The House in the Pines

The novel flashes back to the death of Maya’s paternal grandmother in Guatemala.

Maya’s grandmother dies of a stroke just one month before Aubrey’s death. Though Maya has never met her grandmother, they have exchanged phone calls and birthday cards throughout the years. Maya wants to go to the funeral, but Brenda is hesitant because Guatemala City is dangerous. Maya’s father Jairo was killed on his doorstep in 1990, during the Guatemalan Civil War. Jairo was attending college for literature. Two months after he joined other students at a protest, Jairo was fatally shot on his doorstep in retaliation. His parents and Brenda were at the house when he was killed—Brenda met Jairo while on a post-college mission trip to Guatemala, as his parents were her host family.

Despite this story, and Brenda’s protests, Maya is adamant about attending her grandmother’s funeral. She wants to learn more about her father’s side of the family.

In the present, Maya visits the diner where Cristina died in hopes of gathering information. Maya recognizes a waitress from the video and asks her about Cristina’s death, claiming to have gone to school with Cristina. The waitress thinks the diner might be haunted; she believes that Cristina saw the ghost because of the odd way Cristina stared at something in the distance that no one else could see right before she died.