“MORE SOUP?” MOM ASKS HOPEFULLY. SHE’S GOT about a vat of mushroom barley on the stove, and I do not love mushrooms. Or barley. Or soup. Brian hands his bowl over for a refill. No wonder he’s Mom’s favorite. She brings him an overflowing bowl that splashes onto the saucer, and she sits beside him. “By the way, I had a clock repairman out here today. That stubborn grandfather clock upstairs is fixed. It’s only going to say five o’clock when it’s five o’clock!”

She sounds so chipper that I get suspicious. I know I’m right as soon as Mom lowers her eyes and says, “Kids, let’s talk about Thanksgiving.” Now her voice sounds strained, so it must be about Dad.

My back’s up, like Terpsichore’s when she’s around Chester. “Thanksgiving’s more than two months away. Why do we have to talk about it now?” I sigh one of those deep, silent ones that shout Why do you have to make everything so hard?

But the words that come out of Mom’s mouth are cool and calm. “Your father wants to take you two to Chicago to spend the holiday with Uncle Garrett and Aunt Fran.”

“All right!” Brian says.

“Just Dad, or does this include Terri and Marcus?”

“The whole family,” Mom says, putting on a brittle smile.

“Not me.”

“Shelby, be reasonable.”

“Who’s gonna be here for Thanksgiving?” Brian asks. “You can’t eat a whole turkey by yourself.”

Mom looks so sad that it almost makes me ask for seconds of soup. “I have a great idea, Mom. Brian can go to Chicago, and I’ll stay home with you.”

“That’s nice of you, Shelby, but it’s not possible. The … agreement” — she always leaves out the hot word, divorce — “says that Dad gets Thanksgiving this year, I get it next year, and so on.”

“And so on and so on and so on,” I snarl, throwing my spoon down on the table and storming out of the room. Too bad the door to the dining room is a swinging one. I can’t slam it, but I make sure it hits the wall and bounces a few times.

“Come here, angry girl, come, come closer.” I hear a chorus of quiet voices as I glare at the row of dolls in the hutch. Didn’t they used to be lined up in a different order? Mom must have dusted. Or could they have rearranged themselves?

“Where is Baby Daisy?” one of the dolls demands. I’m not sure whose voice I’m hearing. “You must bring Baby Daisy back to us.”

Yes, I know she belongs with them, not me, and not with those shattered dolls heaped in the basement of the abandoned house.

Mr. Caliberti said that Betsy Anne, the one with the perky magenta ribbon and sweet smile, represented Sadie’s better side. I’m beginning to think I don’t have a better side. I’m blunt and irritable and jealous and, well, just plain angry. A lot. I unlock the hutch and take Betsy Anne out. She’s warm in my hand. “What do you know that I don’t?” I whisper, putting her back with her friends. There’s Dotty Woman, who may have poisoned Sadie, and C.B., the Caliberti doll in his knee pants and sailor hat. Miss Amelia’s hair is a tangled mess. She looks ragged and weary, as if she never gets enough sleep. They all seem harmless. And yet, Sadie and Emily said they were evil dolls, and Emily buried them in the doll graveyard.

Which they got out of, over and over again.

Where is Lady?

All their eyes are locked on me. In my mind, I hear their pleas and their threats of revenge. Quickly, I stash them back in the hutch, next to that weird pipe Aunt Amelia gave Brian, which Mom thought was so beautiful that it should be displayed for everyone to see. Not that anyone comes way out here. I don’t even bother standing the dolls up. When I lock the hutch, I give them one last glance. They’re just piled together, like the large, broken dolls in the house up the hill.

Mom and I have sort of made our peace and are perched on two different green velvet couches. At least we can both be in the same room, the ugly parlor, without being snippy (me) or sighing pitifully (Mom). She’s crocheting a pot holder in SerenaStockPot.com signature colors, red and purple. She’s done about twenty already and plans to put one in each mail-order package. If she ever gets an order.

Brian’s upstairs with Mom’s laptop, playing chess against some famous chess pro, and Chester’s curled in front of the roaring fire, probably deep in a doggy dreamland of meaty bones. Everyone’s cozy-content but me.

I’ve zoomed ahead in The Giver, still racking my brain for an A-plus project, but as usual, my mind’s wandering and spinning. The dance Friday night. Emily at the mental hospital. Darcy — is she going to turn out to be a friend? What’s going on in Grandmother Truva’s head? Where’s Lady? Dad and Thanksgiving in Chicago. The broken dolls. Revenge. I gaze into the flames, searching for answers and comfort.

Just then, a cinder flies out of the fireplace and singes the rug at my feet. For a split second I freeze, watching a hole expand, then I lurch into action. Forgetting that I’m barefooted, I stomp out the trail of fire that’s eating through the carpet. Searing pain seizes the sole of my foot! I hop around on the other foot, shocked to see that the cinder has burst into flame, and the carpet is disappearing before my eyes. I jump away, onto the uncarpeted floor. Mom bats at the flames with a magazine, which ignites, so she hurls the blazing paper into the hearth and picks up a couch cushion to snuff out the fire. That only sends the flames vaulting higher. Chester is leaping on and off the couches, howling like a wolf, a sound I never want to hear again in my whole life.

Through Chester’s wails and the crackling flames, I dimly hear Mom yelling, “Get out, get out!”

The heat is at my back like a mean sunburn, so hot, so hot, and the flames are leaping across the parlor, nipping at the corner of the foxhunting tapestry, and I know I have to get out of here now, because the whole room’s turned orange; I can see it even through my closed eyelids. How could it happen so fast?

“Shelby! Out of the house. Run down the driveway!” Mom hollers, and Chester locks his teeth around my shirt to drag me away. Mom backs off from the blaze and jabs at her cell phone for 9-1-1, waving Chester and me toward the door as the fire nearly reaches the height of the mantel. The wooden mantel will burn like kindling!

But for some strange reason, the fire dies right there, even though a second ago, the room was engulfed in flames. And now everything is smoldering, smelling like burned toast.

Mom shouts, “Shelby Constance, get out of the house this instant. It could all catch again in a flash.” She dashes out the door, motioning for me to follow.

I’m petrified. Fire’s always been my scariest fear, but I suddenly remember my brother, and I’m hurtling up the stairs.

Chester’s running up and down them, confused about what to do.

“Brian!” I shout. “The house is on fire!”

He stumbles out of his room in his pajamas. Panic sweeps across his face when he smells the smoke. I grab his arm, and we tumble down the stairs, Chester behind, herding us out the door like a sheepdog.

Mom’s frantically looking for us. As we pour out of the house, she wraps an arm around each of us. “Thank God! I didn’t know where you were.”

“We’re right here, Mom,” Brian assures her. “Chester, too.”

The fire truck careens into our driveway. How’d they get here so fast? We can see flames jutting wildly again in the parlor window as a fireman asks, “Anybody inside? People? Pets?”

I can barely shake my head. Both my arms are locked around myself, holding me together as if I might burst open and spill my insides. And my burned foot’s killing me.

“Door locked?”

No, again. My arms are so tight that my fingers are going numb.

“Run down the driveway,” the firefighter commands as he lugs the hose off the rack, zooms into the house, and blasts our front room with water stored in the truck.

It’s freezing outside, and Mom’s shaking like a tree in a storm. Her teeth are chattering, and she’s clasping her hands open and closed. “Mr. Caliberti! Oh, I have to go get him in case the flames leap to his place. You two, stay right there. DON’T MOVE! Chester, keep an eye on them.” She runs behind the house to Mr. Caliberti’s cottage.

Rubbing my arms to keep warm, I’ve stepped so far away from our house that I can clearly see the other two houses up the hill, swept bright in the dark night by the headlights of the fire truck.

Mom comes around the house with Mr. Caliberti in his red, ankle-length nightshirt. Terpsichore and Chester are having a standoff, the cat hissing and Chester growling low and ugly. Brian holds Chester’s collar, afraid he’ll pounce and turn the cat into a midnight snack.

Finally, the fire’s still hissing, but the flames have died off for good. Most of our parlor is ruined, and the firemen have carried the three green velvet couches and all the pillows out to the trash, soggy stuffing dangling out of everything.

One fireman says, “I’ve radioed a disaster service. They’ll be out within the hour to set up a wet vac and industrial dryers for your carpet, Mrs. Tate. Be okay in no time.”

It’ll never be okay as long as we live in this house. My knees are knocking and my heart’s going a mile a minute. We came so close to broiling in that fire. What if Brian had been in a deep sleep? What if we’d all been upstairs and didn’t see the fire starting to leap? We could be totally charred, left as ashes.

I have a sick, nagging feeling about how the fire started, how the cinder leaped out of the fireplace and lit up at our feet, but I don’t dare tell Mom.

“Thank you, thank you,” we all murmur over and over as the firefighters jump onto their truck and pull away. Trudging up the front steps, Mom says, “I’m grateful that we’re all safe. Furniture can be replaced. People can’t. Do you want to stay with us tonight, Mr. Caliberti?”

“Kind of you, but Terpsichore and I shall exit stage right and repair to our humble abode. As the great Bard of Avon once wrote, ‘O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention, / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!’ ”

“You got that right!” Brian says with a bright, silly grin.

Mr. Caliberti lays his hand on Mom’s cheek and whispers, “I always knew Amelia’s kith and kin would be lovely people,” and he ambles slowly to his cottage with the cat at his side.

Inside, the house smells sharp and bitter, and our feet squish through what’s left of the carpet in the parlor. Only two things in the room seem to have escaped the fire. One’s the snap-on chess table and the other’s the portrait of Mrs. Thornewood, which I’d have been happy to see changed into kindling.

I spot a third thing that survived. It’s the size of a jawbreaker in a puddle where a couch once stood to cover it. A doll’s head. I snatch it up before Mom sees it and stuff it in my jeans pocket.

“Can I go back to bed?” Brian asks, rubbing his eyes with the corners of his two index fingers.

“Sure, sweetie,” replies Mom. “I’ll wait down here for the dryers and I’ll turn on all the fans to air out the smoky house. You two go on up. Just open all the windows upstairs and cuddle under lots of blankets.”

Chester follows us up the stairs. The grandfather clock in the hall strikes five again. Ha! Mom said it was fixed. I drop Brian and Chester in his room and head for the first-aid kit in the bathroom to soothe my charred foot. Ointment and a thick bandage will help, plus sweat socks and sneakers. So, when I’m sure Chester and Brian are tucked away in his room, I head for the attic, because I’ve got one of my terrible hunches.

And I’m so right. In the dollhouse, the three green velvet couches that match our ruined parlor ones are gone. No trace of them anywhere. I douse the flashlight and sink against the wall across from the little porthole window, trying to figure out how this might have happened so quickly.

A blast of headlights tells me the disaster fix-it people have arrived with a big truck. They’re hauling heavy equipment into the house and quickly set the dryers roaring. Nobody’s going to be able to sleep through this. But a great idea strikes me. Now’s my chance while there’s good light and lots of commotion. Mom won’t notice me missing. I tiptoe down the stairs. Mom’s got her back to me, standing in the ruined, squishy parlor with two men and four roaring dryers. I slip out the back door and dash up the hill to rescue Baby Daisy.

This time I won’t get caught.