Summary

This chapter opens as a letter to Casey. Readers learn that his relationship with Terese has ended, that she was not stable, and that he was "upset that [she] was weak minded" (16). Terese writes that, like her, this letter may spiral out of control, that she may not send it, and that Casey may prefer his life without her. Terese says she is "going to die an Indian death" and that she wants to lay her "neck on the cool feeling alloy of the train tracks back home" (17). As it is, she is writing to Casey from a behavioral health service building where she has committed herself and that Casey is partly to blame for her insanity. Nevertheless, she still wants him and asks if he still loves her.

Terese says that stories are "not medicine anymore" (18). In her culture, when a spirit...