Rose gazed out the window, searching, as she always did, for the first star on the horizon. She knew it would appear, as twinkling and brilliant as an eternal flame, just after the setting sun painted the sky in ribbons of fire and light. When she was a girl, they’d called this twilight l’heure bleue, the blue hour, the time when the earth was neither completely light nor completely dark. Rose had always found comfort in this middle ground.
