Though we felt for the Lisbon girls, and continued to think about them, they were slipping away from us. The images we treasured of them—in bathing suits, jumping through a sprinkler, or running from a garden hose charmed by water pressure into a giant snake—began to fade, no matter how religiously we meditated on them in our most private moments, lying in bed beside two pillows belted together to simulate a human shape. We could no longer evoke with our inner ears the precise pitches and lilts of the Lisbon girls’ voices.
