head in her mother’s lap, an indulgence Miyako would not have allowed even six months ago.
When the bus groaned to a halt, a buzz of excited conversation rose all around them. Lucy pressed her face to the window. In the distance a mountain peak rose up into the night, illuminated by moonlight, snow topped and impossibly vast. It was the biggest thing Lucy had ever seen, bigger than anything she had ever imagined.
And laid out in either direction along the wide dirt avenue where the bus had stopped were long, low buildings like dominoes arranged on a table. Above them the sky was bigger than it ever was in Los Angeles, and dusted with so many stars that it looked like talcum powder had been spilled across it.
“Last stop,” the driver said, perhaps joking; but after he cranked the doors open, it was several moments before anyone made a move. The air was cold here; while Lucy slept, her mother had covered her with a wrap taken from her valise. But the air that rushed into the bus was far colder. The soldiers, barking orders, made clouds with their breath.
“Are you sure this is it?” Lucy whispered, but her words were lost in the hubbub as people began to file off the bus.
“Wait,” Miyako said, her free hand clutching Lucy’s coat collar. The passengers exited and formed a milling crowd outside Lucy’s window, illuminated by spotlights coming from two tall wooden towers. She searched for Aiko’s familiar coat, but there were too many people, too many unfamiliar faces.
Eventually there were only a few stragglers on the bus. “Come on,” the young soldier said impatiently, gesturing with the rifle he held in both hands. “Hurry up.”
Miyako held both their suitcases in front of her, grunting with the effort of maneuvering them down the aisle. Lucy clutched her mother’s coat and inhaled the smell of the wool. Descending the steps, Miyako accepted the help of a stranger in a jacket and tie, and Lucy couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man, who apparently owned no warm coat. Once on the ground, she tested the soil with the toe of her shoe and found it sandy. The cold rushed under her skirt and the wind lifted her hair and swirled it around her face. It was as though the place was claiming her for its own, and Lucy stood rigid and fearful, not knowing how to resist.
8
San Francisco
Wednesday, June 7, 1978
For a moment after Inspector Torre left, the house echoed with the sound of the closing door. Lucy stared thoughtfully at the cream-and-gray-plaid Formica table.
“What the hell was that about?” Patty asked, when she was certain Torre was well out of earshot.
Lucy shrugged. “You were here. You heard the same things I did.”
“That’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean. Who is this guy Forrest? Obviously, you knew him well enough to remember him after all this time. Who was he?”
“Just one of the staff, Patty. And I hadn’t thought of him in ages.”
“You didn’t go see him the other morning?”
“No,” Lucy said, but she didn’t meet Patty’s eyes.
“Not just the other morning, but ever. I mean, isn’t that kind of a strange coincidence, that he lived a few streets over all this time?”
“Worked. He worked near here. I have no idea where he lived. And after the war, lots of people from the camps went to the cities. Those newsletters that come here, half those people are living in San Francisco.”
Patty knew the newsletters her mother was talking about—stapled, folded affairs that her mother threw away without reading, the efforts of a group of former Manzanar internees who were trying to get what was left of the relocation center made into a memorial or a national monument. But Patty knew that Lucy would never seek those people out. She was a loner, content with her own company. It didn’t matter that they’d shared an experience, a moment in history. It seemed as though Lucy would much prefer to erase the past completely.
“Mother, we have to figure this out. Someone thinks they saw you there.”
For a moment Lucy looked as though she was going to say something—she bit her bottom lip and drew herself up in her seat—and then she merely got up and went to pour more tea. “It wasn’t me. I was here, getting ready for work. Like always.”
Like always, except that Patty had been asleep in the next room. She should have told the inspector that—that