Chapter 11 Summary

Operating with one thought between them, not to be separated, Sylvie and Ruth set the house on fire. They cannot bear to leave it and Ruth cannot bear to stay and be taken away from Sylvie. They escape into the night. Sylvie suggests walking across the high railway bridge. No one has ever done it and it is the one route where tracking dogs will not be able to follow. They make it across the bridge just as a train comes. They hop on a boxcar, and begin a life of drifting. The dogs track them to the shore, but no further. Sylvie later finds and pins into her coat a newspaper clipping with a headline that says that Ruth and Sylvie are assumed drowned in the lake. They hold off on contacting Lucille for seven years, fearing the law. Even after seven...