Fire Exit

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of addiction, physical abuse, illness, anti-gay bias, and death.

As he has done on countless previous mornings, Charles Lamosway watches Elizabeth from a distance as she leaves for work. Elizabeth is his daughter, although she does not know it. Because Charles is white, her mother, Mary, listed another man—Roger, an Indigenous man and an enrolled member of the Penobscot Nation—on her birth certificate. If Charles were officially listed as her father, Elizabeth would not have qualified for enrollment. Charles has kept this secret for nearly a quarter century, but he no longer wishes to. 

He thinks back to his short-lived relationship with Mary and to the many times over the years that she quietly slipped out of her house and came to visit him. She even brought Elizabeth once, when she was just a toddler. The meeting didn’t go well. Elizabeth was shy and cried when Charles tried to present her with a gift, a stuffed elephant that made a noise when hugged. The noise frightened Elizabeth. She burst into tears, and Mary took her away.

Since that day, Charles has been watching the house that Mary and Elizabeth live in with Roger.