeigler liked Ellie Hathaway. He had worked with her once before, on a case involving an abusive husband who’d beaten his pregnant wife and caused her to lose her twenty-four-week fetus. He liked her no-nonsense style, her boy’s haircut, and the way her legs seemed to reach all the way to her neck-something anatomically impossible, but stimulating all the same. He had no idea who or what her client was this time around, but the way things were shaping up, Ellie Hathaway was going to get her reasonable doubt-however slim it might be.

In the owl-eye of his microscope, Owen scrutinized the results of the Gram’s stain. There were clusters of dark blue Gram-positive short rods, cocco-bacillary in shape. According to the culture results of the autopsy, these had been identified as diphtheroids-basic contaminants. But there were a hell of a lot of them, making Owen wonder if they were truly diphtheroids after all.

Ellie, actually, had planted the seed of doubt. What if those Gram-positive rods were signs of an infectious agent? A cocco-bacillary organism could easily be misinterpreted as a rod-shaped diphtheroid, especially since the microbiologist who’d performed the test hadn’t done the Gram stain.

He slipped the slide from the scope, cradled it in his palm, and walked down the hospital hall to the lab where Bono Gerhardt worked. Owen found the microbiologist huddled over a catalog of reagents. “You picking out your spring bulbs?”

The microbiologist laughed. “Yeah. I can’t decide between Holland tulips, herpes simplex virus, or cytokeratin.” He nodded at the slide Owen had brought. “What’s that?”

“I’m thinking either Group B beta-hemolytic strep or listeria,” Owen said. “But I was hoping you might be able to tell me for sure.”

Shortly before ten o’clock, the members of the Fisher family would put down whatever they were doing and gravitate, as if pulled by a magnet, to the center of the living room. Elam would say a short German prayer, and then the others would all bow their heads in silence for a moment, offering up their own tribute to God. Ellie had watched it for months now, always recalling that first suspicious conversation she’d had with Sarah about her own faith. The discomfort she’d initially felt had given way to curiosity, and then to indifference-she’d finish reading whatever article she’d been skimming in the Reader’s Digest or one of her own law books, and then go up to bed when the others rose.

Tonight, she and Sarah and Katie had been playing Scrabble. It had gotten almost giddy, with Katie insisting that phonetically spelled words of Dietsch be allowed to count. When the cuckoo clock chimed ten times, Katie dumped her tray of letters into the box, followed by her mother. Aaron, who’d been in the barn, came inside on the wings of a frigid swirl of air. He hung up his coat and went to kneel beside his wife.

But that night, when Elam said the Lord’s Prayer, he recited it in English. Surprised by the overture-the Amish prayed in German, or at the very least, Dietsch-Ellie found her lips moving along. Sarah, whispering too, lifted her head. She looked at Ellie, then shifted the slightest bit to her right, to make a space.

How long had it been since Ellie had prayed, really prayed, not a last-minute send-up as the jury was filing in or when the highway patrolman had caught her doing eighty-five miles per hour? What did she have to lose? Without responding to her own questions, Ellie slipped from her chair and knelt beside Sarah as if she belonged, as if her thoughts and hopes might be answered.

“Bono Gerhardt,” the man said, sticking out his hand. “Charmed.”

Ellie smiled at the microbiologist Owen Zeigler had introduced her to. The man was only about five foot four and wore a surgical scrub cap on his head, printed with zebras and monkeys. A Guatemalan worry doll was pinned to his lapel. Around his neck were headphones, which snaked into a Sony Discman in his right pocket. “You missed the incubation,” he said, “but I’ll forgive you for coming in after the first act.”

Bono led her to a table, where several slides were waiting. “Basically, we’re trying to identify the organism Owen found by using an immunoperoxidase stain. I cut more sections of the paraffin block of tissue, and incubated them with an antibody that will react with listeria-that’s the bacteria we’re trying to ID. Over here are our positive and negative controls: bona fide samples of listeria, courtesy of the veterinary school; and diphtheroids. And now, lady and gentleman, the moment of truth.”

Ellie drew in her breath as Bono set a few drops of solution onto the first specimen.

“This is horseradish peroxidase, an enzyme bound to an antibody,” Bono explained. “Theoretically, this enzyme’s only gonna go where the listeria are.”

Ellie watched him attend to all the slides on the table. Finally, he brandished a small vial. “Iodine?” she guessed.

“Close. It’s just a dye.” He added drops to each sample and then anchored the first slide beneath a microscope. “If that’s not listeria,” Bono murmured, “bite me.”

Ellie looked from one man to the other. “What’s going on?”

Owen squinted into the microscope. “You remember I told you that the necrosis in the liver was probably due to an infection? This is the bacteria that caused it.”

Ellie peered into the scope herself, but all she could see were things that looked like tiny bits of fat rice, edged in brown.

“The infant had listeriosis,” Owen said.

“So he didn’t die of asphyxia?”

“Actually, he did. But it was a chain of events. The asphyxia was due to premature delivery, which was caused by chorioamnionitis-which was caused by listeriosis. The baby contracted the infection from the mother. It’s fatal nearly thirty percent of the time in unborn fetuses, but can go undetected in the mothers.”

“Death by natural causes, then.”

“Correct.”

Ellie grinned. “Owen, that’s fabulous. That’s just the sort of information I was hoping for. And where did the mother pick up the infection?”

Owen looked at Bono. “This is the part that you’re not going to like, Ellie. Listeriosis isn’t like strep throat-you don’t go around contracting it on a daily basis. The odds of infection are roughly one in twenty thousand pregnant women. Maternal infection usually occurs after consumption of contaminated food, and with today’s technology, the specific contaminants are pretty well negated by the time the food’s available for consumption.”

Ellie crossed her arms, impatient. “Food like what?”

The pathologist hunched his shoulders. “What’s the chance that your client drank unpasteurized milk while she was pregnant?”

TWELVE Ellie

The little library at the superior court was directly above Judge Ledbetter’s chambers. Although I was supposed to be researching recent case law concerning judgments on murders of children under the age of five, I had spent considerably more time these past two hours staring at the warped wooden floor, as if I might will through the slats a softness of heart.

“I can hear you thinking out loud,” said a deep voice, and I turned in my seat to find George Callahan standing behind me. He pulled up a chair and straddled it. “You’re sending vibes to Phil, right?”

I searched his face for signs of rivalry, but he only looked sympathetic. “Just some light voodoo.”

“Yeah, I do it too. Fifty percent of the time, it even works.” George smiled, and, relaxing, I smiled back. “I’ve been looking for you. I’ve got to tell you-I don’t feel like a million bucks sending some little Amish girl to jail for life, Ellie. But murder’s murder, and I’ve been trying to come up with a solution that might work for all of us.”

“What’s your offer?”

“You know she’s looking at life, here. I can give you ten years if she pleads guilty to manslaughter. Look, with good behavior, she’ll be out in five or six years.”

“She won’t survive in prison for five or six years, George,” I said quietly.

He looked down at his clasped hands. “She’s got a better chance of making it through five years than fifty.”

I stared, hard, at the floor above Judge Ledbetter’s chambers. “I’ll let you know.”

Ethically, I had to bring a plea offered by the prosecution to my client. I’d been in this position before, where I had to relate an offer that I didn’t think was in our best interests, but this time I was nervous about my client’s response. Usually, I could convince someone that taking our chances at trial would be in his or her best interests, but Katie was a whole different story. She’d been brought up to believe that you gave an apology and then accepted whatever punishment was meted out. George’s plea would allow Katie to bring this fiasco to an end, in a way that made perfect sense to her.

I found her doing the ironing in the kitchen. “I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

She smoothed the arm of one of her father’s shirts-lavender-and pressed it flat with an iron that had been heated on the stove. Not for the first time, I realized that Katie would make the perfect wife-in fact, she’d been groomed for just that. If she was sentenced to life in prison, she’d never get that opportunity. “The county attorney offered you a plea bargain.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a deal, basically. He reduces the charge and sentence, and in return you have to say you were wrong.”

Katie flipped the shirt over and frowned. “And then we still go to trial?”

“No. Then it’s over.”

Katie’s face lit up. “That would be wonderful!”

“You haven’t heard his terms,” I said dryly. “If you plead guilty to manslaughter, instead of Murder One, you’ll get a sentence of ten years in prison, instead of life. But with parole you’ll probably only have to be in jail half that time.”

Katie set the iron on its edge on the stove. “I would still go to jail, then.”

I nodded. “The risk in accepting the offer is that if you go to trial and get acquitted, you don’t go to jail at all. It’s like settling for something, when you haven’t seen what’s out there.” But even as I said it, I knew it was the wrong explanation. An Amishman took what he was given-he didn’t hold out for the best, because that would only come at someone else’s expense, someone who didn’t get the best.

“Will you get me acquitted, then?”

It always came down to this, with clients who were offered a plea. Before they ceded to my advice, they wanted the assurance that things were going to come out in our favor. In most cases of my career, I’d been able to say yes with fervor, with conviction-and I then went on to prove myself right.

But this was not “most cases.” And Katie was no ordinary client.

“I don’t know. I believe I could have gotten you off with temporary insanity. But with the abbreviated length of time I’ve had to prepare this new defense, I just can’t say. I think I can get you acquitted. I hope I can get you acquitted. But Katie . . . I can’t give you my word.”

“All I have to do is say I was wrong?” Katie asked. “And then it’s over?”

“Then you go to jail,” I clarified.

Katie lifted the iron and pressed it so hard against the shoulder of her father’s shirt that the fabric hissed. “I think I will take this offer,” she said.

I watched her run the iron over and between the buttonholes, this girl who had just decided to go to prison for a decade. “Katie, can I tell you something as your friend, instead of your lawyer?” She glanced up. “You don’t know what prison is like. It’s not only full of English people-it’s full of bad people. I don’t think this is the way to go.”

“You don’t think like me,” Katie said quietly.

I swallowed my reply and counted to ten before I let myself speak again. “You want me to accept the plea? I will. But first I’d like you to do something for me.”

I’d been to the State Correctional Institution at Muncy before, courtesy of several female clients of mine who were still serving out their sentences. It was a forbidding place, even to a lawyer accustomed to the reality of prison life. All women sentenced in Pennsylvania went to the diagnostic classification center at Muncy, and then either stayed on to serve out their sentence or got moved to the minimum security institution at Cambridge Springs in Erie. But at the very least, Katie would spend four to six weeks here, and I wanted her to see what she was getting herself into.

The warden, a man with the unfortunate name of Duvall Shrimp and the more unfortunate habit of staring at my breasts, gladly ushered us into his office. I gave no explanations for Katie, no matter how odd it seemed to have a young Amish girl sitting next to me while I asked for a generic tour of the facility, and to Duvall’s credit, he didn’t ask. He led us through the control booth, where the barred door slammed shut behind Katie and made her draw in her breath.

The first place he took us was the dining hall, where long tables with benches framed a center aisle. A straggly line of women moved like a single snake at the serving counter, picking up trays filled with unappetizing lumps in different shades of gray. “You eat in the hall,” he said, “unless you’re in the restricted housing unit for disciplinary behavior, or one of the capital case inmates. They eat in their cells.” We watched factions of prisoners separate to different tables, eyeing us with undisguised curiosity. Then Duvall led us up a staircase, into the block of cells. A television mounted at the end of the hallway cast a puddle of colored light over the face of one of the women, who dangled her arms through the bars of the cell and whistled at Katie. “Whoo-ee,” she catcalled. “Ain’t you a little early for Halloween?”

Other prisoners laughed and snickered, brazenly standing in their tiny cages like exhibits in a circus sideshow. They stared at Katie as if she was the one on display. As she walked past the last cell in the row, whispering a prayer beneath her breath, a prisoner spat, the small splat landing just beside Katie’s sneaker.

In the exercise yard, Duvall grew chatty. “Haven’t seen you around. You been defending men instead of women?”

“About even. You haven’t seen me around because my clients get acquitted.”

He jerked his chin in Katie’s direction. “Who’s she?”

I watched her walk the perimeter of the empty yard, stop at the corner, and view the sky, framed as it was by curls of razor wire. In the tower above Katie’s head were two guards, holding rifles. “Someone who believes in seeing the property before signing the lease,” I said.

Katie approached us, pulling her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “That’s all,” Duvall said. “Hope it was everything you thought it was cracked up to be.”

I thanked him and ushered Katie back to the parking lot, where she got into the car and sat in absolute silence for most of the two-hour trip. At one point she fell asleep, dreamed, and whimpered quietly. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I used the other to smooth her hair, soothe her.

Katie woke up as we got off the highway in Lancaster. She pressed her forehead to the window and said, “Please tell George Callahan that I do not want his deal.”

I finished the last words of my opening argument with a flourish and turned at the sound of clapping. “Excellent. Direct and persuasive,” Coop said, coming forward from the shadows in the barn. He gestured at the lazy cows. “Tough jury, though.”

I could feel heat rising to my cheeks. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

He linked his hands at the small of my back. “Believe me. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

With a shove on his chest, I pushed away. “Really, Coop. I have a trial tomorrow. I’ll be lousy company.”

“I’ll be your audience.”

“You’ll be a distraction.”

Coop grinned. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Sighing, I started to walk back to the milk room, where my computer was glowing green. “Why don’t you go inside and let Sarah cut you a piece of pie?”

“And miss all this excitement?” Coop leaned against the bulk milk tank. “I think not. You go on ahead. Do whatever you were going to do before I showed up.”

With a measured glance, I sat down on the milk crate that served as my chair and began to review the witness list for tomorrow’s trial. After a moment, I rubbed my eyes and turned off the computer.

“I didn’t say a word,” Coop protested.

“You didn’t have to.” Standing, I offered him my hand. “Walk with me?”

We wandered, lazy, through the orchard on the north side of the farm, where the apple trees stood like a coven of arthritic old women. The perfume of their fruit twisted around us, bright and sweet as ribbon candy. “The night before a trial, Stephen would cook steak,” I said absently. “Said there was something primitive about devouring fresh meat.”

“And lawyers wonder why they’re called sharks,” Coop laughed. “Did you eat steak, too?”

“Nope. I’d get into my pajamas and lip-synch to Aretha Franklin.”

“No kidding?”

I tilted back my head and let the notes fill my throat. “R-E-S-P-EC-T!”

“An exercise in self-esteem?”

“Nah,” I said. “I just really like Aretha.”

Coop squeezed my shoulder. “If you’d like, I can sing backup.”

“God, I’ve been waiting my whole life for a guy like you.”

He turned me in his arms and touched his lips to mine. “I certainly hope so,” he said. “Where are you going to go, El, when this is all over?”

“Well, I . . . ” I didn’t know, actually. It was something I’d avoided thinking about: the fact that when I stumbled into Katie Fisher’s legal quandary, I’d been on the run myself. “I could go back to Philadelphia, maybe. Or stay at Leda’s.”

“How about me?”

I smiled. “You could stay at Leda’s too, I suppose.”

But Coop was absolutely serious. “You know what I’m saying, Ellie. Why don’t you move in with me?”

Immediately, the world began to close in on me. “I don’t know,” I said, looking him squarely in the eye.

Coop stuffed his hands into his pockets; I could see how hard he was fighting to keep from making a disparaging comment about my treatment of him in the past. I wanted to touch him, to ask him to touch me, but I couldn’t do that. We had been standing on the edge of this point once before, a hundred years ago, and for all that the cliff looked the same and the drop just as steep; I still couldn’t catch my breath.

But we were older, this time. I wasn’t going to lie to him. He wasn’t going to walk away. I reached out for an apple and handed it to him.

“Is this supposed to be an olive branch, or are you feeling biblical?”

“That depends,” I said. “Are we talking psalms or sacrificial offerings?”

Coop smiled, a sweet conciliation. “Actually, I was thinking of Numbers. All that begetting.” He tangled his fingers with mine, leaned back into the soft grass, and pulled me down on top of him. With his hands angling my head, he kissed me, until I could barely hold a thought, much less a thread of my defense strategy. This was safe. This, I knew.

“Ellie,” Coop whispered, or maybe I imagined it, “take your time.”

“Okay,” I said, in my best impression of a prosecutor, “here’s my offer: You let me unhook that water bucket, and you’re looking at two to five. Carrots, I mean.”

Nugget shook his heavy head and stomped at me, as belligerent as any defense attorney turning down a lousy plea bargain. “Guess we’re going to have to go to trial,” I sighed, and ducked into the stall. The horse shoved me with his nose, and I scowled at him. “Stubbornness sure runs in this family,” I muttered.

In response, the rotten beast took a nip at my shoulder. Yelping, I dropped the water bucket and backed out of the stall. “Fine,” I said. “Go get your own damn drink.” I turned on my heel, but was stopped by a faint sound overhead, like the mew of a kitten.

“Hello?” I called. “Anyone here?”

When there was no response, I began to climb the narrow ladder to the hayloft, where the bales of hay and the grain for livestock were kept. Sarah was sitting in one corner, crying, her face buried in her apron to muffle the noise.

“Hey,” I said gently, touching her shoulder.

She started, hurriedly wiping her face. “Ach, Ellie. I just came up here for . . . for . . . ”

“For a good cry. It’s all right, Sarah. I understand.”

“No.” She sniffed. “I have to get back to the house. Aaron will be coming in for lunch soon”

I forced her to meet my gaze. “I’m going to do my best to save her, you know.”

Sarah turned away, staring out at the neat, symmetrical fields. “I should never have put her on that train to see Jacob. . . . Aaron was right all along.”

“There was no way you could have known that Katie would meet an English boy and get pregnant.”

“Couldn’t I?” Sarah said softly. “This is all my fault.”

My heart went out to the woman. “She might have chosen to go on her own. It might have happened anyway.”

Sarah shook her head. “I love my children. I love them, and look what’s happened.”

Without hesitation, I embraced her. I could hear her words, hot against my collarbone. “I’m her mother, Ellie. I’m supposed to fix it. But I can’t.”

I took a deep breath. “Then I’ll have to.”

Getting to the trial was an exercise in politics. Leda and Coop and Jacob all arrived at the farm at about 6:30 A.M., each in a separate car. Katie and Samuel and Sarah were immediately shuttled to Coop’s car, because he was the only driver who had not been excommunicated. Neither Jacob nor Leda felt comfortable leaving their car on Aaron Fisher’s property, so Leda had to follow Jacob back to her house to drop off his Honda before they returned to pick me up. We had almost reached the point where I was certain we were going to be late when Aaron strode out of the barn, his eyes fixed on the passengers in Coop’s car.

He’d made it clear that he would not attend the trial. Although the bishop would surely have understood Aaron’s involvement in this particular lawsuit, Aaron could not condone it himself. But maybe there was more to him than I’d thought. Even if his principles kept him from accompanying his daughter to her trial, he would not let her go without a proper good-bye. Coop unrolled the back window so that Aaron could stick his head inside and speak to Katie.

But when he leaned close, all he said, softly, was, “Sarah, komm.”

With downcast eyes, Katie’s mother squeezed her hand and then slipped from the car. She fell into place beside her husband, her eyes bright with tears that she did not let fall even as her husband turned her by the shoulders and led her back to the house.

Leda was the first one to notice the vans. Sprawled across the parking lot of the superior court, they were crowned with satellite dishes and emblazoned with an alphabet soup of station call letters. Closer to the court-house was one row of reporters holding microphones and another row of cameramen rolling tape, facing each other as if they were getting ready to do the Virginia reel instead of comment on the fate of a young girl.

“What on earth?” Leda breathed.

“That’s debatable,” I muttered. “Reporters aren’t a human life form.”

Suddenly Coop’s face appeared at my window. “What are they doing here? I thought you won that motion.”

“I got the cameras removed from the courtroom itself,” I said. “Outside is anybody’s turf.” Since the day the judge had ruled, I hadn’t given much thought to the media issue-I’d been too busy trying to create a new defense. But it was naïve to think that just because the cameras would not be present meant that the interest in the story would likewise absent itself. I grabbed my briefcase and got out of the car, knowing that I had about two minutes before everyone realized who I was. Tapping on the rear window of Coop’s car, I pulled Katie’s attention from the knot of press.

“Come on,” I said. “It’s now or never.”

“But-”

“There’s no other way, Katie. Somehow we’re going to have to break right through them to walk up the steps to the courthouse. I know it’s not what you want, and it’s certainly not what I want, but we don’t have a choice.”

Katie closed her eyes briefly before getting out of the car. Praying, I realized, and I wished in vain that she were asking God to make them all come down with a plague. Then, with a grace that belied her age, Katie stepped out and put her hand into mine.

Awareness rolled like a tidal wave as one reporter after another caught sight of Katie’s kapp and apron. Cameras swiveled; questions fell around our feet like javelins. I could feel her wince at each flash; and I thought of Dorian Gray’s portrait, the life draining out. Bewildered, she kept her face tucked down and trusted me to lead her up the stairs. “No comment,” I shouted, parting the reporters like the prow of a great ship, pulling Katie in my wake.

I knew the building well enough after several visits, so I immediately took Katie to the nearest ladies’ room. Checking beneath the stalls to make sure they were empty, I leaned against the door to prevent anyone else coming in. “You’re all right?”

She was shaking, and her eyes were wide with confusion, but she nodded. “Ja. It just wasn’t what I expected.”

It wasn’t what I had expected either, and I had an obligation to tell her that it was going to get significantly worse before it got better, but instead I took a deep breath and managed to taste, deep in my lungs, the scent of Katie’s fear. Shoving her out of the way, I ran for the nearest stall and threw up until there was nothing left in my stomach.

On my knees, with my face fired and hot, I pressed my forehead against the cool fiberglass wall of the stall. It was only by taking shallow breaths that I managed to turn and rip off a piece of toilet paper to wipe my mouth.

Katie’s hand fell like a question on my shoulder. “Ellie, are you all right?”

Nerves, I thought, but I wasn’t about to admit that to my own client. “Must have been something I ate,” I said, tossing Katie my brightest smile and getting to my feet. “Now. Shall we go?”

Katie kept running her hands over the smooth, polished wood of the defense table. There were places the finish had been rubbed raw, worn by the hands of endless defendants who’d sat in the very same place. How many of them, I wondered, had truly been innocent?

Courtrooms, before the fact of a trial, were not the bastions of serenity depicted on TV shows about the law. Instead, they were a bustle: the clerk shuffling for the right file, the bailiff blowing his nose in a spotted handkerchief, the people in the gallery talking headlines over Styrofoam cups of coffee. Today it was even louder than usual, and I could make out distinct sentences through the general buzz. Most involved Katie, who was on display just as surely as a zoo animal, removed from her natural habitat for the curiosity of others.

“Katie,” I said softly, and she jumped a foot.

“How come they haven’t started yet?”

“It’s still early.” Now her hands were tucked beneath her apron, her eyes darting over the activity in the front of the courtroom. Her gaze lit upon George Callahan, six feet away at the prosecutor’s table.

“He looks kind,” she mused.

“He won’t be. His job is to get the jury to believe all the bad things he’s going to say about you.” I hesitated, then decided in Katie’s case, it would be best to know what’s coming. “It’s going to be hard for you to hear, Katie.”

“Why?”

I blinked at her. “Why will it be hard?”

“No. Why will he lie about me? Why would the jury believe him and not me?”

I thought about the rules of forensic evidence, the distinctions between casting a motive and spinning a false tale, the psychometric profiles that had been written on juries-all idiosyncrasies that Katie would not understand. How did one explain to an Amish girl that in a trial, it often came down to who had the best story? “It’s the way the legal system works in the English world,” I said. “It’s part of the game.”

“Game,” Katie said slowly, turning the word in her mouth until it softened. “Like football!” She smiled up at me, remembering our earlier conversation. “A game with winning and losing, but you get paid for it.”

I felt sick to my stomach again. “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”

“All rise; the Honorable Philomena Ledbetter presiding!”

I got to my feet and made sure Katie was doing the same as the judge bustled in from the side door of the courtroom. She climbed the steps, her robes billowing out behind her. “Be seated.” Her eyes roamed the gallery, narrowing on the concentrated band of media representatives in the rear. “Before we begin might I remind the press that the use of cameras or video photography is forbidden in this courtroom, and if I see a single violation, I’ll toss the lot of you into the lobby for the remainder of the trial.”

She turned her attention to Katie, measuring her in silence before she spoke to the county attorney. “If the prosecution’s ready, you may begin.”

George Callahan strolled toward the jury box, as if he’d long been friends with every member. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “This is a trial for murder-so where’s the accused? Surely that little Amish girl sitting over there, wearing her apron and her little white cap, couldn’t have killed a fly, much less another human being.” He shook his head. “You all live in this county. You all see the Amish in their buggies and at their farm stands. If you know nothing else about them, you at least have picked up on the fact that they’re a highly religious group that keep to themselves and don’t make waves. I mean, really-when was the last time you heard of an Amish person being brought up on felony charges?

“Last year, that’s when. When the idyllic bubble of Amish life was burst by two of its youth, peddling cocaine. And today, when you hear how this young woman cold-bloodedly killed her own newborn infant.”

He ran his hand along the rail of the jury box. “Shocking, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe any mother would kill her own child, much less a girl who looks as innocent as the one sitting over there. Well, let me put your mind to rest. During the course of this trial you’ll learn that the defendant is not innocent-in fact, she’s a proven liar. For six years, she’s been sneaking off her parents’ farm to spend nights and weekends on a college campus, where she lets down her hair and dresses in jeans and tight sweaters and parties like any other teenager. She lied about that-just like she lied about the fact that she’d gotten pregnant during one of these wild weekends; just like she lied about committing murder.”

He turned toward Katie, pinned her with his gaze. “So what’s the truth? The truth is that shortly after two A.M. on July tenth, the defendant awakened with labor pains. The truth is that she got up, tiptoed to the barn, and in silence gave birth to a live baby boy. The truth is that she knew if the baby was discovered, life as she knew it would be over. She’d be thrown out of her home, out of her church, and out of her community. So the truth is, she did what she had to do to keep the lie intact-she willfully, deliberately, and premeditatedly killed her own baby.”

George flicked his eyes away from Katie and turned back to the jury. “When you look at the defendant, look past the quaint costume. That’s what she wants you to see. See instead a woman smothering a crying baby. When you listen to the defendant, pay attention to what she has to say. But remember that what comes out of her mouth can’t be trusted. This so-called sweet little Amish girl hid a forbidden pregnancy, murdered a newborn with her bare hands, and fooled everyone around her while it was happening. Don’t let her fool you.”

The jury was made up of eight women and four men, and I vacillated between thinking that worked for or against us. Women would be likely to feel more sympathy for an unwed teen-but more contempt for someone who killed her newborn. What it all boiled down to, of course, was how willing this particular mix of people was to look for a loophole.

I squeezed Katie’s trembling hand beneath the defense table and stood. “Mr. Callahan would like you to believe that a certain party in this courtroom is an expert when it comes to not telling the truth. And you know what? He’s right. The thing is, Katie Fisher isn’t that person. Actually, it’s me.” I raised my hand and waved it cheerfully. “Yep, guilty as charged. I’m a liar and I’m rather good at it, if I say so myself. So good that it’s made me a pretty accomplished attorney. And although I’m not about to put words in the county attorney’s mouth, I bet he’s bent the facts a time or two himself.” I raised my brows at the jury. “You guys hear all the jokes-I don’t have to tell you about lawyers. Not only do we lie well, but we get paid a lot to do it.”

I leaned against the railing of the jury box. “Katie Fisher, on the other hand, doesn’t lie. How do I know this, for a fact? Well, because I wanted to use a defense of temporary insanity today. I had experts who were going to stand up here and tell you that Katie didn’t know what she was doing the morning she gave birth. But Katie wouldn’t let me. She said she wasn’t insane, and she hadn’t murdered her baby. And even if it meant risking her conviction, she wanted you, the jury, to know that.”

I shrugged. “So here I am, a lawyer armed with a novel weapon-the truth. That’s all I’ve got to contradict the prosecution’s allegations: the truth, and perhaps a clearer eye. Nothing that Mr. Callahan will show you is conclusive proof, and for good reason-Katie Fisher did not murder her newborn. Having lived with her and her family now for several months, I know something that Mr. Callahan does not-that Katie Fisher is Amish, through and through. You don’t ‘act’ Amish, like Mr. Callahan is suggesting. You live it. You are it. Through the course of this trial, you’ll come to understand this complex, peaceful group, as I have. Maybe a suburban teenager would give birth and stuff the baby in the toilet, but not an Amish woman. Not Katie Fisher.

“Now, let’s look at some of Mr. Callahan’s points. Did Katie sneak away repeatedly to a college town? Yes, she did-see, I’m telling you the truth. But what the prosecutor left out is why she was going there. Katie’s brother, her only remaining living sibling, decided to leave the Amish church and study at college. Her father, hurt by this decision, restricted contact with this son. But family means everything to Katie, as to most Amish, and she missed her brother so much she was willing to risk anything to see him. So you see, Katie wasn’t living a lie. She was maintaining a love.

“Mr. Callahan also suggested that Katie needed to hide the illegitimate pregnancy, or else suffer being kicked out of her faith. However, you will learn that the Amish are forgiving. Even an illegitimate pregnancy would have been accepted by the church, and the infant would have grown up with more love and support than is found in many homes in our own communities.”

I turned toward Katie, who was regarding me with wide, bright eyes. “Which brings me to Mr. Callahan’s final point: why, then, would Katie Fisher kill her own baby? The answer is simple, ladies and gentlemen. She didn’t.

“The judge will explain to you that to convict Katie, you have to believe the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt. By the time this trial’s over, you’ll have more than a reasonable doubt, you’ll have a whole wagon full of them. You will see that there’s no way for the prosecution to prove that Katie killed her baby. They have no physical witnesses to the fact. They have nothing but speculation and dubious evidence.

“On the other hand, I’m going to show you that there were a number of ways that baby might have died.” I walked toward Katie, so that the jury would be staring at her as well as me. “I’m going to show you why the Amish don’t commit murder. And most importantly,” I finished, “I’m going to let Katie Fisher tell you the truth.”

THIRTEEN

Lizzie Munro would never have laid odds on the fact that one day, she’d be testifying against an Amish murder suspect. The girl was sitting at the defense table next to that high-powered attorney of hers, head bowed and hands clasped like one of those godawful Precious Moments figurines Lizzie’s mother liked to litter her windowsills with. Lizzie herself hated them-each angel too calculatedly cute, each shepherd boy too doe-eyed to be taken seriously. Similarly, looking at Katie Fisher gave Lizzie the overwhelming urge to turn away.

She focused instead on George Callahan, dapper in his dark suit. “Can you state your name and address?” he asked.

“Elizabeth Grace Munro. 1313 Grand Street, Ephrata.”

“Where are you employed?”

“At the East Paradise Township Police Department. I’m a detective-sergeant.”

George didn’t even have to ask her the questions; they’d been through this opening act so often she knew what was coming. “How long have you been a detective?”

“For the past six years. Prior to that, I was a patrol officer for five years.”

“Can you tell us a little bit about your work, Detective Munro?”

Lizzie leaned back in the witness chair-for her, a comfortable place. “For the most part, I investigate felony cases in East Paradise Township.”

“Roughly how many are there?”

“Well, we took about fifteen thousand calls last year, total. Of those, there were only a handful of felonies-mostly we see misdemeanors.”

“How many murders occurred last year?”

“None,” Lizzie answered.

“Of those fifteen thousand calls, do many take you into Amish homes?”

“No,” she said. “The Amish will call the police in if there’s theft or damage to their properties, and occasionally we’ll have to book an Amish youth for DUI or disorderly conduct, but for the most part they have a fairly minimal relationship to local law enforcement authorities.”

“Detective, could you tell us what happened on the morning of July tenth?”

Lizzie straightened in her chair. “I was at the station when someone called to report finding a dead infant in a barn. An ambulance had been dispatched to the scene, and then I went out there as well.”

“What did you find when you arrived?”

“It was about five-twenty A.M., near sunrise. The barn belonged to an Amish dairy farmer. He and his two employees were still in the barn, milking their cows. I taped the front and back door of the barn to secure the scene. I went into the tack room, where the body had been found, and spoke to the EMTs. They said the baby was newborn and premature, and couldn’t be resuscitated. I took down the names of the four men: Aaron and Elam Fisher, Samuel Stoltzfus, and Levi Esch. I asked if they’d seen anything suspicious or if they’d disturbed anything in the barn. The youngest boy, Levi, had been the one to find the baby. He hadn’t touched anything but a couple of horse blankets on top of the dead infant, which was wrapped in a boy’s shirt. Aaron Fisher, the owner of the farm, said that a pair of scissors used to cut baling twine was missing from a peg near the calving pen. All four men told me that no one had been found in the barn, and that no women in the household had been pregnant.

“After that, I went through the stalls, looking for a lead. The MCU of the state police was called in, as well. It was fairly impossible to take prints off the rough wooden beams and the hay, and any partial prints we found matched those of family members who would have had reason to be in the barn.”

“At this point, were you suspecting foul play?”

“No. I wasn’t suspecting much of anything, other than abandonment.” George nodded. “Please continue.”

“Finally, we found the site of the birth-in a corner of the calving pen fresh hay had been scattered to cover up matted blood. At the spot where the baby’s body had been discovered, we found a footprint in the dirt floor.”

“Did you determine anything about the footprint?”

“It would have belonged to a barefoot woman who wore a size seven shoe.”

“What did you do next?”

“I tried to find the woman who’d given birth. First I interviewed Aaron Fisher’s wife, Sarah. I found out that she’d had a hysterectomy nearly a decade ago, and was unable to have children. I questioned the neighbors and their two teenage girls, all of whom had alibis. By the time I got back to the farm, the Fishers’ daughter, Katie, had come downstairs. In fact, she came into the tack room where the medical examiner was with the newborn’s body.”

“What was her reaction?”

“She was very disturbed,” Lizzie said. “She ran out of the barn.”

“Did you follow her?”

“Yes. I caught up with her on the porch. I asked Ms. Fisher if she’d been pregnant, and she denied it.”

“Did that seem suspicious to you?”

“Not at all. It was what her parents had told me, too. But then I noticed blood running down her legs and pooling on the floor. Although she was reluctant, I had her forcibly removed by the EMTs and taken to the hospital for her own personal safety.”

“At this point what was running through your mind?”

“That this girl needed medical attention. But then I wondered if perhaps the defendant’s parents had never known she was pregnant-if she’d hidden the truth from them, like she’d tried to hide it from me.”

“How did you discover that she’d hidden the truth?” George asked.

“I went to the hospital and spoke to the defendant’s doctor, who confirmed that she had delivered a baby, was in critical condition, and needed emergency treatment to stop the vaginal bleeding. Once I knew that she had lied to me about the pregnancy, I got warrants to search the farm and the house, and to get a blood test and DNA from the baby and from the defendant. The next step was to match the blood in the hay of the calving pen to that of the defendant, the blood on the baby’s body to that of the defendant, and the blood type in the baby’s body to that of the defendant.”

“What came of the information you got from these warrants?”

“Underneath the defendant’s bed was a bloody nightgown. In her closet were boots and shoes in a size seven. All the lab tests positively linked the blood in the barn to the defendant, and the blood on and in the baby to the defendant.”

“What did this lead you to believe?”

Lizzie let her gaze rest lightly on Katie Fisher. “That in spite of her denial, the defendant was the mother of that baby.”

“At this point, did you believe that the defendant had killed the baby?”

“No. Murder’s rare in East Paradise, and virtually unheard of in the Amish community. I believed, at this point, that the baby was stillborn. But then the medical examiner sent me the autopsy report, and I had to refine my conclusions.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, the baby had been born alive. For another, the umbilical cord had been cut by scissors-which made me think of the scissors Aaron Fisher said were missing; scissors from which we might have lifted a print. The newborn had died of asphyxia, but the medical examiner found fibers deep in the baby’s mouth that matched the shirt it had been wrapped in, suggesting that he had been smothered. That was when I realized that the defendant was a potential suspect.”

Lizzie took a sip of water from a glass perched beside the witness stand. “After that, I interviewed everyone close to the defendant, and the defendant herself. The defendant’s mother confirmed that a younger child had died many years ago, and that she had no idea her daughter was pregnant-nor any reason to think so. The father wouldn’t speak to me at all. I also interviewed Samuel Stoltzfus, one of the hired hands and coincidentally the defendant’s boyfriend. From him I learned that he’d planned to marry the defendant this fall. He also told me that the defendant had never had sexual intercourse with him.”

“What did that lead you to believe?”

Lizzie raised her brows. “At first I wondered if he’d found out that Katie Fisher had two-timed him-and if he’d smothered the baby out of revenge. But Samuel Stoltzfus lives ten miles from the Fisher farm with his parents, who confirmed that he was sleeping there during the window of time the medical examiner said death occurred. Then I began to think that maybe I had it backward-that the information pointed to the defendant, instead. I mean, here was a motive: Amish girl, Amish parents, Amish boyfriend-and she gets pregnant by someone else? That’s an excuse to hide the birth, maybe even get rid of it.”

“Did you interview anyone else?”

“Yes, Levi Esch, the second hired hand on the farm. He said that the defendant had been sneaking to Penn State for the past six years to meet with her brother. Jacob Fisher did not live like the Amish anymore, but like any other college student.”

“Why was that relevant?”

Lizzie smiled. “It’s a lot easier to meet a guy other than your Amish boyfriend when a whole new world is at your fingertips-one with booze and frat parties and Maybelline.”

“Did you speak to Jacob Fisher, too?”

“Yes, I did. He confirmed the defendant’s secret visits and said he had not known of his sister’s pregnancy. He also told me that the reason the defendant had to visit him behind her father’s back was because he was no longer welcome at home.”

George feigned confusion. “How come?”

“The Amish don’t attend school past eighth grade, but Jacob had wanted to continue his education. Breaking that rule got him excommunicated from the Amish church. Aaron Fisher took the punishment one step further, and disowned Jacob. Sarah Fisher followed her husband’s wishes, but sent her daughter to visit Jacob covertly.”

“How did this affect your thinking about the case?”

“All of a sudden,” Lizzie said, “things became more clear. If I were the defendant, and I knew that my own brother had been exiled for something as simple as studying, I’d be very careful not to break any rules. Call me crazy, but having a baby out of wedlock is a more severe infraction than reading Shakespeare on the side. That means if she didn’t find a way to hide what had happened, she was going to be tossed out of her home and her family, not to mention her church. So she concealed the pregnancy for seven months. Then she had the baby-and concealed that, too.”

“Did you determine the identity of the father?”

“We did not.”

“Did you consider any other suspects, beside the defendant?”

Lizzie sighed. “You know, I tried to. But too much didn’t add up. The birth occurred two and a half months early, in a place with no phone and no electricity-which means no one could have been called, or have known about it, unless they were living at the farm and heard the defendant’s labor. As for a stranger coming by, what’s the chance of someone dropping in unannounced at two A.M. on an Amish farm? And if a stranger did show up, why kill the baby? And why wouldn’t the defendant have mentioned this?

“So that left me with family members. But only one of them had lied about the pregnancy and birth to my face. For only one of them were the stakes frighteningly high should news of this baby get out. And for only one of them did we have evidence placing her at the scene of the crime.” Lizzie glanced at the defendant’s table. “In my opinion, the facts clearly show that Katie Fisher smothered her newborn.”

When Ellie Hathaway stood up to do her cross-examination, Lizzie squared her shoulders. She tried to remember what George had said about the attorney’s ruthlessness, her ability to worm answers out of the most stubborn witnesses. From the looks of her, Lizzie didn’t doubt it a bit. Lizzie could hold her own with the boys in the department, but Ellie Hathaway’s cropped hair and angular suit made it seem as if any of the softer edges of her personality had long been hacked away.

Which is why Lizzie nearly fell over in her seat when the attorney approached her with a genuine, friendly smile. “Did you know I used to spend summers here?”

Lizzie blinked at her. “At the courthouse?”

“No,” Ellie laughed, “contrary to popular belief. I meant in East Paradise.”

“I did not know that,” Lizzie said stiffly.

“Well, my aunt lives here. Used to own a little farm.” She grinned. “But that was before real estate taxes went as high as the new cellular towers.”

At that, Lizzie chuckled under her breath. “That’s why I rent.”

“Your Honor,” George interrupted, giving his witness a warning look, “I’m certain the jury doesn’t need to hear Ms. Hathaway’s stroll down memory lane.”

The judge nodded. “Is there a point to this, counselor?”

“Yes, Your Honor. It’s that growing up around here, you get to watch the Amish quite a bit.” She turned to Lizzie. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“You said you hadn’t booked many Amish. When was the last one?”

Lizzie backpedaled mentally. “About five months ago. A seventeen-year-old who drove his buggy into a ditch under the influence.”

“And before that? How long had it been?”

She tried, but she couldn’t remember. “I don’t know.”

“But a good length of time?”

“I’d say so,” Lizzie admitted.

“In your dealings . . . both professional and personal . . . have you found the Amish to be fairly gentle people?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happens when an unwed Amish girl has a baby?”

“I’ve heard that they take care of their own,” Lizzie said.

“That’s right, and Katie wouldn’t have been excommunicated-only shunned for a while. Then she’d be forgiven and welcomed back with open arms. So where’s the motive for murder?”

“In her father’s actions,” Lizzie explained. “There are ways around excommunication if you want to keep in touch with family members who’ve left the church, but Aaron Fisher didn’t allow them when he banished the defendant’s brother. That severe fact was in the back of her mind, all the time.”

“I thought you didn’t interview Mr. Fisher.”

“I didn’t.”

“Ah,” Ellie said. “So now you’re psychic?”

“I interviewed his son,” Lizzie countered.

“Talking to a son won’t tell you what’s in the father’s mind. Just like looking at a dead baby doesn’t tell you that its mother killed it, right?”

“Objection!”

“Withdrawn,” Ellie said smoothly. “Do you find it odd that an Amish woman is being accused of murder?”

Lizzie looked at George. “It’s an aberration. But the fact is, it happened.”

“Did it? Your scientific proof confirms that Katie had that baby. That’s indisputable. But does having that baby necessarily lead to killing that baby?”

“No.”

“You also mentioned that you found a footprint in the dirt near where the infant’s body was found. In your mind, this links Katie to murder?”

“Yes,” Lizzie said. “Since we know that she wears a size seven. It’s not convicting evidence in and of itself, but it certainly adds support to our theory.”

“Is there any way to prove that this specific footprint was made by Katie’s foot?”

Lizzie folded her hands together. “Not conclusively.”

“I wear a size seven shoe, Detective Munro. So theoretically, it could have been my foot that made that print, correct?”

“You weren’t in the barn that morning.”

“Did you know that a size seven adult woman’s shoe is also approximately equivalent in length to a size five child’s shoe?”

“I didn’t.”

“Did you know that Levi Stoltzfus wears a size five shoe?”

Lizzie smiled tightly. “I do now.”

“Was Levi barefoot when you arrived at the farm?”

“Yes.”

“Had Levi, by his own admission, been standing on the floor near that pile of horse blankets to reach for one when he happened to find the body of the infant?”

“Yes.”

“So is it possible that the footprint you’re chalking up to evidentiary proof of Katie committing murder actually belonged to someone else who was in the same spot for a completely innocent reason?”

“It’s possible.”

“All right,” Ellie said. “You said the umbilical cord was cut with scissors.”

“Missing scissors,” Lizzie interjected.

“If a girl was going to kill her baby, Detective, would she bother to cut the cord?”

“I have no idea.”

“What if I told you that clamping and cutting the cord prompts the reflex that makes the newborn breathe on its own? Would it make sense to do that, if you’re going to smother it a few minutes later?”

“I suppose not,” Lizzie answered evenly, “but then again, I doubt most people know that cutting the cord leads to breathing. More likely, it’s a step in the birthing process they’ve seen on TV. Or in this case, from watching farm animals.”

Taken down a peg, Ellie stepped back to regroup. “If a girl was going to kill her baby, wouldn’t it be easier to cover it up with hay and leave it to die of exposure?”

“Maybe.”

“Yet this baby was found wiped clean, lovingly wrapped. Detective, what murderous young mother is going to swab and swaddle her baby?”

“I don’t know. But it happened,” Lizzie said firmly.

“That brings me to another point,” Ellie continued. “According to your theory, Katie hid the pregnancy for seven months and sneaked into the barn to deliver the baby in absolute silence-going to great lengths to keep anyone from finding out that a baby ever existed either in utero or out. So why on earth would she leave it in a place that she knew very well would be crawling with people doing the milking a few hours later? Why not dump the baby in the pond behind the barn?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or in the manure pile, where it wouldn’t have been found for some time?”

“I don’t know.”

“There are a lot of places on an Amish farm where the body of a baby could be disposed of that are far more clever than under a pile of blankets.”

Shrugging, Lizzie replied, “No one said the defendant was clever. Just that she committed murder.”

“Murder? We’re talking basic common sense here. Why cut the cord, get the baby breathing, swaddle it, kill it-and then leave it where it’s sure to be discovered?”

Lizzie sighed. “Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Ellie rounded on her. “And yet by the very terms of a charge of murder, you allege that she was cognizant of this act, that she premeditated this act, that she committed it with intent? Can you be deliberate and confused all at the same time?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist, Ms. Hathaway. I don’t know.”

“No,” Ellie said meaningfully. “You don’t.”

When Katie and Jacob had been small, they’d played together in the fields, zigzagging through the summer cornfields as if they were a maze. Incredible, how thick and green those walls could grow, so that she could be a foot away from her brother just on the other side, and never know it.

Once, when she was about eight, she got lost. She’d been playing follow-the-leader, but Jacob got ahead of her and disappeared. Katie had called out for him, but he was teasing her that day and wouldn’t come. She walked in circles, she grew tired and thirsty, and finally she lay down on her back on the ground. She squinted up between the slats of stalks and took comfort from the fact that this was the same old sun, the same old sky, the same familiar world she’d awakened in that morning. And eventually, feeling guilty, Jacob came and found her.

At the defense table, with a flurry of words hailing around her like a storm, Katie remembered that day in the corn.

Things had a way of working out for the best, when you let them run their course.

“The patient was brought into the ER with vaginal bleeding, and a urine pregnancy test was positive. She had a boggy uterus about twenty-four weeks’ size, and an open cervical os,” said Dr. Seaborn Blair. “We started her on a drip of pitocin to stop the bleeding. A BSU confirmed that the patient was pregnant.”

“Was the defendant cooperative about treatment?” George asked.

“Not as I recall,” Dr. Blair answered. “She was very upset about having a pelvic done-although we do see that from time to time in young women from remote areas.”

“After you treated the defendant, did you have a chance to speak to her?”

“Yes. Naturally, my first question was about the baby. It was clear that Ms. Fisher had recently delivered, yet she wasn’t brought in with a neonate.”

“What was the defendant’s explanation?”

Dr. Blair looked at Katie. “That she hadn’t had a baby.”

“Ah,” George said. “Which you knew to be medically inaccurate.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you question her further?”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t admit to the pregnancy. At that point, I suggested a psychiatric consult.”

“Did a psychiatrist ever examine the defendant at the hospital?”

“Not as far as I know,” the doctor said. “The patient wouldn’t permit it.”

“Thank you,” George finished. “Your witness.”

Ellie drummed her fingers on the defense table for a moment, then stood. “The boggy uterus, the positive BSU, the bleeding, the pelvic exam. Did these observations lead you to believe that Katie had had a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Did these observations lead you to believe that Katie had killed that baby?”

Dr. Blair glanced, again, at Katie. “No,” he said.

Dr. Carl Edgerton had been the medical examiner in Lancaster County for over fifteen years and easily fit the role, with his tufted eyebrows and white hair waving back from a central part. He’d participated in hundreds of trials, and approached every one with the same slightly irritated look on his face, one that said he’d rather be back in his lab. “Doctor,” the prosecutor said, “can you tell us the results of the autopsy on Baby Fisher?”

“Yes. He was a premature liveborn male infant with no congenital abnormalities. There was evidence of acute chorioamnionitis, as well as some meconium aspiration and early pneumonia. There were various indications of perinatal asphyxia. Additionally, there were perioral ecchymoses and intraoral cotton fibers that matched the shirt the infant was found in.”

“Let’s break that down a bit for those of us who didn’t go to med school,” George said, smiling at the jury. “When you say it was premature and liveborn, what does that mean?”

“The baby wasn’t carried to term. Its skeletal age was consistent with a gestational age of thirty-two weeks.”

“And liveborn?”

“As opposed to stillborn. The lungs of the infant were pink and aerated. Representative samples of each lower lobe, with a control sample of liver, were suspended in water. The lung tissue floated, while the liver sank-which indicates that the infant was born and breathed air.”

“How about a lack of congenital abnormalities-why is that important?”

“The baby would have been born viable. There were also no chromosomal defects and no evidence of substance abuse-all significant negative findings.”

“And the chorioamnionitis?”

“Basically, it’s an infection in the mother that led to premature delivery. Additional examination of the placenta ruled out the usual other common causes for premature labor. The cause of the chorioamnionitis was not identified because the fetal tissues and placenta were contaminated.”

“How did you know that?”

“Microbiological studies revealed diphtheroids-common contaminants-in the fetal tissues. The placenta is rarely sterile after vaginal birth, but this one had been sitting in a stable for some time before being retrieved, as well.”

George nodded. “And what is asphyxia?”

“A lack of oxygen, which eventually led to death. Petechiae-small hemorrhages-were visible on the surface of the lungs, thymus, and pericardium. A small subarachnoid hemorrhage was found on the brain. In the liver were patchy zones of necrosis of hepatocytes. These findings sound very exotic, but are seen with asphyxia.”

“What about the ecchymoses and cotton fibers?”

“Ecchymoses are small bruises, in layman’s terms. These were all approximately one to one-point-five centimeters in diameter, all surrounding the mouth. Scrapings of the oral cavity revealed fibers that matched the shirt.”

“What did these two observations lead you to believe?”

“That someone had stuffed the shirt in the infant’s mouth and attempted to cut off his air supply.”

George let that sink in for a moment. “Was the umbilical cord examined?”

“The attached portion of the umbilical cord was twenty centimeters in length, with no tie or clamp present on the cord, although the end was crushed as if a ligature had been present at some time. Fibers present on the cord stump were submitted to Trace Evidence for analysis and matched baling twine found in the barn. The cut surface of the cord was jagged, had bits of fiber on it, and indicated a small demarcation in the center.”

“Is that important?”

The doctor shrugged. “It means that whatever was used to cut the cord, most likely scissors, had a notch in one of its blades and had been used to cut baling twine.”

“Doctor, based on all this, did you determine a cause of death for Baby Fisher?”

“Yes,” Edgerton said. “Asphyxia, due to smothering.”

“Did you determine a manner of death?”

The medical examiner nodded. “Murder.”

Ellie took a deep breath, stood, and approached the medical examiner. “Dr. Edgerton, are the ecchymoses around the mouth conclusive proof of smothering?”

“The proof of smothering is in the many organs that show signs of asphyxia.”

Ellie nodded. “You mean, for example, the petechiae in the lungs. But isn’t it true that you cannot tell from an autopsy exactly when that asphyxia occurred? For example, if there was a problem with placental blood flow before or during birth, couldn’t it cause a loss of oxygen in the fetus, which would show up in the autopsy?”

“Yes.”

“What if there was a problem with placental blood flow just after birth? Might that result in signs of asphyxia?”

“Yes.”

“How about if the mother were bleeding or having trouble breathing herself during the delivery?”

The medical examiner cleared his throat. “That too.”

“What if the baby’s lungs were immature, or if it were suffering from poor circulation or pneumonia-would that lead to evidence of asphyxia?”

“Yes, it would.”

“And if the baby choked on its own mucus?”

“Yes.”

“So asphyxia may be caused by many things other than homicidal smothering?”

“That’s correct, Ms. Hathaway,” the medical examiner said. “It was the asphyxia, in conjunction with the bruises around the oral cavity and the fibers found within it, that led to my specific diagnosis.”

Ellie smiled. “Let’s talk about that. Does the evidence of a bruise prove that someone held a hand over the baby’s mouth?”

“The bruise indicates that there was local pressure applied,” Dr. Edgerton said. “Make of it what you will.”

“Well, let’s do just that. What if the baby was delivered precipitously, and landed on his face on the barn floor-might that have led to bruises?”

“It’s possible.”

“How about if the mother grabbed for the infant as it was falling after that delivery?”

“Perhaps,” the doctor conceded.

“And the fibers in the oral cavity,” Ellie continued. “Might they have come from the mother wiping mucus from the baby’s air passages, to help it breathe?”

Edgerton inclined his head. “Could be.”

“In any of those alternative scenarios, is the mother of the infant causing it harm?”

“No, she is not.”

Ellie crossed to the jury box. “You mentioned that the cultures were contaminated?”

“Yes. The lapse of time between the birth and the recovery of the placental tissue made it a culture plate, picking up bacteria.”

“The fetal tissue was also contaminated?”

“That’s correct,” Dr. Edgerton said. “By diphtheroids.”

“On what did you base your identification of these . . . diphtheroids?” Ellie asked.

“Colony and Gram’s stain morphology of the placental and fetal cultures.”

“Did you do any biochemical studies to make sure they were diphtheroids?”

“No need to.” The doctor shrugged. “Do you reread your textbooks before every case, Ms. Hathaway? I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. Believe me, I know what diphtheroids look like.”

“You’re a hundred percent sure these were diphtheroids?” Ellie pressed.

“Yes, I am.”

Ellie smiled slightly. “You also mentioned that the placenta showed signs of acute chorioamnionitis. Isn’t it true that chorioamnionitis can lead a fetus to aspirate infected amniotic fluid, and thus develop intra-uterine pneumonia-which in turn leads to septicemia and death?”

“Very, very rarely.”

“But it does happen?”

The medical examiner sighed. “Yes, but it’s a real stretch. It’s far more realistic to point to the chorioamnionitis for premature delivery, rather than cause of death.”

“Yet by your own admission,” Ellie said, “the autopsy revealed evidence of early pneumonia.”

“That’s true, but not severe enough to lead to mortality.”

“According to the autopsy report, meconium was found in the air spaces in the lungs. Isn’t that a sign of fetal distress?”

“Yes, in that the fetal stool-the meconium-was passed into the amniotic fluid and breathed into the lungs. It’s very irritating and can compromise respiration.”

Ellie crossed toward the witness. “You’ve just given us two additional reasons that this infant might have suffered from respiratory distress: early pneumonia, as well as aspirating fetal stool.”

“Yes.”

“By your own testimony, asphyxia was the cause of death for this infant.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it true that pneumonia and meconium aspiration-both of which are due to natural causes-would have led to asphyxia?”

Dr. Edgerton seemed amused, as if he knew exactly what Ellie was trying to do. “Maybe, Ms. Hathaway. If the smothering didn’t do the job all by itself.”

Ellie had always found the concept of a vending machine that sold hot soup and coffee a little upsetting-how long did all that liquid sit around in its insides? How did it know to give you decaf, instead of chicken broth? She stood before one in the basement of the court, hands on hips, waiting for the small Styrofoam cup to shoot out, for the steam to curl and rise.

Nothing.

“Come on,” she muttered, kicking the bottom of the vending machine. She raised a fist and thumped it on the Plexiglas for good measure. “That was fifty cents,” she said, more loudly.

A voice behind her stopped her in mid-tirade. “Remind me to never owe you money,” Coop said, his hands cupping her shoulders, his lips falling on the violin curve of her neck.

“You’d think someone would keep these maintained,” Ellie huffed, turning her back on the machine. As if that was all it took, it began to splash out hot coffee without a cup, spraying her shoes and her ankles.

“Goddamn!” she yelped, jumping out of the way, then surveying the brown stains on her light hose. “Oh, great.”

Coop sat down on a metal bridge chair. “When I was a kid my grandma used to try to make accidents happen. Knock over bottles of milk on purpose, trip over her own feet, splash her blouse with water.”

Blotting at her ankles, Ellie said, “No wonder you went into mental health.”

“Makes perfect sense, actually, provided you’re superstitious. If she had something important to do, she wanted to get the mishap out of the way. Then she’d be free and clear for the rest of the day.”

“You do know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Are you so sure?” Coop crossed his legs. “Wouldn’t it be nice to know that now since this has happened, you can walk into that courtroom and do no wrong?”

Ellie sank down beside him and sighed. “Do you know that she’s shaking?” Folding the soiled napkin in half and then in half again, she set it down on the floor beside her chair. “I can feel her trembling next to me, like she’s a tuning fork.”

“Do you want me to talk to her?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “I’m afraid that bringing it up might terrify her more.”

“Psychologically speaking-”

“But we’re not, Coop. We’re speaking legally. And the most important thing is to get her through this trial without her coming apart at the seams.”

“You’re doing fine so far.”

“I haven’t done anything at all!”

“Ah, now I get it. If Katie’s this nervous just listening to testimony, what’s she going to be like when you get her up as a witness?” He rubbed Ellie’s back gently. “You must have faced skittish clients before.”

“Sure.”

“You-” Coop broke off as another attorney entered the room, nodded, and stuffed a set of quarters into the coffee vending machine. “Careful,” he warned. “It’s not toilet trained.”

Beside him, Ellie swallowed the bubble of a laugh. The attorney kicked the defective machine, cursed beneath his breath, and walked upstairs again. Ellie smiled up at Coop. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“How about this?” Coop asked, leaning forward to kiss her.

“You don’t want to kiss me.” Ellie held him at arm’s length. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

His eyes drifted shut. “I’m in a gambling mood.”

“Oh, there you are.”

At Leda’s voice, Ellie and Coop jerked away from each other. Standing on the staircase was Ellie’s aunt, with Katie in tow. “I told her you were coming right back,” Leda said, “but she wasn’t having any of it.”

Katie walked down the last few steps to stand in front of Ellie. “I need to go home now.”

“Soon, Katie. Just hang on a little longer.”

“We need to be back for the afternoon milking, and if we leave now, we’ll be able to do it. My Dat can’t manage with Levi alone.”

“We’re required to stay in court until it’s adjourned,” Ellie explained.

“Hey, Katie,” Coop interjected, “why don’t you and I go somewhere and talk for a few minutes?” He cast Ellie a sidelong glance, urging her to be compassionate.

Even at a distance, it was possible to see the tremors that ran through Katie. She ignored Coop, staring directly at Ellie instead. “Can’t you make court adjourn?”

“That’s up to the judge.” Ellie set her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I know this is hard for you, and I-where are you going?”

“To talk to the judge. To ask her to adjourn,” Katie said stubbornly. “I can’t miss my chores.”

“You can’t just go talk to the judge. It’s not done.”

“Well, I’m gonna do it.”

“Get the judge angry,” Ellie warned, “and you’ll be missing your chores forever.”

Katie rounded on her. “Then you ask.”

“This is a new one for me, counselor,” Judge Ledbetter said. She leaned over her desk, frowning. “You’re requesting that we wrap up early today so that your client can do her chores?”

Ellie straightened her spine, her expression impassive. “Actually, Your Honor, I’m requesting that we adjourn at three P.M. every day this trial goes on.” Gritting her teeth, she added, “Believe me, Judge. If this were not germane to my client’s way of life, I wouldn’t be suggesting it.”

“Court adjourns at four-thirty, Ms. Hathaway.”

“I’m aware of that. I explained as much to my client.”

“I’m just dying to know what she had to say.”

“That the cows wouldn’t wait till then.” Ellie risked a glance toward George, who was grinning like the cat who’d eaten the canary. And why shouldn’t he be? Ellie was doing a splendid job digging her own grave without a single syllable’s contribution from him. “At issue, Your Honor, is the fact that in addition to my client, one of the sequestered witnesses is also a hired hand on the Fisher farm. For both of them to miss the afternoon milking would put undue strain on the economic affairs of the family.”

Judge Ledbetter turned toward the prosecutor. “Mr. Callahan, I assume you have something to say about this.”

“Yes, Your Honor. From what I understand the Amish don’t abide by daylight saving time. It’s one thing to run their own schedules when it doesn’t affect anyone else, but in a court of law they ought to be required to adhere to our clock. For all I know, this is some plot of Ms. Hathaway’s to point out the glaring differences between the Amish and the rest of the world.”

“It’s not a plot, George,” Ellie muttered. “It’s just lactation, pure and simple.”

“Furthermore,” the prosecutor continued, “I have one witness remaining to be questioned, and postponing his testimony would be detrimental to my case. Since it’s Friday, the jury wouldn’t be able to hear it until Monday morning, and by then any momentum that’s been building would be lost.”

“At the risk of being presumptuous, Your Honor, may I point out that in many trials I’ve participated in, schedules have been reworked at the last minute according to the whims of child care, doctor’s visits, and other emergencies that come up in the lives of the attorneys and even judges? Why not bend the rules for the defendant as well?”

“Oh, she’s done a fine job of that by herself,” George said dryly.

“Pipe down, you two,” Judge Ledbetter said. “As tempting as it is to get out of here before Friday-night traffic settles in, I’m going to deny your request, Ms. Hathaway, at least for as long as it takes the prosecution to present their case. When it’s your turn, you’re welcome to adjourn court at three P.M. if it suits you.” She turned to George. “Mr. Callahan, you may call your witness.”

“Imagine that you’re a young girl,” said Dr. Brian Riordan, the forensic psychiatric expert for the state. “You find yourself involved in an illicit relationship with a boy your parents know nothing about. You sleep with the boy, although you know better. A few weeks later, you find out you’re pregnant. You go about your daily routine, even though you’re a little more tired these days. You think the problem will take care of itself. Every time the thought crosses your mind, you shove it aside, promising you’ll deal with it tomorrow. In the meantime, you wear clothes that are a little looser; you make sure that no one embraces you too closely.

“Then one night you wake up in severe pain. You know what is happening to you, but all you care about is keeping your secret. You sneak out of the house so no one can hear you giving birth. In solitude, in silence, you deliver a baby that means nothing to you. Then the baby begins to cry. You cover its mouth with your hand, because it is going to wake everyone up. You press harder until the baby stops crying, until it is no longer moving. Then, knowing you have to get rid of it, you wrap it up in a nearby shirt and stuff it somewhere out of sight. You’re exhausted, so you go up to your bedroom to sleep, telling yourself you’ll deal with the rest tomorrow. When the police approach you the next day asking about a baby, you say you know nothing about it, just like you’ve been telling yourself all along.”

Mesmerized, the jury leaned forward, caught on the sharp, stiletto edges of the scene Riordan had crafted with words. “What about maternal instincts?” George asked.

“Women who commit neonaticide are completely detached from the pregnancy,” Riordan explained. “For them, giving birth packs all the emotional punch of passing a gallstone.”

“Do women who commit neonaticide feel badly about doing it?”

“Remorse, you mean.” Riordan pursed his lips. “Yes, they do. But only because they’re sorry their parents have seen them in such an unfavorable light-not because there’s a dead baby.”

“Dr. Riordan, how did you come to meet the defendant?”

“I was asked to evaluate her for this trial.”

“What did that entail?”

“Reading the discovery in this case, examining her responses to projective psychological tests like the Rorschach and objective tests like the MMPI, as well as meeting with the defendant personally.”

“Did you reach a conclusion as to a reasonable degree of psychiatric certainty?”

“Yes, at the time she killed the baby she knew right from wrong and was aware of her actions.” Riordan’s eyes skimmed over Katie. “This was a classic case of neonaticide. Everything about the defendant fit the profile of a woman who would murder her newborn-her upbringing, her actions, her lies.”

“How do you know she was lying?” George asked, playing devil’s advocate. “Maybe she really didn’t know that she was pregnant, or having a baby.”

“By her own statement, the defendant knew she was pregnant but made the voluntary decision to keep it secret. If you choose to act a certain way to protect yourself, it implies conscious knowledge of what you’re doing. Thus, denial and guilt are linked. Moreover, once you lie, you’re likely to lie again, which means that any of her statements about the pregnancy and birth are dubious at best. Her actions, however, tell a solid, consistent story,” Riordan said. “During our interview, the defendant admitted to waking up with labor pains and intentionally leaving her room because she didn’t want anyone to hear her. This suggests concealment. She chose the barn and went to an area that she knew had fresh hay placed in it. This suggests intent. She covered the bloody hay after the delivery, tried to keep the newborn from crying out-and the body of the newborn was found tucked beneath a stack of blankets. This suggests that she had something to hide. She got rid of the bloody nightgown she’d been wearing, got up and acted perfectly normal the next morning in front of her family, all to continue this hoax. Each of these things-acting in isolation, concealing the birth, cleaning up, pretending life is routine-indicates that the defendant knew very well what she was doing at the time she did it-and more importantly, knew what she was doing was wrong.”

“Did the defendant admit to murdering the newborn during your interview?”

“No, she says that she doesn’t remember this.”

“Then how can you be sure she did?”

Riordan shrugged. “Because amnesia is easily faked. And because, Mr. Callahan, I’ve been here before. There is a specific pattern to the events of neonaticide, and the defendant meets every criteria: She denied the pregnancy. She claims she didn’t realize she was in labor, when it first occurred. She gave birth alone. She said she didn’t kill the baby, in spite of the truth of the dead body. She gradually admitted to certain holes in her story as time went on. All of these things are landmarks in every neonaticide case I’ve ever studied, and lead me to believe that she too committed neonaticide, even if there are patches in the story she cannot apparently yet recall.” He leaned forward on the stand. “If I see something with feathers and a bill and webbed feet that quacks, I don’t have to watch it swim to know it’s a duck.”

The hardest part about changing defenses, for Ellie, had been losing Dr. Polacci as a witness. However, there was no way she could give the psychiatrist’s report to the prosecution, since it stated that Katie had killed her newborn, albeit without understanding the nature and quality of the act. This meant that any holes Ellie was going to poke in the prosecution’s argument of neonaticide had to be made now, and preferably large enough to drive a tank through. “How many women have you interviewed who’ve committed neonaticide?” Ellie asked, striding toward Dr. Riordan.

“Ten.”

“Ten!” Ellie’s eyes widened. “But you’re supposed to be an expert!”

“I am considered one. Everything’s relative.”

“So-you come across one a year?”

Riordan inclined his head. “That would be about right.”

“This profile of yours, and your claims about Katie-they’re made on the extensive experience you’ve collected by interviewing all of . . . ten people?”

“Yes.”

Ellie raised her brows. “In the Journal of Forensic Sciences, didn’t you say that women who commit neonaticide are not malicious, Dr. Riordan? That they don’t necessarily want to do harm?”

“That’s right. They’re usually not thinking about it in those terms. They see the action only as something that will egocentrically help themselves.”

“Yet in the cases you’ve been involved in, you’ve recommended that women who commit neonaticide be incarcerated?”

“Yes. We need to send a message to society, that murderers don’t go free.”

“I see. Isn’t it true, Doctor, that women who commit neonaticide admit to killing their newborns?”

“Not at first.”

“But eventually, when faced with evidence or pressed to explain, they crumble. Right?”

“That’s what I’ve seen, yes.”

“During your interview with Katie, did you ask her to hypothesize about what had happened to the baby?”

“Yes.”

“What was her response?”

“She came up with several.”

“Didn’t she say, ‘Maybe it just died, and someone hid it.’”

“Among other things, yes.”

“You said that when pressed, women who commit neonaticide crumble. Doesn’t the fact that Katie offered up this hypothetical scenario, rather than breaking down and admitting to murder, mean that it might have been what actually happened?”

“It means she can lie well.”

“But did Katie ever admit that she killed her baby?”

“No. However, she didn’t admit to her pregnancy at first, either.”

Ellie ignored his comment. “What did Katie admit, exactly?”

“That she fell asleep, woke up, and the baby was gone. She didn’t remember anything else.”

“And from this you inferred that she committed homicide?”

“It was the most likely explanation, given the overall set of behaviors.”

It was exactly the answer Ellie wanted. “As an expert in the field, you must know what a dissociative state is.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Could you explain it for those of us who don’t?”

“A dissociative state occurs when someone fractures off a piece of her consciousness to survive a traumatic situation.”

“Like an abused wife who mentally zones out while her husband’s beating her?”

“That’s correct,” Riordan answered.

“Is it true that people who go into a dissociative state experience memory lapses, yet manage to appear basically normal?”

“Yes.”

“A dissociative state is not a voluntary, conscious behavior?”

“Correct.”

“Isn’t it true that extreme psychological stress can trigger a dissociative state?”

“Yes.”

“Might witnessing the death of a loved one cause extreme psychological stress?”

“Perhaps.”

“Let’s step back. For a moment, let’s assume Katie wanted her baby, desperately. She gave birth and, tragically, watched it die in spite of her best efforts to keep it breathing. Might the shock of the death cause a dissociative state?”

“It’s possible,” Riordan agreed.

“If she then could not recall how the baby died, might her memory lapse be due to this dissociation?”

Riordan grinned indulgently. “It might, if it were a reasonable scenario, Ms. Hathaway, which it unfortunately is not. If you want to claim that the defendant went into a dissociative state that morning that subsequently led to her memory lapses, I’m happy to play along with you. But there’s no way to prove that the stress of the baby’s natural death put her into that state. It’s equally possible that she dissociated due to the stress of labor. Or as a result of the highly stressful act of committing murder.

“You see, the fact of dissociation doesn’t absolve Ms. Fisher from committing neonaticide. Humans are able to perform complex meteoric actions even when the ability to recall these actions is impaired. You can drive your car while in a dissociative state, for example, and travel for hundreds of miles without remembering a single landmark. Likewise, in a dissociative state, you can deliver a baby, even if you can’t recall the specifics. You can try to resuscitate a dying baby, and not recall the specifics. Or,” he said pointedly, “you can kill a baby, and not recall the specifics.”

“Dr. Riordan,” Ellie said, “we’re talking about a young Amish girl here, not some self-absorbed mall-rat teen. Put yourself into her shoes. Isn’t it possible that Katie Fisher wanted that baby, that it died in her arms, that she became so upset about it her own mind unconsciously blocked out what had happened?”

But Riordan had been on the stand too many times to fall so neatly into an attorney’s trap. “If she wanted that baby so badly, Ms. Hathaway,” he said, “why did she lie about it for seven months?”

George was standing up before Ellie even made it back to the defense table. “I’d like to redirect, Your Honor. Dr. Riordan, in your expert opinion, was the defendant in a dissociative state on the morning of July tenth?”

“No.”

“Is that important to this case?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Riordan shrugged. “Her behavior is clear enough-there’s no need to invoke this psychobabble. The defendant’s subversive actions before the birth suggest that once the baby arrived, she’d do anything within her power to get rid of it.”

“Including murder?”

The psychiatrist nodded. “Especially murder.”

“Recross,” Ellie said. “Dr. Riordan, as a forensic psychiatrist you must know that for a Murder One conviction, a person must be found guilty of killing with deliberation, willfulness, and premeditation.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Women who commit neonaticide-do they kill willfully?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do they deliberate about the act?”

“Sometimes, in the way they’ll pick a quiet place, or bring a blanket or bag to dispose of the baby-as the defendant did.”

“Do they plan the murder of the infant in advance?”

Riordan frowned. “It’s a reflexive act, stimulated by the newborn’s arrival.”

“Reflexive act,” Ellie repeated. “By that you mean an automatic, instinctive, unthinking behavior?”

“Yes.”

“Then neonaticide isn’t really first-degree murder, is it?”

“Objection!”

“Withdrawn,” Ellie said. “Nothing further.”

George turned to the judge. “Your Honor,” he said, “the prosecution rests.”

Sarah had held dinner for them, a spread of comfort food that offered no appeal for Ellie. She picked at her plate and felt the walls closing in on her, wondering why she hadn’t taken Coop up on his suggestion to get a bite to eat at a restaurant in Lancaster.

“I brushed Nugget for you,” Sarah said, “but there’s still tack to be cleaned.”

“All right, Mam,” Katie answered. “I’ll go on out after supper. I’ll get the dishes, too; you must be tired after helping out with the milking.”

From the opposite end of the table, Aaron belched loudly, smiling a compliment at his wife. “Gut meal,” he said. He hooked his thumbs beneath his suspenders and turned to his father. “I’m thinking of heading to Lapp’s auction on Monday.”

“You need some new horseflesh?” Elam said.

Aaron shrugged. “Never hurts to see what’s there.”

“I heard tell that Marcus King was getting set to sell that colt bred off his bay last spring.”

“Ja? He’s a beauty.”

Sarah snorted. “What are you gonna do with another horse?”

Ellie looked from one family member to another, as if she were following a tennis match. “Excuse me,” she said softly, and one by one they turned to her. “Are you all aware that your daughter is involved in a murder trial?”

“Ellie, don’t-” Katie stretched out her hand, but Ellie shook her head.

“Are you all aware that in less than a week’s time, your daughter could be found guilty of murder and taken directly from the courthouse to the prison in Muncy? Sitting here talking about horse auctions-doesn’t anyone even care how the trial is going?”

“We care,” Aaron said stiffly.

“Hell of a way to show it,” Ellie muttered, balling up her napkin and tossing it onto the table before escaping upstairs to her room.

• • •

When Ellie opened her eyes again, it was fully dark, and Katie was sitting on the edge of the bed. She sat up immediately, pushing her hair back from her face and squinting at the little battery-powered clock on the nightstand. “What time is it?”

“Just after ten,” Katie whispered. “You fell asleep.”

“Yeah.” Ellie ran her tongue over her fuzzy teeth. “Looks like.” She blinked her way back to consciousness, then reached over to turn up the gas lamp. “Where did you go, anyway?”

“I did the dishes and cleaned the tack.” Katie busied herself around the room, pulling the shades for the night and sitting down to unwind her neat bun.

Ellie watched Katie run a brush through her long, honey hair, her eyes clear and wide. When Ellie had first arrived and seen that look on all the faces surrounding her, she’d mistaken it for blankness, for stupidity. It had taken months for her to realize that the gaze of the Amish was not vacant, but full-brimming with a quiet peace. Even now, after a difficult beginning to the trial that would have kept most people tossing and turning, Katie was at ease.

“I know they care,” Ellie heard herself murmur.

Katie turned her head. “About the trial, you mean.”

“Yeah. My family used to yell a lot. Argue and spontaneously combust and then somehow get back together after the dust settled. This quiet-it’s still a little strange.”

“Your family yelled at you a lot, didn’t they?”

“Sometimes,” Ellie admitted. “But at least all the noise let me know they were there.” She shook her head, clearing it of the memory. “Anyway, I apologize for blowing up at dinner.” She sighed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Katie’s brush stopped in the middle of a long stroke. “You don’t?”

“Well, no. I mean, I’m a little anxious about the trial, but if I were you I’d rather have me nervous than complacent.” She looked up at Katie, only to realize the girl’s cheeks were burning.

“What are you hiding?” Ellie asked, her stomach sinking.

“Nothing! I’m not hiding a thing!”

Ellie closed her eyes. “I’m too tired for this right now. Could you just save your confession until the morning?”

“Okay,” Katie said, too quickly.

“The hell with the morning. Tell me now.”

“You’ve been falling asleep early, like you did tonight. And you exploded at the dinner table.” Katie’s eyes gleamed as she remembered something else. “And remember this morning, in the bathroom at the court?”

“You’re right. I can blame it all on this bug I’ve caught.”

Katie set down the hairbrush and smiled shyly. “You’re not sick, Ellie. You’re pregnant.”

FOURTEEN Ellie

“Clearly, it’s wrong,” I said to Katie, holding out the stick from the pregnancy test kit.

Katie, squinting at the back of the box, shook her head. “You waited five minutes. You watched the little line appear in the test window.”

I tossed the stick, with its little pink plus sign, onto the bed. “I was supposed to pee for thirty seconds straight, and I only counted fifteen. So there you go. Human error.”

We both looked at the box, which contained a second stick. At the pharmacy the deal had been two for the price of one. All it would take for proof was one more trip to the bathroom, five more interminable minutes of destiny. But both Katie and I knew what the results would be.

Things like this did not happen to forty-year-old women. Accidents were for teenagers caught up in the moment, rolling around the backseat of their parents’ cars. Accidents were for women who considered their bodies still new and surprising, rather than old, familiar friends. Accidents were for those who didn’t know better.

But this didn’t feel like an accident. It felt hard and hot, a nugget nestled beneath my palm, as if already I could feel the sonic waves of that tiny heart.

Katie looked into her lap. “Congratulations,” she whispered.

• • •

In the past five years, I had wanted a baby so much I ached. I would wake up sometimes beside Stephen and feel my arms throb, as if I had been holding a newborn weight the whole night. I would see an infant in a stroller and feel my whole body reach; I would mark my monthly period on the calendar with the sense that my life was passing me by. I wanted to grow something under my heart. I wanted to breathe, to eat, to blossom for someone else.

Stephen and I fought about children approximately twice a year, as if reproduction were a volcano that erupted every now and then on the island we’d created for ourselves. Once, I actually wore him down. “All right,” he’d said. “If it happens, it happens.” I threw away my birth control pills for six consecutive months, but we didn’t manage to make a baby. It took me nearly half a year after that to understand why not: You can’t create life in a place that’s dying by degrees.

After that, I’d stopped asking Stephen. Instead, when I was feeling maternal, I went to the library and did research. I learned how many times the cells of a zygote divided before they were classified as an embryo. I saw on microfiche the pictures of a fetus sucking its thumb, veins running like roads beneath the orange glow of its skin. I learned that a six-week-old fetus was the size of a strawberry. I read about alpha-fetal protein and amniocentesis and rH factors. I became a scholar in an ivory tower, an expert with no hands-on experience.

So you see, I knew everything about this baby inside me-except why I wasn’t overjoyed to discover its existence.

I didn’t want anyone on the farm to know I was pregnant-at least not until I broke the news to Coop. The next morning, I slept late. I managed to make it out to a secluded spot behind the vegetable garden before I started dry heaving. When the smell of the horse grain made me dizzy, Katie wordlessly took over for me. I began to see her in a new light, amazed she had hidden her condition from so many people, for so long.

She came to join me outside the barn. “So,” she asked briskly, “you feeling poor, still?” She slid down beside me, our backs braced by the red wooden wall.

“Not anymore,” I lied. “I think I’ll be okay.”

“Till tomorrow morning, anyway.” Katie dug beneath the waistband of her apron and pulled out two teabags. “You’ll be needing these, I figure.”

I sniffed at them. “Will they settle my stomach?”

Katie blushed. “You put them here,” she said, grazing her breasts with the tips of her fingers. “When they’re too sore to bear.” Assessing my naïveté, she added, “You steep them, first.”

“Thank God I know someone who’s already been through this-” Katie reared back as if I’d slapped her, and too late I realized what I’d said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she murmured.

“It’s not okay. I know this can’t be easy for you, especially in the middle of the trial. I could say that you’ll have another baby of your own one day, but I remember how I felt every time one of my pregnant, married friends said something like that to me.”

“How did you feel?”

“Like I wanted to deck her.”

Katie smiled shyly. “Ja, that’s about right.” She glanced at my stomach, then away. “I’m happy for you, Ellie, I am. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. And I keep telling myself that my Mam lost three babies, four if you count Hannah.” She shrugged. “You can be happy for someone else’s good fortune, but that doesn’t mean you forget your own bad luck.”

I had never been more aware than I was at that moment of the fact that Katie had wanted her baby. She may have put off having it, she may have procrastinated owning up to her pregnancy-but once the infant was born, there had never been any question in her mind about loving it. With no little amazement I stared at her, feeling the defense I’d prepared for her trial dovetail into the truth.

I squeezed her hand. “It means a lot to me,” I said. “Being able to share this secret with someone.”

“Soon you’ll be able to tell Coop.”

“I guess.” I didn’t know when or whether he’d be by this weekend. We hadn’t made any official plans when he dropped us off at the farmhouse on Friday night. Still annoyed after my refusal to move in with him, he was keeping his distance.

Katie wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. “You think he’ll be happy?”

“I know he will.”

She looked up at me. “Suppose you’ll be getting married, then.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know about that.”

“I bet he’ll want to marry you.”

I turned to her. “It’s not Coop who’s holding back.”

I expected her to stare at me blankly, to wonder why on earth I’d shy away from the obvious, easy path. I had a man who loved me, who was the father of this child, who wanted this child. Even I didn’t understand my reluctance.

“When I found out I was carrying,” Katie said softly, “I thought about telling Adam. He’d gone away, sure, but I figured that I could have dug him up if I put my mind to it. And then I realized that I really didn’t want to tell Adam. Not because he would have been upset-ach, no, the very opposite. I didn’t want to tell him because then all the choices were gone. I’d know what I had to do, and I would have done it. But I was afraid that one day I’d look down at the baby, and I wouldn’t be thinking, I love you . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and I turned to catch her gaze, to finish her words. “I’d be thinking, how did I get here?”

Katie stared at the flat expanse of the pond in the distance. “Exactly,” she said.

Sarah headed toward the chicken coop. “You don’t have to do this,” she told me for the third time.

But I was feeling guilty about having slept the morning away. “It’s no trouble at all,” I said. The Fishers kept twenty-four hens for laying. Tending to the chickens was something Katie and I did in the mornings; the chore involved feeding the birds and gathering the eggs. I had been pecked hard enough to bleed at first, but finally learned how to slide my hand under the warm bottom of a chicken without suffering injury. In fact, I was looking forward to showing Sarah that I already knew a thing or two.

Sarah, on the other hand, wanted to pepper me with questions about Katie’s trial. With Aaron far out of earshot, she asked about the prosecutor, the witnesses, the judge. She asked whether Katie would have to speak out in court. Whether we would win.

That last question fell at the door to the coop. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m doing my best.”

Sarah’s face stretched into a smile. “Yes,” she said softly. “You do that well.”

She pushed open the wooden door, sending feathers flying as the birds squawked and scattered. Something about a chicken coop reminded me of a batch of ladies gossiping at a hairdresser’s salon, and I smiled as a high-strung hen flapped around my heels. Heading to the roost on the right, I began to search the beds for eggs.

“No,” Sarah instructed as I upended a russet-colored hen. “She’s still gut.” I watched her tuck a molting chicken beneath her arm like a football and press her fingers between the bones that protruded from its bottom. “Ah, here’s one that stopped laying,” she said, holding it out to me by the feet. “Let me just grab another.”

The chicken was twisting like Houdini, intent on escaping. Completely baffled, I fisted my hand more tightly around its nubby legs as Sarah found another bird. She headed for the door of the coop, shooing hens. “What about their eggs?” I asked.

Sarah looked back over her shoulder. “They’re not giving ’em anymore. That’s why we’ll be having them for dinner.”

I stopped in my tracks, looked down at the hen, and nearly let her go. “Come along,” Sarah said, disappearing behind the coop.

There was a chopping block, an ax, and a steaming pail of hot water waiting. With grace Sarah lifted the ax, swung the bird onto the block and cut off its head. As she released its legs, the decapitated chicken somersaulted and danced a jitterbug in a pool of its own blood. With horror I watched Sarah reach for the chicken I was holding; I felt her pull it from my grip just before I fell to my knees and threw up.

After a moment Sarah’s hand smoothed back my hair. “Ach, Ellie,” she said, “I thought you knew.”

I shook my head, which made me feel sick again. “I wouldn’t have come.”

“Katie don’t have the stomach for it either,” Sarah admitted. “I asked you because it’s so much easier than going back in there again after doing the first one.” She patted my arm; on the back of her wrist was a smear of blood. I closed my eyes.

I could hear Sarah moving behind me, dipping the limp bodies of the chickens into hot water. “The dumpling stew,” I said hesitantly. “The noodle soup . . . ?”

“Of course,” Sarah answered. “Where did you think chickens came from?”

“Frank Perdue.”

“He does it the same way, believe me.”

I cradled my head in my hands, refusing to think about all the brisket and the hamburger meat we’d eaten, and of the little bull calves I’d seen born in the months I’d been on the farm. People only see what they want to see-look at Sarah turning a blind eye to Katie’s pregnancy, or a jury hanging an acquittal on the testimony of a certain sympathetic witness, or even my own reluctance to admit that the connection between Coop and me went beyond the physical fact of creating a baby.

I glanced up to see Sarah stripping the feathers off one of the birds, her mouth set in a tight line. There were tufts of white fluff on her apron and skirt; a trail of red blood soaked into the hard-packed dirt before her. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “How do you do it?”

“I do what I have to do,” she said matter-of-factly. “You of all people should understand.”

I was hiding in the milk room when Coop found me that afternoon. “El, you’re not gonna believe this-” His eyes widened as he saw me, and he sprinted to my side, running his hands up and down my arms. “How did this happen?”

He knew; God, all he’d had to do was look at me, and he knew about the baby. I swallowed and met his gaze. “Pretty much the usual way, I guess.”

Coop’s hand slid from my shoulder to my waist, and I waited for him to move lower still. But instead, his fingers plucked at my T-shirt, rubbing at the bright red streak that stained it. “When was your last tetanus shot?”

He wasn’t talking about the baby. He wasn’t talking about the baby.

“Well, of course I am,” Coop said, making me realize I’d spoken aloud. “But for God’s sake, the stupid trial can wait. We’ll get you stitched up first.”

I pushed Coop’s hands away. “I’m fine. This blood’s not mine.”

Coop raised a brow. “Have you been committing homicide again?”

“Very funny. I was helping kill chickens.”

“I’d save the pagan rituals until after you’ve presented your defense, but then-”

“Tell me about him, Coop,” I said firmly.

“He wants answers. After all, the man jumped on a plane the day after finding out he was a father-but he wants to see Katie and the baby.”

My jaw dropped. “You didn’t tell him-”

“No, I didn’t. I’m a psychiatrist, Ellie. I’m not about to cause someone undue mental anguish unless I’m there, face to face, to help him deal with it.”

As Coop turned away, I put my hand on his shoulder. “I would have done the same thing. Except my motive wouldn’t have been kindness, but selfishness. I want him to testify, and if that works to get him here, so be it.”

“This isn’t going to be easy for him,” Coop murmured.

“It was no picnic for Katie, either.” I straightened. “Has he seen Jacob yet?”

“He just got off the plane. I picked him up in Philly.”

“So where is he now?”

“In the car, waiting.”

“In the car?” I sputtered. “Here? Are you crazy?”

Coop grinned. “I think I can tell you with some authority that I’m not.”

In no mood for his jokes, I was already walking through the barn. “We’ve got to get him out of here, fast.”

Coop fell into step beside me. “You may want to change first,” he said. “Just a suggestion-but right now you look like you’ve stepped out of a Kevin Williamson film, and you know how important first impressions are.”

His words barely registered. I was too busy considering how many times that day I would be called upon to tell a man the one thing he least expected to hear.

• • •

“Why is she in trouble?” Adam Sinclair asked, leaning across the table at the diner. “Is it because she wasn’t married when she had the baby? God, if she’d just written to me, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“She couldn’t write to you,” I said gently. “Jacob never forwarded your letters.”

“He didn’t? That bastard-”

“-was doing what he thought was in the best interest of his sister,” I said. “He didn’t think she could bear the stigma of having to leave her faith, and that’s what marrying you would have entailed.”

Adam pushed away his plate. “Look. I appreciate you getting in touch with me and letting me know that Katie’s in some kind of trouble. I appreciate the ride from the airport out here to East Paradise. I even appreciate the free lunch. But I’m sure that by now, Katie’s back home with the baby, and I really need to go speak to her directly.”

I watched his hands play over the table and imagined them touching Katie, holding Katie. And with a great and sudden rage I hated this man whom I hardly knew, for unwittingly bringing Katie to this point. Who was he, to decide that his affection for Katie overruled everything she’d been brought up to believe? Who was he, to lead an eighteen-year-old girl down a path of seduction when he clearly knew better?

Something must have shown on my face, because beneath the table, Coop pressed his hand against my thigh in gentle warning. I blinked, and Adam came into clear focus: his bright eyes, his tapping foot, his sideways glance at every jingle of the bell over the door, as if he expected Katie and his son to come strolling in any minute.

“Adam,” I said, “the baby didn’t survive.”

He froze. With precision he folded his hands on the table, fingers gripped so tight the tips turned bloodlessly white. “What . . . ” he said softly, his voice breaking in the middle of the word. “What happened?”

“We don’t know. He was born prematurely and died shortly after delivery.”

Adam’s head sagged. “For the past three days, since you called, all I’ve been thinking of is that baby. Whether it’s got her eyes, or my chin. Whether I’d know him in an instant. Jesus. If I’d been here, maybe I could have done something.”

I looked at Coop. “We didn’t think it was right to tell you over the phone.”

“No. No, of course not.” Adam looked up, quickly wiping his eyes. “Katie must be devastated.”

“She is,” Coop said.

“Is that what you meant when you said she’s in trouble? Did you need me to come because she’s depressed?”

“We need you to stand up for her in court,” I said quietly. “Katie’s been charged with murdering the baby.”

He reeled back. “She didn’t.”

“No, I don’t think so either.”

Pushing to his feet, Adam threw down his napkin. “I have to see her. Now.”

“I’d rather you wait.” I stood in front of him, blocking his exit.

Adam loomed over me. “Do you think I give a flying fuck what you want?”

“Katie doesn’t even know you’re here.”

“Then it’s high time she found out.”

I put my hand on his arm. “As Katie’s lawyer, I believe that if the jury is given a front-row seat the first time she sees you again, they’re going to be moved by her emotion. They’re going to think that anyone who wears her heart on her sleeve like that couldn’t be cold enough to kill her own infant.” I stepped away. “If you want to see Katie now, Adam, I’ll take you there. But think hard about that. Because the last time she needed you, you weren’t here to help. This time, you can.”

Adam looked from me to Coop, and slowly sank back into his seat.

The moment Adam went to use the restroom, I told Coop we had to talk.

“I’m all ears.” Coop picked up a french fry from my plate and popped it into his mouth.

“In private.”

“My pleasure,” Coop said, “but what do I do with my baby-sitting charge?”

“Keep him far away from mine.” I sighed, and considered keeping the news to myself until after the trial; this was a moment I should have been concentrating on Katie, after all, and not myself. But I had only to look as far as Adam Sinclair to see the grief that could come from remaining silent, even with the best of intentions.

Before I could puzzle out a solution, Adam provided me with one. Coming from the restroom with red-rimmed eyes and the smell of soap fresh about him, he stood awkwardly at the edge of the table. “If it’s not too much trouble,” he asked, “could you take me to my son’s grave?”

Coop parked beside the Amish cemetery. “Take as long as you’d like,” he said. Adam stepped out of the back of the car, his shoulders hunched against the wind, as I got out of my own seat and led him through the small gate.

We kicked up small tornadoes of fallen leaves as we crossed to the new grave. The stone, chipped by Katie’s hands, was the color of winter. Adam shoved his hands into his pockets and spoke without turning to me. “The funeral . . . were you here?”

“Yes. It was lovely.”

“Was there a service? Flowers?”

I thought of the brief, uncomfortable prayer said by the bishop, of the Plain customs that did not allow for any adornment of the grave, neither flowers nor fancy headstones. “It was lovely,” I repeated.

Adam nodded, then sat down on the ground beside the grave. He held out his hand, gently running one finger over the rounded edge of the headstone, the way a new father might reverently touch the soft curve of a newborn’s cheek. Eyes stinging, I turned abruptly and walked back to Coop’s car.

As I slid into the passenger seat, Coop watched Adam through the window. “Poor guy. I can’t even imagine.”

“Coop,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”

He turned. “You’re what?”

I folded my hands over my abdomen. “You heard right.”

The fact of this baby had tangled my thoughts. I had once left Coop for all the wrong reasons; I didn’t want to stay with him for all the wrong reasons, either. I stared at his face, waiting; telling myself that his reaction wouldn’t affect my decision about the future in the least; wondering why, then, I wanted to hear his response so badly. For the first time I could remember, I was unsure about Coop’s commitment to me. Sure, he had asked me to move in with him, but this wasn’t the same thing at all. Maybe he wanted to spend a lifetime together, but he might not have expected that lifetime to begin quite so suddenly or with such lasting consequences. He had never mentioned marriage. He had never mentioned children.

I’d provided Coop with the perfect reason to walk out of my life and leave me the breathing room I’d always craved-but now I realized I didn’t want him to go.

When he did not smile, or touch me, or do anything but sit frozen across from me, I began to panic. Maybe Katie had it right; maybe the best thing would have been to wait a few days, if not more. “So,” I said, my voice shaking. “What are you thinking?”

He reached across the seat and tugged my hand away from the place where it covered my stomach. He edged up the hem of my sweatshirt and leaned forward, and then I felt his kiss low against my belly.

The breath I did not realize I’d been holding rushed out in a great flood of relief. After a moment I cradled his head in my hands, sifting strands of his hair through my fingers, as Coop wrapped his arms around my hips and held tight to the two of us.

He insisted on walking me to the door of the Fishers’ house. “I’m not handicapped, Coop,” I argued. “Just pregnant.” But the feminist in me rolled over, secretly thrilled to be treated like spun sugar.

At the porch, he took my hands and turned me to face him. “I know this part is supposed to come before you actually make the baby, but I want you to know I love you. I’ve loved you so long I can’t remember when it started.”

“I can. It was after the Kappa Alpha Theta San Juan Night party, somewhere between you diving into the grain alcohol and the naked blow pong tournament.”

Coop groaned. “Let’s not tell him how we met, okay?”

“What makes you so sure it’s a he?”

Suddenly Coop stilled and held his hand up to his ear. “Do you hear that?”

I strained, then shook my head. “No. What?”

“Us,” he said, kissing me lightly. “Sounding like parents.”

“Scary thought.”

He smiled, then cocked his head and stared at me. “What?” I asked, self-conscious. “Do I have spinach between my teeth?”

“No. It’s just that I’m only going to get this moment once, and I want to remember it.”

“I think we can arrange for you to walk me into the house a few more times, if it’s that important to you.”

“God, can’t a guy get a break? Do all women talk this much, or is it just because you’re an attorney?”

“Well, if I were you I’d say whatever it is you’re going to say, because Adam’s liable to get sick of waiting in the car and drive back to Philly without you.”

Coop cupped my face in his palms. “You’re a pain in the ass, El, but you’re my pain in the ass.” His thumbs smoothed over my cheeks. “Marry me,” he whispered.

I brought my hands up to grasp his wrists. Over his shoulder, the moon was rising, a ghost in the sky. I realized that Coop was right: I would remember this moment with the same level of detail and clarity that came to mind when I thought back to the last time Coop had asked me to share his life; the last time I’d told him no.

“Don’t hate me,” I said.

His hands fell away. “You are not doing this to me again. I won’t let you.” A muscle jumped along his jaw as he struggled for control.

“I’m not saying no. I’m just not saying yes, either. Coop, I just found out about this. I’m still seeing how the word mother fits. I can’t try on wife at the same time.”

“Millions of other women manage.”

“Not quite in this order.” I smoothed my hand over his chest, hoping to soothe. “You told me a little while ago I could take a while to think. Does that still hold?”

Coop nodded, and slowly let the tension drain out of his shoulders. “But this time, you won’t be able to get rid of me so easily.” Then he splayed his hand over my abdomen, where part of him already was, and kissed me good-bye.

“You were gone for so long,” Katie whispered from her bed. “Did you tell him?”

I stared up at the ceiling, at the small yellow stain that reminded me of Abraham Lincoln’s profile. “Yeah, I did.”

She came up on one elbow. “And?”

“And he’s happy. That’s it.” I refused to let myself look at her. If I did, I would remember Adam’s expression when he first heard about their baby, Adam’s sorrow as he knelt at the grave. I couldn’t trust myself to keep from Katie the news that Adam Sinclair was home again.

“I bet he couldn’t stop smiling,” Katie said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I bet that he looked into your eyes.” Her voice grew more dreamy. “I bet he told you that he loved you.”

“As a matter of fact-”

“And he put his arms around you,” Katie continued, “and said that even if everyone else turned their backs, even if you never saw your friends or family again, a world with only you and him and the baby would feel downright crowded because of all the love that would be stuffed into it.”

I stared at Katie, at her eyes shining in the darkness, her mouth twisted in a half smile somewhere between rapture and remorse. “Yes,” I said. “It was just like that.”

FIFTEEN

Ellie might never have made it out the door on Monday morning, if not for the chamomile tea. She finally managed to get downstairs after a sleepless night and morning sickness, and found the steaming mug on her plate with a few saltines. By that time, the others had left the breakfast table; only Katie and Sarah remained in the kitchen cleaning the dishes. “You understand we have to drive in with Leda today,” Ellie said, steeling herself against the smell of leftover food. “Coop’s meeting us at the courthouse.”

Katie nodded, but didn’t turn around. Ellie glanced at the women’s backs, thankful that Katie had known enough to spare her the sight of a platter heaped with eggs and bacon and sausage. She took a tentative sip of the tea, expecting her stomach to heave again, but curiously the nausea ebbed. By the time she finished, she felt better than she had all weekend.

She did not want to harp on the pregnancy, especially not today, but she felt duty-bound to acknowledge Katie’s thoughtfulness. “The tea,” Ellie whispered, as they climbed into the backseat of Leda’s car twenty minutes later. “It was just what I needed.”

“Don’t thank me,” Katie whispered back. “Mam made it for you.”

For the past months, Sarah had been piling her plate at mealtime as if she were a sow to be fattened up for the kill; the sudden change in menu seemed suspicious. “Did you tell her I’m pregnant?” Ellie demanded.

“No. She made it for you because you’re worried about the trial. She thinks chamomile settles your nerves.”

Relaxing, Ellie sat back. “It settles your stomach, too.”

“Ja, I know,” Katie said. “She used to make it for me.”

“When did she think you were worried?”

Katie shrugged. “Back when I was carrying.”

Before she could say anything else, Leda got into the driver’s seat and peered into the rearview mirror. “You’re okay with me at the wheel, Katie?”

“I figure the bishop’s getting used to making exceptions to the rules for me.”

“Is Samuel coming with us today or what?” Ellie muttered, peering out the window. “Being late on the first day of testimony doesn’t usually sit well with judges.”

As if she had conjured him, Samuel came running from the field behind the barn. The jacket of his good Sunday suit hung open, his black hat sat askew on his head. Pulling it off, he ducked into the seat beside Leda. “Sorry,” he muttered, twisting around as Leda began to drive. He handed a tiny, fading sprig of clover to Katie, the four leaves of its head lying limp in her palm. “For luck,” Samuel said, smiling at her. “For you.”

“You have a nice weekend?” George asked as they took their places in court.

“It was fine,” Ellie answered brusquely, arranging the defense table to her satisfaction.

“Sounds like someone’s cranky. Must’ve gone to bed too late last night.” George grinned. “Guess you were partying till the cows came home. What time do they come home, anyway?”

“Are you finished?” Ellie asked, staring at him with indifference.

“All rise! The Honorable Philomena Ledbetter presiding!”

The judge settled into her chair. “Good morning, everyone,” she said, slipping on her half-glasses. “I believe we left off on Friday with the prosecution resting its case, which means that today, Ms. Hathaway, you’re on. I trust you’re ready to go?”

Ellie rose. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Excellent. You may call your first witness.”

“The defense calls Jacob Fisher to the stand.”

Katie watched as her brother entered the courtroom from the lobby, where he’d been sequestered as an upcoming witness. He winked at her as he was being sworn in. Ellie smiled at him, reassuring. “Could you state your name and address?”

“Jacob Fisher. Two-fifty-five North Street, in State College, Pennsylvania.”

“What’s your relationship to Katie?”

“I’m her older brother.”

“Yet you don’t live at home with the Fishers?”

Jacob shook his head. “I haven’t for several years, now. I grew up Plain on my parents’ farm and got baptized at eighteen, but then I left the church.”

“Why?”

Jacob looked at the jury. “I truly believed I would be Plain my whole life, but then I discovered something that meant just as much to me as my faith, if not more.”

“What was that?”

“Learning. The Amish don’t believe in schooling past eighth grade. It goes against the Ordnung, the rules of the church.”

“There are rules?”

“Yes. It’s what most people associate with the Amish-the fact that you can’t drive cars, or use tractors. The way you dress. The lack of electricity and telephones. All the things that make you recognizable as a group. When you’re baptized, you vow to live by these conditions.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was working as a carpenter’s apprentice, building bookshelves for a high school English teacher over in Gap. He caught me leafing through his books, and let me take some home. He planted the thought in my mind that I might want to further my studies. I hid my books for as long as I could from my family, but eventually, when I knew I would be applying to college, I realized that I could no longer be Plain.”

“At that point, what happened?”

“The Amish church gave me a choice: Give up on college, or leave the faith.”

“That sounds harsh.”

“It’s not,” Jacob said. “At any point-today, even-if I went back and confessed in front of the congregation, I’d be accepted back with open arms.”

“But you can’t erase the things you’ve learned at college, can you?”

“That’s not the point. It’s that I’d agree to yield to a set of circumstances chosen by the group, instead of trailblazing my own.”

“What do you do today, Jacob?”

“I’m getting my master’s degree in English at Penn State.”

“Your parents must be quite proud of you,” Ellie said.

Jacob smiled faintly. “I don’t know about that. You see, what commands praise in the English world is very different from what commands praise in the Plain world. In fact, you don’t want to command praise if you’re Plain. You want to blend in, to live a good Christian life without calling attention to yourself. So, no, Ms. Hathaway, I wouldn’t say my parents are proud of me. They’re confused by the choice I’ve made.”

“Do you still see them?”

Jacob glanced at his sister. “I saw my parents for the first time in six years just the other night. I went back to their farm even though my father had disowned me after I was excommunicated.”

Ellie raised her brows. “If you leave the Amish church, you can’t stay in touch with those who are Amish?”

“No, that’s the exception rather than the rule. Sure, having someone around who’s excommunicated can make things uncomfortable for everyone else, especially if you all live in the same house, because of the Meidung-shunning. One of those church rules I was talking about says that members of the church have to avoid those who’ve broken the rules. People who’ve sinned are put under the bann for a little while, and during that time, other Plain folks can’t eat with them, or conduct business, or have sexual relations.”

“So a husband would have to shun his wife? A mother would have to shun her child?”

“Technically, yes. But then again, when I was Plain, I knew of a husband who owned a car and was put under the bann. He still lived with his wife, who was a member of the church-and even though she was supposed to be shunning him, they somehow managed to have seven children who all got baptized Amish when it came time. So basically, the distancing is up to the individuals involved.”

“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 baptized 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 deci sions 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 Ledbetter 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 fraternizes with young people from any of those groups.”

“Is your sister still in a gang?”

“Technically, she could participate in their get-togethers until she’s married. But most young people stop attending after they’re baptized into the church.”

“Because then they can’t drink alcohol or dance or go to movies?”

“That’s right. Before baptism, the rules are bent, and that’s okay. After baptism, you’ve chosen your path, and you’d better stick to it.”

“Katie tried beer for the first time when she came to visit you?”

Jacob nodded. “Yes. At a frat party, where I was with her. But it wasn’t substantially different from an experience she might have had with her gang.”

“It was perfectly okay under Amish rules?”

“Yes, because she wasn’t baptized yet.”

“She went to some movies with you, too?” George asked.

“Yes.”

“Which, again, was something she might have even done with her gang?”

“That’s right,” Jacob answered.

“And it was perfectly okay under church rules.”

“Yes, because she wasn’t baptized.”

“How about dancing? Did you ever take her out dancing?”

“Once or twice.”

“But some gangs might have done a little dancing too.”

“Yes.”

“And it was perfectly okay under church rules.”

“Yes. Again, she wasn’t baptized yet.”

“Sounds like you can test a lot of waters before you take the final plunge,” George said.

“That’s the point.”

“So when did your sister get baptized?” George asked.

“September of last year.”

The prosecutor nodded thoughtfully. “Then she got pregnant after she was baptized. Is sexual intercourse outside of marriage and having an illegitimate baby perfectly okay under church rules?”

Jacob, silent, turned red.

“I’d like an answer.”

“No, that wouldn’t be all right.”

“Ah, yes. Because she was already baptized?”

“Among other things,” Jacob said.

“So let me sum up here,” George concluded. “The defendant lied to your father, she lied to you, she got pregnant out of wedlock after taking baptismal vows-is this the truth about your sister you wanted the jury to understand?”

“No!”

“This is the ‘sweet, kind, good’ girl you described in your testimony? We’re talking about a real Girl Scout here, aren’t we, Mr. Fisher?”

“We are,” Jacob stiffly answered. “You don’t understand.”

“Sure I do. You explained it yourself far more eloquently than I ever could.” George crossed to the court reporter and pointed to a spot in the long loop of the trial’s transcript. “Could you read this back for me?”

The woman nodded. “When you’re Amish,” she read, “family is everything.”

George smiled. “Nothing further.”

• • •

Judge Ledbetter called for a coffee break after Jacob’s testimony. The jury filed out, clutching their pads and pencils and studiously avoiding Ellie’s gaze. Jacob, sprung from the witness chair, walked to Katie and took her hands into his. He bent his forehead against hers and whispered in Dietsch, saying something that made her laugh softly.

Then he stood up and turned to Ellie. “Well?”

“You did fine,” she said, a smile pasted to her face.

This seemed to relax him. “Does the jury think so, too?”

“Jacob, I stopped trying to figure out American juries around the same time Adam Sandler movies started raking in millions at the box office-people just don’t act predictably. The woman with the blue hair, she didn’t take her eyes off you the entire time. But the guy with the bad toupee was trying to pull a stray thread off his blazer cuff, and I doubt he heard a thing you said.”

“Still . . . it went well?”

“You’re the first witness,” Ellie said gently. “How about we just wait and see?”

He nodded. “Can I take Katie to get a cup of coffee downstairs?”

“No. The cameras are no-holds-barred the minute she leaves this courtroom. If she wants coffee, bring it back here to her.”

The moment he left, Ellie turned to Katie. “Did you see what George Callahan did to Jacob on the stand?”

“He tried to trip him up a little, but-”

“Do you have any idea how much worse it’s going to be for you?”

Katie set her jaw. “I’m going to make my things right, no matter what it takes.”

“I have a stronger case if I don’t put you on the stand, Katie.”

“How? After all that talk about the truth, shouldn’t they hear it from me?”

Ellie sighed. “No one said I was going to tell them the truth!”

“You did, during that opening part-”

“It’s an act, Katie. Seventy-five percent of being an attorney is being an Oscar-worthy performer. I’m going to tell them a story, that’s all, and with any luck they’ll like it better than the one George tells them.”

“You said that you would let me tell the truth.”

“I said that I wouldn’t use an insanity defense. You said that you’d tell the truth. And if you recall, I basically said that we’d see.” She looked into Katie’s eyes. “If you step out there, George is going to cut you to ribbons. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t destroy the thread of the defense while he’s doing it. This is an English world, an English court, an English murder charge. You can’t win if you play by Amish rules.”

“You have an Amish client, with an Amish upbringing, and Amish thoughts. The English rules don’t apply,” Katie said quietly. “So where does that leave us?”

“Just listen to what the prosecutor does and says, Katie. Right up till the minute you’re supposed to get on the stand, you can change your mind.” Ellie gazed at her client. “Even if you never speak a word in court, I can win.”

“If I never speak a word in court, Ellie, I’ll be the liar that Mr. Callahan says I am.”

Frustrated, Ellie turned away. What a catch-22: Katie wanting her to sacrifice this case on the altar of religious honesty; Ellie knowing that the last place honesty belonged was in court. It was like navigating a car in an ice storm-even if she’d been entirely sure of her own abilities, there were other parties on the road speeding by her, crossing lines, crashing.

Then again, Katie had never driven a car.

“You’re not feeling well, are you?”

At the sound of Coop’s voice, Ellie raised her face. “I’m just fine, thanks.”

“You look awful.”

She smirked. “Gee, I bet you have to beat girls off with a stick.”

He hunkered down beside her. “I’m serious, Ellie,” he said, lowering his voice. “I have a personal stake in your welfare, now. And if this trial is too much for you-”

“For God’s sake, Coop, women used to give birth in the fields and then keep on picking corn after-”

“Cotton.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “They were picking cotton.”

Ellie blinked at him. “Were you there?”

“I was just making a point.”

“Yeah. A point. The point is that I’m fine. A-OK. Perfect and one hundred percent. I can win this trial; I can have this baby; I can do anything.” With horror, Ellie realized that tears were pricking the backs of her eyes. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to end the war in Bosnia and stop hunger in a few Third World countries before court reconvenes.” Pushing to her feet, she shoved past Coop.

He stared after Ellie, then sank into the chair she’d vacated. Katie was rubbing her thumbnail over the top sheet of a legal pad. “It’s the baby,” she said. “It can make you all ferhoodled.”

“Well.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m worried about her.”

Pressing deeper with her nail, she left a mark on the paper. “I’m worried, too.”

Ellie slipped into the seat beside Katie just as the judge was coming back into the courtroom. Ellie’s face was flushed and a little damp, as if she’d been splashing water on it. She would not look at Katie, not even when Katie touched her lightly on the hand beneath the defense table, just to make sure everything was all right.

Ellie murmured something then, something that sounded like “Don’t worry,” or “I’m sorry,” although the latter didn’t make any sense. Then she rose in one fluid stream, in the sleek, dramatic way that made Katie think of smoke curling from a chimney. “The defense,” Ellie said, “calls Adam Sinclair.”

Katie had heard wrong, surely. She sucked in her breath.

“Objection,” the prosecutor called out. “This witness wasn’t on my list.”

“Your Honor, he was out of the country. I discovered his whereabouts only days ago,” Ellie explained.

“That still doesn’t tell me why Mr. Sinclair didn’t make it to your witness list,” Judge Ledbetter said.

Ellie hesitated. “He represents some last-minute information I’ve found.”

“Your Honor, this is unconscionable. Ms. Hathaway is twisting legal procedure to suit her own needs.”

“I beg your pardon, Judge,” Ellie countered, “and I apologize to Mr. Callahan for the short notice. This witness isn’t going to win my case for me, but he will be able to provide an important piece of background that’s been missing.”

“I want time to depose him first,” George said.

Katie did not hear the rest. All she knew was within moments, Adam was in the same room as her. She began to take short, shallow breaths; each one rustling, as if she might unwrap it to find the candy of his name. Adam placed his palm over the Bible and Katie pictured it, instead, pressed against the flat of her own belly.

And then he looked at her. There was a sorrow in his gaze that made Katie think anguish had risen within him like a sea, leaving a watermark that cut right across the blue of his eyes. He stared at her, kept staring at her, until the air went solid and her heart thudded in her chest, hard enough for there to be a recoil.

Katie bit her lip, pulling shame tight as a shawl. She had done this, she had brought them to this point. I’m sorry.

Don’t worry.

She lifted shaking hands to cover her face, thinking like a child now: if she could not see Adam, surely she would be invisible.

“Ms. Hathaway,” the judge said. “Would you like to take a moment?”

“No,” Ellie answered. “My client is fine.”

But Katie wasn’t fine. She couldn’t stop trembling, and the tears were coming harder, and for the life of her she couldn’t look up and see Adam again. She could feel the stares of the jury members like so many tiny pinpricks, and she wondered why Ellie wouldn’t do this one thing for her-let her run out of here, and never look back.

“Please,” she whispered to Ellie.

“Shh. Trust me.”

“Are you sure, counselor?” Judge Ledbetter asked.

Ellie glanced at the jury, at their open-mouthed expressions. “Positive.”

At that moment, Katie thought she truly hated Ellie.

“Your Honor,” came his voice; oh, Lord, his sweet, deep voice, like the hum of a buggy running over the pavement. “May I?” He picked up the box of tissues on the stand, and nodded in Katie’s general direction.

“No, Mr. Sinclair. You will stay where you are,” the judge ordered.

“I have to object to this, Your Honor,” the prosecutor insisted. “Ms. Hathaway put this witness on for purely dramatic value, and nothing of true import.”

“I haven’t even questioned him yet, George,” Ellie said.

“Counsel-approach,” Judge Ledbetter said. She began to whisper angrily to Ellie and the county attorney, their voices rising in small spurts. Adam looked from the bench to Katie, who was still weeping. He picked up the box of tissues and opened the gate to the witness stand.

The bailiff stepped forward. “Sir, I’m sorry, but-”

Adam pushed past him, his footsteps growing louder as he approached the defense table. Judge Ledbetter looked up and called out his name. When he kept walking, she banged her gavel. “Mr. Sinclair! You will stop now, or I’ll hold you in contempt of court!”

But Adam did not stop. As the prosecutor’s voice rose in outrage, wrapped around the angry warnings of the judge, Adam knelt beside Katie. She could smell him, could feel the heat coming off his body, and she thought: This is my Armageddon.

She felt the soft stroke of a tissue along her cheek.

The voices of the judge and lawyers faded, but Katie did not notice. Adam’s thumb grazed her skin, and she closed her eyes.

In the background, George Callahan threw up his hands and began to argue again.

“Thank you,” Katie whispered, taking the tissue from Adam’s hand.

He nodded, silent. The bailiff, following orders, grasped Adam’s arm and wrenched him to his feet. Katie watched him being led back to the witness stand, every slow step a mile between them.

“I’m a ghost hunter,” Adam said, responding to Ellie’s question. “I search for and record paranormal phenomena.”

“Can you tell us what that entails?”

“Staying overnight in places that are assumed to be haunted; trying to detect some change in the energy field either by dowsing or by a specialized type of photography.”

“Besides your Ph.D. from Penn State in parapsychology, do you hold any other degrees?”

“Yes. A bachelor’s of science and a master’s degree from MIT.”

“In what field, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Physics.”

“Would you consider yourself a man of science, then?”

“Absolutely. It’s why I know paranormal phenomena have to exist-any physicist will tell you that energy can’t be lost, but only transformed.”

“How did you get to know Jacob Fisher?” Ellie asked.

“We met in a class at Penn State-I was a teaching assistant, he was an undergraduate. I was immediately attracted to his focus as a student.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Well, obviously, given the field I’m in, I can’t afford to make light of my work. I’ve found that the best way to go about my business is to put my nose to the grindstone and just do my research and not worry about what everyone else thinks. Jacob reminded me of myself, in that. For an undergraduate, he was far less interested in the social scene on campus than the academic side. When it came time to sublet my house, since I’d be traveling to do research, I approached him as a potential tenant.”

“When did you meet Jacob’s sister?”

Adam’s gaze moved from Ellie to Katie and softened. “The first time was the day I got my Ph.D. Her brother introduced us.”

“Can you tell us about that?”

“She was beautiful and wide-eyed and shy. I knew she was Amish-I had learned that from Jacob some time back-but she wasn’t dressed that way.” He hesitated, then lifted his palm. “We shook hands. Perfectly ordinary. But I remember thinking that I didn’t want to let go.”

“Did you have the opportunity to meet Katie again?”

“Yes, she visited her brother once a month. Jacob moved into my house a few months before I officially moved out, so I got to see Katie when she made her trips to State College.”

“Did your relationship progress?”

“We became friends very quickly. She was interested in my work, not in the National Enquirer hack way, but truly respectful of what I was trying to do. I found it very easy to talk to her, because she was so open and honest. To me, it was like she wasn’t of this world-and in many ways I guess that was true.” He shifted in his seat. “I was attracted to her. I knew better-God, I was ten years older than her, experienced, and clearly not Amish. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”

“Did you become lovers?”

He watched Katie’s cheeks bloom with color. “Yes.”

“Had Katie ever slept with anyone before?”

“No.” Adam cleared his throat. “She was a virgin.”

“Did you love her, Mr. Sinclair?”

“I still do,” he said quietly.

“Then why weren’t you here for her when she became pregnant?”

Adam shook his head. “I didn’t know about it. I’d postponed my research trip twice, to stay close to her. But that night after . . . after the conception, I left for Scotland.”

“Have you come back to the States between then and now?”

“No. If I had, I would have gone to see Katie. But I’ve been in remote villages, unreachable areas. Saturday was the first time I’ve been on American soil in a year.”

“If you had known about the baby, Mr. Sinclair, what would you have done?”

“I would have married Katie in a heartbeat.”

“But you’d have to be Amish. Could you convert?”

“It’s been done, I know, but I probably couldn’t. My faith isn’t strong enough.”

“So marriage wouldn’t really have been an option. What else would you have done?” Ellie asked.

“Anything. I would have left her among family and friends, but hoped that I could still have some future with her.”

“What kind of future?”

“Whatever she was willing or able to give me,” Adam said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Ellie continued, “but a shared future between an Amish woman and a worldly man seems awfully unlikely.”

“A saguaro can fall for a snowman,” Adam mused softly, “but where would they set up house?” He sighed. “I didn’t want to be a star-crossed lover. I would have been perfectly happy to find some corner of the universe where Katie and I could just be Katie and I. But if I loved her, I couldn’t ask her to turn her back on everything and everyone else. That’s why I took the coward’s way out last year. I left, hoping that by the time I returned, things would have magically changed.”

“Had they?”

Adam grimaced. “Yes, but not for the better.”

“When you came back on Saturday, what did you learn?”

He swallowed. “Katie had given birth to my child. And the child had died.”

“That must have been very upsetting to hear.”

“It was,” Adam said. “It still is.”

“What was your first reaction?”

“I wanted to go to Katie. I was certain she must have been as devastated as I was, if not more. I thought we could help each other.”

“At the time, did you know that Katie had been accused of murdering the baby?”

“Yes.”

“You heard that your baby was dead, and that Katie was the one suspected of killing him-yet you wanted to go to her to give and receive comfort?”

“Ms. Hathaway,” Adam said, “Katie didn’t kill our baby.”

“How could you know for certain?”

Adam looked into his lap. “Because I wrote a dissertation on it. Love’s the strongest kind of energy. Katie and I loved each other. We couldn’t love each other in my world, and we couldn’t love each other in her world. But all that love, all that energy, it had to go somewhere. It went into that baby.” His voice broke. “Even if we couldn’t have each other, we would have both had him.”

“If you loved her so much,” George said midway through his cross-examination, “why didn’t you drop her a line every now and then?”

“I did. I wrote once a week,” Adam answered. From beneath his lashes, he watched Ellie Hathaway. She had warned him not to talk about the letters that had never found their way to Katie, because then it would come out that Jacob had not wanted his sister to have a future with Adam-a strike against the star-crossed lover defense.

“So during all this pen-pal time, she never told you she was pregnant?”

“As far I understand, she never told anyone.”

George raised a brow. “Couldn’t the reason she kept her pregnancy from you be because she didn’t care as much about your relationship as you apparently did?”

“No, that wasn’t-”

“Or perhaps she had gotten her wild ride and now intended to go back to her Amish boyfriend with no one the wiser.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Maybe she didn’t tell you because she planned to get rid of the baby.”

“She wouldn’t have done that,” Adam said with conviction.

“Pardon me if I’ve misunderstood, but were you standing in the barn the night she gave birth?”

“You know I wasn’t.”

“Then you can’t say for certain what did or did not happen.”

“By the same logic, neither can you,” Adam pointed out. “But there’s one thing I do know that you don’t. I know how Katie thinks and feels. I know she wouldn’t murder our child. It doesn’t matter whether I was there to witness the birth or not.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re a . . . what did you call it? Ah, a ghost hunter. You don’t have to see things to believe them.”

Adam’s gaze locked onto the prosecutor’s. “Maybe you’ve got that backward,” he said. “Maybe it’s just that I believe things you can’t see.”

Ellie gently closed the door of the conference room. “Look,” she began with trepidation. “I know what you’re going to say. I had no right to spring him on you. As soon as I knew where Adam was, I should have told you. But Katie, the jury needed to know about the father of your baby in order to understand that the death was a tragedy. They needed to see how much it hurt you to watch Adam walk into the room. They needed to build up sympathy for you so that they’ll want to acquit you, for whatever reason they can find.” She folded her arms. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

When Katie turned away, Ellie tried to make light of the situation. “I said I was sorry. I thought if you confessed, you were forgiven and welcomed back to the fold.”

Katie looked up at her. “This was mine,” she said quietly. “This memory was the only thing I had left. And you gave it away.”

“I did it to save you.”

“Who said I wanted to be saved?”

Without another word, Ellie walked to the door again. “I brought you something,” she said, and turned the knob.

Adam stood there hesitantly, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Ellie nodded at him, then walked out, closing the door behind her.

Katie rose, blinking back tears. All he had to do was open his arms, and she would fall into them. All he had to do was open his arms, and they’d be back where they were before.

He took a step forward, and Katie flew to him. They whispered their questions into each other’s skin, leaving marks as sure as scars. Katie wriggled closer, surprised to see she didn’t quite fit, as if some small object was caught between their bodies. She glanced down to see what had pressed up between them, and found nothing except the invisible, hard fact of their baby.

Adam felt it too, she could tell by the way he shifted and held her at arm’s length. “I tried to write you. Your brother didn’t give you my letters.”

“I would have told you,” she answered. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“We would have loved him,” Adam said fiercely, the tone as much a statement as it was a question.

“We would have.”

His hand stroked over her hair, catching at the edge of her kapp. “What happened?” he whispered.

Katie stilled. “I don’t know. I fell asleep, and woke up, and the baby was gone.”

“I understand that’s what you told your lawyer. And the police. But this is me, Katie. This is our son.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t remember.”

“You were there! You have to remember!”

“But I don’t!” Katie cried.

“You have to,” Adam said thickly, “because I wasn’t there. And I need to know.”

Katie pressed her lips together and gave a tight little shake of her head. She sank down into a chair and curled forward, her arms crossed over her stomach.

Adam reached for her hand and kissed the knuckles. “We’ll figure this out,” he said. “After the trial, somehow, it’s all going to work out.”

She let his voice wash over her with the same spiritual cleansing that she’d felt at Grossgemee, communion services. How she wanted to believe him! Lifting her face to Adam’s, she started to nod.

But something flickered in his eyes, the smallest dance of doubt, so brief that had Adam not turned away quickly, Katie might have put it from her mind. He had said he loved her. He had told a jury. He might not admit it in court, but here in private, he would allow himself to wonder if the reason Katie could not remember what had happened to their baby was because she’d done something unspeakable.

He kissed her gently, and she wondered how you could come so close to a person that there was not a breath of space between you, and still feel like a canyon had ripped the earth raw between your feet. “We’ll have other babies,” he said, the one thing Katie could not stand to hear.

She touched his cheeks and his jaw and the soft curve of his ears. “I’m sorry,” she said, unsure for what she was apologizing.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Adam murmured.

“Adam-”

Touching his finger to her lips, he shook his head. “Don’t say it. Not just yet.”

Her chest tightened, so that she could barely breathe. “I wanted to tell you he looked like you,” she said, the words tumbling bright as a gift. “I wanted to tell you he was beautiful.”

Adam stepped out of the bathroom stall and began to wash his hands. His head was still full of thoughts of Katie, of the trial, of their baby. He was only marginally aware when another man stepped up to wash at the sink beside him.

Their eyes met in the mirror. Adam regarded the man’s broad-brimmed black hat, the simple trousers, the suspenders, the pale green shirt. Adam had never met him before, but he knew. He knew the same way that the blond giant who seemed unable to tear his eyes away from Adam knew.

This was the one she was with before me, Adam thought.

He had not been in the courtroom; Adam would have remembered him. Perhaps he was opposed to it for religious reasons. Perhaps he was sequestered, and would be on the witness stand later.

Perhaps, like the prosecutor had suggested, he had stepped in after Adam left to take care of Katie.

“Excuse me,” the blond man said in heavily accented English. He reached across Adam toward the soap dispenser.

Adam dried his hands on a paper towel. He nodded once-territorially, evenly-at the other man, and tossed the crumpled paper into the trash.

As Adam swung open the bathroom door to reveal the busy hallway, he looked back one last time. The Amish man was reaching for his own paper towel now, was standing in the very spot that Adam had been just a moment before.

Samuel’s fingers fumbled on the doorknob as he entered the tiny conference room where Ellie had said he’d find Katie. She was there, yes, her head bent over the ugly plastic table like a dandelion wilting on its stem. He sat down across from her and set his elbows on the table. “You okay?”

“Ja.” Katie sighed, rubbed her eyes. “I’m okay.”

“That makes one of us.”

Katie smiled faintly. “You’re on the stand soon?”

“Ellie says so.” He hesitated. “Ellie says she knows what she’s doing.” Samuel got to his feet, feeling oversized and uncomfortable inside such cramped quarters. “Ellie says I have to bring you back, now, too.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint Ellie,” Katie said sarcastically.

Samuel’s brows drew together. “Katie,” he said, that was all, and suddenly she felt small and mean.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she admitted. “These days, I don’t know myself.”

“Well, I do,” Samuel said, so perfectly serious that it made her grin.

“Thank goodness for that.” Katie did not like being in this courthouse, being so far away from her parents’ farm, but knowing that Samuel was feeling just as out of place as she was somehow made it a little better.

He held out his hand and smiled. “Come on now.”

Katie slipped her fingers into his. Samuel pulled her out of the chair and led her out of the conference room. They walked hand-in-hand down the hallway, through the double doors of the courtroom, toward the defense table; neither one of them ever thinking it would be all right, now, to let go.

SIXTEEN Ellie

The night before testimony began for Katie’s defense, I had a dream about putting Coop on the stand. I stood in front of him in a courtroom that was empty save for the two of us, the lemon-polished gallery stretching behind me like a dark desert. I opened up my mouth to ask him about Katie’s treatment, and instead, a different question flew out of my mouth like a bird that had been trapped inside: Will we be happy ten years from now? Mortified, I pressed my lips together and waited for the witness to answer the question, but Coop just stared into his lap. “I need a response, Dr. Cooper,” I pressed; and I approached the witness stand to find Katie’s dead infant stretched across his lap.

Questioning Coop as a witness rated high on my scale of discomfort-somewhere, say, between suffering a bikini wax and braving bamboo slivers under the nails. There was something about having a man locked in a box in front of me, at my mercy to answer any inquiry I threw at him-and yet to know that the questions I’d be asking were not the ones I truly needed answered. Plus, there was a new subtext between us, all the things that had not yet been said in the wake of this knowledge of pregnancy. It surrounded us like a sea, pale and distorting; so that when I saw Coop or listened to him speak, I could not trust my perception to be accurate.

He came up to me minutes before he was scheduled to take the stand. Hands in his pockets, painfully professional, he lifted his chin. “I want Katie out of the courtroom while I testify.”

Katie was not sitting beside me; I’d sent Samuel to retrieve her. “Why?”

“Because my first responsibility is to Katie as a patient, and after that last stunt you pulled with Adam, I think she’s too fragile to hear me talk about what happened.”

I straightened the papers in front of me. “That’s too bad, because I need the jury to see her getting upset.”

His shock was a palpable thing. Well, good. Maybe this was the way to show him that I wasn’t the woman he expected me to be. Turning a cool gaze on him, I added, “The whole point is to gain sympathy for her.”

I expected him to argue with me, but Coop only stood there, staring at me for a moment, until I began to shift beneath his regard. “You’re not that tough, Ellie,” he said finally. “You can stop pretending.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Of course it is.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I cried, frustrated. “It’s not what I need now.”

“It’s exactly what you need, El.” Coop reached out and straightened my lapel, gently smoothing it down, a gesture that suddenly made me want to cry.

I took a deep breath. “Katie’s staying, that’s that. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a few minutes by myself.”

“Those few minutes,” he said softly. “They’re adding up.”

“For God’s sake, I’m in the middle of a trial! What do you expect?”

Coop let his hand trail off my shoulder, over my arm. “That one day you’ll look around,” he said, “and you’ll find out you’ve been alone for years.”

“Why were you called in to see Katie?”

Coop looked wonderful on the stand. Not that I was in the habit of judging my witnesses on the way they filled out a suit, but he was relaxed and calm and kept smiling at Katie, something the jury could not help but notice. “To treat her,” he said. “Not to evaluate her.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Most of the professional psychiatrists who testify in court have been appointed to assess Katie’s mind for the value of the trial. I’m not a forensic psychiatrist; I’m just a regular shrink. I was simply asked to help her.”

“If you’re not a forensic psychiatrist, then why are you here today?”

“Because I’ve developed a relationship with Katie over the course of her treatment. As opposed to an expert who’s only interviewed her once, I believe I know the workings of her mind more thoroughly. She’s signed an agreement to allow me to testify, which I consider a strong mark of her trust in me.”

“What did your treatment of Katie involve?” I asked.

“Clinical interviews that grew more in-depth over a four-month period. I began by asking about her parents, her childhood, her expectations of pregnancy, history of depression or psychological trauma-your basic psychiatric interview, in effect.”

“What did you learn?”

He grinned. “Katie’s no run-of-the-mill teenager. Before I could really understand her, I needed to bone up on what it means to be Amish. As I’m sure everyone knows, the culture in which a child is raised dramatically impacts their actions as an adult.”

“We’ve heard a little about Amish culture. What, in particular, interested you as Katie’s psychiatrist?”

“Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it’s no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there’s no room for deviation from the norm. It’s important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don’t fit in, the consequences are psychologically tragic-you stand alone when all you’ve ever known is being part of the group.”

“How did this contribute to your understanding of Katie?”

“Well,” Coop said, “in Katie’s mind, difference is equated with shame, rejection, and failure. For Katie, the fear of being shunned is even more deeply rooted. She saw it happen to her brother, in a very extreme case, and absolutely did not want that to happen to herself. She wanted to get married, to have children . . . but she’d always assumed it would happen the way it happened to everyone else in her world. Discovering she was pregnant with an English man’s child, and unwed-both glaringly against the Amish norm-well, it led right to being shunned, which was something her mind wasn’t equipped to handle.”

I was hearing him speak of Katie, but thinking of myself. My hand crept inside the jacket of my suit, resting over my abdomen. “What do you mean by that?”

“She had been brought up to believe that there was only one way to get from point A to point B,” he said. “That if her life didn’t march down that path or turn out as perfectly as she had expected, it was unacceptable.”

Coop’s words wrapped so tightly around me that breathing became an effort. “It wasn’t her fault,” I managed.

“No,” Coop said softly. “I’ve been trying to get her to see that for a while, now.”

The room narrowed, people falling away and sounds receding. “It’s hard to change the way you’ve always thought about things.”

“Yes, and that’s why she didn’t. Couldn’t. That pregnancy,” Coop murmured, “it turned her world upside down.”

I swallowed. “What did she do?”

“She pretended it didn’t matter, when it was the most important thing in the world. When it had the power to change her life.”

“Maybe . . . she was just afraid of taking that first step.”

A profound silence had blanketed the courtroom. I watched Coop’s lips part, I waited for him to absolve me.

“Objection!” George said. “Is this a direct examination, or As the World Turns?”

Shaken out of my reverie, I felt myself blush. “Sustained,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Ms. Hathaway, could you flip the channel back to The People’s Court?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Sorry.” I cleared my throat and deliberately turned away from Coop. “When Katie found out that she was pregnant, what did she do?”

“Nothing. She shoved the idea out of her mind. She denied it. She procrastinated. You know how it is when you’re a kid, and you close your eyes and think you’re invisible? Well, the same principle was at work. If she didn’t say out loud, ‘I’m pregnant’-she wasn’t. Ultimately, if she admitted to herself that she was pregnant, she would have to admit it to her church, too-confess publicly to her sins and be shunned for a brief time, after which she’d be forgiven.”

“Ignoring her pregnancy-that sounds like a deliberate decision.”

“It’s not, because she really didn’t have a choice. In her mind it was the only sure way to keep from being excluded from her community.”

“She couldn’t hide it when she went into labor. What happened then?”

“Quite obviously,” Coop said, “that denial mechanism broke down, and her mind scrambled for some other way to keep herself from admitting to the pregnancy. When I first met Katie, she told me that she felt sick at dinner, went to bed early, and remembered nothing until she woke up. Of course, the facts indicate that sometime during those hours, she had a baby.”

“That was the new coping mechanism-a memory loss?”

“A memory gap, due to dissociation.”

“How do you know Katie wasn’t dissociating from the minute she found out she was pregnant?”

“Because then she’d probably have multiple personality disorder. Anyone who fragments off her consciousness for that many months would develop another identity. However, it is possible to split off one’s consciousness to survive brief periods of trauma, and for Katie, that’s entirely consistent.” He hesitated. “It’s less important to understand which defense mechanism she used, and whether it was conscious or unconscious. For Katie, it’s more crucial to understand why she felt a need to protect herself from the knowledge of pregnancy and birth, period.”

I nodded. “Did she eventually recall what happened during and after the birth?”

“To a point,” Coop said. “She remembers being afraid to get blood on the sheets of her bed. She remembers going to the barn to give birth, and being incredibly afraid. She remembers cutting the cord and tying it off. She knows that she picked up the infant and cuddled him. Quieted him.” He held up his pinkie. “She remembers giving him her finger to suckle. She closed her eyes, because she was so tired, and when she woke up the infant was gone.”

“Based on your knowledge of Katie, what do you think happened to that infant?”

“Objection,” George said. “This calls for speculation.”

“Your Honor, every witness the prosecutor put on speculated about this issue,” I pointed out. “As Katie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Cooper is far more qualified than anyone else to comment on this.”

“Overruled, Mr. Callahan. Dr. Cooper, you may answer the question.”

“I believe that the baby died in her arms, for whatever medical reasons premature infants die. Then she hid the body-not well, because she was acting like a robot at the time.”

“What makes you believe this?”

“Again, it goes back to being Amish. To bring an illegitimate baby into the Amish community is upsetting, but not ultimately tragic. Katie would have been shunned for a brief time, and then accepted back into the fold, because children are treasured by the Amish. Eventually, after the stress of birth, Katie would have had to face the fact that she’d borne an illegitimate child, but I believe she’d have been able to handle it once the baby was alive and there and real to her-she loved children, she loved the baby’s father, and she could have rationalized shunning on the grounds that something beautiful had come from her mistake.”

Coop shrugged. “However, the baby died in her arms while she was passed out from exhaustion. She woke up, covered with blood from delivery and holding the dead newborn. In her mind, she blamed herself for the baby’s death: he had died because he wasn’t conceived in wedlock, within the Amish church.”

“Let me get this straight, Doctor. You don’t believe Katie killed her baby?”

“No, I don’t. Killing her own infant would have made it virtually impossible for Katie, in the long run, to be accepted back into the community. Although I’m no expert on pacifist societies, I think deliberately confessing to murder would most likely fall under that category. Since inclusion in the community was the foremost thought in her mind for the entire pregnancy, it was certainly with her at the moment of birth, as well. If she’d woken up to a live baby, I think she would have confessed to her sin in church, raised the baby with her parents, and gone on with her life. But as it was, that didn’t happen. I think that she woke up, saw the dead infant, and panicked-she was going to be shunned for an illegitimate birth, and she didn’t even have a child to sweeten that reproof. So her mind reflexively kicked into coping gear, and tried to remove the evidence that there had been either a birth or a death-in essence, so that there would be no reason to exclude her from her community.”

“Did she know she was hiding the body at the time she was doing it?”

“I assume Katie hid the baby’s body while she was still in a dissociative state, because to this day she doesn’t remember doing it. She can’t let herself remember, because it’s the only way she can live with her grief and her shame.”

That was the point at which Coop and I had planned to cut off the direct examination. But suddenly, on a hunch, I crossed my arms. “Did she ever tell you what happened to the baby?”

“No,” Coop said guardedly.

“So this whole scenario-the baby’s death and Katie’s sleepwalking stint to hide the body-that’s something you came up with entirely on your own.”

Coop blinked at me, confused, and with good reason. “Well . . . not entirely. I based my conclusions on my conversations with Katie.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said dismissively. “But since she didn’t actually tell you what happened that night, isn’t it possible that Katie murdered her baby in cold blood, and stuck it in the tack room afterward?”

I was leading, but I knew that George wouldn’t have objected if his life depended on it. Coop sputtered, utterly confused. “Possible is a very big word,” he said slowly. “If you’re talking about the feasibility of certain-”

“Just answer the question, Dr. Cooper.”

“Yes. It’s possible. But not probable.”

“Is it possible that Katie gave birth, held her baby boy, swaddled her baby boy, and cried after discovering it had died in her arms?”

“Yes,” Coop said. “Now, that’s probable.”

“Is it possible that Katie fell asleep holding her live infant, and that a stranger came into the barn and smothered it, and hid it while she was unconscious?”

“Sure, it’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.”

“Can you say for certain that Katie did not kill her baby?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“Can you say for certain that Katie did kill her baby?”

“No.”

“Would it be fair to say that you have doubts about what happened that night?”

“Yes. Don’t we all?”

I smiled at him. “Nothing further.”

• • •

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Cooper, but the defendant never actually said that her baby died of natural causes, right?”

Coop stared down the prosecutor, God bless him. “No, but she never said she murdered him either.”

George considered this. “And yet, you seem to think that’s highly improbable.”

“If you knew Katie, you would, too.”

“By your own testimony, the foremost thought in Katie’s mind was acceptance by her community.”

“Yes.”

“A murderer would be shunned by the Amish community-maybe even forever?”

“That’s my assumption.”

“Well, then, if the defendant killed her baby, wouldn’t it make sense for her to hide the evidence of the murder so that she wouldn’t be excommunicated forever?”

“Gosh, I used to do this in seventh-grade math. If x, then y. If not x, then not y.”

“Dr. Cooper,” George pressed.

“Well, I only brought it up because if the if part of that statement is false, the then part doesn’t work either. Which is just a roundabout way of saying that Katie really couldn’t have murdered her baby. That’s a conscious act, with conscious reactive actions-and she was in a dissociative state at that point.”

“According to your theory, she dissociated when she gave birth-and was dissociating when she hid the body-but managed to be conscious and mentally present enough to understand that the baby had died of natural causes in the few minutes in between?”

Coop’s face froze. “Well,” he said, recovering, “not quite. There’s a distinction between knowing what’s happening, and understanding it. It’s possible that she was dissociating during the entire sequence.”

“If she was dissociating when she realized the baby had died in her arms, as you suggest, then she was not really aware of what was happening?”

Coop nodded. “That’s right.”

“Then why would she have felt such overwhelming grief and shame?”

He had Coop up against a tree, and we all knew it. “Katie employed a variety of defense mechanisms to get through the birth. Any of these might have been at work at the moment she realized the infant had died.”

“How convenient,” George commented.

“Objection!” I called out.

“Sustained.”

“Doctor, you said that the first thing Katie recalled about the birth was that she didn’t want to get blood on the sheets, so she headed to the barn to give birth?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t recall the baby itself.”

“The baby came after the labor, Mr. Callahan.”

The prosecutor smiled. “So my dad told me forty years ago. What I meant was that the defendant did not recall holding the baby, or bonding with it, isn’t that right?”

“All that would happen after the birth. After the dissociation,” Coop said.

“Well, then, it seems awfully callous to be worrying about your sheets when you’re apparently enraptured with the idea of having a child.”

“She wasn’t enraptured at the time. She was terrified, and dissociating.”

“So she wasn’t acting like herself?” George prodded.

“Exactly.”

“One might even say, then, that it was like the defendant’s body was there, giving birth, feeling pain, although her mind was elsewhere?”

“Correct. You can function mechanically, even in a dissociative state.”

George nodded. “Isn’t it possible that the part of Katie Fisher that was physically present and mechanically able to give birth and cut the cord might also have been physically present and mechanically able to kill the baby?”

Coop was silent for a moment. “There are a number of possibilities.”

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” George started to walk back to the prosecution’s table. “Oh, one final question. How long have you known Ms. Hathaway?”

I was on my feet before I even realized I had been rising. “Objection!” I yelled. “Relevance? Foundation?”

Surely everyone could see how red my face had become. A hush had fallen over the courtroom. On the stand, Coop looked like he wanted to sink through the floor.

Judge Ledbetter squinted at me. “Approach,” she said. “What does this have to do with anything, Mr. Callahan?”

“I’d like to show that Ms. Hathaway has had a working relationship with this witness for many years.”

Flattened on the polished surface of the judge’s bench, my palms were sweating. “We’ve never worked together in court before,” I said. “Mr. Callahan is trying to prejudice the jury simply by showing that Dr. Cooper and I know each other personally as well as professionally.”

“Mr. Callahan?” the judge asked.

“Your Honor, I believe there’s a conflict of interest here, and I want the jury to know it.”

While the judge weighed our statements, I suddenly remembered the first time Katie had admitted to knowing the father of her baby. The moon had been full and white, pressed up against the window to eavesdrop; Katie’s voice had smoothed at the edges when she said Adam’s name out loud. And just ten minutes ago: This memory was the only thing I had left, and you gave it away.

If George Callahan did this, he’d be robbing me.

“All right,” the judge said. “I’ll allow you to proceed with your questioning.”

I crossed back to the defense table and took my seat beside Katie. Almost immediately, her hand reached for my own and squeezed. “How long have you known the defense counsel?” George asked.

“Twenty years,” Coop said.

“Isn’t it true that you two have more than a professional relationship?”

“We’ve been friends for a long time. I respect her immensely.”

George’s gaze raked me from head to toe, and at that moment I had the profound urge to kick him in the teeth. “Friends?” he pushed. “Nothing more?”

“It’s none of your business,” Coop said.

The prosecutor shrugged. “That’s what Katie thought, too, and look where it got her.”

“Objection!” I said, standing so quickly that I almost pulled Katie up too.

“Sustained.”

George smiled at me. “Withdrawn.”

“Come on,” Coop said to me a little later, when he was released as a witness and the judge called for a coffee break. “You need a walk.”

“I need to stay with Katie.”

“Jacob will baby-sit, won’t you, Jacob?” Coop asked, clapping Katie’s brother on the shoulder.

“Sure,” Jacob said, straightening a little in his seat.

“All right.” I followed Coop out of the courtroom, through a volley of quiet murmurs from the press reps who were still sitting in the gallery.

As soon as we reached the lobby, a camera flash exploded in my face. “Is it true,” the accompanying reporter said, her face only inches from mine, “that-”

“Can I just say something here?” Coop interrupted pleasantly. “Do you know how tall I am?”

The reporter frowned. “Six-two, six-three?”

“Just about. Do you know what I weigh?”

“One ninety.”

“Excellent guess. Do you know that I’m thinking really hard about taking that camera and throwing it on the ground?”

The reporter smirked. “Guess you’re a bodyguard in every sense of the word.”

I squeezed Coop’s arm and pulled him off into a hallway, where I found an empty conference room. Coop stared at the closed door, as if contemplating going back after the reporter. “It’s not worth the publicity,” I said.

“But think about the psychological satisfaction.”

I sank into a chair. “I can’t believe that no one’s tried to take a picture of Katie, but they came after me.”

Coop smiled. “If they go after Katie, it makes them look bad-violating religious freedom and all that. But they still need something to run as a graphic with their stories. That leaves you and Callahan, and believe me, a camera’s gonna love you more than it loves him.” He hesitated. “You were fantastic in there.”

Shrugging, I curled my toes out of my pumps. “You were awfully good yourself. The best witness we’ve had yet, I think-”

“Well, thanks-”

“-until George completely undermined your credibility.”

Coop came to stand behind me. “Shit. He didn’t nullify the whole testimony with that crap, did he?”

“Depends on how self-righteous the jury is, and how much they think we were taking them for a ride. Juries do not like to be fucked with.” I grimaced. “Of course, now they’ll think I’m screwing anyone I put on the stand.”

“You could recall me, so I could disabuse them of that idea.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Coop’s fingers slid into my hair, began to massage my scalp. “Oh, God. I ought to pay you for this.”

“Nah. It’s one of the perks of sleeping with me to secure my testimony.”

“Well, then. It’s worth it.” I tipped my head back and smiled. “Hi,” I whispered.

He leaned forward to kiss me upside down. “Hi.”

His mouth moved over mine, awkward at this angle, so that I found myself twisting around and kneeling on the chair to fit myself into Coop’s arms. After a moment, he broke away from me and touched his forehead to mine. “How’s our kid?”

“Splendid,” I said, but my grin faltered.

“What?”

“I wish Katie had had some of this,” I said. “A couple of moments, you know, with Adam, that made her believe it would all work out.”

Coop tilted his head. “Will it, El?”

“This baby’s going to be fine,” I said, more for myself than for Coop.

“This baby wasn’t the party in question.” He took a deep breath. “What you said in there during the direct-that line about taking the first step, did you mean it?”

I could have played coy; I could have told him I had no idea what he meant. Instead, I nodded.

Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. “Perhaps I haven’t mentioned it, but I’m an expert when it comes to first steps.”

“Are you,” I said. “Then tell me how.”

“You close your eyes,” Coop answered, “and jump.”

I took a deep breath and stood. “The defense calls Samuel Stoltzfus.”

There were quiet titters and glances as Samuel appeared at the rear of the courtroom with a bailiff. A bull in a china shop, I thought, watching the big man lumber to the witness stand, his face chalky with fear and his hands nervously feeding the brim of his black hat round and round.

I knew, from Katie and Sarah and the conversations held over the supper table, what Samuel was sacrificing in order to be a witness in Katie’s trial. Although the Amish community cooperated with the law, and would go to a courtroom if subpoenaed, they also forbid the voluntary filing of a lawsuit. Samuel, who had willingly offered his services as a character witness for Katie, was riding somewhere between the two extremes. Although his decision hadn’t been called into question by church officials, there were members who looked less favorably upon him, certain that this deliberate brush with the English world was not for the best.

The clerk of the court, a pinch-faced man who smelled of bubble gum, approached Samuel with the customary Bible. “Please raise your right hand.” He slid the battered book beneath Samuel’s left palm. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Samuel snatched his hand away from the Bible as if he’d been burned. “No,” he said, horrified. “I do not.”

A wave of disruption undulated across the gallery. The judge rapped her gavel twice. “Mr. Stoltzfus,” she said gently, “I realize you’re not familiar with a court of law. But this is a very customary procedure.”

Samuel belligerently shook his head, the blond strands flying. He looked up at me, beseeching.

Judge Ledbetter murmured something that might have been, “Why me?” Then she beckoned me to the bench. “Counsel, maybe you’d like a minute with the witness to explain this procedure.”

I walked over to Samuel and placed my hand on his arm, turning him away from the eyes of the gallery. He was trembling. “Samuel, what’s the problem?”

“We do not pray in public,” he whispered.

“It’s only words. It doesn’t really mean anything.”

His mouth dropped, as if I’d just turned into the devil right before his eyes. “It’s a promise to God-how can you say it means nothing? I cannot swear on the Bible, Ellie,” he said. “I am sorry, but if that’s what it takes, I can’t do it.”

Nodding tightly, I went back to the judge. “Swearing an oath on the Bible goes against his religion. Is it possible to make an exception?”

George jockeyed into position beside me. “Your Honor, I’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but clearly Ms. Hathaway has planned this performance to make the jury sympathetic to the Amish.”

“He’s right, of course. And any minute now the troupe of thespians I’ve hired to reenact Katie’s grief will come and take center stage.”

“You know,” Judge Ledbetter said thoughtfully, “I had an Amish businessman as a witness in a trial some years back, and we ran into the same problem.”

I gaped at the judge, not because she was posing a solution, but because she’d actually had an Amishman in her courtroom before. “Mr. Stoltzfus,” she called out. “Would you be willing to affirm on the Bible?”

I could see the gears turning in Samuel’s head. And I knew that the literal-mindedness of the Amish would serve the judge well here. As long as the word she posed wasn’t swear or vow or promise, Samuel would find the compromise acceptable.

He nodded. The clerk slipped the Bible beneath his hand again; I may have been the only one who noticed that Samuel’s palm hovered a few millimeters above the leather-bound cover. “Do you . . . uh, affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Samuel smiled at the little man. “Ja, all right.”

He took the stand, filling the whole box, his large hands balanced on his knees and his hat tucked beneath the chair. “Could you state your name and address?”

He cleared his throat. “Samuel Stoltzfus. Blossom Hill Road, East Paradise Township.” He hesitated, then added, “Pennsylvania, U.S.A.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stoltzfus.”

“Ellie,” he whispered loudly, “you can call me Samuel.”

I grinned. “Okay. Samuel. Are you a little bit nervous?”

“Yes.” The word came out on a guffaw of relief.

“I’ll bet. Have you ever been in court before?”

“No.”

“Did you ever think you would be in court, one day?”

He shook his head. “Ach, no. We don’t believe in the filing of lawsuits, so I never gave it a minute’s thought.”

“By ‘we’ you mean whom?”

“The People,” he said.

“The Amish?”

“Yes.”

“Were you asked to be a witness today?”

“No. I volunteered.”

“You willingly put yourself into an uncomfortable situation? Why?”

His clear, blue gaze locked on Katie. “Because she didn’t murder her baby.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve known her my whole life. Since we were kids. I’ve seen her every single day for years. Now I work for Katie’s father on the farm.”

“Really? What do you do there?”

“Anything Aaron tells me to do, pretty much. Mostly, I’m there to help with the planting and the harvesting. Oh, ja, and the milking. It’s a dairy.”

“When is the milking done, Samuel?”

“Four-thirty A.M. and four-thirty P.M.”

“What does it entail?”

George raised a brow. “Objection. Do we really need a lesson in farm management?”

“I’m laying foundation, Your Honor,” I argued.

“Overruled. Mr. Stoltzfus, you may answer the question.”

Samuel nodded. “Well, we start by mixing the feed. Then we shovel up behind the stanchions, and that goes into the manure pit. Aaron’s got twenty cows, so this takes a while. Then we wipe down their teats and put on the milking pump, which runs on generator. Two cows get hooked up at a time, did I say that? The milk goes into a can that gets dumped into the bulk tank. And usually in the middle we have to stop and shovel up behind ’em again.”

“When does the milk company truck come to pick up the milk?”

“Every other day, save the Lord’s Day. When it falls on a Sunday, it comes crazy times, like Saturdays at midnight.”

“Is the milk pasteurized before the truck takes it?”

“No, that happens after it leaves the farm.”

“Do the Fishers get their milk from the supermarket?”

Samuel grinned. “That would be sort of silly, wouldn’t it? Like buying bacon when you’ve just slaughtered a perfectly good pig. The Fishers drink their own fresh milk. I have to bring a pitcher in to Katie’s mother twice a day.”

“So the milk the Fishers drink has not yet been pasteurized?”

“No, but it tastes just the same as the stuff you get in the white plastic jug. You’ve had it. Don’t you think so?”

“Objection-could someone remind the witness that he’s not supposed to be asking questions?” George said.

The judge leaned sideways. “Mr. Stoltzfus, I’m afraid the prosecutor’s right.”

The big man reddened and looked into his lap. “Samuel,” I said quickly, “why do you feel that you know Katie so well?”

“I’ve seen her in so many situations I know how she acts-when she’s sad, when she’s happy. I was there when her sister drowned, when her brother got banned for good from the church. Two years ago, too, we started to go together.”

“You mean date?”

“Ja.”

“Were you dating when Katie had the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there when she gave birth?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Samuel said. “I found out later.”

“Did you think at the time that it was your baby?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He cleared his throat. “We never slept together.”

“Did you know who the father of that baby was?”

“No. Katie wouldn’t tell me.”

I softened my voice. “How did that make you feel?”

“Pretty bad. She was my girl, you see. I didn’t understand what had happened.”

For a moment, I simply let the jury look at Samuel. A strong, good-looking man dressed in clothes that seemed strange, speaking haltingly in his second language, trying to keep afloat in a situation that was completely unfamiliar to him. “Samuel,” I said. “Your girlfriend gets pregnant with someone else’s baby-the baby’s mysteriously found dead, although you’re not there to see how it happens-you’re nervous about being in a courtroom to testify-yet you’ve come here to tell us she didn’t commit murder?”

“That’s right.”

“Why are you sticking up for Katie, who, by all means, has wronged you?”

“Everything you said, Ellie, it’s true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I’m not. Now I’ve gotten past my own selfishness to where I’ve got to help her. See, when you’re Plain, you don’t put yourself forward. You just don’t do it, because that would be Hochmut-puffing yourself up-and the truth is there’s always others more important than you. So Katie, when she hears others telling lies about her and this baby, she won’t want to fight back, or stand up for herself. I am here to stand up for her.” As if listening to his own his words, he slowly got to his feet and stared at the jury. “She did not do this. She could not do this.”

Every one of the twelve was arrested by the image of Samuel’s face, set with quiet, fierce conviction. “Samuel, do you still love her?”

He turned, his eyes sliding past me to light on Katie. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

George tapped his forefinger against his lips. “She was your girlfriend, but she was sleeping with some other guy?”

Samuel’s eyes narrowed. “Did you not just hear what I said?”

The prosecutor held up his hands. “Just wondering about your feelings on that subject, that’s all.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about my feelings. I came here to talk about Katie. She’s done nothing wrong.”

I covered my chuckle with a cough. For someone inexperienced, Samuel could be a hell of a mountain to move. “Does your religion practice forgiveness, Mr. Stoltzfus?” George asked.

“Samuel.”

“All right, then. Samuel. Does your religion practice forgiveness?”

“Yes. If a person humbles himself and confesses to his sin, he’ll always be welcome back in the church.”

“After he admits to what he did.”

“After confessing, that’s true.”

“Okay. Now let’s forget about the church for a minute. Don’t answer as an Amishman, just answer as a person. Aren’t there some things you just can’t excuse?”

Samuel’s lips tightened. “I cannot answer without thinking Plain, because it’s who I am. And if I couldn’t forgive someone, it wouldn’t be their problem, but mine, because I wasn’t being a true Christian.”

“In this particular case, you personally forgave Katie.”

“Yes.”

“But you just said that forgiveness implies the other party has already confessed to a sin.”

“Well . . . ja.”

“So if you forgave Katie, she must have done something wrong-in spite of the fact that you told us not five minutes ago she didn’t.”

Samuel was silent for a moment. I held my breath, waiting for George to strike the killing blow. Then the Amishman looked up. “I am not a smart man, Mr. Callahan. I didn’t go to college, like you. I don’t really know what you’re trying to ask me. Yes, I forgave Katie-but not for killing a baby. The only thing I had to forgive Katie for was breaking my heart.” He hesitated. “And I don’t think even you English can put her in jail for that.”

Owen Zeigler was apparently allergic to the courtroom. For the sixth time in as many minutes, he sneezed, covering his nose with a florid paisley handkerchief. “Sorry. Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Judge Ledbetter.

“Dust mites. Nasty little creatures. They live in pillows, mattresses-and, I’ll bet, under the rugs here.” He sniffed a bit. “They feed on the scales shed by human skin, and their waste products cause allergic symptoms. You know, if you monitored the humidity a little better in here, you might reduce the irritants.”

“I assume you’re referring to the mites, and not the lawyers,” the judge said dryly.

Owen glanced dubiously at the air-conditioning vents overhead. “You probably want to take a look at the mold spores, too.”

“Your Honor, I have allergies,” George said. “Yet I’ve been perfectly comfortable in this courtroom.”

Owen looked aggrieved. “I can’t help my high level of sensitivity.”

“Dr. Zeigler, do you feel that you’ll be able to make it through your testimony? Shall I see about procuring another courtroom?”

“Or maybe a plastic bubble,” George muttered.

Owen sneezed again. “I’ll do my best.”

The judge kneaded her temples. “You may continue, Ms. Hathaway.”

“Dr. Zeigler,” I said, “did you examine the tissue samples from Baby Fisher?”

“Yes. The infant was a premature liveborn male with no congenital abnormalities. There was evidence of acute chorioamnionitis and infection in the baby. The cause of death was perinatal asphyxia.”

“Your findings, then, did not disagree with those of the medical examiner?”

Owen smiled. “We agree on the cause of death. However, regarding the proximate causes of death-the events leading up to the asphyxia-our analyses are markedly different.”

“How so?”

“The medical examiner found the manner of death to be homicide. I believe the infant’s asphyxia was due to natural causes.”

I let the jury absorb that for a moment. “Natural causes? What do you mean?”

“Based on my findings, Ms. Fisher did not have a hand in her newborn’s death-it stopped breathing all by itself.”

“Let’s walk through some of those findings, Doctor.”

“Well, the most puzzling was liver necrosis.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Owen nodded. “Necrosis is cell death. Pure necrosis is usually caused either by congenital heart abnormalities, which this newborn didn’t have, or by infection. When the ME saw the necrosis, he assumed it came part and parcel with the asphyxia, but the liver has a dual blood supply and is less susceptible to ischemia than other organs.”

“Ischemia?”

“Tissue hypoxia-lack of oxygen-caused by this loss of oxygen in the blood. Anyway, it’s very unusual to find this sort of lesion in the liver. Add this to the chorioamnionitis, and I started to wonder if an infectious agent might have been at work here, after all.”

“Why would the medical examiner have overlooked this?”

“A couple of reasons,” Owen explained. “First, the liver showed no signs of polys-white blood cells that respond to a bacterial infection. However, if the infection was very early, there wouldn’t have been a poly response yet. The ME assumed there was no infection because there was no inflammatory response. But cell death can occur several hours before the body responds to it by mounting an inflammation-and I believe the infant died before this could happen. Second, his cultures showed no organism that would have been a likely cause of infection.”

“What did you do?”

“I got the paraffin blocks of tissue and did Gram’s stains on the liver. That’s when I found a large number of cocco-bacillary bacteria in the neonate. The ME chalked these up to contaminants-diphtheroids, which are rod-shaped bacteria. Now, cocco-bacilli are often misidentified as either rod-shaped bacteria, like diphtheroids; or cocci, like staph or strep. There were so many of these organisms I began to wonder if they were something other than mere contaminants-like perhaps an infectious agent. With the help of a microbiologist, I identified the organism as Listeria monocytogenes, a motile pleomorphic Gram-positive rod.”

I could see the eyes of the jury glazing, bogged down in scientific terms. “You can say that again,” I joked.

Owen smiled. “Let’s just call it listeriosis. That’s the infection caused by these bacteria.”

“Can you tell us about listeriosis?”

“It’s an often unrecognized cause of preterm delivery and perinatal death,” Owen said. “Infection in the second or third trimester usually leads to either stillbirth or preterm birth followed by pneumonia and neonatal sepsis.”

“Hang on a second,” I said. “You’re saying that Katie contracted some infection that may have compromised the health of her baby before it was even born?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Moreover, it’s extremely difficult to diagnose in time to initiate therapy. The mother will exhibit flu-like symptoms-fever, aches, mild pain-only hours before the premature delivery takes place.”

“What is the effect on the newborn?”

“Perinatal depression, fever, and respiratory distress.” He paused. “The mortality rate for the newborns, in case studies, is somewhere between thirty and fifty percent even after treatment.”

“An infant infected with listeria has a fifty percent chance of dying even if treated?”

“Correct.”

“How do you contract listeriosis?” I asked.

“From the studies I’ve seen, eating contaminated food is the most frequent mode of transmission. Particularly unpasteurized milk and cheese.”

“Unpasteurized milk,” I repeated.

“Yes. And people who are in contact with animals seem to be at particular risk.”

I put my hand on Katie’s shoulder. “Dr. Zeigler, if I gave you the autopsy report for Katie’s newborn, and then told you that Katie lived on a dairy farm, drank unpasteurized milk daily when she was pregnant, and was actively involved in the milking of the cows twice a day, what would you infer?”

“Based on her living conditions and potential exposure to Listeria monocytogenes, I’d say that she contracted this infection when she was pregnant.”

“Did Baby Fisher exhibit the symptoms of an infant infected with listeriosis?”

“Yes. He was born prematurely and suffered respiratory failure. He showed some signs of granulomatosis infantiseptica, including liver necrosis and pneumonia.”

“Could it have been fatal?”

“Absolutely. Either from the complications of perinatal asphyxia, or simply from the infection.”

“In your opinion, what caused Baby Fisher’s death?” I asked.

“Asphyxia, due to premature delivery, because of chorioamnionitis secondary to listeriosis.” He smiled. “It’s a mouthful, but it basically means that a chain of events led to death by natural causes. The baby was dying from the moment it was born.”

“In your opinion, was Katie Fisher responsible for her baby’s death?”

“Yes, if you want to get technical about it,” Owen said. “After all, it was her body that passed on the Listeria monocytogenes to her fetus. But the infection certainly wasn’t intentional. You can’t blame Ms. Fisher any more than you’d blame a mother who unwittingly passes along the AIDS virus to her unborn child.” He looked at Katie, sitting with her head bowed. “That’s not homicide. It’s just plain sad.”

To my delight, George was clearly rattled. It was exactly what I’d been counting on, actually-no prosecutor was going to dig up listeriosis on his own, and certainly it was nothing George had thought to ask about during the deposition. He stood up, smoothing his tie, and walked toward my witness.

“Listeria,” he said. “Is this a common bacteria?”

“Actually, it’s quite common,” Owen said. “It’s all over the place.”

“Then how come we’re not all dropping like flies?”

“It’s a very common bacteria, but a fairly uncommon disease. It affects one in twenty thousand pregnant women.”

“One in twenty thousand. And it hit the defendant full force, or so you said, because of her tendency to drink unpasteurized milk.”

“That’s my assumption, yes.”

“Do you know for a fact that the defendant drank unpasteurized milk?”

“Well, I didn’t personally ask her, but she does live on a dairy farm.”

George shook his head. “That doesn’t prove anything, Dr. Zeigler. I could live on a chicken farm and be allergic to eggs. Do you know for a fact that every time the defendant reached for a pitcher at the dinner table, it contained milk-rather than orange juice, or water, or Coke?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Did anyone else in the household suffer the effects of listeriosis?”

“I wasn’t asked to examine paraffin blocks of their tissue,” Owen said. “I couldn’t tell you for sure.”

“Let me help you out then. They didn’t. No one else but the defendant exhibited signs of this mystery illness. Isn’t it strange that a family drinking the same contaminated milk wouldn’t all have the same physical reaction to the bacteria?”

“Not really. Pregnancy is a state of immunosuppression, and listeriosis flares up in immunocompromised patients. If someone in the household had cancer, or HIV infection, or was very old or very young-all of which would compromise the immune system-there might have been another response much like the one Ms. Fisher apparently had.”

“Apparently had,” George repeated. “Are you suggesting, Doctor, that she might not have suffered from this illness?”

“No, she definitely did. The placenta and the infant were infected, and the only way they could have contracted the bacteria is from the mother.”

“Is there any way to prove, conclusively, that the infant was suffering from listeriosis?”

Owen considered this. “We know that he was infected with listeria, because of the immunostaining we did.”

“Can you prove that the infant died from complications due to listeriosis?”

“It’s the listeria that’s fatal,” Owen answered. “It causes the infection in the liver, the lungs, brain, wherever. Depending on the pattern of involvement, the organ that causes death might be different from patient to patient. In the case of Baby Fisher, it was respiratory failure.”

“The baby’s death was due to respiratory failure?”

“Yes,” Owen said. “Respiratory failure, as caused by respiratory infection.”

“But isn’t respiratory infection only one cause of respiratory failure?”

“Yes.”

“Is smothering another cause of respiratory failure?”

“Yes.”

“So isn’t it possible that the baby might have been infected with listeria, might have had evidence of the bacteria in his body and lungs-but his actual death could have been caused by his mother suffocating him?”

Owen frowned. “It’s possible. There would be no way of knowing for sure.”

“Nothing further.”

I was up out of my seat to redirect before George made it back to his table. “Dr. Zeigler, if Katie’s baby hadn’t died of respiratory failure that morning, what would have happened to him?”

“Well, assuming that after the home birth the newborn wasn’t whisked off to a hospital for diagnosis and treatment, the infection would have progressed. He might have died of pneumonia at two or three days of life . . . if not then, he would have died of meningitis within a couple of weeks. Once meningitis develops, the disease is fatal even if it’s diagnosed and treatment is begun.”

“So unless the baby was taken to a neonatal care unit, he most likely would have died shortly after?”

“That’s right.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

I sat down just as George stood again. “Recross, Your Honor. Dr. Zeigler, you said the mortality rate for listeriosis is high, even with treatment?”

“Yes, nearly fifty out of a hundred babies will die from complications.”

“And you just hypothesized that Baby Fisher would have died within a few weeks, if not that first morning of life?”

“Yes.”

George raised his brows. “How do you know, Dr. Zeigler, that he wasn’t one of the other fifty?”

For reasons I didn’t understand, Katie retreated into her shell with each word of Owen’s testimony. By all accounts, she should have been as pleased as I was. Even George’s little dig at the end of his recross couldn’t take away from the fact this fatal bacteria had been found in the baby’s body. The jury, now, had to have a reasonable doubt-which was all that we needed for an acquittal.

“Katie,” I said, leaning close to her, “are you feeling all right?”

“Please, Ellie. Can we go home now?”

She looked miserable. “Are you sick?”

“Please.”

I glanced at my watch. It was three-thirty; a little early for milking, but Judge Ledbetter would never know that. “Your Honor,” I said, getting to my feet, “if it pleases the court, we’d like to adjourn for the afternoon.”

The judge peered at me over the edge of her glasses. “Ah, yes. The milking.” She glanced at Owen Zeigler, now sitting in the gallery. “Well, if I were you I’d make sure to wash my hands when I was done. Mr. Callahan, do you have any objections to an early dismissal for farm chores?”

“No, Your Honor. My chickens will be thrilled to see me.” He shrugged. “Oh, that’s right. I don’t have chickens.”

The judge frowned at him. “No need to be a cosmopolitan snob, counselor. All right, then. We’ll reconvene tomorrow at ten A.M. Court is adjourned.”

Suddenly a wall of people surrounded us: Leda, Coop, Jacob, Samuel, and Adam Sinclair. Coop slid his arm around my waist and whispered, “I hope she has your brains.”

I didn’t answer. I watched Jacob trying to crack jokes that would make Katie smile; Samuel standing tight as a bowstring and careful not to let his shoulder brush against Adam’s. For her part, Katie was attempting to keep up a good front, but her smile stretched across her face like a sheet pulled too tight. Was I the only one who noticed that she was about to fall apart?

“Katie,” Adam said, stepping forward, “do you want to take a walk?”

“No, she does not,” Samuel answered.

Surprised, Adam turned. “I think she can speak for herself.”

Katie pressed her fingers to her temples. “Thank you, Adam, but I have plans with Ellie.”

This was news to me, but one look at the desperate plea in her eyes and I found myself nodding. “We need to go over her testimony,” I said, although if I had my way there wasn’t going to be any testimony from her at all. “Leda will drive us back. Coop, can you manage to get everyone else home?”

We left the way we had on Friday: Leda drove to the rear of the court-house to pick Katie and me up at the food service loading dock. Then we circled to the exit at the front of the building, passing all the reporters who were still waiting for Katie to appear. “Honey,” Leda said a few minutes later. “That doctor you put on the stand was something else.”

I was looking into the little vanity mirror above the passenger seat, rubbing off circles of mascara beneath my eyes. Behind me, in the backseat, Katie turned to stare out the window. “Owen’s a good guy. And an even better pathologist.”

“That bacteria stuff . . . was it real?”

I smiled at her. “He wouldn’t be allowed to make it up. That’s perjury.”

“Well, I bet you could win the case on that doctor’s testimony alone.”

I glanced into the mirror again, trying to catch Katie’s eye. “You hear that?” I asked pointedly.

Her lips tightened; other than that, she gave no indication that she’d been listening. She kept her cheek pressed to the window, her eyes averted.

Suddenly Katie opened the car door, causing Leda to swerve off the road and come to a screeching stop. “My stars!” she cried. “Katie, honey, you don’t do that when we’re still moving!”

“I’m sorry. Aunt Leda, is it all right if Ellie and I walk the rest of the way?”

“But that’s a good three miles!”

“I could use the fresh air. And Ellie and me, we have to talk.” Katie smiled fleetingly. “We’ll be okay.”

Leda looked to me for approval. I was wearing my black flats-not heels, granted, but still not my first choice for hiking shoes. Katie was already standing outside the car. “Oh, all right,” I grumbled, tossing my briefcase into the seat. “Can you drop this off in the mailbox?”

We watched her taillights disappear down the road, and then I turned to her, arms crossed. “What’s this about?”

Katie started walking. “I just wanted to be alone for a bit.”

“Well, I’m not leaving-”

“I meant alone with you.” She stooped to pick a tall, curly fern growing along the side of the road. “It’s too hard, with the rest of them all needing a piece of me.”

“They care about you.” I watched Katie duck beneath an electric fence to walk through a field milling with heifers. “Hey-we’re trespassing.”

“This is Old John Lapp’s place. He won’t mind if we take a shortcut.”

I picked my way through the cow patties, watching the animals twitch their tails and blink sleepily at us as we marched across their turf. Katie bent down to pick tufted white dandelions and dried milkweed pods. “You ought to marry Coop,” she said.

I burst out laughing. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me alone? Why don’t we worry about you first, and deal with my problems after the trial.”

“You have to. You just have to.”

“Katie, whether I’m married or not, I’ll still have the baby.”

She flinched. “That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“Once he’s gone,” she said quietly, “you don’t get him back again.”

So that was what had her so upset-Adam. We walked in silence for a while, ducking out the other side of the pasture’s electric fence. “You could still make a life with Adam. Your parents aren’t the same people they were six years ago, when Jacob left. Things could be different.”

“No, they couldn’t.” She hesitated, trying to explain. “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean the Lord has it in His plan for you to be together.” All of a sudden we stopped walking, and I realized two things at once: that Katie had led me to the little Amish cemetery; and that her raw emotions had nothing to do with Adam at all. Her face was turned to the small, chipped headstone of her child, her hands clenching the posts of the picket fence. “People I love,” she whispered, “get taken from me all the time.”

She started crying in silence, wrapping her arms around her middle. Then she bent forward, keening in a way she had not the whole time I had known her: not when she was charged with murder, not when her infant was buried, not when she was shunned. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t, Katie.” I gently touched her shoulder, and she turned into my arms.

We stood in the lane, rocking back and forth in this embrace, my hands stroking her spine in comfort. The wild weeds Katie had gathered were strewn around our feet, an offering. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated, choking on the words. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

My blood froze, my hands stilled on her back. “Didn’t mean to do what?”

Katie lifted her face. “To kill him.”

SEVENTEEN

By the time Katie ran up the driveway, a stitch in her side, the men were doing the milking. She could hear the sounds coming from the barn and she found herself drawn to them. Around the edge of the wide door she could see Levi pushing a wheelbarrow; Samuel stooping to attach the pump to the udders of one of the cows. A suck, a tug, and the thin white fluid began to move through the hose that led to the milk can.

Katie clapped her hand over her mouth and ran to the side of the barn, where she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach.

She could hear Ellie calling out as she limped her way up the drive. Ellie couldn’t run as fast as she could, and Katie had shamelessly used that advantage to escape.

Slinking along the side of the barn, Katie edged toward the nubby, harvested fields. They were not much use for camouflage now, but they would put distance between her and Ellie. Lifting her skirts, she ran to the pond and hid behind the big oak.

Katie held out her hand, examining her fingers and her wrist. Where was it now, this bacteria? Was there any left in her, or had she passed it all on to her baby?

She closed her eyes against the image of her newborn son, lying between her legs and crying for all he was worth. Even then, she’d known something was wrong. She hadn’t wanted to say it out loud, but she had seen his whole chest and belly work with the effort to draw in air.

But she hadn’t been able to do anything about it, just like she hadn’t been able to keep Hannah from going under, or Jacob from being sent away, or Adam from leaving.

Katie looked at the sky, etched with sharp detail around the naked branches of the oak. And she understood that these tragedies would keep coming until she confessed.

Ellie had defended guilty clients, even several who had patently lied to her, but somehow she could not recall ever feeling so betrayed. She fumed up the drive, furious at Katie for her deception, at Leda for leaving them three miles away, at her own sorry physical shape that left her breathless after a short jog.

This is not personal, she reminded herself. This is strictly business.

She found Katie at the pond. “You want to tell me what you meant back there?” Ellie asked, bending down and breathing hard.

“You heard me,” Katie said sullenly.

“Tell me why you killed the baby, Katie.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to make excuses anymore. I just want to tell the jury what I told you, so this can be over.”

“Tell the jury?” Ellie sputtered. “Over my dead body.”

“No,” Katie said, paling. “You have to let me.”

“There is no way in hell that I’m going to let you get up on that stand and tell the court you killed your baby.”

“You were willing to let me testify before!”

“Amazingly enough, your story was different then. You said you wanted to tell the truth, to tell everyone you didn’t commit murder. It’s one thing for me to put you on as a witness if you don’t contradict everything else my strategy has built up; it’s another thing entirely to put you on so that you can commit legal suicide.”

“Ellie,” Katie said desperately. “I have to confess.”

“This is not your church!” Ellie cried. “How many times do you need to hear that? We’re not talking six weeks of suspension, here. We’re talking years. A lifetime, maybe. In prison.” She bit down on her anger and took a deep breath. “It was one thing to let the jury see you, listen to your grief. To hear you say you were innocent. But what you told me just now . . .” Her voice trailed off; she looked away. “To let you take the stand would be professionally irresponsible.”

“They can still see me and hear me and listen to my grief.”

“Yeah, all of which goes down the toilet when I ask you if you killed the baby.”

“Then don’t ask me that question.”

“If I don’t, George will. And once you get on the stand, you can’t lie.” Ellie sighed. “You can’t lie-and you can’t say outright that you killed that baby, either, or you’ve sealed your conviction.”

Katie looked down at her feet. “Jacob told me that if I wanted to talk in court, you couldn’t stop me.”

“I can get you acquitted without your testimony. Please, Katie. Don’t do this to yourself.”

Katie turned to her with absolute calm. “I will be a witness tomorrow. You may not like it, but that’s what I want.”

“Who do you want to forgive you?” Ellie exploded. “A jury? The judge? Because they won’t. They’ll just see you as a monster.”

“You don’t, do you?”

Ellie shook her head, unable to answer.

“What is it?” Katie pressed. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That it’s one thing to lie to your lawyer, but it’s another to lie to your friend.” Ellie got to her feet and dusted off her skirt. “I’ll write up a disclaimer for you to sign, that says I advised you against this course of action,” she said coolly, and walked away.

“I don’t believe it,” Coop said, bringing together the corners of the quilt that he was folding with Ellie. It was a wedding ring pattern, the irony of which had not escaped him. Several other quilts, newly washed, flapped on clotheslines strung between trees, huge kaleidoscopic patterns of color against a darkening sky.

Ellie walked toward him, handing him the opposite ends of the quilt. “Believe it.”

“Katie’s not capable of murder.”

She took the bundle from his arms and vigorously halved it into a bulky square. “Apparently, you’re wrong.”

“I know her, Ellie. She’s my client.”

“Yeah, and my roommate. Go figure.”

Coop reached for the clothespins securing the second quilt. “How did she do it?”

“I didn’t ask.”

This surprised Coop. “You didn’t?”

Ellie’s fingers trailed over her abdomen. “I couldn’t,” she said, then briskly turned away.

In that moment, Coop wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms. “The only explanation is that she’s lying.”

“Haven’t you been listening to me in court?” Ellie’s lips twisted. “The Amish don’t lie.”

Coop ignored her. “She’s lying in order to be punished. For whatever reason, that’s what she needs psychologically.”

“Sure, if you call life in prison therapeutic.” Ellie jerked up the opposite end of the fabric. “She’s not lying, Coop. I’ve probably seen as many liars as you have, in my line of work. Katie looked me in the eye and she told me she killed her baby. She meant it.” With abrupt movements, she yanked the quilt from Coop and folded it again, then slapped it on top of the first one. “Katie Fisher is going down, and she’s taking the rest of us with her.”

“If she’s signed the disclaimer, you can’t be held responsible.”

“Oh, no, of course not. It’s just my name and my accountability being trashed along with her case.”

“No matter what her reasoning, I doubt very much that Katie’s doing this right now in order to spite you.”

“It doesn’t matter why, Coop. She’s going to get up there and make a public confession, and the jury won’t give a damn about the rationale behind it. They’ll convict her quicker than she can say ‘I did it.’”

“Are you angry because she’s ruining your case, or because you didn’t see this coming?”

“I’m not angry. If she wants to throw her life away, it’s no skin off my back.” Ellie grabbed for the quilt that Coop was holding but fumbled, so that it landed in a heap in the dirt. “Dammit! Do you know how long it takes to wash these things? Do you?” She sank to the ground, the quilt a cloud behind her, and buried her face in her hands.

Coop wondered how a woman so willow-thin and delicate could bear the weight of someone else’s salvation on her shoulders. He sat beside Ellie and gathered her close, her fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. “I could have saved her,” she whispered.

“I know, sweetheart. But maybe she wanted to save herself.”

“Hell of a way to go about it.”

“You’re thinking like a lawyer again.” Coop tapped her temple. “If you’re afraid of everyone leaving you, what do you do?”

“Make them stay.”

“And if you can’t do that, or don’t know how to?”

Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. In fact, you’ve done it. You leave first,” Coop said, “so you don’t have to watch them walk away.”

When Katie was little, she used to love when it rained, when she could skip out to the end of the driveway where the puddles, with their faint sheen of oil, turned into rainbows. The sky looked like that now, a royal purple marbled with orange and red and silver, like the gown of a fairytale queen. It settled over all these Plain folks’ farms; each piece of land butting up against something lush and rich that seemed to go on forever.

She stood on the porch in the twilight, waiting. When the hum of a car’s engine came from the west, she felt her heart creep up her throat, felt every muscle in her body strain forward to see if the vehicle would turn up the driveway. But seconds later, through the trees, the taillights ribboned by.

“He isn’t coming.”

Katie whirled at the sound of the voice, followed by the heavy thumps of boots on the porch steps. “Who?”

Samuel swallowed. “Ach, Katie. Are you gonna make me say his name, too?”

Katie rubbed her hands up and down her arms and faced the road again.

“He went into Philadelphia. He’ll be back tomorrow, for the trial.”

“You came to tell me this?”

“No,” Samuel answered. “I came to take you for a walk.”

She lowered her gaze. “I don’t figure I’d be very good company right now.”

He shrugged when Katie didn’t answer. “Well, I’m going, anyway,” Samuel said, and started down from the porch.

“Wait!” Katie cried, and she hurried to fall into step beside him.

They walked to a symphony of wind racing through trees and birds lighting on branches, of owls calling to mice and dew silvering the webs of spiders. Samuel’s long strides made Katie nearly run to keep up. “Where are we going?” she asked after several minutes, when they had just reached the small grove of apple trees.

He stopped abruptly and looked around. “I have no idea.”

That made Katie grin, and Samuel smiled too, and then they were both laughing. Samuel sat, bracing his elbows on his knees, and Katie sank down beside him, her skirts rustling over the fallen leaves. Empire apples, bright as rubies, brushed the top of Katie’s kapp and Samuel’s brimmed hat. He thought suddenly of how Katie had once peeled an apple in one long string at a barn raising, had tossed the skin over her shoulder like the old wive’s tale said to see who she would marry; how all their friends and family had laughed to see it land in the shape of the letter S.

Suddenly the silence was thick and heavy on Samuel’s shoulders. “You’ve sure got a good harvest here,” he said, removing his hat. “Lot of applesauce to be put up.”

“It’ll keep my mother busy, that’s for certain.”

“And you?” he joked. “You’ll be in the barn with us, I suppose?”

“I don’t know where I’ll be.” Katie looked up at him, and cleared her throat. “Samuel, there’s something I have to tell you-”

He pressed his fingers against her mouth, her soft mouth, and let himself pretend for just a moment that this could have been a kiss. “No talking.”

Katie nodded and looked into her lap.

“It’s near November. Mary Esch, she’s got a lot of celery growing,” Samuel said.

Katie’s heart fell. The talk of November-the wedding month-and celery, which was used in most of the dishes at the wedding dinner, was too much to bear. She’d known about Mary and Samuel’s kiss, but no one had said anything more to her in the time that had passed. It was Samuel’s business, after all, and he had every right to go on with his life. To get married, next month, to Mary Esch.

“She’s gonna marry Owen King, sure as the sunrise,” Samuel continued.

Katie blinked at him. “She’s not going to marry you?”

“I don’t think the girl I want to marry is gonna look kindly on that.” Samuel blushed and glanced into his lap. “You won’t, will you?”

For a moment, Katie imagined that her life was like any other young Amish woman’s; that her world had not gone so off course that this sweet proposition was unthinkable. “Samuel,” she said, her voice wavering, “I can’t make you a promise now.”

He shook his head, but didn’t lift his gaze. “If it’s not this November, it’ll be next November. Or the November after that.”

“If I go away, it’ll be forever.”

“You never know. Take me, for example.” Samuel traced his finger along the brim of his hat, a perfect black circle. “There I was, so sure I was leaving you for good . . . and it turns out all that time I was just heading back to where I started.” He squeezed her hand. “You will think about it?”

“Yes,” Katie said. “I will.”

It was after midnight when Ellie silently crept upstairs to the bedroom. Katie was sleeping on her side, a band of moonlight sawing her into two like a magician’s assistant. Ellie quietly dragged the quilt into her arms, then tiptoed toward the door.

“What are you doing?”

She turned to face Katie. “Sleeping on the couch.”

Katie sat up, the covers falling away from her simple white nightgown. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“It’s bad for the baby.”

A muscle tightened along the column of Ellie’s throat. “Don’t you tell me what’s bad for my baby,” she said. “You have no right.” She turned on her heel and walked down the stairs, hugging the bedding to her chest as if it were an armored shield, as if it were not too late to safeguard her heart.

Ellie stood in the judge’s chambers, surveying the legal tracts and the woodwork, the thick carpet on the floor-anything but Judge Ledbetter herself, scanning the disclaimer that she’d just been given.

“Ms. Hathaway,” she said after a moment. “What’s going on?”

“My client insists on taking the stand, although I’ve advised her against it.”

The judge stared at Ellie, as if she might be able to discern from her blank countenance the entire upheaval that had occurred last night. “Is there a particular reason you advised her against it?”

“I believe that will make itself evident,” Ellie said.

George, looking suitably delighted, stood a little straighter.

“All right, then,” the judge sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

You could not grow up Amish without knowing that eyes had weight, that stares had substance, that they could sometimes feel like a breath at your shoulder and other times like a spear right through your spine; but usually in Lancaster the glances came one on one-a tourist craning his neck to see her better, a child blinking up at her in the convenience store. Sitting on the witness stand, Katie felt paralyzed by the eyes boring into her. A hundred people were gawking at once, and why shouldn’t they? It was not every day a Plain person confessed to murder.

She wiped her sweating palms on her apron and waited for Ellie to start asking her questions. She had hoped that when they came to this moment, Ellie would make it easier-maybe Katie would even have been able to pretend it was just the two of them, having a talk down by the pond. But Ellie had barely spoken a word to her all morning. She’d been sick in the bathroom, had a cup of chamomile tea, and told Katie it was time to go without ever meeting her gaze. No, Ellie would be giving her no quarter today.

Ellie buttoned her suit jacket and stood up. “Katie,” she said gently, “do you know why you’re here today?”

Katie blinked. Her voice, her question-it was tender, full of sympathy. Relief washed over her, she started to smile-and then she looked into Ellie’s eyes. They were just as hard and angry as they had been the night before. This compassion-it was all part of an act. Even now, Ellie was only trying to get her acquitted.

Katie took a deep breath. “People think I killed my baby.”

“How does that make you feel?”

Once again, she saw that tiny comma of a body lying between her legs, slick with her own blood. “Bad,” she whispered.

“You know that the evidence against you is strong.”

With a glance at the jury, Katie nodded. “I’ve been trying to follow what’s been said. I’m not sure I understand it all.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“The way you English do things is very different than what I’m used to.”

“How so?”

She thought about this for a minute. The confession, that was the same, or she wouldn’t be sitting up here now. But the English judged a person so that they’d be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that they’d be justified in welcoming her back. “Where I’m from, if someone is accused of sinning, it’s not so that others can place blame. It’s so that the person can make amends and move on.”

“Did you sin when you conceived your child?”

Instinctively, Katie adopted a humble demeanor. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t married.”

“Did you love the man?”

From beneath lowered lashes, Katie scanned the gallery to find Adam. He was sitting on the edge of his seat with his head bowed, as if this was his confession as well. “Very much,” Katie murmured.

“Were you accused of that sin by your community?”

“Yes. The deacon and the bishop, they came and asked me to make a kneeling confession at church.”

“After you confessed to conceiving a child out of wedlock, what happened?”

“I was put in the bann for a time, to think about what I’d done. After six weeks, I went back and promised to work with the church.” She smiled. “They took me back.”

“Katie, did the deacon and minister ask you to confess to killing your child?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Katie folded her hands in her lap. “That charge wasn’t laid against me.”

“So the people in your own community did not believe you guilty of the sin of murder?” Katie shrugged. “I need a verbal response,” Ellie said.

“No, they didn’t.”

Ellie walked back to the defense table, her heels clicking on the parquet floor. “Do you remember what happened the night you gave birth, Katie?”

“Bits and pieces. It comes back a little at a time.”

“Why is that?”

“Dr. Cooper says it’s because my mind can’t take too much too soon.” She worried her bottom lip. “I kind of shut down after it happened.”

“After what happened?”

“After the baby came.”

Ellie nodded. “We’ve heard from a number of different people, but I think the jury would like to hear you tell us about that night. Did you know you were pregnant?”

Katie suddenly felt herself tumble backward in her mind, until she could feel beneath her palms the hard, small swell of the baby inside. “I couldn’t believe I was,” she said softly. “I didn’t believe it, until I had to move the pins on my apron because I was getting bigger.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“No. I pushed it out of my head, and concentrated on other things.”

“Why?”

“I was scared. I didn’t want my parents to know what had happened.” She took a deep breath. “I prayed that maybe I’d guessed wrong.”

“Do you remember delivering the baby?”

Katie cradled her hands around her abdomen, reliving the burning pains that burst from her back to her belly. “Some of it,” she said. “The pain, and the way the hay pricked the skin on my back . . . but there are blocks of time I can’t picture anything at all.”

“How did you feel at the time?”

“Scared,” she whispered. “Real scared.”

“Do you remember the baby?” Ellie asked.

This was the part she knew so well, it might have been engraved on the backs of her eyelids. That small, sweet body, not much bigger than her own hand, kicking and coughing and reaching out for her. “He was beautiful. I picked him up. Held him. I rubbed his back. He had . . . the tiniest bones inside. His heart, it beat against my hand.”

“What were you planning to do with him?”

“I don’t know. I would have taken him to my mother, I guess; found something to wrap him in and keep him warm . . . but I fell asleep before I could.”

“You passed out.”

“Ja.”

“Were you still holding the baby?”

“Oh, yes,” Katie said.

“What happened after that?”

“I woke up. And the baby was gone.”

Ellie raised her brows. “Gone? What did you think?”

Katie wrung her hands together. “That this had been a dream,” she admitted.

“Was there evidence to the contrary?”

“There was blood on my nightgown, and a little in the hay.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to the pond and washed off,” Katie said. “Then I went back to my room.”

“Why didn’t you wake anyone up, or go to a doctor, or try to find that baby?”

Her eyes brightened with tears. “I don’t know. I should have. I know that now.”

“When you woke up the next morning, what happened?”

She wiped her hand across her eyes. “It was like nothing had changed,” she said brokenly. “If everyone had looked a little different; if I’d felt poorly, maybe I wouldn’t have . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she looked away. “I thought that maybe I’d made it all up, that nothing had happened to me. I wanted to believe that, because then I wouldn’t have to wonder about where the baby was.”

“Did you know where the baby was?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember taking it anywhere?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember waking up with the baby in your arms at any time?”

“No. After I woke up, he was already gone.”

Ellie nodded. “Did you plan to get rid of the baby?”

“No.”

“Did you want to get rid of the baby?”

“Not once I’d seen him,” Katie said softly.

Ellie was now standing only a foot away. Katie waited for her question, waited to speak the words she had come here to say. But with a nearly imperceptible shake of her head, Ellie turned to the jury. “Thank you,” she said. “Nothing further.”

Frankly, George was baffled. He’d expected more flashes of brilliance from Ellie Hathaway in a direct examination of her client, but she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. More importantly, neither had the witness. Katie Fisher had said what anyone would expect her to say-none of which added up to Ellie’s disclaimer in chambers this morning.

He smiled at Katie. “Good morning, Ms. Fisher.”

“You can call me Katie.”

“Katie, then. Let’s pick up where you just left off. You fell asleep holding the baby, and when you woke up, he was gone. You were the only eyewitness that night. So tell us-what happened to that baby?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear leaking from one corner. “I killed him.”

George stopped in his tracks. The gallery erupted in confusion, and the judge rapped her gavel for quiet. Turning to Ellie, George lifted his palms in question. She was sitting at the defense table, looking almost bored, and he realized this had not been a surprise to her. Meeting his gaze, she shrugged.

“You killed your baby?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

He stared at the girl on the stand, looking powerfully beaten as she curled into herself in misery. “How did you do it?”

Katie shook her head.

“You must answer the question.”

She clenched her hands around her middle. “I just want to make my things right.”

“Hang on now. You just confessed to killing your baby. Now I’m asking you to tell us how you killed him.”

“I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I can’t.”

George turned to Judge Ledbetter. “Approach?”

The judge nodded, and Ellie walked up beside him to the bench. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

“Ms. Hathaway?”

Ellie raised a brow. “Ever hear of the Fifth Amendment, George?”

“It’s a little late,” the prosecutor said. “She’s already incriminated herself.”

“Not necessarily,” Ellie said coolly, although she and George both realized she was lying through her teeth.

“Mr. Callahan, you know very well that the witness can take the Fifth whenever she chooses.” The judge turned to Ellie. “However, she needs to ask for it by name.”

Ellie glanced at Katie. “She doesn’t know what it’s called, Your Honor. She just knows she doesn’t want to say anything else about this.”

“Your Honor, Ms. Hathaway can’t speak for the witness. If I don’t hear the defendant officially plead the Fifth, I’m not buying it.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “May I have a moment with my client?” She walked to the witness stand. Katie was shaking like a leaf, and with no small degree of shame Ellie realized that was partly because she expected a tirade. “Katie,” she said quietly. “If you don’t want to talk about the crime, all you have to do is say in English, ‘I take the Fifth.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s part of the Constitution. It means you have the right to remain silent, even though you’re on the stand, so that your words can’t be used against you. Understand?”

Katie nodded, and Ellie walked back to the defense table to sit down.

“Please tell us how you killed your baby,” George repeated.

Katie darted a glance at Ellie. “I take the Fifth,” she said haltingly.

“What a surprise,” George muttered. “All right, then. Let’s go back to the beginning. You lied to your father so that you could see your brother at college. You did this from the time you were twelve?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re eighteen now.”

“Yes, I am.”

“In six years’ time did your father ever find out you were visiting your brother?”

“No.”

“You would have just kept lying, wouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t lie,” Katie said. “He never asked.”

“In six years, he never asked how your weekend with your aunt went?”

“My father doesn’t speak of my aunt.”

“How lucky. Then, you lied to your brother about sleeping with his roommate?”

“He-”

“No, let me guess. He never asked, right?”

Confused, Katie shook her head. “No, he didn’t.”

“You never told Adam Sinclair he’d fathered a child?”

“He’d gone overseas.”

“You never told your mother about your pregnancy, or anyone else for that matter?”

“No.”

“And when the police came the morning after you gave birth, you lied to them as well.”

“I wasn’t sure it had actually happened,” Katie said, her voice small.

“Oh, please. You’re eighteen years old. You’d had sex. You knew you were pregnant, even if you didn’t want to admit it. You’ve seen countless women in your community have babies. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t know what had happened to you that night?”

Katie was crying silently again. “I can’t explain how my head was, except that it wasn’t working like normal. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I didn’t want to believe that it might not have been a dream.” She twisted the edge of her apron in her fists. “I know I’ve done something wrong. I know that it’s time for me to take responsibility for what happened.”

George leaned so close his words fell into her lap. “Then tell us how you did it.”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Ah. That’s right. Just like you figured that if you didn’t talk about your pregnancy, it would disappear. And like you didn’t tell people you murdered your baby, assuming they’d never find out. But that’s not the way things work, is it, Katie? Even if you don’t tell us how you killed your baby, he’s still dead, isn’t he?”

“Objection,” Ellie called out. “He’s badgering the witness.”

Katie hunched in the chair, sobbing openly. George’s eyes flickered over her once; then he turned dismissively. “Withdrawn. I’m through here.”

Judge Ledbetter sighed. “Let’s take fifteen. Ms. Hathaway, why don’t you take your client somewhere to compose herself?”

“Of course,” Ellie said, wondering how to help Katie pull herself together when she herself was falling apart.

The conference room was dark and dingy, with nonfunctioning fluorescent bulbs that spit and hissed and emitted no viable source of light. Ellie sat at an ugly wooden table, tracing a coffee stain that was likely as old as Katie. As for her client, she was standing near the chalkboard in the front of the room, weeping.

“I’d like to have some sympathy for you, Katie, but you asked for this.” Ellie pushed away from the table and turned her back. Maybe if she didn’t look at Katie, the sobs wouldn’t be quite so loud. Or upsetting.

“I wanted it to be over,” Katie stammered, her face swollen and red. “But it wasn’t like I expected.”

“Oh, no? What were you expecting-some movie-of-the-week where you break down and the jury breaks down right along with you?”

“I just wanted to be forgiven.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen right now. You just kissed your freedom good-bye, sweetheart. Forget about forgiveness from your church. Forget about seeing your parents, or having a relationship with Adam.”

“Samuel asked me to marry him,” Katie whispered miserably.

Ellie snorted. “You might want to let him know that conjugal visits are hard to come by in the state correctional facility.”

“I don’t want conjugal visits. I don’t want to have another baby. What if I-” Katie broke off suddenly and turned away.

“What if you what?” Ellie shot back. “Smother it in a moment of weakness?”

“No!” Katie’s eyes filled with tears again. “It’s that disease, that bacteria. What if it’s still in me? What if I give it to all of my babies?”

Above Ellie’s head, the bulb fizzed and popped. She slowly stared at Katie, from her obvious remorse to the way her fingers now clutched at the thick fabric of her bodice, as if this illness was something that might be scratched out of her. She thought of how Katie had once told her that you confessed to whatever the deacon charged you with. She thought of how a girl used to having others accuse her of sinning might hear the pathologist’s testimony and take the blame for something that was, in truth, an accident.

She looked at Katie, and saw the way her mind worked.

Ellie walked across the room and grasped her shoulders. “Tell me now,” she said. “Tell me how you killed your baby.”

“Your Honor,” Ellie began, “I’d like to redirect.”

She could feel George looking at her like she’d lost her mind, and for good reason: with a confession on the court record, there wasn’t too much Ellie could do to erase all the damage that had been done. She watched Katie take the stand again and shift restlessly in the seat, nervous and pale. “When the prosecutor asked you if you killed your baby, you said yes.”

“That’s right,” Katie answered.

“When he asked you to explain the method of homicide, you didn’t want to talk.”

“No.”

“I’m asking you now: Did you smother the baby?”

“No,” Katie murmured, her voice cracking wide open over the syllable.

“Did you intentionally end the baby’s life?”

“No. Never.”

“How did you kill your baby, Katie?”

She took a deep, rattling breath. “You heard the doctor. He said I killed him by having that infection, and passing it on. If I wasn’t the baby’s mother, he would have lived.”

“You murdered your baby by passing along listeria from your body?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you meant when you told Mr. Callahan you’d killed your baby?”

“Yes.”

“You told us before that in your church, if you sin, you have to confess in front of the other members.”

“Ja.”

“What’s that like?”

Katie swallowed. “Well, it’s terrifying, that’s what. First there’s the whole Sunday service. After the sermon comes a song, and then all the nonmembers, they leave. The bishop calls your name, and you have to get up and sit right in front of the ministers and answer their questions loud enough that the entire congregation can hear you. The whole time, everyone’s watching, and your heart is pounding so loud you can hardly hear the bishop talk.”

“What if you didn’t sin?”

Katie looked up. “What do you mean?”

“What if you’re innocent?” Ellie thought back to the conversation they’d had months ago, praying that Katie remembered too. “What if the deacon says you went skinny-dipping, and you didn’t?”

Katie frowned. “You confess anyway.”

“Even though you didn’t do it?”

“Yes. If you don’t show how sorry you are, if you try to make excuses, it just gets more embarrassing. It’s hard enough walking up to the ministers with all your family and friends watching. You just want to get it over with, take the punishment, so that you can be forgiven and welcomed back.”

“So . . . in your church, you have to confess in order to be forgiven. Even if you didn’t do it?”

“Well, it’s not like people get accused of sinning for nothing. There’s a reason for it, most of the time. Even if the story isn’t quite right, usually you still did something wrong. And after you confess, the healing comes.”

“Answer the question, Katie,” Ellie said, smiling tightly. “If your deacon came to you and said you’d sinned, and you hadn’t, you’d confess anyway?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Now-why did you want to be a witness in your trial?”

Katie looked up. “To confess to the sin that I’ve been accused of.”

“But that’s murder,” Ellie pointed out. “That means you intentionally killed your baby, that you wanted it dead. Is this true?”

“No,” Katie whispered.

“You had to know that coming here today and saying you killed your baby was going to make the jury believe you were guilty, Katie. Why would you do that?”

“The baby is dead, and it’s because of me. It doesn’t matter if I smothered him or not, he’s still dead because of something I did. I should be punished.” She brought the hem of her apron up to wipe her eyes. “I wanted everyone to see how sorry I am. I wanted to confess,” she said quietly, “because that’s the only way I can be forgiven.”

Ellie leaned on the edge of the witness box, blocking everyone else’s view for a moment. “I’ll forgive you,” she said softly, for Katie’s ears alone, “if you forgive me.” Then she turned to the judge. “Nothing further.”

“Okay, so this is all twisted around now,” George said. “You killed the baby, but you didn’t murder it. You want to be punished so that you can be forgiven for something you didn’t mean to do in the first place.”

“Yes.” Katie nodded.

George hesitated for a moment, as if he was considering all this. Then he frowned. “So what happened to the baby?”

“I made it sick, and it died.”

“You know, the pathologist said that the baby was infected, but he admitted there were several reasons it might have died. Did you see the baby stop breathing?”

“No. I was asleep. I don’t remember anything until I woke up.”

“You never saw the baby after you woke up?”

“It was gone,” Katie said.

“And you want us to believe you had nothing to do with that?” George advanced on her. “Did you wrap the baby’s body in a blanket and hide it?”

“No.”

“Huh. I thought you said you don’t remember anything after you fell asleep.”

“I don’t!”

“Then technically, you can’t tell me for certain that you didn’t hide the baby.”

“I guess not,” Katie said slowly, puzzled.

George smiled, his grin as wide as a wolf’s. “And technically, you can’t tell me for sure that you didn’t smother the baby.”

“Objection!”

“Withdrawn,” George said. “Nothing further.”

Ellie cursed beneath her breath. George’s pointed statement was the last thing the jury would hear as part of testimony. “The defense rests, Your Honor,” Ellie said. She watched Katie open the gate of the witness box and step down, crossing the room with studied caution, as if she now understood that something as stable as solid ground might at any moment tilt beneath her feet.

“You know,” Ellie said to the jury. “I wish I could tell you exactly what happened in the early hours of the morning of July tenth, in the Fishers’ barn, but I can’t. I can’t, because I wasn’t there. Neither was Mr. Callahan, and neither were any of the other experts you’ve seen paraded through here during the past few days.

“There’s only one person who was actually there, who also spoke to you in this courtroom-and that’s Katie Fisher. Katie, an Amish girl who can’t remember exactly what happened that morning. Katie, who stood up here wracked with guilt and shame, convinced that the accidental transmission of a disease in utero to her fetus made her responsible for the baby’s death. Katie, who is so upset over losing her child she thinks she deserves to be punished, even when she’s innocent. Katie, who wants to be forgiven for something she did not intentionally do.”

Ellie trailed her hand along the rail of the jury box. “And that lack of intention, ladies and gentlemen, is quite important. Because in order to find Katie guilty of murder in the first degree, the prosecution must convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that Katie killed her child with premeditation, willfulness, and deliberation. First, that means she planned this murder. Yet you’ve heard that no Amishman would ever consider such violence, no Amishman would choose an action that valued pride over humility or an individual decision over the society’s rules. Second, it means that Katie wanted this baby dead. Yet you’ve witnessed the look on Katie’s face when she first saw the father of her child again, when she told you that she loved him. Third, it means that she intentionally murdered her baby. Yet you’ve been shown proof that an infection transmitted during pregnancy could very well have caused the baby to die-a tragedy, but an accident all the same.

“It is the prosecution’s job to prove to you that Katie Fisher’s baby was killed. My job is to show you that there might be a viable, realistic, possible reason for the death of Katie’s infant other than first-degree murder. If there’s more than one way to look at what happened that morning, if there’s even the slightest doubt in your mind, you have no choice but to acquit.”

Ellie walked toward Katie and stood behind her. “I wish I could tell you what happened or did not happen the morning of July tenth,” she repeated, “but I can’t. And if I don’t know for sure-how can you?”

“Ms. Hathaway’s right-but only about one thing. Katie Fisher doesn’t know exactly what happened the morning she gave birth.” George surveyed the faces of the jury. “She doesn’t know, and she’s admitted to that-as well as to killing her baby.”

He stood up, his hands locked behind his back. “However, we don’t need the defendant’s recollections to piece together the truth, because in this case, the facts speak for themselves. We know that Katie Fisher lied for years to her family about her clandestine visits to the outside world. We know that she concealed her pregnancy, gave birth secretly, covered up the bloody hay, and hid the body of her infant. We can look at the autopsy report and see bruises around the baby’s mouth due to smothering, the cotton fibers shoved deep in its throat, the medical examiner’s diagnosis of homicide. We can see the forensic evidence-the DNA tests that place the defendant and the defendant alone at the scene of the crime. We can point to a psychological motive-Ms. Fisher’s fear of being shunned from her family forever, like her brother, for this transgression of giving birth out of wedlock. We can even replay the court record and listen to the defendant confess to killing her child-an admission made willingly, which the defense then desperately tried to twist to its advantage.”

George turned toward Ellie. “Ms. Hathaway wants you to think that because the defendant is Amish, this crime is unthinkable. But being Amish is a religion, not an excuse. I’ve seen pious Catholics, devout Jews, and faithful Muslims all convicted of vicious criminal acts. Ms. Hathaway also would like you to believe that the infant died of natural causes. But then, why wrap up the body and hide it under a pile of blankets-actions that suggest a cover-up? The defense can’t explain that; they can only offer a red-herring testimony about an obscure bacterial infection that may have led to respiratory failure in a newborn. I repeat: may have led. But then again, it may not have. It may just be a way of covering up the truth: that on July tenth, Katie Fisher went out to her parents’ barn and willfully, premeditatedly, and deliberately smothered her infant.”

He glanced at Katie, then back at the jury. “Ms. Hathaway would also like you to believe one other falsehood-that Katie Fisher was the only eyewitness that morning. But this is not true. An infant was there, too; an infant who isn’t here to speak for himself because he was silenced by his mother.” He let his gaze roam over the twelve men and women watching him. “Speak up for that infant today,” he said.

George Callahan’s father, who had won four consecutive terms as the district attorney in Bucks County a few decades ago, used to tell him that there was always one case in a man’s legal career he could ride all the way into the sunset. It was the case that was always mentioned in conjunction with your name, whenever you did anything else noteworthy in your life. For Wallace Callahan, it had been convicting three white college boys of the rape and murder of a little black girl, right in the middle of the civil rights protests. For George, it would be Katie Fisher.

He could feel it the same way he could feel snow coming a day ahead of its arrival, by a tightening in his muscles. The jury would find her guilty. Hell, she’d found herself guilty. Why, he wouldn’t be surprised if the verdict came back before suppertime.

He shrugged into his trench coat, lifted his briefcase, and pushed out the doors of the courthouse. Immediately reporters and cameramen from local networks and national affiliates engulfed him. He grinned, turned his best side to the majority of the video cameras, and leaned in to the knot of microphones being shoved beneath his chin.

“Any comments about the case?”

“Do you have a sense of how the jury will find?”

George smiled and let the practiced sound bite roll off his tongue. “Clearly, this will be a victory for the prosecution.”

“There’s no question in my mind that this will be a victory for the defense,” Ellie said to the small group of media reps huddled in the parking lot of the superior court.

“Don’t you think that Katie’s confession might make it hard for the jury to acquit?” one reporter yelled out.

“Not at all.” Ellie smiled. “Katie’s confession had less to do with the legal ramifications of this case than the moral obligations of her religion.” She politely pushed forward, scattering the reporters like marbles.

Coop, who had been waiting for her impromptu press conference to finish, joined her as she made her way to Leda’s blue sedan. “I ought to just stick around,” she said. “Chances are the jury will be back by the time we finish grabbing a bite.”

“If you stick around, Katie’s going to be bombarded with people. You can’t keep her locked in a conference room.”

Ellie nodded and unlocked the door of the car. By now, Leda and Katie and Samuel would be waiting for her at the service entrance of the court.

“Well,” Coop said. “Congratulations.”

She snorted. “Don’t congratulate me yet.”

“But you just said you’re going to win.”

Ellie shook her head. “I said it,” she admitted. “But the truth is, Coop, I don’t know that at all.”

EIGHTEEN Ellie

A full day later, the jury still had not returned a verdict.

Because of my lack of proximity to a working phone, Judge Ledbetter ordered George to let me borrow his beeper. When the verdict came in, she would page me. In the meantime, we could all return home and go about our business.

I had been in situations before with a hung jury. It was unpleasant, not only because it automatically guaranteed that we’d have to go through the rigmarole of a second trial, but also because until the verdict came back, I became obsessed with second-guessing my defense. In the past, when it took some time for a jury to return, I’d try to distract myself with the other cases I was working on. I would go to the gym and pound on a Stairmaster until I could barely move, much less think. I’d sit down with Stephen, who would walk me through the case to see what I might have done differently.

Now, I was surrounded by the Fishers-all of whom had a vested interest in the verdict, and none of whom seemed to notice that it hadn’t been returned yet. Katie continued doing her chores. I was expected to help Sarah in the kitchen, to make myself useful in the barn if Aaron needed me, to carry on with life even though we were anticipating a momentous decision.

Twenty-eight hours after we’d left the courthouse, Katie and I were washing windows for Annie King, an Amish woman who’d fallen and broken her hip. I watched Katie for a moment, tirelessly dipping her cloth in alcohol solution and scrubbing it over the glass, wondering how she could find the strength to help someone else when her own emotions had to be overwhelming right now. “Isn’t this bothering you?” I said finally.

“My back?” Katie asked. “Ja, a little. If it hurts you too much, you can rest a bit.”

“Not your back. The fact that you don’t know the outcome of the trial.”

Katie let the cloth slip into the bucket and sank back on her heels. “Worrying isn’t going to make it happen any quicker.”

“Well, I can’t stop thinking about it,” I admitted. “If I was facing a murder conviction, I don’t think I’d be washing someone else’s windows.”

Katie turned to me, her eyes clear and filled with a peace that made it nearly impossible to turn away from her. “Today Annie needs help.”

“Tomorrow, you might need it.”

She looked out the sparkling window, where women were busy hauling cleaning supplies from their buggies. “Then tomorrow, all these people, they will be with me.”

I swallowed my doubts, hoping for her sake she was right. Then I stood up, leaving my rag draped over the bucket. “I’ll be right back.”

Katie hid her smile; the incredible number of times I went to the bathroom these days had become a running joke. But it wasn’t funny moments later, when I sat on the toilet, when I looked down and realized that I was bleeding.

Sarah drove her buggy to the community hospital, the same one Katie had been brought to by ambulance the day she’d given birth. In the back, being jostled, I tried to tell myself that this was normal; that this happened all the time to pregnant women. I pressed my fist against the cramps that had started up in my abdomen while Katie and Sarah sat on the bench in the front, whispering in Dietsch.

I was taken into the ER, questions hammering at me from every direction. Was I pregnant? Did I know how far along I was? A nurse turned to Katie and Sarah, hovering uncomfortably at the edge of the curtain. “Are you relatives?”

“No. Friends,” Katie answered.

“Then I’ll have to ask you to wait outside.”

Sarah caught my eye before she turned away. “You’ll be all right.”

“Please,” I whispered. “Get Coop.”

The doctor had pianist’s hands, long white fingers so delicate that they seemed like flowers trailing over my skin. “We’re going to do some blood tests to confirm your pregnancy,” he said. “Then we’ll get you in for an ultrasound, to see what’s going on.”

I hiked myself up on my elbows. “What is going on?” I demanded, with more force than I thought I’d have. “You have to have some idea.”

“Well, the bleeding is fairly heavy. Based on the date of your last period, you’re most likely about ten weeks along. It’s possible that this is an ectopic pregnancy, which is very dangerous. If it’s not, your body may just have started to spontaneously abort.” He looked up at me. “Miscarry.”

“You have to stop it,” I said evenly.

“We can’t. If the bleeding slows or stops on its own, that’s a good sign. If not . . . well.” He shrugged and looped his stethoscope around his neck. “We’ll know more in a little while. Just try to rest.”

I nodded, lying back, concentrating on not crying. Crying wouldn’t do me any good. I stayed perfectly still, breathing shallowly. I could not lose this baby. I could not.

Coop’s face was a ghostly white as the ultrasound technician swabbed gel on my belly and pressed what looked like a microphone against my skin. On the computer screen a wedge of static began to form into round balls that shifted and changed shape. “There you go,” the technician said, marking with graphic arrows the tiniest circle.

“Well, the pregnancy isn’t in a Fallopian tube,” the doctor said. “Blow that up.”

The technician enlarged the area. It did not look like a baby; it did not look like much of anything but a grainy curl of white with a black dot in its middle. I turned to the doctor and the technician, but they were not saying a word. They were staring at the screen, at something that was apparently very wrong.

The technician pushed harder against my belly, rolling the wand back and forth. “Ah,” she said finally.

The black dot was pulsing rhythmically. “That’s the heartbeat,” the doctor said.

Coop grasped my hand. “That’s good, right? That means everything is all right?”

“We don’t know what makes someone miscarry, Dr. Cooper, but nearly a third of early pregnancies do. Usually it’s because the embryo isn’t viable, so it’s for the best. Your wife is still bleeding heavily. All we can do now is send her home and hope things turn around in the next few hours.”

“Send her home? You’re just going to send her home?”

“Yes. You should stay off your feet. If the bleeding hasn’t slowed by morning, or if the cramps intensify, come back in.”

I stared at the screen, frozen on that small white circle.

“But the heartbeat,” Coop pressed. “That’s a positive sign.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, the bleeding is a bad one.”

The doctor and technician left the room. Coop sank down on a chair beside the examination table and spread his fingers over my stomach. I covered his hand with my own. “I’m not letting go of this baby,” I told him firmly. And then I let myself cry.

Coop wanted to take me to his apartment, but it was too far away. Instead, Sarah insisted we come back to the farmhouse where she could watch over me. “Of course, you’ll come too,” she told Coop, which was why he allowed the decision to be made.

He carried me up to the room I shared with Katie and set me gently on the bed. “Here,” he said, arranging the pillows behind my head. “How’s that?”

“Fine.” I looked at him and tried to smile. He sat down on the edge of the bed and twined his fingers with mine. “Maybe this is nothing at all.”

I nodded. Coop worried the edge of the quilt through his hands, looking at the nightstand, the window, the floor-anywhere but at me. “Coop,” I said, “do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“I want you to call Judge Ledbetter. Let her know what’s going on, just in case.”

“For God’s sake, Ellie, you shouldn’t even be thinking about that now.”

“Well, I am. And I need you to do this.”

Coop shook his head. “I’m not leaving you.”

I touched his arm, whispering the words neither one of us wanted to hear. “There is nothing you can do.”

I turned my head away, and a moment later I heard his footsteps as he left the room. But too quickly, the door opened again. Expecting Coop, I opened my eyes, and found Sarah pouring a glass of water from a pitcher.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

She shrugged. “I’m sorry this is happening, Ellie.”

I nodded. However she might have felt about having yet another unwed mother-to-be in her household, she was gracious enough to offer sympathy to me right now.

“I lost three babies between Katie and Hannah,” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “I never did understand why they say it that way in English-lose a baby. You know right where she is, don’t you? And you’d do anything to keep her there.”

I stared at her, this woman who understood what it was like to be at the mercy of your own body, what it was like to have no control over your own shortcomings. It was just like Katie had said-it didn’t matter if it was accidental; you felt guilty all the same. “She’s real to me, already,” I whispered.

“Well, ’course she is,” Sarah agreed. “And you’re already willing to move heaven and earth for her.”

She bustled around the room. “If you need anything, you just call, you hear?”

“Wait.”

Sarah paused at the door.

“How . . .?” I was unable to form the question, but she understood me anyway.

“It’s the Lord’s will,” she said quietly. “You get through it. You just never get over it.”

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remembered, the sun was nearly setting and Coop was sprawled on Katie’s bed across the room. As I stirred, he sat up and knelt beside me. “How do you feel?”

“I’m okay. The cramps are gone.”

We looked at each other, afraid of what that might mean. “I called the judge,” Coop said, quick to change the topic. “She said the jury is still deliberating, and that if necessary she’d keep them sequestered until you were up and about.” He cleared his throat. “She also said she’s praying for us.”

“That’s good,” I said evenly. “We can take all the help we can get.”

“Can I ask you something?” Coop picked at a thread on the quilt. “I know this isn’t the time, and I know that I promised I wouldn’t do this, but I want you to marry me. I’m not the lawyer here, so I don’t have any fancy arguments to convince you. But when Katie called me today from the hospital, I couldn’t breathe. I thought you were in an accident. And then she said it was the baby, and all I could think was, Thank God. Thank God it wasn’t Ellie.

“I hate myself for that. I wonder if I deserve this, just because of what popped into my head. And now I’ve been imagining this baby, this gift that I didn’t expect to have in the first place, getting taken away. If it happens, El, it’s going to hurt so badly-but it’s nothing compared to the way I’d feel if you were taken away. That . . .” he said, his voice breaking, “that I wouldn’t make it through.”

He brought my hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles. “We’ll have more babies. They won’t be this one, but they’ll be ours. We can have ten of them, one for every room in our house.” Coop raised his face. “Just tell me that you want to.”

I had once left Coop because I wanted to see if I could be the best, if I could make my own way in the world. But living for months with the Fishers made me see the value of intrinsically knowing there was someone to help me up if I stumbled.

I had turned Coop down a second time because I was afraid that I’d only be saying yes out of responsibility, because of the baby. But there might not be a baby, now. There was only me, and Coop, and this terrible ache that only he could understand.

How many times would I throw this away, before I realized it was what I had been looking for all along?

“Twelve,” I answered.

“Twelve?”

“Twelve babies. I’m planning on a very large house.”

Coop’s eyes lit up. “A mansion,” he promised, and kissed me. “God, I love you.”

“I love you too.” As he climbed onto the bed with me, I started to laugh. “I’d love you more if you helped me into the bathroom.”

He grinned and looped his arms around me, carrying me down the hall. “Can you do this yourself?”

“I’ve gotten very good at it after thirty-seven years.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he said gently.

“I know.” We stared at each other for a moment, until I had to turn away from the sorrow in his eyes. “I can handle it, Coop.” I closed the door behind myself and hiked up my nightgown, steeling myself for the sight of another heavily soiled sanitary napkin. When I glanced down, I started to cry.

With a crash, Coop burst into the bathroom, wild-eyed and frightened. “What? What is it?”

The tears kept coming; unstoppable, overwhelming. “Make that thirteen babies,” I said, a smile unraveling across my face. “I think this one might be staying.”

NINETEEN

It wasn’t until George Callahan had gone through a bottle pack of Zantac that he realized this case was literally eating him alive. His sure thing, it turned out, was not necessarily so sure. He wondered which juror was hanging up the others-the fellow with the Claddagh tattoo? The mother of four? He wondered if he had enough time to run to the pharmacy after lunch, or if he’d be called in for the verdict the minute he got on the highway. He wondered if Ellie Hathaway had lost three nights of sleep, too.

“Well,” Lizzie Munro said, pushing away her plate. “That’s the first time I’ve ever packed away more than you have.”

George grimaced. “Turns out my stomach’s more delicate than I thought.”

“Well, if you’d asked-which I might point out you didn’t-I could have told you that people around here would have trouble convicting someone Amish.”

“Why?”

Lizzie lifted one shoulder. “They’re sort of like angels-in-residence. If you admit that one of them’s a murderer, the whole world’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

“They’re not acquitting her so quickly, either.” He blotted his mouth with a napkin. “Ledbetter said the jury had requested the transcripts of the two psychiatrists.”

“Now, that’s interesting. If they’re quibbling over state of mind, it almost implies that they think she did something wrong.”

George snorted. “I’m sure Ellie Hathaway would put a different spin on it.”

“Ellie Hathaway isn’t spinning much of anything right now. Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“She’s sick. Got taken into the hospital.” Lizzie shrugged. “The news around the water cooler is that it had something to do with complications of pregnancy.”

“Pregnant? Ellie Hathaway’s pregnant?” He shook his head. “God, she’s about as nurturing as a black widow spider.”

“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

Ellie had been promoted from reclining in the bedroom to reclining on the living room couch. She had been allowed to walk only once, when Coop had taken her to the obstetrician to be given a clean but guarded bill of health. Now Coop was back at his office with a suicidal client, having left Sarah in charge to watch over her like a hawk. But Sarah had gone out to get a chicken for dinner-making Ellie, for the first time, happy about her status as an invalid.

Ellie closed her eyes, but she was certain that if she slept another hour she was going to go into a coma. She was trying to decide which argument to use on Coop to convince him that she should be allowed to be vertical-fetal circulation just slightly edging out bedsores-when Katie skulked by the doorway, trying not to be seen.

“Oh, no you don’t. Get back here,” Ellie ordered.

Katie slipped into the room. “Did you need something?”

“Yeah. I need you to break me out of here.”

Katie’s eyes widened. “But Dr. Cooper-”

“-doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to be lying around for two entire days.” Ellie reached for her hand, and tugged so that Katie was sitting down beside her. “I don’t want to go climb Everest,” she begged. “Just a little walk. Outside.”

Katie looked toward the kitchen.

“Your mom’s at the chicken coop. Please.”

She nodded quickly, then helped Ellie from the couch. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Really. You can call my doctor and ask her.” Grinning, Ellie added, “Well, you could if you had a phone.”

Katie slid her arm around Ellie’s waist and took tentative steps with her through the kitchen and out the back door. Ellie quickened the pace as they passed the small patch of the vegetable garden, stepping over the pumpkin vines spread like the arms of an octopus. At the pond, she sank onto the bench beneath the oak tree, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright, feeling better than she had in days.

“Can we go back now?” Katie asked miserably.

“I just got here. You want me to rest before I hike all the way home, don’t you?”

She glanced toward the house. “I want to get you back before anyone notices you’re gone.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you brought me out here if you don’t.”

“Not a soul,” Katie said.

Ellie tipped back her head and closed her eyes, letting the sun wash over her face and throat. “Well, then, here we are. Partners in crime.”

“Partners in crime,” Katie echoed softly.

At the thin, sad note in her voice, Ellie blinked. “Oh, Katie. I didn’t mean-”

“Shhh.” Katie held up her hand, rising slowly off the seat as she stared at the pond. A flock of wood ducks, hidden among the dry marsh grass at the edges, suddenly startled and took to flight, sending up a spray of mist that illuminated the surface of the water. The late sun prismed through, and for a moment Katie could see her sister spinning in the midst of it, a hologram ballerina unaware of her audience.

This is what she would miss if she were put in jail. This home, this pond, this connection.

Hannah turned, and in her arms was a small package. She turned again, and the package shifted . . . so that a tiny pink arm slipped from the swaddling.

The mist settled, the nasal holler of the ducks receding in the distance. Katie sat down beside Ellie, who suddenly looked much paler than she was before. “Please,” Katie whispered. “Don’t let them send me away.”

• • •

Out of deference to Aaron, Jacob parked his car a half mile from his father’s farm. He’d known guys who’d bought cars during their Rumspringa, fellows who’d parked them behind tobacco sheds while their dads pretended not to notice. Jacob, though, he’d never had a car. Not until he’d left for good.

Walking up the drive felt strange, too. He absently rubbed the scar on his chin that he’d gotten when he’d been roller-skating and had pitched over a rut in the pavement. The rut was still there. He’d bet that his roller skates were, too, up in the attic with whatever old clothes and hats had not been passed along to younger cousins.

His heart was so loud in his ears by the time he reached the barn door that he had to stop and breathe deeply just to get the courage to go further. The problem was, he’d become Sod so long ago that thinking Plain came less and less easily. It had taken Katie’s trial-where he, of all people, was cast as the expert on Amish life-to make him realize that the Plain side of him had been there all along. Although he lived in a different world, he still saw it with the eyes of one who’d grown up separate and apart; he judged it with a set of values that had been ingrained long ago.

One of the first truths you learned when you were Plain was that actions spoke louder than words.

In the English world, people sent condolences and wrote e-mail and exchanged valentines. In the Amish world, sympathy came in the form of a visit, love was a look of satisfaction cast across the dinner table, help was hands-on. All this time, Jacob had been waiting for an apology from his father, when that wasn’t his father’s means of currency.

He slid open the heavy door of the barn and walked inside. Dust motes circled in the air, and the heady scent of hay and sweet grain was so familiar that Jacob froze for a moment and simply closed his eyes, remembering. The cows, chained at their stanchions, shuffled at his entrance and rolled their heavy heads in his direction.

It was milking time; Jacob had planned it that way. He walked into the central aisle of the barn. Levi was shoveling manure into a wheelbarrow, looking none too pleased about it. Samuel stood down at the far end, waiting for the feed to funnel down the chute from the silo. Elam and Aaron moved between the animals in tandem, checking the pumps and wiping down the teats of the next cow in line.

It was Elam who saw him first. Straightening slowly, the old man stared at Jacob and gradually smiled. Jacob nodded, then reached down into the bucket his grandfather held and ripped out a leaf of the old Yellow Pages. He took the spray bottle from Elam’s hand to sanitize an udder just as his father came around the broad behind of the cow.

Aaron started. His shoulders tensed; the powerful muscles in his forearms locked up. Samuel and Levi watched the scene in silence; it even seemed that the cows had quieted, waiting to see what would happen.

Elam placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Es ist nix,” he said. It’s nothing.

Without saying a word, Jacob bent down and resumed his task. His palms slipped along the soft underskin of the cow. A moment later, he felt his father at his shoulder. The hands that had taught him how to do most everything gently pushed his out of the way, so that the milk pump could be attached.

Jacob stood up, toe to toe with his father. Aaron nodded slowly toward the next cow. “Well,” he said in English. “I’m waiting.”

George mounted the steps of the Fishers’ front porch, unsure of what to expect. In a way, he’d figured a people so close to God would have managed to get lightning to strike him the minute he got out of his car, but so far so good. He straightened his jacket and tie and knocked firmly.

The defendant answered the door. Her friendly smile faltered, then completely withered. “Yes?”

“I’m, uh, here to see Ellie.”

Katie crossed her arms. “She’s not taking visitors just now.”

From behind her, a voice yelled out, “That’s not true! I’ll take anyone. If it’s the UPS man, send him in!”

George raised his brows, and Katie pushed open the screen door to admit him. He followed her through a house that looked surprisingly like his own. In the living room, Ellie lay on a couch with an afghan tossed over her legs.

“Well,” he said. “You look completely different in your pajamas. Softer.”

Ellie laughed. “That’s why I rarely wear them during litigation. Is this a social visit?”

“Not exactly.” George looked pointedly at Katie. She glanced at Ellie, and then went into another room. “I’ve got a deal for you.”

“What a surprise,” Ellie said dryly. “Has the jury got you running scared?”

“Why, no. In fact, I figured you’re the one who’s panicking, and I’m feeling chivalrous at the moment.”

“You’re a regular Lancelot, George. All right, let’s hear it.”

“She pleads guilty,” George said. “We agree to four to seven years.”

“Not a chance.” Ellie bristled, but then thought of Katie, by the pond. “I’ll consider a nolo, and I’ll take two to four as a capped plea, if you let me argue for less.”

George turned away, looking out the window. More than anything else, he wanted to win this case-it was what would buoy him through the next election. He had no grand desire to make Katie Fisher rot away in jail forever; and from what Lizzie had told him, he didn’t think that would sit well with the community, either. With a nolo contendere, as Ellie was suggesting, a defendant didn’t admit guilt, but still accepted a conviction. Basically, it meant saying that you didn’t do it, but you understood that there was enough evidence to condemn you, so you accepted that verdict.

For Katie, it meant saving face and accepting punishment at the same time.

For Ellie, it meant erasing her client’s unexpected courtroom confession from the record.

For George, it was still a guilty verdict.

He walked toward Ellie again. “I need to think about it. If she does get convicted, she could be looking at a hell of a lot of time.”

“If, George. The jury’s been out for five days. If they come back for us, Katie gets nada. As in not a thing.”

He crossed his arms. “Nolo. Three to six, capped.”

“Two and a half to five, and you’ve got yourself a deal.” She smiled. “Of course, I’ll have to run it by my client.”

“Get back to me.” George started out of the living room, pausing at the threshold of the doorway. “Hey, Ellie,” he said. “I was sorry to hear about what happened.”

She fisted the afghan in her hands. “Well, it’s all going to be fine now.”

“Yeah.” George nodded slowly. “I think it is.”

Katie sat outside the judge’s chambers, running her fingers over the smooth seams of the wooden bench. She’d flatten her palm against a spot, buff it with her apron, and then do it all over again. Although being here today was considerably less upsetting than being here for the trial, she was still counting the minutes until she could leave.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Katie glanced up as Adam sat down beside her. “Jacob told me about the plea.”

“Yes. And now it will be finished,” she said quietly, and both of them weighed the words, turned them over like stones, and set them down again.

“I’m going back to Scotland.” He hesitated. “Katie, you could-”

“No, Adam.” She shook her head, interrupting him. “I couldn’t.”

Adam swallowed, nodded. “I guess I knew that all along.” He touched the curve of her cheek. “But I also know that these past months, you’ve been there with me.” When Katie looked up, puzzled, he continued. “I find you, sometimes, at the foot of my bed, when I wake up. Or I notice your profile in the moorings of a castle wall. Sometimes, when the wind’s right, it’s like you’re calling my name.” He took her hand, traced the outline of her fingers. “I see you more clearly than I’ve ever seen any ghost.”

He lifted her palm, kissed the center, and closed her fingers around it. Then he pressed the fist tight to her belly. “Remember me,” Adam said thickly; and for the second time in Katie’s life, he left her behind.

“I’m glad to hear that you’ve come to an agreement,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Now let’s talk about time.”

George leaned forward. “We agreed to a capped plea, Your Honor, two and a half to five years. But I think it’s important to remember that whatever decision is reached here is going to send a message to society about neonaticide.”

“We agreed to a nolo,” Ellie specified. “My client is not admitting to this crime. She has repeatedly stated that she doesn’t know what happened that night, but for various reasons she’s willing to accept a guilty verdict. However, we’re not talking about a hardened felon. Katie has a commitment to the community, and she’s not going to be a repeat offender. She shouldn’t do a day of time, not even an hour. Sentencing her to a correctional facility sends the message that she’s like any common criminal, when you can’t even come close to comparing the two.”

“Something tells me, Ms. Hathaway, that you have a solution in mind.”

“I do. I think Katie’s a perfect candidate for the electronic monitoring program.”

Judge Ledbetter took off her half glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Mr. Callahan, we set an example for society by taking this case to trial and putting it in front of the press. I see no reason to shame the Amish community any more than the media attention already has, by sending one of their own into Muncy. The defendant will serve time-but in private. Which somehow seems like a little bit of poetic justice.” She scrawled her signature across the papers in front of her. “I’m sentencing Ms. Fisher to a year on the bracelet,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Case closed.”

The plastic cuff went under her stockings, because she wouldn’t be able to take it off for nearly eight months. It was three inches wide, implanted with a homing device. If Katie left Lancaster County, Ellie explained, it would beep, and the probation officer would find her in minutes. The probation officer might find her anyway, just for the heck of it, to make sure she was keeping herself out of trouble. Katie was officially a prisoner of the state, which means she had no rights to speak of.

But she got to stay on the farm, live her life, and go about her own business. Surely the sin of a small piece of jewelry could be overlooked when she was getting so much in exchange.

She and Ellie walked through the hallways, their shoes echoing in the silence. “Thank you,” Katie said softly.

“My pleasure.” Ellie hesitated. “This is a fair deal.”

“I know.”

“Even if it’s a guilty verdict.”

“That never bothered me.”

“Yeah.” Ellie smiled. “I suppose I’ll get over it, in another decade or so.”

“Bishop Ephram says that this was a good thing for the community.”

“How so?”

“It keeps us humble,” Katie said. “Too many English think we’re saints, and this will remind them we’re just people.”

They stepped outside together into the relative quiet of the afternoon. No reporters, no onlookers-it would be hours before the press got wind that the jury had been dismissed and the trial abruptly aborted, due to the plea bargain. Katie stopped at the top of the stairs, looking around. “This isn’t the way I pictured it.”

“What isn’t?”

“After.” She shrugged. “I thought that everything you talked about at the trial would help me understand what happened a little better.”

Ellie smiled. “If I do my job right, then I tend to make things muddier.”

A breeze, threaded with the cold of winter, blew the strings of Katie’s kapp across her face. “I’m never going to know exactly how he died, am I?” she asked softly.

Ellie linked her arm through Katie’s. “You know how he didn’t die,” she answered. “That may have to be enough.”

TWENTY Ellie

It’s funny how you can accumulate so many things in such a small amount of time. I had come to East Paradise with a single suitcase, but now that it was time to pack up my things I could barely make them fit. Now, in addition to my clothes, there was my first and probably final attempt at a quilt, which would one day grace my child’s crib. There was the straw hat I’d bought at Zimmermann’s, a young boy’s broad-brimmed hat, but one that managed to keep the sun off my face when I was working in the fields. There were smaller things: a perfectly flat stone I’d found in the creek, a matchbook from the restaurant where I’d first had dinner with Coop, that extra pregnancy test in the two-for-one kit. And finally, there were the things that were too grand in scope to fit the confines of any luggage: spirit, humility, peace.

Katie was outside, beating rugs with the long handle of a broom. She’d unrolled her stockings to show Sarah the bracelet, and I made sure to explain its limitations. Coop would be here any minute with his car, to take me home.

Home. It would take some getting used to. I wondered how many mornings I’d wake at 4:30 A.M., imagining the soft sounds of the men going to the barn for the milking. How many nights I’d forget to set an alarm, sure that the rooster would do the job.

I also wondered what it would be like to flip through the channels of a TV again. To sleep beside Coop every night, his arm slung over me like an anchor. I wondered who my next client would be, and if I would often think of Katie.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Come on in.”

Sarah moved into the room, her hands tucked beneath her apron. “I came to see if you need any help.” Looking at the empty pegs on the walls, she smiled. “Guess you’ve pretty much taken care of it.”

“The packing wasn’t so hard. It’s leaving that’s going to be a challenge.”

Sarah sank down onto Katie’s bed, smoothing the quilt with one hand. “I didn’t want you here,” she said quietly. “When Leda first suggested it in the courtroom that day, I told her no.” She lifted her face, eyes following me as I finished cleaning up. “Not just because of Aaron, neither. I thought you might be one of those folks we get every now and then, looking to pretend they’re one of us because they think peace is something a body can learn.”

Her hand picked at a small imperfection in the quilt. “I figured out quick enough that you weren’t like that at all. And I have to admit that we’ve learned more from you, I think, than you ever could have learned from us.”

Sitting down beside Sarah, I smiled. “That would be debatable.”

“You kept my Katie here with me. For that, you’ll always be special.”

Listening to this quiet, solemn woman, I felt a quick kinship. For a while, she had entrusted her daughter to me. More than ever, I understood that remarkable leap of faith.

“I lost Jacob, you see, and Hannah. I couldn’t lose Katie. You know how a mother would do anything, if it meant saving her child.”

My hand stole over my belly. “Yes, I do.” I touched her shoulder. “You did the right thing, having me defend Katie in court. No matter what Aaron or the bishop or anyone else told you, you shouldn’t doubt that.”

Sarah nodded, then pulled from beneath her apron a small packet wrapped in tissue paper. “I wanted to give you these.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, embarrassed that I had not thought of giving a gift, too, in return for the Fishers’ hospitality. I tore at the paper, and it fell away to reveal a pair of scissors.

They were heavy and silver, with a marked notch in one blade. They were polished clean, but a small loop of twine tied to the handle was dark and stiff with dried blood. “I thought you could take these away,” Sarah said simply. “I can’t give them back to Aaron, now.”

My mind reeled back to the medical examiner’s testimony, to the autopsy photos of the dead infant’s umbilicus. “Oh, Sarah,” I whispered.

I had based an entire legal defense on the fact that an Amish woman would not, could not, commit murder. And yet here was an Amish woman, holding out to me the evidence that incriminated her.

The light had been left on in the barn, because Sarah knew her daughter was pregnant all along. The scissors used to cut the cord, covered with blood, had been hidden. The baby had disappeared when Katie was asleep-and the reason she didn’t remember wrapping and hiding his body was because she had not been the one to do it.

My mouth opened and closed around a question that never came.

“The sun, it came up so quick that morning. I had to get back to the house before Aaron woke for the milking. I thought I’d be able to come back later-but I had to go. I just had to.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I was the one who sent her out to the English world in the first place-and I could see how she was changing. No one else noticed-not even Samuel-but once he did, well, I knew what would happen. I only wanted Katie to have the kind of life she’d always imagined having-one here, among all of us.

“But Aaron had sent Jacob away, and for much less than this. He would never have accepted that baby . . . and Katie would have been sent away, too.” Sarah’s eyes went to my abdomen, where my child lay safe. “You understand now, Ellie, don’t you? I couldn’t save Hannah, and I couldn’t save Jacob. . . . I had one last chance. No matter what, someone was going to leave me. So I chose. I did what I thought I had to do, to keep my daughter.” She bowed her head. “And I nearly lost her, all the same.”

Outside, a car horn sounded. I heard the door slam, and Coop’s voice tangling with Katie’s in the front yard. “Well.” Sarah wiped her eyes and got to her feet. “I don’t want you carrying that suitcase. Let me.” She smiled as she lifted it, testing its weight. “You bring that baby back so we can meet her, all right?” Sarah said, and setting down the suitcase, she put her arms around me.

I froze, unable to embrace her. I was an attorney; I was bound by the law. By duty, I needed to call the police, to tell the county attorney this information. And then Sarah would be tried for the same crime for which her daughter had been convicted.

Yet of their own volition, my hands came up to rest on Sarah’s back, my thumb brushing the edge of one of the straight pins that held her apron in place. “You take care,” I whispered, squeezing her tightly. Then I hurried down the stairs, outside to where the world was waiting.