We had never known them. They had brought us here to find that out. - The Virgin Suicides

The flagpole that had flown at half-mast the day Cecilia died, though it had been summer and no one but the lawn crew had noticed

We realised that the version of the world they had rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass, they didn't give a damn about lawns.

The room’s changes- water bugs adhering to walls, one bobbing dead mouse- only heightened what hadn’t changed