The time has come for Minnie to return home. It means facing everything that has happened and admitting the truth in A Fugitive Green chapter 16.
There is a lot of emotion throughout this chapter, with Minnie scared about returning home. What are the chances of her father finding out that she has lost her virginity to Hal Grey? And what will he do once that secret has come out?
What I’m surprised at is the fact that she hasn’t thought too much about what her father did to her mother all those years ago. Minnie seems to have glossed over that fact.
Breaking down A Fugitive Green chapter 16
The chapter starts with Minnie looking back at her time in England. It’s time for her to get out of London and return home to her father. While she hasn’t got all of her work done, she has finished enough that the O’Higgins brothers and the Simpsons can take care of the rest of the situation.
She at least gets a chance to visit the farm her mother is staying at. This gives her a chance to say goodbye in her heart, even if not to the woman herself.
Now it’s time to face her father, and she’s scared. She is worried about what he will think of her when he finds out that she and Hal have been together. Will he view her as ruined? Will he force her into a marriage that she doesn’t want just to cover it up? There is also the risk that Hal will turn to blackmailing her father — and if not Hal, then someone else who could use the information to their advantage.
When she gets to Paris, though, she is relieved. While her father certainly knows everything that has happened, she realizes that he cares about her. At the same time, she realizes that she is pregnant. Her father already went back to get her as an infant, so he loves her, and that should mean that he will do what he can to protect Minnie and her child.
There is a sense of peace with this at the end, although I do have to question why she isn’t even just a little angry at her father about everything that happened in the past with her mother.
Could this chapter be used in a TV adaptation?
While we would need to see the chapter to see Minnie return home, it would be hard to use it fully in an adaptation of A Fugitive Green. The problem is that so much of this is internalized, so Minnie will need someone to talk to as a way to reveal everything she is thinking and feeling. That’s not always that easy to do.
I’m not sure who Minnie would even talk to about this. Would it be possible for her to talk to her mother from a distance, so that her mom doesn’t hear her but that she is sharing these details with someone to allow us to know? Would it be possible for her to share it with her dad at some point? All I know is that it’s needed to further the story and to give us more of an insight into Minnie.
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