When night began to fall in Wolf, it did its business quickly. Blue to gray, purple to black, all within the span of thirty minutes. Matthew watched the blanket drop, darkening the trees into a solid mass of black, erasing the definition between horizon and sky. September afternoons could be as beautiful and summer-like as they decided they ought to be, but September evenings made no bones about the fact that the days were getting shorter and the nights were getting deeper.
The shower had started up as Matthew had been slicing red pepper and trimming kale. Strips of sirloin waited on a cutting board beside a heating frying pan and a rice steamer worked soundlessly in the corner, transforming hard grains into fluffy puffs that would serve as a bed for the rest. But while his fingers worked
