The town stood finished in gray. C.W. had the drawing whole—house, porch, road, three figures in one slant of light. But every line was pencil. He needed color now, and the color was dusk. He could see the evening in his head. Warm gold on the shutters. Blue shadow under the eaves. But he had never watched real dusk fall over this town. His colors would be a guess, and Kean would arrive tomorrow expecting truth on the page. He walked down the road while the light dropped. He stopped at the two-story house with the yellow door and the neat porch rail. The place John had shown him once. He stood across from it and waited. The sun sank. C.W. watched the shingles go from brown to purple. The windows caught fire, then dimmed. The yellow door held its color longest, glowing after the walls turned dark. He had guessed wrong in his head. Dusk did not warm everything the same. It picked and chose. It kept some things bright and drowned others fast. He sketched fast, noting each shift in the margins. Gold there. Cool gray there. He worked until the last light left the porch and his hand could barely see the page. At the cabin, he mixed his paints by lamplight. He laid down the colors he had watched, not the ones he had imagined. The shutters went blue-green in shadow. The door stayed warm. The road caught the low sun and held it a moment. He did not rush. He matched the page to the street he had studied. He finished near midnight and slept. Sumner Kean came at noon. His editor set his bag by the door and came straight to the board leaning against the wall. He wore his glasses down his nose. He grew up around quarter horses and landed, somehow, editing a magazine about Morgans. He talked about that switch like the breed had reached out and grabbed him. He looked at C.W.'s town the same way now. Kean bent close. He said nothing for a long time. "The door," Kean said. "It's still lit. Everything else is going dark." "That's how it fell. I watched it." Kean nodded slow. "You watched it." He straightened. "It's true. A made-up dusk always spreads even. This one doesn't. This one picked the door." He tapped the board once. "That's the book. That's Timbermaw." C.W. felt the knot in his chest loosen. The color held. The town was no longer a guess. Kean picked up his bag. "I'll take it for the color plates." He paused at the door. "Your wife would like this one. Ruth said the last book made her cry. She'll cry at this door." Then he was down the ladder, the finished spread under his arm. C.W. sat with the empty easel. The town was colored and gone to press. But one gap stayed. Not one figure in it had a face he could name.