Chapter 26 Summary: Lt. Bev

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens on a frosty November morning at Melby's restaurant, where a sign taped to the cash register invites patrons to leave their fear of change at the door. Bev, recently retired, shares breakfast with Mike, a fellow former warden who still spends his days listening to the public safety radio. Mike recounts a complaint filed against a warden in District 11 who ran over someone's dog during a pursuit. Bev suggests a heartfelt apology would help; Mike mocks what he calls the cult of the apologizers, and Bev reminds him he's the only warden in service history to have suspended his own license—a reference to the time he mistakenly wrote his own name on an OUI form for a fisherman he'd arrested, creating a false drunk-driving record that later blocked his license renewal. Gretchen brings their food, and the teasing subsides.

Bev then narrates the months ahead in a compressed, forward-looking passage. In December she will pack a suitcase for Leominster, where her ailing mother is still hanging on. She gives Kate plane tickets to Puerto Rico for her fiftieth birthday, telling her it's Bev's turn to sit at Ma's bedside. She spends long hours with Ma, speaking at length even though Ma cannot hear her. Most nights she stays at Faith's house, fixing CO2 detectors, mediating family arguments, mixing pitchers of Crystal Light, and placing bets on The Bachelorette. Kelsey teaches her Mario Kart; Mackenzie cuts her hair short. When Ma passes, Bev is there holding her hand.

Returning to Maine in the dead of winter, nothing feels right. The following summer she takes a job running the Nature Shack at a camp in the Wachusett Mountain State Reservation, in exchange for free tuition for Hailey and Kelsey. At summer's end she returns to Maine but misses them all too much—even the loons and late-summer asters fail to comfort her. She puts her camp up for sale. On a magnificent day in September, before she can tell Mike she's leaving Maine, Mike dies of a heart attack in his bear stand.

The narrative returns to the November breakfast. The visit is touched with a sense of lastness. Bev studies Mike—his handsome head of hair, his eyes flicking to the door as if still on duty. She recalls being twenty-seven and new to the force when Mike clapped her on the back and placed her under an invisible dome of protection that lasted for years. She remembers the first time an armed man lunged at her and Mike threw him back, shouting that the man wasn't half the woman she was. Bev tells Mike she wants to be like him when she grows up, takes the bill, and pays. As she's about to leave, she stops and tells him she loves him, ugly as he is, that he's always been a friend. A heartsick look crosses his face, and he responds with a joke about UMass freshmen and a light bulb. Bev waves and walks out.

Back home, a brown padded mailer forwarded from the Bangor office waits for her. She sets it aside and spends days on physical labor—repointing the chimney, graveling the walkway, sealing the cellar, caulking the shower, limbing trees, oiling hinges, evicting critters, clearing and burning brush, feeding it through the wood chipper until the sky darkens. She stands dog-tired by the lakeside, listening to the loons and the lake. The labor moves her, as if she's conceding to Maine, to winter, to time.

Days later, on a cold evening, she opens the package. It contains a composition notebook—Valerie Gillis's journal—and a note. Valerie writes that her parents and Ruben Serrano came for Thanksgiving, that she's settled in an apartment near the Smith College botanical gardens, that Gregory still comes over every Monday to cook dinner, and that she starts training to become an APRN in the New Year. She wants to be a good person, a caring nurse. She says writing saved her life in the woods, and her therapist suggested sending the journal to someone for safekeeping. She tells Bev the journal is a little too much for her to handle emotionally, and jokes that Bev can read it on the toilet.

Bev chuckles, makes tea, tries to do housework, but keeps eyeing the journal. She walks outside without a coat to the lake, thinking of a poem about the stars—that they don't care whether she goes to hell—but then recalls the fuller poem, which asks how we'd like it if the stars burned with passion for us, and concludes that if equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be her. She returns, sits by the fireplace, and reads the entire journal start to finish. When she's done, her eyes wet, she stares into the fire for a long time.

She reflects that wood gives structure to backcountry life—choosing a tree, felling it, limbing it, chopping it into stove-size logs, hauling, stacking, bringing it inside. The reward is the crisp conversation of fire at night, a bedtime story that starts fierce but is most itself in the dying down, when the heat of the embers hushes all intentions. She offers an idea: all emotions start out as love, worked on by luck and suffering. Hate is soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother, the taproot. She concludes she has no regrets.

Key Events

Bev and Mike share what will be their last breakfast at Melby's, trading jokes about a dog-related complaint and Mike's self-inflicted OUI paperwork error.
Bev narrates the coming year: caring for Ma in Leominster, Ma's death, her disconnection from Maine, the Nature Shack job, and selling her camp.
Mike dies of a heart attack in his bear stand in September, before Bev can tell him she's leaving Maine.
Bev tells Mike she loves him at the breakfast table; he deflects with a joke.
A package arrives containing Valerie Gillis's journal and a note describing her recovery, her nursing training, and her gratitude.
Bev reads the journal by the fire and reflects on fire, wood, and love as the origin of all emotions.
Bev concludes she has no regrets.

Character Development

Bev is the chapter's center, and her development is largely internal. She has retired from a career that defined her, and the chapter shows her processing that loss through physical labor and through the relationships she tends. Her decision to care for Ma, her willingness to be present at her mother's deathbed, and her eventual sale of her camp all point to a woman learning to let go. The chapter's final reflection—that all emotions begin as love—is the culmination of her arc: she reframes her own history, including her grief and fear, as expressions of love rather than wounds.

Mike, though present only in the breakfast scene, is drawn with warmth and specificity. His radio eavesdropping, his jokes, his deflection of Bev's declaration of love—all reveal a man who has spent his life in service and who struggles to receive affection directly. His death, narrated in advance, gives the breakfast scene a poignancy Bev herself doesn't yet feel.

Valerie Gillis appears only through her note and journal, but her transformation is significant. The girl who survived the woods is now training to become a nurse, living near the Smith College botanical gardens, cooking Monday dinners with Gregory, and expressing gratitude for her experience. Her decision to send the journal to Bev—on her therapist's suggestion—is an act of trust and a recognition of Bev's role in her survival.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Fear of change: The sign at Melby's—if you are afraid of change, leave it here—frames the entire chapter. Bev's retirement, her mother's death, Mike's death, and her sale of the camp are all changes she must face.
Fire and wood: Bev's meditation on wood and fire—the labor of gathering, the comfort of the hearth—serves as a metaphor for processing grief and accepting time. The fire's dying-down is when it is most itself, a model for Bev's own late-life acceptance.
Love as the origin of all emotions: Bev's formulation—hate is soured love, fear is wounded love, longing is homeless love—is the chapter's philosophical core. It reframes pain as a derivative of love rather than its opposite.
Writing as salvation: Valerie's journal, which she credits with saving her life in the woods, becomes a gift that helps Bev process her own transitions. The act of writing and reading becomes a form of connection across distance.
Mortality and loss: Mike's death, Ma's death, and Bev's own aging are all present in the chapter. The forward narration of deaths that haven't yet happened gives the breakfast scene an elegiac quality.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is a turning point for Bev's character and for the novel's emotional arc. It brings together threads from earlier chapters—Valerie's story, Bev's career, her relationships with Mike and her family—and resolves them into a coherent statement about love, loss, and acceptance. The chapter also gives readers the novel's most explicit articulation of its central philosophy: that love is the origin of all emotions, and that a life lived without regret is possible even after profound loss. It is also the chapter in which Bev's own story—her retirement, her mother's death, her departure from Maine—is told in full, making it essential for understanding her character.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Bev tell Mike she loves him at the end of their breakfast, and how does he respond?

Bev tells Mike she loves him because the visit is touched with a sense of lastness—she senses, without knowing it, that this is their final meeting. Mike responds with a joke about UMass freshmen and a light bulb, deflecting the emotional weight of her declaration. His deflection is characteristic of their relationship: he has always shown care through action and humor rather than direct expression.

2. What does Bev's reflection on fire and wood reveal about her state of mind?

Bev's reflection on fire and wood reveals a woman who has found a way to process grief through physical labor and through the rhythms of the natural world. The fire's dying-down, when the embers' heat hushes all intentions, mirrors her own late-life acceptance. The labor of gathering wood gives structure to her days and to her emotional life, allowing her to move through loss without being consumed by it.

3. What does Valerie's journal and note suggest about the long-term effects of her experience in the woods?

Valerie's note suggests that her experience, while traumatic, has given her a strange kind of wealth. She is training to become a nurse, maintaining a relationship with Gregory, and expressing gratitude for her family and for Bev. Her decision to send the journal to Bev—on her therapist's advice—shows that she has integrated the experience enough to let it go, and that she trusts Bev to hold it for her. The journal itself, which she credits with saving her life, becomes a gift that helps Bev in turn.

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