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.
