Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary

Dolores wakes one Saturday morning to the sound of her parents fighting over whether or not Celesta should marry Pippo. A knock comes on the door, and the police and a social worker are standing there. Fran has burned a building that she thought was abandoned. It is actually a store Dolores had been to weeks before. The couple who owned it could have been hurt in the fire, and they have lost their ledger with all the debts the neighbors owed. There are witnesses who saw Fran run from the building when it burned down. The social worker decides that Fran must be taken from the family and placed in a home for troubled kids.

When Lizzie, the social worker, comes to have Mary sign the papers that will allow her to take Fran, Mary walks out of the house...