Summary

In Chapter 12, Maddie goes to the main room the following morning, planning to read a book. Anna is mopping and goes on a tirade about Maddie wasting her day while Anna and Meg work two jobs, including waiting on Maddie. Maddie goes to the post office and sends a telegram to her father, Dr. Ernest Pennypaker, in Philadelphia. She says she's made a mistake and asks him to send a plane for her. She realizes she can't pay for the telegram but the postman sends it anyway.

Maddie doesn't want to face Anna again so she wanders around, looking for the loch. She notices that all the children at a local school are carrying a bag that Maddie knows contains a gas mask. At the graveyard, she finds a stone with three names on it: an infant named Agnes and her parents, Mairi...