Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page B

caught unawares.”
    â€œMy Katie doesn't need a lawyer.”
    â€œSo I hope,” the bishop said. “But if she does, the community will stand behind her.” He hesitated, then added, “She'll have to put herself back, you understand, during this time.”
    Elam looked up. “Just give up communion? She wouldn't be put under the bann? ”
    â€œI will need to speak to Samuel, of course, and then think on it.” Ephram put his hand on Aaron's shoulder. “This isn't the first time a young couple has gotten ahead of their wedding night. It's a tragedy, to be sure, that the baby died. But heartache can cement a marriage just as much as happiness. And as for Katie being blamed for the other—well, none of us believes it.”
    Aaron turned, shrugging off the bishop's hand. “Thank you. But we will not hire a lawyer for Katie, and go through the Englischer courts. It's not our way.”
    â€œWhat makes you always draw a line, and challenge people to cross it, Aaron?” Ephram sighed. “That's not our way.”
    â€œIf you'll excuse me, I have work to do.” Aaron nodded at the bishop and his father and struck off toward the barn.
    The two older men watched him in silence. “You've had this conversation with him once before,” Elam Fisher pointed out.
    The bishop smiled sadly. “Ja . And I was talking to a stone wall that time, too.”
    Katie dreamed she was falling. Out of the sky, like a bird with a wounded wing, the earth rushing up to meet her. Her heart lodged in her throat, holding back the scream, and she realized
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    at the very last second that she was heading toward the barn, the fields, her home. She closed her eyes and crashed, the scenery shattering like an eggshell at impact so that when she looked around, she recognized nothing at all.
    Blinking into the darkness, Katie tried to sit up in the bed. Wires and plastic tubes grew from her body like roots. Her belly felt tender; her arms and legs heavy.
    A comma of a moon split the sky, and a smattering of stars. Katie let her hands creep beneath the covers to rest on her stomach. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht,” she whispered. I did not have a baby.
    Tears fell on the blanket. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht. Ich hab ken Kind kaht,” she murmured over and over, until the words became a stream running through her veins, an angel's lullaby.
    The fax machine in Lizzie's house beeped on just after midnight, while she was running on her treadmill. Adrenaline had kept her awake, anyway, and perfectly suited for a workout that might make her tired enough to catch a few hours of sleep. She shut off the treadmill and walked to the fax, sweating as she waited for the pages to begin rolling out. At the cover page from the medical examiner's office, her heart rate jumped another notch.
    Words began to reach at her, tugging at her mind.
    Male, 32 weeks. 39-2 cm crown-heel; 26 cm crown-rump. Hydrostatic test … dilated alveolar ducts … mottled pink to dark red appearance … left and right lungs floated, excluding partial and irregular aeration. Air present in the middle ear. Bruising on the upper lip; cotton fibers on gums .
    â€œGood God,” she whispered, shivering. She had met murderers several times—the man who'd stabbed a convenience store owner for a pack of Camels; a boy who'd raped college girls and left them bleeding on the dormitory floor; once, a woman who had shot her abusive husband's face off while he lay sleeping. There was something about these people, something that had always made Lizzie feel that if you cracked them open like Russian nesting dolls, you'd find a hot, smoking coal at their center.
    Something that did not fit this Amish girl at all.
    Lizzie stripped out of her workout clothes, heading for the shower. Before the girl was no longer free to leave, before she was read Miranda and formally charged, Lizzie wanted to look Katie Fisher in the eye and see what