Fire Exit

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, mental illness, and death.

Louise seems to know more about Bobby’s past than Charles does, and Charles is struck by how much his friend must have shared with his mother. Charles continues to divide his time between caring for Louise and watching Elizabeth through his front windows. Long accustomed to seeing his daughter looking put together and in work clothes, he worries as he observes her, day after day, wearing the same hoodie and basketball shorts. She has taken up smoking, and he worries about that as well. He recalls his relationship with Mary, including the way she’d show up at his house in the middle of the night. He remembers the day she told him that she was pregnant. She relayed the news, informed him that the baby couldn’t be his, and then put everything of hers that she’d left at his house into a garbage bag and left. Later, he figured out that she wanted her daughter to be Penobscot enough to claim tribal membership and that if she listed Charles as the father on her birth certificate, that wouldn’t be possible.