The House in the Pines

In the past, Maya can’t stop thinking about Frank and Aubrey, so sets out to confront Frank at his father’s house. Frank’s father answers the door. Frank mentioned his father is dying, but in person, his father doesn’t seem ill. Frank is out back at his cabin. Frank’s father gives Maya directions, though his demeanor is ominous, with “a strange mirth to his voice that she doesn’t like” (192). Maya goes to the cabin, not turning back despite her gut instinct to get away: “She has a bad feeling. She knows she should leave but feels compelled by something darker than curiosity, some other impulse she doesn’t try to name” (192).

The narrative jumps to Maya entering the cabin. She can’t remember getting here, but all she cares about is the beauty of the place. As she looks around, her body feels strange, as if she is drugged or in a dream, though this doesn’t bother her. “Her hand is strangely hard to lift […] She feels heavy. Pleasantly drowsy. It must be the fire” (194). She feels safe and even willing to join Frank in bed. Frank makes them a meal and asks Maya to move into the cabin with him. Maya is tempted, but then catches herself—how has she so readily given in to Frank when she came here to confront him about toying with her and Aubrey? Suddenly, the steam from their meal reminds Maya of her father’s book, where the boy lived in a home in the clouds. She knows that something is wrong, but Frank brushes off her worry as a panic attack and gives her the key.

The narrative jumps to Maya rushing away from the cabin and back to her car, covered in dirt. She doesn’t know why, and Frank won’t tell her. She doesn’t remember leaving the cabin.

In the present, Maya meets Steven at a pub. Steven wants to talk about Cristina’s art, but Maya questions him about Frank’s cabin. Steven reluctantly shares some important information: Frank has clients of some sort, his father is dead, and he spends most nights at a local bar called The Whistling Pig. Also, Cristina left Steven a note before she died, saying “she was going to live with Frank in his cabin” (210). Cristina’s painting of the cabin shows genuine love for Frank, in contrast to the manipulative relationship between Frank and Maya. Maya asks Steven to go to the cabin with her, but he refuses.

In the past, Maya doubts if anything truly went wrong the previous night in Frank’s cabin. However, she has lost her attraction for him, so she packs for college with renewed excitement. When Frank calls, Maya breaks off their relationship.

Later that day, Maya visits Aubrey before their night out at the Tender Wallpaper concert. Aubrey gives her the scarf she’s been knitting, which all along has been a going-away present. The two friends reconcile and enjoy their night. The concert has a fairy tale theme, with three singers dressed like the fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty—something Aubrey instantly recognizes: “[Aubrey] loves fairy tales and magic. And sad songs” (224).

In the present, Maya goes searching for Frank’s cabin in hopes of figuring out what happened to her. She feels more relieved than scared: “She thought of all the effort she’d put into repressing her memories of the last time she was here, all the pills she’d take, only for the truth to go on simmering beneath that fake comfort that never quite fit” (227). She follows the path to the cabin and reaches a strange bridge that triggers a realization: The bridge can only be crossed by foot, meaning it would have been impossible for Frank to carry the materials needed to build his cabin over this path—and this is the only path to the cabin.

The book flashes back to this unlocked memory of Maya’s first visit to the cabin. She crosses the dilapidated bridge and finds Frank in a clearing in the woods on a sleeping bag in the middle of ruins: “There is no cabin. Only the weathered concrete remains of a foundation, a wide, cracked rectangle in the middle of the clearing” (229). Frank admits the cabin is just a figment of his imagination, a place where he mentally escapes to feel safe from his father’s abuse, which started after Frank’s father, a psychology professor, fell from grace and lost his license.

As Frank describes his imagined cabin in vivid detail, Maya is suddenly transported there. The cabin becomes real: “She hears what sounds like a door slam shut at her back […] she takes in his handiwork” (234). Frank gives Maya a key to the cabin—a key Frank is actually using to hypnotize Maya into believing that she is truly inside a structure. However, when a raindrop snaps Maya out of her trance, she realizes Frank has tricked her. She runs back to her car, but Frank has her keys. He pretends to give them back to her, but hands her the cabin key instead. Readers infer that Frank further hypnotizes Maya to bury her memories from this night, which is why she only remembers these events seven years later.