“I made my way quietly out back and sat in Helga’s whitewashed porch swing, listening to the first faint sounds of big band music drift out of Helga’s open windows and into the cooling summer air. The darkness was moving in slow from the east, interrupted by the sparse waltz of the increasingly emboldened fireflies. The urgency with which they flared up stood in stark contrast to their measured fade back to black, like lit matchsticks being tossed in slow motion out into the purpling horizon, burning slowly down to dust.”