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

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

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

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

“What’s your offer?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay.”

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

“No. Then it’s over.”

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

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

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

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

“Will you get me acquitted, then?”

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

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

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

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

“Then you go to jail,” I clarified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll be your audience.”

“You’ll be a distraction.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No kidding?”

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

“An exercise in self-esteem?”

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

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

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

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

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

“How about me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hello?” I called. “Anyone here?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What on earth?” Leda breathed.

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

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

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

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

“But-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How come they haven’t started yet?”

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

“He looks kind,” she mused.

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

“All rise; the Honorable Philomena Ledbetter presiding!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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