Firekeeper's Daughter

Daunis’s first instinct at hearing how much money is in the account is to wonder if Levi is involved in the meth production. She scolds herself for this thinking and then rationalizes the enormous amount of money in Levi’s account by attributing it to his 3,000 a month per-cap check.

Every time Daunis has the reoccurring dream of her last night with Travis and Lily, a little more is revealed to her. Daunis has either forgotten or blocked out pieces of that evening, but as they slowly return to her she remembers Travis talking about “the little people” who won’t leave him alone. When Daunis wakes from this dream, she decides she needs to talk to the elders. She’s heard them mention “the little people.” Daunis hears her mother crying and talking to her Uncle David from outside her bedroom door that night, and she decides to keep listening instead of interrupting her mother. During her mother’s conversation, Daunis hears the story of the night she drove to Sugar Island to tell Daunis’s father about her pregnancy and how Daunis’s mother found him in bed with Dana. When her mother tried to drive away, her father got in her truck, where in her anger and grief she drove recklessly and swerved for a deer. When the cops showed up, she lied and said that Daunis’s father was driving. She was then shipped away until Daunis was born. When she came back, Daunis’s father was married to Dana and Levi had been born. The accident left Daunis’s father without proper use of his legs and ended his hockey career. Daunis first thinks about the lies her father told her mother and the promises he failed to keep, and then she thinks about how her dad was the first man to ever lie to her when she was seven years old. 

Daunis attends Robin’s funeral mass and thinks about the story that Robin’s parents told her: Robin’s addiction to opioids turning into an addiction to meth. Daunis remembers how she and Robin were injured in the same hockey game. When Teddie brought Daunis to the hospital and saw the doctor prescribe her oxycodone, she told the doctor that Daunis would only be taking Tylenol, even though he assured Teddie that a 10-day prescription was safe. Daunis skips the funeral lunch in order to take Granny June to the Elder Center, where she hopes to run into Leonard so she can ask him about his experience with the Little People.

Teddie confronts Daunis when she gets to the center due to Daunis’s decision to play in the benefit game next weekend, presumably because of whatever happened to Daunis’s shoulder a year ago. Teddie takes this opportunity with Daunis to tell her how disappointed she is in her behavior since becoming Jamie’s girlfriend—she never comes to visit the girls, she blows Teddie off all the time, and she’s never home, according to her mother. Daunis tries to explain that she’s busy with classes, but Teddie doesn’t buy it. The conversation ends in a fight when Teddie brings up that TJ thinks Jamie is no good. Daunis feels betrayed by Teddie, that she would even consider TJ’s opinion after what he did to her.

Daunis tracks down Leonard, who tells her what he knows about the Little People, that they are helpers and sometimes tricksters, but not malicious in nature. Leonard says that the only story he knows of them getting angry is with his cousin who was sniffing gasoline. The Little People reportedly yelled at the cousin every time he sniffed gasoline, until one day he caught himself on fire trying to light a cigarette. 

Daunis goes to the high school to ask Levi about the money in their joint back account. When she gets there, she overhears the guys talking about girls and laughing until a new guy makes a comment about Daunis’s body. Levi punches the kid, and then threatens him. Daunis is frightened by this extra-violent side of Levi. When Levi sees her, he expects her to be proud of him for protecting her. Daunis questions why Levi and his friends talk about any girls the way they do if hearing someone talk about her that way makes him so upset. Levi explains the money in the bank account as the down payment on land he is trying to buy in Canada, an answer which satisfies Daunis.

While Daunis is at her dress fitting for a gala with Mrs. Edwards, she gets a text from Teddie to come to her house tomorrow night. Daunis agrees, because even though she is upset with her aunt she knows that Teddie is the reason she has any relationship to the Firekeeper side of her family at all; Teddie has looked out for Daunis since she was born. When Daunis checks out after her dress fitting, Mrs. Edwards complains about the antique dresser that has been used as a cash register since GrandMary owned the store. This prompts Daunis’s memory of her Uncle David having a secret drawer in his office desk at school, which might be where he stored his journal while he was a CI for the FBI. 

Daunis goes right to the high school to find Uncle David’s notebook, which she finds exactly where she expected it to be. When she is looking for a quiet place to read the notebook, she decides to go to EverCare and sit with her grandmother. Daunis finds her mother in the room crying. Her grandmother is being moved to a different room, and when her mother was going through the closet, she found the “lightbulb” notebook Daunis has been keeping. The lightbulb book has been tracking the moments that Daunis observes the light going out from behind GrandMary’s eyes—when she doesn’t seem to be present in her body anymore. Daunis feels remorse for upsetting her mother, but when she takes the notebook and tries to shove it into her jeans, she remembers that she already has David’s notebook hiding there. Daunis gives up on her plan to go through the journal tonight and instead offers to get a movie and takeout with her mom.

Daunis spends the next day avoiding the notebook by bringing Granny June to the Elder Center and then trying to run as many errands as she can to fill up her day. When Daunis finally goes to the library at the end of the day, she finds that Uncle David started the journal at the beginning of her senior year. He was tracking his classes and the students and had symbols for some of the students who appeared in the journal the most—Daunis recognizes herself as the heart and wonders who the lightbulb smiley face is that was asking all the questions her Uncle David wanted to record. Daunis thinks that the pattern of “lightbulbs” questions any absence from class as the year goes on are in line with Travis. In December the journal switches to the coded language of French and Italian that her mother and her uncle invented. Daunis is able to translate the appearance of both the words “mushrooms” and “Duck Island.” In January, her uncle wrote a new code word that Daunis figures out means “FBI.”