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.”