After the emergency birth, Miriam ties off Holly’s umbilical cord and cuts it with sewing scissors while Hagar cooks eggs and coffee. Fern and Zinnia wash Holly, and the exhausted girls watch, giddy with relief, as Holly nurses her newborn daughter for the first time. Holly is so hungry that Fern feeds her eggs while the baby keeps sucking, and Miriam shows Holly how to hold and burp the baby.

In the other room, Zinnia warns Fern that the Home will notice they never returned from the hospital and will trace them through Nurse Kent and the taxi driver. Zinnia proposes a desperate plan: return to the Home claiming Holly ran away, while Holly and the baby hide elsewhere for a day or two and then take a bus to Augusta. Fern and Zinnia ask Hagar and Miriam to shelter Holly, but Hagar refuses, arguing the baby “belongs” to the preacher and that helping would mean theft and legal risk.

Miriam privately presses Hagar until Hagar offers a compromise: Holly can hide briefly at Mrs. Easterly’s house, a nearby woman who will not ask questions if told “Sister sent you,” but Hagar and Miriam insist they cannot be involved. Fern, newly attached to Holly’s baby in her arms, steels herself to protect the child, and the three girls prepare to leave immediately.

They step into the yard toward the road and the promised blue door, even joking about baby names, when headlights suddenly flood the darkness. Cars surround them, and Nurse Kent and Dr. Vincent rush in; Nurse Kent snatches the baby from Holly while Dr. Vincent examines the newborn on the hood of Miss Wellwood’s station wagon. Uniformed men crowd in as Nurse Kent moves Holly away, and Miss Wellwood orders Holly taken to the clinic first.

On the porch, Miss Wellwood scolds Hagar and Miriam for letting the girls come there at all; Hagar challenges Miss Wellwood about sending Holly back to the preacher and implies the preacher caused the pregnancy. When Miss Wellwood threatens consequences, Hagar declares she and Miriam are done and will not return. Miss Wellwood then condemns Fern and Zinnia as disappointments; police separate them by race, with Miss Wellwood taking Zinnia back to the Home while Fern is shoved into a police car to be fingerprinted and jailed until her parents arrive.