Free Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

Hell who had been introduced in absentia in the courtroom. A brother, maybe. But then I caught him staring at Katie with a look that was anything but brotherly. I glanced at Katie, and noticed she was not looking at him the same way.
    All of a sudden, in the run of language, there came a word I knew—my own name. Sarah gestured to me, smiled uncomfortably, and then nodded to the blond man. He took my suitcase from the trunk and set it down beside him, then offered me his hand to shake. “I am Samuel Stoltzfus,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of my Katie.”
    Did he notice the way Katie stiffened at the possessive claim? Did anyone but me?
    Hearing the metallic clop of hooves and harness behind me, I turned to see someone leading a horse into the barn. Wiry and muscular, the man had a thick red beard just beginning to sport streaks of gray. Beneath his black trousers he wore a pale blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He glanced at us, briefly frowning at the sight of Leda's car. Then he continued into the barn, only to reappear a moment later.
    Ignoring everyone else, he went straight to Sarah and began to speak quietly but firmly to her in their language. Sarah bowed her head, a willow branch under a wind. But Leda took a step forward and began talking back to him. She pointed to Katie, and to me, and shook her fists. Her eyes snapping with frustration, she set her hands on my shoulders and shoved me forward, into Aaron Fisher's scrutiny.
    I had watched men step apart from themselves at the moment they were sentenced to life in prison; I had seen the blankness in a witness's eyes when she recounted the night she was attacked; but never had I seen a detachment like I saw on that man's face. He held himself in check, as if admitting to his pain might crack him into a thousand pieces; as if we were age-old adversaries; as if he knew, deep down, that he'd already been beaten.
    I held out my hand. “It is a pleasure.”
    Aaron turned away without touching me. He approached his daughter, and the world fell away, so that when he tipped his forehead against Katie's and whispered to her with tears in his eyes, I ducked my head to offer them privacy. Katie nodded, starting for the house with her father's arm locked around her shoulders.
    In a tight knot, Samuel, Sarah, and Leda followed, talking heatedly in their dialect. I stood alone in the driveway, the breeze blowing my silk shell against my back, the sun sugaring new freckles on my shoulders. From the barn came the stamp and whinny of a horse.
    I sat down on one suitcase and stared in the direction of the house. “Yeah,” I said softly. “It's nice to meet you too.”
    To my amazement, the Fisher home was not that much different from the one I'd grown up in. Braided rag rugs were scattered across the hardwood floors, a bright quilt sat folded over the back of a rocking chair, an intricately carved hutch held an assortment of delft china bowls and teacups. I think, in a way, I'd been expecting to step back into Little House on the Prairie — these were people, after all, who willingly set aside modern conveniences. But there was an oven, a refrigerator, even a washing machine that looked like one my grandmother had had in the 1950s. My confusion must have shown, because Leda materialized by my elbow. “They all run on gas. It's not the appliances they don't want; it's the electricity. Getting power from public utility lines—well, it means you're linked to the outside world.” She pointed to a lamp, showing me the thin tubing that piped in the propane from a tank hidden beneath its base. “Aaron will let you stay here. He doesn't like it, but he's going to do it.”
    I grimaced. “Marvelous.”
    â€œIt will be,” Leda said, smiling. “I think you're going to be surprised.”
    The others had remained in the kitchen, leaving me alone with Leda in a living room of sorts. Bookshelves