The Enemy at Home

by Kevin O'Brien

Genres: World War II; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

1943, Seattle. While raging war reshapes the landscape of Europe, its impact is felt thousands of miles away too. Before the war, Nora Kinney was one of countless housewives and mothers in her comfortable Capitol Hill neighborhood. Now, with her doctor husband stationed in North Africa, Nora feels compelled to do more than tend her victory garden or help with scrap metal drives . . .



At the Boeing B-17 plant, Nora learns to wield a heavy riveting gun amid the deafening noise of the assembly line—a real-life counterpart to "Rosie the Riveter" in the recruitment posters. Yet while the country desperately needs their help, not everyone is happy about "all these women" taking over men's jobs. Nora worries that she is neglecting her children, especially her withdrawn teenage son. But amid this turmoil, a sinister tragedy occurs: One of Nora's coworkers is found strangled in her apartment, dressed in an apron, with a lipstick smile smeared on her face.



It's the beginning of a terrifying pattern, as women war-plant workers like Nora are targeted throughout Seattle and murdered in the same ritualistic manner. And eclipsing Nora's fear for her safety is her secret, growing conviction that she and the killer are connected—and that the haven that was her home has become her own personal battlefield . . .

Release date: August 22, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 448

Sample

“Who’s there?” Nora called out softly.

Clutching a fireplace poker, she cowered in the back doorway. Nora Kinney had thrown her robe over her nightgown before hurrying downstairs to investigate the noises that seemed to come from the backyard. The thirty-seven-year-old mother of two was alone—her husband stationed in North Africa.

On their secluded, tree-shaded block in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, the Kinneys’ modest Craftsman-style home was dwarfed by neighboring mansions, some with garage apartments for servants’ quarters. The Kinneys had a garage apartment, too—tucked behind the house at the end of the driveway. But it had been vacant for the past year, its windows boarded up.

Nora listened to the wind rustling tree branches.

“Is anyone there?” she asked, a bit louder this time, though she didn’t want to wake the kids. She could see her breath in the chilly night air. She nervously glanced toward the garage—and the backyard, which dropped off to a wooded ravine. Past the gully’s silhouetted treetops, Nora had a moonlit view of Lake Union and Queen Anne Hill. Because of the wartime blackout, the city looked desolate and eerie. Nora felt as if she were the only person awake in the darkened city—she and whoever was skulking around the house.

Nora had been lying in bed, unable to sleep, when she’d heard the noises outside. It sounded like someone—or more than just one someone—was in the backyard. She could have sworn she heard whispering.

They’d had nighttime disturbances before. They’d even had to call the police twice. But now she wasn’t hearing anything. Nora stood in the doorway for another minute, looking out. The family victory garden—with a low wire fence around it to keep out rabbits and squirrels—was undisturbed.

At the start of the war, everyone had been encouraged to grow their own produce. Nora had heard that these private “victory” gardens would help lower the cost of vegetables needed to feed the troops, so money could go to other essentials. Everyone had become patriotic and planted victory gardens. Even apartment dwellers grew produce in window boxes. Mrs. Roosevelt had a victory garden on the White House lawn. Nora had planted lettuce, spinach, carrots and onions. The garden was good for about three salads or side dishes per week. But Nora thought the garden always looked so pathetic and scrawny.

She remembered how pretty the yard used to be.

There had been a patch of beautiful dahlias where the victory garden was now. Nora also remembered a trellis with climbing red roses on the north side of the garage. The garage apartment’s former tenants, Takashi and Fumiko Hara, had been second-generation U.S. citizens, born in Washington State. Gardening had been Miko’s hobby. And Nora had always been hopelessly inept at it, so when her tenant had asked for permission to plant some flowers in the front yard, Nora had gladly given her the go-ahead. Miko had transformed the Kinneys’ drab yard into a botanical showplace. She’d planted more roses and dahlias in front of the house and rows of daffodils and various colored tulips along the length of the driveway. At the height of spring, the vibrant colors had been gorgeous.

But all of that was gone now. Destroyed.

It was spring once again, and Nora still hoped some of the flowers might come back and bloom. At least the victory garden was intact. She could be grateful for that.

Ducking back inside, she closed and locked the door. She paused in the kitchen and realized she hadn’t thought about what to cook for dinner tomorrow night. There was some ground beef in the refrigerator. Nora figured on stretching it out and making meatloaf. That would be easy to throw together with what they had in the victory garden. And “easy” was the way to go, since she’d probably be dead tired by dinnertime.

In just six hours, Nora would start her first day on the job as a riveter at Boeing’s B-17 plant. She’d signed up, been fingerprinted for security, and gone through an orientation class on Friday. Over the weekend, she’d bought three different colorful bandanas to wrap up her shoulder-length, honey-brown hair while at work. Hollywood’s Veronica Lake had posed for a photo in Life magazine, showing how women adopting her long, blond hairstyle—with that famous peek-a-boo bang—could get their tresses caught in the machinery at the war plants. So bandanas were essential for the job.

Nora had yet to hold a riveting gun. But if the ear-splitting racket the gun had produced during the orientation lesson was any indication, she might as well be operating a jackhammer.

“Remember, ladies,” the mustached, wormy-looking instructor had told the class, shouting over the gun’s noise during the demonstration. “This tool is a lot more powerful and dangerous than what you’re accustomed to dealing with at home. And this gun is much heavier than the iron you use to press your husband’s shirts.” Then he’d smirked condescendingly. “Please, try not to kill anyone with it . . .”

This would be Nora’s first job since she’d worked for kindly old Mr. Diggle behind a drugstore counter in Chicago eighteen years ago. Now she’d be working for Boeing. And it would be a hell of a lot more dangerous than operating a soda fountain. She was terrified she’d foul it up.

Switching off the lights, Nora headed back upstairs with the fireplace poker. Since her husband had shipped out, she sometimes slept with it at her bedside. She hadn’t realized until Pete was gone how often she’d relied on him to investigate the things that go bump in the night. Now it was totally up to her. The poker by her nightstand gave her some peace of mind.

Upstairs, she peeked into her seventeen-year-old son’s bedroom. The walls were covered with college pennants and scantily clad “Petty Girls” cut out of Esquire magazine. Nora couldn’t very well object, since the artist George Petty’s bathing beauties often decorated the noses of warplanes. Also on the bedroom walls, Chris displayed placards he’d collected over the years—everything from PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE to RAILROAD CROSSING to DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD. Only God knew where he’d gotten them all. The bedroom reeked of Old Spice and BO. “Do all teenage boys smell like goats—or is it just our son?” she’d once asked her doctor husband. He explained it was the testosterone. So Nora had given Chris a bottle of Old Spice aftershave lotion for his last birthday—even though he wasn’t shaving yet. He was still just a boy. And the notion that he’d have to register for the draft on his next birthday seemed unreal to her—and unthinkable.

In the darkness she couldn’t actually see Chris; he was just a lump under the covers.

Moving on to the bedroom across the hall, Nora found her twelve-year-old daughter restlessly shifting under the covers of her canopy bed. On the wall, over her headboard, was Jane’s shrine to Tyrone Power—with a dozen photos of him clipped from Photoplay and other movie magazines. Jane had a few strategically placed curlers in her red hair. She mumbled in her sleep—something she’d done ever since she’d first learned to talk.

Nora couldn’t make any sense out of what Jane was saying. But she was certain it hadn’t been her daughter’s voice she’d heard earlier. The whispering had definitely come from outside—and there had been two voices.

Nora quietly closed the bedroom door. Stopping by the window at the end of the hallway, she moved the blackout curtain and checked the backyard again. She didn’t see anyone out there. But she still wasn’t satisfied.

In her bedroom, Nora set the poker upright—between the double bed and her nightstand. Then she went to the window, pulled aside the thick curtain and glanced out at the front yard. She was tempted to go downstairs again and turn on the front porch light. But they weren’t supposed to leave any lights on outside because of the blackout.

On the West Coast, they’d started implementing citywide blackout drills months before Pearl Harbor. Cities would go completely dark by eleven at night, making it difficult for potential enemies to target major population centers. This meant all outside lights—streetlamps, illuminated signs, porch lights, everything—had to be extinguished. Like everyone else, Nora had installed shades or hung dark, heavy curtains to ensure that no light escaped from their windows. After December 7, these drills became an everyday reality.

It had been well over a year since Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese hadn’t bombed or invaded the West Coast—at least, not with any major impact. There were exceptions—like the shelling of the Ellwood Oil Field west of Santa Barbara, California, by a Japanese submarine in February of the previous year. No lives were lost, and the damage was minimal, but people had gone into a panic. The notion that a Japanese sub could travel undetected across the Pacific, all the way to California’s shores, was downright scary. What would keep them from invading? Another Japanese submarine had made it to the coast and bombarded Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River last June; and again, there were no casualties. The newspapers said the blackout had saved them. Then there was the invasion of the Aleutian Islands in the Alaska Territory—with two of the islands still occupied by Japanese forces.

Nora had to remind herself that the damage inflicted on the West Coast by the Japanese wasn’t much at all compared with what German U-boats were doing to oil tankers off our Atlantic shores. Still, Nora lived in a perpetual state of dread. God, please, let it be one of ours, she thought whenever she heard the ominous buzz of a low-flying plane overhead.

A constant reminder of the danger and their vulnerability came with the helmeted local Civil Defense warden, who still pounded on doors and issued fines to anyone not complying with the blackout rules. At night, with the window curtains closed and the blinds down, Nora and the kids felt like they were living in a cocoon.

The blackout had led to a spike in crime and auto accidents, but abiding by the blackout regulations showed patriotism. And the Kinneys couldn’t afford to look unpatriotic. Despite the small flag with the blue star displayed in their front window—signifying a family member in the service—the Kinneys were still considered by some as disloyal.

So Nora decided to keep the porch light off. She didn’t want to give certain neighbors another excuse to despise them.

Crawling back into the double bed, Nora reached up and switched off the nightstand lamp. She still wasn’t used to sleeping alone. Even in her slumber, she never rolled over to Pete’s side. But all too often, she hugged his pillow, pretending it was him. Sometimes, it was the only way she could fall asleep—by making believe he was still there with her.

But then all it took was a strange noise in the night, and the illusion was shattered. She’d realize once again that he was gone.

Nora wasn’t supposed to know where her husband was. The army censored all the mail before they photographed the letters and shrank the images onto microfilm for transport to the U.S., where they were printed up for V-mail. It was such a little thing, but she missed not having the actual piece of paper Pete had written on.

She and Pete had worked out a code in advance regarding his location. If they’d relocated him, the salutation on the letter would be “Hello, Sweetheart.” Then the first letter of each sentence at the start of the letter would spell out where he was. In the V-mail she’d gotten on St. Patrick’s Day last month, the letter had begun:

So she knew Pete was in Tunisia, where a great deal of the fighting was going on right now. And for a while, she’d gotten the impression that the Nazis were beating the hell out of the Allies—the green American troops especially. But apparently, Patton was starting to turn things around. She didn’t tell the kids where their father was currently stationed. “Loose lips sink ships” and all that. But Chris had already guessed that his dad was in North Africa.

Pete was an orthopedic surgeon. He knew the army needed doctors and had told Nora he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t do his part for the war effort. As the head of a household with dependents, he had a 3-A deferment. He didn’t have to go. Nora argued that people in Seattle needed doctors, too. Plus, she and the kids needed him. But Pete couldn’t be swayed.

That was just like him, so conscientious, so stalwart. Nora had heard people compare Pete to Gary Cooper. Tall, lean and handsome, he was quietly commanding, one of those people who whispered and everyone listened. Practically all his female patients fell in love with him. Of course, it helped that he was a brilliant surgeon. Because he was so dependable, Pete came across as solid and confident. But Nora knew about the little cracks of vulnerability that no one else saw in him. He was extremely hard on himself. Sometimes, he could sink into a quiet depression and withdraw from everyone—especially after he’d lost a patient.

For Nora, it wasn’t always easy being married to someone so good and so right most of the time. Arguing with him seemed impossible. It drove her crazy how he always seemed to have the final word on things.

Nevertheless, when Pete had mentioned joining the Army Medical Corps, Nora had fought him on it. She couldn’t imagine trying to get by without him. At the time, the Germans and Japanese were clobbering the hell out of the Allies. The notion of an attack on the American front seemed very real. And here was Pete, announcing his intention to leave her and the kids so he could do his bit to help the war effort.

He seemed awfully pigheaded about it.

But last August, when he’d been getting ready to report for duty, he’d left his half-packed suitcase on the bed to run a few errands. Nora had been putting some clean undershirts in the suitcase when she’d noticed that Pete had packed his rosary. Pete was a good Catholic. The family went to Mass at St. Joseph Parish Church every Sunday and holy day. But Pete wasn’t a rosary guy. He usually kept the string of beads—behind his handkerchiefs, cufflinks and tie clasps—in the top drawer of his dresser. Nora had never seen him praying the rosary. She couldn’t imagine Pete packing it for this trip—not unless he was afraid.

She slipped it back in the sleeve along the inside of his suitcase and told herself to pretend she’d never found it.

That same night before Pete was supposed to catch the train for the East Coast, neither one of them could fall asleep. They lay in bed, holding each other, not saying a word. But Nora must have drifted off, because she suddenly realized she was in bed alone. It was nearly three in the morning. Switching on the nightstand lamp, Nora climbed out of bed and threw on her robe. She navigated the darkened hallway and crept down the stairs. A faint light came from the back of the house, and she heard a strange, muffled sound. She realized it was Pete crying.

Nora froze. She’d seen Pete cry only once before—when his mom had died. His sobs so unnerved her that she froze. She cleared her throat before she padded into the kitchen—so he’d have a few moments to pull himself together.

She found him sitting at the breakfast table in the center of the kitchen. The room was dark except for the stove panel light. Pete was in his pajamas. He had a glass and a bottle of bourbon in front of him. He quickly wiped his red-rimmed eyes before he glanced up at her. He, too, cleared his throat.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Guess I’m prematurely nervous in the service.” He nodded at the half-full bottle. “You want a hit, honey?”

“Hell, yes,” Nora sighed. Taking a jelly glass from the cupboard, she set it on the table and sat down next to him.

Neither one of them was a heavy drinker, so for her to see Pete down straight whiskey was startling. But Nora said nothing. He poured a little in her jelly glass, and they both drank in silence. Nora felt the bourbon burn the back of her throat. She glanced down and noticed him clutching the edge of the table. His always-steady surgeon’s hand shook slightly.

She put her hand over his. “It’s going to be okay, honey,” she whispered.

Pete let out a rasp and started to cry again. “I’m scared,” he admitted. “I keep thinking this is the last time I . . .” His voice trailed off as he wiped his eyes. Then he took a deep breath. “I remember this guy down at the end of my block when I was a kid. His name was Jimmy Costello, a good-looking guy, worked at his father’s grocery store. Everybody liked him. Whenever I came into the store, he’d say, ‘Kinney, think fast!’ and lob a piece of penny candy in my direction. When Jimmy enlisted to go fight the Kaiser, his dad posted a photo of him looking all spiffy in his army uniform. He kept the picture by the cash register for everyone to see. Anyway, Jimmy Costello came back from the Great War blind from mustard gas. His handsome face was all messed up, and he was half out of his mind. He barely left the house. Any kind of loud noise would set him off. I tried to visit. I came by the house with a bag of penny candy for him. But his mother wouldn’t let me see him. The neighborhood kids who didn’t know him before he left teased the hell out of the poor guy. They thought it was hysterical, watching him go to pieces. They’d sneak up to his house and shoot off their cap guns outside the windows, the little bastards. That’s what Jimmy got for defending his country. Eventually, his parents moved him to the state institution in Elgin. Anyway, I remember how Jimmy Costello came back from the Great War—and I can’t help worrying the same thing will happen to me.”

Nora shook her head. “But you won’t be on the front lines, Pete,” she said, rubbing his arm. “You said so yourself . . .”

He nodded and wiped his eyes again. “I know,” he sighed. “I guess I’m just a coward.”

“You’re not a coward. You’re scared. There’s a difference.” She reached up and smoothed back his disheveled dark brown hair. “In fact, you know just how dangerous this might be, you know about all the horrible things that can happen, and yet you’re still catching that train in five hours. That makes you brave. And it makes me very proud of you, honey.”

He let out a sad laugh and then swigged some more bourbon. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been so terrified in all my life. I’m worried about you and the kids, too. I know you’ll be safe. But what if I come back from the war all messed up, and you have to take care of me? And while I’m gone, you’ll have to sacrifice and budget to get by on my new salary . . .”

Nora smiled patiently and squeezed his hand. “We’ll get along all right, Pete. And you’ll be okay. But if you have another sip of booze, you’ll be sick as a dog on that crowded train tomorrow . . .”

That had been eight months ago. And since then, Nora had reminded herself over and over that Pete wasn’t a medic, thank God. He wasn’t there on the front lines dodging bullets to aid fallen infantrymen. He was at a clearing station, miles behind the lines with a group of doctors and nurses, sewing up the wounded. But the Germans sometimes bombed those first aid stations—even though the Red Cross symbol was clearly displayed on top of the tents. They weren’t as bad as the Japanese, who hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention pact and apparently targeted those Red Cross signs. At least Pete wasn’t dealing with malaria, jungle rot and all the other horrors the troops were suffering through in the Pacific. But he had to put up with snakes, scorpions, insects and the unbearable heat of the desert. She knew the work was exhausting, the conditions primitive, and they were in short supply of everything.

But Pete didn’t complain in his always-cheerful letters—just as Nora didn’t tell him about her own worries. She imagined him composing his missives in spurts—whenever he got a break from the stream of incoming wounded. She could picture him stealing a few minutes in some makeshift mess hall tent, hunched over a rickety table, scribbling away to her—and then, overhead, the sudden shriek of a descending projectile.

Every time the doorbell rang, Nora couldn’t help thinking it might be the Western Union boy or some soldier in his dress blues bringing her the news that Pete had been killed.

As she lay there alone in the darkened bedroom, Nora wondered if Pete was already dead. He could have been killed a week ago, and she wouldn’t know.

She heard whispering again. It came from outside—this time from in front of the house.

Jumping out of bed, Nora threw on her robe and grabbed the fireplace poker. She ran for the stairs, but before she was even halfway down the steps there was a loud pop—and the sound of shattering glass. Nora stopped dead.

Her heart racing, she stood frozen on the stairway. For a few moments, she couldn’t breathe. She heard the footsteps of someone retreating and then a car engine. The blackout curtain over the window in the door blocked any view outside, and it was dark in the front hallway. She wasn’t sure what the sound of breaking glass had been. Had someone hurled an empty bottle at the house?

Nora finally caught her breath and hurried down to the hallway. She headed for the front door to move aside the curtain. But then, she stepped on something sharp. She heard an awful crunch and felt glass shards cutting her bare feet. Only then did she realize one of the panes in the front door’s window was shattered. “Goddamn it!” she muttered, wincing in pain.

She switched on the hallway’s overhead light and saw the shards and blood on the floor—along with a medium-sized rock. She felt so stupid.

Moving back the curtain, Nora glanced out the smashed windowpane. Through the trees outside, she couldn’t make out the car, but then she heard its tires screech against the pavement as the vehicle peeled away.

“Mom?”

Startled, she swiveled around to see Jane in her nightgown, standing near the bottom of the stairs.

Nora put a hand over her heart and caught her breath. “Don’t come over here,” she warned. “There’s glass on the floor, honey. You need to put some shoes on. While you’re upstairs, could you get me my slippers? And from the bathroom medicine chest, could you bring me the iodine?”

Wide-eyed, Jane stared at her. “You’re bleeding . . .”

She nodded. “Yes, I know. Could you hurry, honey?”

Jane retreated back up the steps.

Nora managed to unlock and open the door without stepping on any more glass. The cold night air hit her. What she saw out there was like a punch in the stomach.

Blotches of fresh red paint made a trail from the door’s threshold along the porch floor to the walkway. And a message was painted across the front door: JAP-LOVER.

In their robes and slippers, Nora and her daughter cleaned up the mess. As Nora used the garden hose to wash the fresh paint off the porch, the watery red puddles reminded her of blood.

Jane idly wiped a rag over the water-beaded front door. “On Saturday, Ruthie McNally found out that her older brother, Mike, was killed in New Guinea,” she remarked.

Nora glanced up from her work for a moment. “Oh, no, poor Mrs. McNally,” she sighed. Then she went back to hosing down the porch floor. The McNallys had a boy in Chris’s class, too.

That explains it, she thought. Her sympathy for the boy and his family was tinged with anger and frustration.

The neighbors—and, for some reason, the kids in Chris’s high school—all seemed to know that the Kinneys had rented out their garage apartment to a Japanese-American couple for a few years. A general contempt for the Japanese had begun to take hold back in 1937, after Japan’s invasion of China, with stories of atrocities—including rape, torture and mutilation. In the city of Nanking, estimates of the number of men, women and children slaughtered were as high as three hundred thousand.

Pete had had some serious misgivings about renting the one-bedroom apartment to Takashi and Fumiko Hara. But Nora had pointed out that the Haras were Americans. They’d never even been to Japan. In fact, Miko didn’t know how to speak Japanese—except for a few phrases she’d picked up as a child listening to her parents. Nora had persuaded Pete to give the young couple a two-month trial run. She’d had a good feeling about them.

They’d turned out to be ideal tenants. Tak worked as a fruit and vegetable supplier and traveled all over the state. He was away every other week. Miko was the office manager and accountant for a boiler repair company. They weren’t the only Japanese-Americans on the block.

At the far end of the street was a gated mansion. Its owner, a ninety-year-old widow, Mrs. Landauer, had a nurse-housekeeper named Sono Nakai, who was Japanese-American. Sono and her teenage daughter lived on the premises. No one objected to them. And after a while, most of the neighbors seemed to accept Tak and Miko, too.

But Pearl Harbor changed everything. Somehow, it got around—beyond just their block—that the Kinneys were “harboring Japs.” In the predawn hours of Tuesday, December 9, Nora and Pete were awakened by a loud screech, and then a bang. After all the war news, Nora’s first thought was that they were under attack. But then she realized the ensuing clatter was coming from the backyard. And she heard someone yell out, “Eat shit, Japs!”

Tak and Miko’s trellis had been torn down and smashed to pieces. DIE JAPS! was painted on the garage door. A can of Dutch Boy had been kicked over, and red paint had spilled across the driveway in front of the garage apartment’s entrance.

Tak and Miko had been terrorized. Fortunately, they’d remained inside the apartment throughout the incident.

That had been the start of the sporadic nighttime ambushes. Over the next few weeks, rocks were hurled through the Haras’ windows and more messages of hate—often obscene—were scrawled on the garage in paint or chalk. Their garbage cans rarely made it through a week without getting knocked over. And every few nights, Nora could count on a car coming to a screeching halt in front of the driveway, and someone screaming out obscenities or “Japs, go home!”

Because of the blackout, Nora couldn’t turn on the outside lights at night. So these “patriotic” vandals continued to harass the Haras under the cloak of darkness.

In mid-January, without explanation, a couple of government men took Tak into custody during one of his business trips. They nabbed him at an apple farm outside Wenatchee. Pete tried to look into why they’d taken him, but he got stonewalled. Eventually, he found out that Tak was being detained “as a precaution” at a temporary holding center in Puyallup, south of Seattle. They didn’t give any other explanation.

Miko was frantic. She privately asked Nora to hide a couple of big photo albums and some family keepsakes—a couple of geisha figurines, a Hakata clay doll of an old peasant man, and a few other antiques. Many of Tak and Miko’s Japanese-American friends were burning their mementos—anything that tied them to Japan. But Miko couldn’t destroy these treasured family keepsakes. Nora put everything in a box and stashed it in the attic, behind the Christmas decorations. Yet she couldn’t help feeling conflicted about it. In helping her friend, was she being unpatriotic?

The following day, when Nora was the only one home, two men identifying themselves as “U.S. Marshals” came by with a search warrant. They combed through the garage apartment, tagging and confiscating several items—including a tea set and a pair of bookends that appeared “oriental” to them, some maps, letters, a telescope and several books. Helpless, Nora stood by, watching them.

Tak and Miko weren’t the only ones being persecuted. Down at the end of the block, the lampposts were broken and anti-Japanese signs were hung from Mrs. Landauer’s front gate. Then Nora heard that the old woman had dismissed her live-in, Japanese-American nurse-housekeeper, and eventually, the harassment stopped—for her, at least.

In February, Miko had to report to King Street Train Station for “relocation.” She’d been instructed to bring only as much as she could carry. Hoping she wouldn’t be gone too long, Miko gave Nora four months’ rent in advance. Nora promised to hold the apartment and their furniture for them.

Nora’s heart broke for Miko. At the same time, she felt a tiny bit of relief that Miko’s departure might bring them some peace—and she hated herself for it. Pete boarded up the apartment’s windows and entrance—so people could see that the place was no longer occupied.

Miko and Tak were reunited at a holding center and then eventually sent to an “internment” camp in Idaho.

Though it had been over a year, Nora kept the garage apartment vacant for Miko and Tak. But the place continued to be vandalized. Then, last May, after Corregidor fell, someone came by at night and destroyed all the flowers Miko had planted in front of the house. The garden had been in full bloom—at the height of its dazzling beauty.

Once Pete joined the Army Medical Corps, word must have gotten around that the man of the house wasn’t in. The blue star flag in the window was a dead giveaway, of course. So now the Kinneys’ house was targeted, too. Wheneve