Sophie Littlefield - Garden of Stones

In the dark days of war, a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice

Lucy Takeda is just fourteen years old, living in Los Angeles, when the bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor. Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up—along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans—and taken to the Manzanar prison camp.

Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever...and spur her to sins of her own.

Bestselling author Sophie Littlefield weaves a powerful tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love.

Garden

of

Stones

Sophie Littlefield

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Julie

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Acknowledgments

A Conversation with Sophie Littlefield

Questions for Discussion

1

San Francisco

Tuesday, June 6, 1978

Reg Forrest lowered himself painfully into his desk chair, which was as hard, used and creaky as he was. The dark brown leather was cracked and worn, the brass nails missing in places. When he found the chair in the alley, he thought it had a certain masculine appeal, like something a hotshot lawyer might own. But it hadn’t taken long for the thing to seem as shoddy as the rest of his office.

Reg flipped the corners of the stack of papers on his desk and sighed. The coffee wouldn’t be ready for a few minutes yet.

Dust motes swirled in the first rays of morning sunlight, causing Reg to blink and then to sneeze. He had positioned his desk under the only window in the room, a filthy pane of glass at ceiling level that looked out into a corrugated-aluminum well half-filled with garbage and dead leaves. Above the window well was the same alley where he’d found the chair, a narrow, stinking passage between the DeSoto Hotel and the building next door. Still, early in the morning, depending on the season, an errant sunbeam or two found its way down into the room, and for that small grace, Reg occasionally remembered to be grateful.

Beyond the office door, there was silence. The gym opened at seven, which was still a half hour away. He’d already unlocked the doors, but the half-dozen men who’d gather by seven would wait for him to come prop them open. They knew each other’s habits. Early morning drew the shift workers, the boys getting in a few rounds on the bag after clocking out. Night security, deliverymen, dockworkers—they were quieter, as a rule, than the ones who came later. Other than the occasional grunt or curse, they had little to say as they worked through their circuits.

It had been several years since Reg himself had taken to the practice ring. He’d broken the same hand three times, and his shoulder was never right anymore. The ligaments in his back were for shit, and there was a scar like a zipper running over his left knee. He was fifty-nine years old and he’d spent three of his six decades here, in the basement of the DeSoto Hotel, building Reg’s Gym up from nothing. Reg had paid in rough coin, but he wasn’t complaining; the sounds and smells of this place were all he knew anymore, and if he spent more of his time locked up in this office with a calculator than on the floor these days, he supposed that was all right. A man slows down, in time.

A knock at the door. Raphael, his day manager, sometimes came in early and drank a cup of coffee with him. On days like this, when his aches and pains were more troublesome than usual, Reg could do without the conversation—at least until he’d had a chance to work the kinks out of his joints and was feeling more sociable. The only reason he came in to work this early was his insomnia: often stark-awake by three or four, Reg had nowhere else to go.

“Yeah. Come in.”

He didn’t turn. The only sound was the gurgling of the coffeepot. Reg squinted at the sheet on top of the stack and wondered if he needed to go to the eye doctor again. What had it been, two years, three, and it seemed like they were printing everything smaller all the time.

“Hey, Raphael, look at this invoice, will you, I can’t make out the damn numbers—”

He jerked with surprise when warm hands covered his eyes. For a moment he was frozen, remembering the way his sister used to sneak up on him, half a century ago. She loved to put her small hands over his eyes and make him guess, little skinny Martha who died of scarlet fever before her seventh birthday; he hadn’t thought of her in years. The hands pushed gently, tilting his head back, one of them cupping his chin to hold it in place. Reg squinted, trying to see who was standing above him, but he was blinded by the sun streaming in the window. Something cold and hard pressed against his forehead, and the last thing Reg saw was a face surrounded with a brilliant, glowing corona, like Jesus in the picture his mother had hung above Martha’s bed.

2

San Francisco

Wednesday, June 7, 1978

Patty Takeda was having the nightmare again.

In it, she stood at the back of the church as the organist finished the last few measures of Franck’s “Fantaisie in C,” watching her maid of honor approach the altar and execute a perfect turn in her pink high heels. There was a pause as the entire congregation waited breathlessly. Then the first triumphant notes of the wedding march rang out, and everyone rose in their pews and turned toward the back, expectant smiles on their faces. Patty emerged from behind the latticed anteroom divider. Step–pause, step–pause, a smile fixed on her face.

But something was wrong. Audible gasps filled the chapel and Patty looked down and discovered that she had forgotten to put her dress on. Or her slip, for that matter, or her panties or strapless bra. She was completely naked other than her white satin pumps. She tried to cover herself with her hands, but everyone was watching, staring, pointing, and she turned to run back to the dressing room but the ushers were standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking her way, gaping.

Patty woke, shoulders heaving, sweat gluing her T-shirt to her neck, the sheets knotted around her body. She was breathing hard, but at least she was awake. Sometimes, when she had this dream, she ran around the church for what seemed like hours, never finding an exit.

The sound of the doorbell jarred her fully awake. Was that the sound that had broken through the dream? Patty groped for the clock on the bedside table, knocking the tissue box to the floor before she found it. Almost nine. Patty lay still and listened as her mother answered the door. She heard her mother’s voice, and a man’s, back and forth a few times—and then footsteps, through the house, down the hall past Patty’s door, into the kitchen.