baton hung from his belt. He walked around the perimeter of the room, hands behind his back, saying nothing, a strange smile fixed on his face. Lucy put down her spoon, her appetite lost. A few hundred feet away, in the guard towers that loomed over the camp, soldiers watched every inch of the fence, their fingers never far from the triggers of their guns—but somehow Reg’s presence was even more chilling.
Lucy slid closer to the family whose table she was sharing, hoping that she could escape Reg’s notice by pretending to be one of their children. But Reg had already spotted her. He walked directly toward her table and Lucy felt the filament that connected them grow taut. She sat up as straight as she could and forced herself to meet his gaze.
“Well, well, little Lucy Takeda,” Reg said, nodding to the family Lucy was sitting with. They blanched and slid away from her. “Good to see you up and about, looking fit as a fiddle this morning.”
Lucy wondered what response he was looking for, what words would make him go away.
“And your mother? I trust she is well also?”
“Yes,” Lucy said quickly, though in fact Miyako had resumed her late-night outings two or three times a week, and sometimes didn’t come home until Lucy was already asleep. On those nights Lucy occasionally woke to find her mother kneeling on the floor next to her bed, her head resting on the edge of the mattress. Miyako was losing weight again, and she sometimes clutched herself around the middle as though she was in pain. She wore long sleeves and high collars, but even so, Lucy had spotted bruises on her skin.
“But—” he made a show of looking around the room, assuming an exaggerated expression of concern “—I don’t see her here. She isn’t forgetting to eat, is she?”
“No...sir.” Lucy hated the papery tone of her voice, the tremor in her hands that betrayed her fear.
“Because you gotta eat, keep your strength up, times like these.” Reg squared his shoulders, his broad chest and powerful arms filling out his uniform shirt and tapering to the trim waist and muscular legs. Reg was rumored to have a punching bag and weights in his apartment rather than living room furniture; this only added to his allure among the young women in camp.
Lucy nodded faintly, unable to think of a response.
“You know...it’s been awfully nice to see her around again. The boys sure missed her. Your mother’s a class act.” Reg made a gun from his thumb and forefinger and pretended to shoot Lucy with it, making a clicking sound in his throat. He winked and finally turned and walked away, completing his tour of the mess hall before leaving to haunt other corners of the camp.
The couple she was sitting with exchanged a worried barrage of words in a mixture of Japanese and English, but Lucy didn’t listen. Her appetite was gone. She carefully wrapped two slices of bread in a handkerchief and headed back to her room, knowing she’d have to work hard not to let her face give her fears away.
16
The riots were followed by a relentless wave of cold. The new year came without incident, people cowering in their rooms under whatever warm clothes and blankets they were able to find. Donations from churches and deliveries of surplus clothing from the first war supplemented the meager belongings the internees had brought from home, and the oil heaters burned constantly, but it seemed as though no one was ever warm enough. There was only one heater per barrack, a barrel-shaped thing that could not produce enough heat for the entire building.
The business of the camp continued unabated. Deputy Chief Griswold promoted one of the full-time couriers to clerical assistant and asked Lucy to help out again a few days a week after school. If Mrs. Kadonada was aware of the distance between Lucy and her son, she was too discreet to mention it, but it seemed that she was especially solicitous as she gave Lucy stacks of letters and mimeographs to deliver. She asked after Miyako with no apparent irony, and for that kindness, Lucy was grateful. She wondered if Mrs. Kadonada understood that her errands in the frozen camp were preferable to afternoons alone with her thoughts in a warm room.
One Friday afternoon, Mrs. Kadonada gave Lucy an envelope stamped CONFIDENTIAL and addressed to Reginald Forrest, Property Manager, Warehouse One. Ordinarily such a delivery would only be handled by