Thief River Falls

Lisa goes to the cemetery to investigate Willow’s story. For Lisa, “The sheer weight of the memories in this place was suffocating for her, like being buried alive” (182). Lisa’s family members, including her parents, three brothers, and fiancé, are all buried in this cemetery. Lisa, her twin brother Noah, and her fiancé, Danny, used to come to the cemetery as teenagers. The cemetery was also the place where Danny proposed to Lisa.

Lisa walks through the cemetery, searching for a fresh plot of land. As she walks, she wonders if Willow hallucinated the men burying a body in the cemetery two nights ago. Lisa worries that Willow had thoughts of suicide on her mind, and knows that “[i]n the face of severe trauma, the brain could conjure entire worlds that didn’t exist as a way of blocking out reality” (184). Eventually, Lisa finds a recently overturned plot. She looks around the cemetery and sees a man walking around various headstones. She approaches the man and asks if he works at the cemetery. The man explains that he is a volunteer and former priest who still occasionally leads funeral services. Lisa asks if he knows anything about the recently dug grave.