And despite his anger at Schlossman and his focused need to get to the bottom of those damning photos, part of his brain had been acutely aware of a variety of things. First, that Shayla was stronger—sturdier—than he’d imagined. There was a solidness to her, and at the same time, a softness. It was a good combination, which made him aware of the second thing, which was that it had been too damn long since someone who cared about him—truly, honestly cared—had put their arms around him.
It had shocked him—just how much he’d missed something that he hadn’t even really known that he’d been denied.
It was different from sex. He was well aware of just how much he’d missed that, but oddly, this hurt worse.
“Maddie told you that she and Dingo were going here—to Manzanar?” Shayla asked as she continued to study the photos.
“For a school project.” Hiroko was heavy with her ironic emphasis. “The girl’s got her mother’s ability to lie like a professional card shark, but the boy was one giant, twitchy tell.”
“Please forgive me for not knowing, but is the prison still there?” Shay asked as she finally came back and sat down beside Pete.
“It is and it isn’t,” Hiroko said.
Shay leaned in again. “Didn’t anyone, I don’t know, preserve it as an historic site?”
“Who would’ve done that?” Hiroko asked. “The families who’d been imprisoned there? We’d lost everything when we were rounded up—farms, businesses, jobs—all gone. My parents spent the war unemployed—like everyone in the camp—and when it was over, we were tossed back into a society who’d been taught to hate an enemy who looked exactly like us. Creating an historic site was the last thing we were thinking about. As for the government, they wanted Manzanar to disappear since yes, it had been unconstitutional and illegal—our imprisonment. So they tore down the cabins and sold off the wood and the metal from the fencing. But there’s really nothing out there—no town needing the site for a shopping mall or a suburban development, so in that sense, it’s still there—that great, big, dusty, empty space. And yes, it is a national site now, all these decades later—with a small monument to mark our national shame—but that happened only after we kicked and screamed to make it so. Now there’s an organization trying to preserve it, to rebuild more of the cabins according to the photos, but until they do that, there’s not much there to preserve. The high school auditorium that we built. I think that still stands, but other than that, there’s just some eroding foundations in a big dusty field, marked with a few little signs—apparently. That’s what I’ve heard. I have not been back.”
“So it’s unlikely Maddie would go there, expecting—I don’t know—a place to hide out?” Shayla asked.
“It’s unlikely she’d find much of anything to hide in or behind,” Hiroko replied, “if she and the boy with the ridiculous name did go there.”
Pete spoke up. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to put a stop payment on the check.”
“If I wanted to stop the payment, Peter, I wouldn’t have given the check to the girl in the first place” was the curt reply. “And actually, I didn’t write it to Maddie. She said she didn’t have a bank account and wouldn’t be able to cash it. So I wrote it for the boy. Ricky—Richard—Dingler. She calls him Dingo. I don’t know why, when Ricky is a perfectly fine name. I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”
And that was their cue to go. As Pete stood up, he took out his phone and texted Izzy: FYI, Dingo’s name is Ricky, short for Richard, Dingler. That info could be useful if Izzy encountered Dingo’s parents up in Van Nuys. “Please call me if they come back,” he told Hiroko.
“They won’t.” She seemed certain.
“Thank you so much for the coffee,” Shayla said, giving Hiroko a hug, which was actually amazing. Pete had never seen the old woman reach out to make any kind of contact with anyone—not even a handshake. In fact, she shrank from it. Because of that, people tended to keep their distance—himself and Lisa included. And even now, as Shayla hugged the old woman, it looked a lot like she was hugging a marble statue. Still, she pulled back to look into Hiroko’s eyes and say, “It was so nice to meet you—Peter’s told me a lot about you. I hope we’ll see you again, soon.”
Hiroko’s response was a prickly “Well, I don’t know about that.” But then, after Shay had gone out the door, as Pete was heading out himself and pulling it closed behind him, the old woman said, “I hope you’re finally happy, Peter.”
He almost stopped and went back inside to confront her, because that was just cruel. She hoped he was finally happy? With Lisa dead, and Maddie run away and possibly pregnant at age fifteen…?
Instead, he closed the door behind him.
Thanks, Hiroko. Jesus. Just…thanks.
“Is Maddie a morning person?” Shayla asked as they headed toward the next item on their search list: the San Diego address they’d gotten for Daryl Middleton, Dingo’s long-haired friend.
Peter had been silently grim since they left Hiroko’s lovely little beach house, lost in thoughts and memories, no doubt, from being back in the very place he’d first met Maddie’s mother. Now, as he navigated his way through the morning traffic, he glanced at Shay and the expression on his face was intentionally comical—an over-exaggerated Seriously? “She’s a teenager,” he reminded her. “She’d sleep until noon every day if she could.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.” She smiled at him. “I’ve got two of my own, and Tevin’s currently doing a workout regimen before school. I think his desire to put on some muscle, you know, to stop being the tall, skinny kid currently trumps his need for sleep—but it’s a daily battle and sleep sometimes wins. Frank’s solidly in the sleep-all-day-if-he-could phase.” She paused, then asked, “So what’s she doing up this early on a day she has no intention of going to school? Why not sleep in? Instead, she and Dingo must’ve gotten to Hiroko’s before seven. That had to take some serious effort.” She could tell he didn’t quite understand why this mattered, so she added, “I keep thinking there’s a clue in there. Like, whoever they’re staying with has to get up and go to work. Or…what?”
He nodded. “You’re right. Although it’s possible their motivation was the money. We told Maddie, in the story we sent, that Hiroko often got up early. Maybe she wanted to get there before we did.”
“Or, maybe they’re sleeping on the beach or in a park somewhere,” Shay said, “or even in that car, and got told to move it along, so they were just out, doing what I think of as the early-morning zombie shuffle, except they’re in the car. Drove past Hiroko’s as recon, stumbled on her up and in her garden.”
He nodded again as he threw her another glance. “That writer brain of yours,” he said. “It’s a good one.”
“Well, thanks, but if I were writing this scene, I’d have ’em staying with Dingo’s buddy Daryl at—” she checked the address she’d input into her phone’s GPS “—the Riverside Arms, unit three-fifty. Does San Diego even have a river?”