llie 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.