Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary by Wendelin Van Draanen

He looks back at the rubble and says, “I'm going to go see how she's doing,” then hurries off toward the house.
    As we're watching him go, Penny nudges me in the thigh, first gently, then hard. And when I look down to scold her, she looks right at me and does it again, only this time she adds a great big snort.
    There's no doubt about it—she's telling me to get a move on. So I say to the others, “You want to go see how Lucinda's doing?”
    Holly says, “Yes!” and the others shrug and say, “Sure.”
    And as we head down the path to the main house, I look over my shoulder at the firemen turning the ashes of Mary's cabin. And it hits me that if the Murdocks really did burn the place down, no amount of turning coals is going to put that fire out. A little puff of wind would bring it right back to life.
    Just as it had for over a hundred years.

NINE
    They'd just given Lucinda a sedative when Kevin let us into the den. He said, “Try to keep it short. It's been a rough night,” but the gruffness of his voice was oddly soft. Like he was too tired to turn us away and too upset to really want us not to be there.
    Lucinda looked tiny, like a little girl, wrapped in a blanket on the couch. Dallas was sort of perched on the edge beside her, saying, “Lucinda, I've been thinking… Maybe I can rebuild it for you. The fireplace is still intact and—”
    “Don't you do that to her!” Kevin steps out of the shadows of the hallway and says, “This is hard enough without talk like that.”
    Dallas stands up and whispers to Lucinda, “I'll come see you tomorrow.” Then he motions our way and says, “Your new friends are here,” and leaves the room.
    Lucinda smiles at us, then puts out a hand, saying, “Come in, girls.”
    We scoot in, and since her hand is still out, I take it. Her fingers feel cold and hard. Like I'm holding a bouquet of bones.
    When I sit down where Dallas had been, she looks at me sadly and says, “Where's she going to go?”
    I know she's talking about Mary, and I can't think of anything comforting to say.
    Holly whispers, “Maybe she's free now.”
    Lucinda looks at her. “Free…what a nice thought. Though I never considered the house to be her prison…” She squeezes my hand a little and says, “Would you bring me her diary? It's up in my room on the night table. Upstairs, last door on the left.”
    I look around to make sure it's okay with Kevin, but he's gone, so I say, “Sure,” and head for the stairs.
    The carpet on the steps is dirty and matted, and the flowered wallpaper has faded to a dusty yellow. And as I creak my way up the staircase, I feel like I'm surrounded by decay. Like I'm walking through the heart of a house that's dying.
    I shake off the creeps and hurry down the hallway to the last room on the left, but when I open the door, the room feels the same as the hall and stairs had. The wallpaper's peeling and the ceiling has dark spots from water damage, and there are two places where the carpet's been seamed with duct tape.
    I pull back the lace curtain of one of the windows to see if I can spot the cabin, and the cloth feels brittle, like if I pressed too hard, it would crumble in my hand. The fire truck floodlights are gone, and I can't see much through the fog, so I move over to the other window and there's Dallas out on the driveway with Kevin, and it looks like they're arguing. I try pulling up the window a little so that maybe I can hear what they're saying, but the thing's swollen shut and won't budge.
    Then Dallas puts his hands up, shakes his head, and walks off, so I let the curtain down and get busy looking for the diary.
    It's on the nightstand, all right, and I would've picked it right up and run downstairs if this framed photo of Kevin hadn't distracted me. In the picture a much younger Kevin is standing beside a truck loaded with grapes, and his face is bursting with happiness. I stared at it for a minute and couldn't help wondering—how long
had
it been