Firekeeper's Daughter

Daunis drives straight to Teddie’s, where Teddie is able to get the police to meet them at Duck Island. After Daunis leads law enforcement to where Heather’s body is, TJ questions why she was on the island at all. Daunis has a moment of panic as she remembers that she hasn’t even reached out to Ron or Jamie. Daunis hopes that Heather’s death has nothing to do with the investigation but then recalls Heather’s offer of drugs to her around the bonfire and thinks otherwise. TJ is upset when Daunis says she needs to call her boyfriend. TJ then asks if he is a teammate of Levi’s. Daunis goes home with her mother, where she lets her mother care for her. Daunis fills Jamie in over the phone about finding Heather, but then tells him that he needs to come over if he wants to talk more. When Jamie comes over, Daunis gets him alone and tells him about Heather’s offer of drugs at the party. Jamie tells Daunis that Ron says Heather’s death was not ruled as suspicious. Daunis disagrees with Jamie and tells him about Heather’s familial situation and her parents fight over Heather’s per-cap money from the tribe.

Daunis also explains the DNA tests used to test paternity for babies that are claimed to be tribal. Jamie’s interest piques at this, and Daunis wonders again about Jamie’s heritage and community. Daunis talks about the decision to use blood as a way to test paternity and to find adults who have been adopted out of their tribe and community. Jamie attempts to discard Daunis’s claim that something bad happened to Heather by bringing up her reputation as a drug user with a propensity to disappear. He mentions that it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Heather to disappear with a bag full of meth, at which point Daunis remembers that there was no meth in the bag of pills that Heather offered her, “just speckled pills” (199). Daunis is frustrated that Jamie and Ron are leaving her out of the investigation while she rests from her traumatic experience, but while she is watching a movie with her mother, she spends more time thinking about her Uncle David and his encouragement of her curious and scientific pursuits. She remembers him telling her to “organize and document everything” (202), and in this moment Daunis realizes that her uncle had to have left behind a notebook of his findings on Duck Island, and that his death may have been a result of him finding something he wasn’t supposed to.

Daunis goes to GrandMary’s empty house in search of her uncle’s journals. She looks through all of her uncle’s journals that begin from before she was born. She finds nothing from the last year and realizes that her mother knew something was wrong with her uncle, but Daunis herself didn’t notice. When Daunis did notice, she made the wrong assumption, which was that her uncle relapsed with drugs and alcohol after being sober for quite some time, while her mom remained true to her belief in the fact that he hadn’t relapsed. Uncle David faced ostracization too because he was openly gay. Daunis thinks about her role in ostracizing her uncle. Later, Daunis continues to look for and document mushrooms on Duck Island while remembering Heather Nodin, how Heather didn’t seem to have anyone supporting her or reminding her of her worth and value either—like Uncle David.

Daunis sits with the other hockey girlfriends at the season opener for the Supes and is surprised by what a good time she has with them. Daunis then introduces Ron to Grant Edwards after the game in the hopes of getting them a seat on the Hockey Booster Bus, which Grant says he will try to do. Later, Daunis approaches Grant’s son Michael to see if she can get her, Ron, and Jamie invited to the Edward’s weekly Sunday dinner where they watch hockey tapes. Daunis is hopeful that Mr. Edwards might hold some clue as to what is happening with the meth crisis since he is a defense attorney. Daunis lands an invite for the three of them but leaves the conversation feeling uneasy about Grant Edwards. 

On the way to Sunday Dinner at the Edwards’s, Daunis tells Ron and Jamie that Coach Bobby and Grant Edwards became close friends after Levi, Stormy, Mike, and Travis were goofing around with a BB gun after practice one day and accidentally hit the car of a teammate’s mom who ended up losing her eye. Coach Bobby encouraged the boys to tell the truth about who did it and Travis came forward and took responsibility. Travis was then shunned by everyone in town and eventually stopped playing hockey altogether because no team would pick him up. Before dinner and while watching the game tapes, Daunis looks around the room and considers what Jamie and Ron are seeing: a room full of suspects. Daunis remarks that the Supes coach, Coach Alberts, was almost not hired because he is Black. The racism that exists in the sport of hockey is something that Daunis’s father also went through, so she understands that a lot of people, when they think of who hockey is for, think of wealthy kids who are white.

Being around Mrs. Edwards reminds Daunis of GrandMary. Even before Mrs. Edwards bought GrandMary’s boutique store, GrandMary praised Mrs. Edwards in front of Daunis’s mother in a way that left Daunis feeling betrayed. Mrs. Edwards looks and acts like Daunis’s grandmother, and Daunis wishes that her mother would stand up for herself to GrandMary, just like Teddie stood up for Daunis as a baby when she demanded that GrandMary not keep Daunis from her Firekeeper family. When the Shagala comes up at dinner, the yearly fundraiser for the hockey team, Daunis questions why everyone doesn’t just donate money to the team instead of spending all that extra time and money on the fundraiser. Mr. Edwards makes a comment to Daunis about it being the time that “our women look lovelier than ever” (219), while locking eyes with Daunis. Daunis recognizes that something is off with Grant Edwards, and she feels recognizably uncomfortable around him for the first time.

Coach Bobby makes a comment at dinner about how Daunis still has a chance to play hockey, but Daunis knows that is not true even if no one else does. As the narrator, Daunis is slow to release the information about her shoulder injury and how she will never play hockey again. Daunis thinks about how only Teddie knows about her shoulder and how “two summers in a row now, I’ve made a huge decision that changed me” (221). The second decision she is referencing is the decision she has made this summer to be a CI for the FBI case. Daunis gets Mike to take her upstairs to set up her new blackberry, which is her excuse to be near Grant’s office. Daunis’s plan is to leave something in Mike’s room, say she needs to go back upstairs and get it, and then sneak into Grant’s office. Daunis knows the office furniture in Grant’s study because it used to belong to her Grandpa Lorenzo, GrandMary’s husband. Daunis knows that the key for the locked drawer was always behind the top right drawer, but it isn’t there now. Daunis covers her tracks in the office and makes her way back into the bathroom right before Mike opens the door and tells her he knows what she’s trying to do. 

Mike misinterprets the attention Daunis has been paying to him as a signal that she’s interested in him. Daunis pushes Mike’s kiss away and tells him that she’s not interested because she has a boyfriend. When Mike ignores Daunis’s rejection and suggests that it could be their “little secret,” Daunis sees Grant Edward’s exact look in his son’s eyes. Mike tells Daunis that she shouldn’t get hung up on Jamie because he probably won’t be around long, to which she replies that maybe she won’t be around much longer either. Mike laughs at this and tells her that he figured she bailed on leaving for college because she’s connected to everyone here, that she is treated like royalty here, and she knows if she leaves she’ll be a nobody. Mike turns mean at Daunis’s adamant refusal of him and his advances and concedes that his dad is right in saying all girls are just distractions. Daunis is shaken by her interaction with Mike because it is a side of him she has never seen before.

When Ron and Jamie drop Daunis off at home, Jamie’s pretend kiss to Daunis fails miserably but inspires Daunis to give into her feelings for Jamie momentarily. She gives him a real kiss on the cheek. The next morning, Jamie and Daunis have a tense run where Jamie tries to give Daunis advice about her life and she lashes out at him. There are things, like the story about her shoulder, that Daunis has not yet shared with Jamie, and she is frustrated by his advice to her when he doesn’t know her whole story or situation. At the end of their run, Jamie tells Daunis that he’s going to stop running with her and begin running with Levi and the other guys. Daunis is hurt by this but pretends she doesn’t care.

Daunis spends the rest of the week on Duck Island looking for mushrooms. She consoles herself and her mixed feelings about her sneaky behavior with deciding that she can lie to everyone about what she’s doing as long as she takes care of Granny June and helps the other elders. When Daunis breaks for lunch to bring Granny June to the Elder Center, she sees Teddie but tries to avoid her. Teddie has been texting and calling Daunis every day, but Daunis always has an excuse for why she can’t come over. Daunis knows that her aunt is the one person to whom she won’t be able to lie. Daunis is unsuccessful in avoiding Teddie and the entire Elder Center watches while Teddie motions for Daunis to come see her.