People saw their clairvoyance in the wiped-out elms and harsh sunlight. Some thought the torture tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them: So full of flaws. But the only thing we are certain of after all these years is the insufficiency of explanation.
...
Unable to go anywhere, the girls traveled in their imaginations: To gold-tipped Siamese temples or past an old man, the leaf broom tidying the maw carpeted speck of Japan. And Cecelia hadn't died. She was a bride in Calcutta.
