After the sudden death of their father, four children — teenagers Chris and Cathy and 5-year-old twins Cory and Carrie — find themselves penniless and forced to travel with their mother Corinne to live with her wealthy parents (whom the children had neither met nor been told about before). Corinne informs her children that there has been tension between herself and her parents for many years, but does not elaborate and simply says they had cut her out of their lives for something she had done of which they disapproved. The children trust her, though Cathy is skeptical. When the mother starts to be away longer and longer the kids feel distant from her and even found out that the mother has married a new man and that her father have died months ago. That was the breaking point for the kids at this point they don’t trust her anymore and decide to run away. But in order to run away you need one thing: money. So that’s what they did. They couldn’t get jobs because they were supposed to be in the attic every second so the only option was to steal from their mother and grandmother.Chris took a key out of the grandmothers back pocket while she gave them food.When she left they went right to work.Cathy and Chris checked every room for something valuable and succeeded.Everything is starting to look good for them until the youngest brother (Cory) dies of rat poison from the donut his mother had given him. Once the kids figure that out (Their grandmother had told them) they ran away that instant. Chris, Cathy and Carrie climbed the rope from the window and managed to make it through the electric fence and now they are on a bus on their way to Florida to start their new lives.