Chapters 31-33 Summary

Jane and Rebecca celebrate Rebecca's fifteenth birthday in Towner, North Dakota, the geographical center of North America by shopping for clothes at a barn store called Eloise's. Inside the stalls serve as changing rooms that have straw on the floor. Rebecca buys a wardrobe, including designer jeans, for $50. She urges her mother to splurge, so Jane buys daring clothes—a leopard print G-string, a slim black skirt and a rose-colored satin gown.

Smug in his belief that he will intercept Jane and Rebecca in Iowa, he judges that he will be back home in time to go to the humpback whale migration in Hawaii. He celebrates his own brilliance at noon in the bar of a Holiday Inn. He is served by a surly, foul-mouthed, young barmaid dressed in a red leather skirt and a studded bustier. She serves him...