I brought my hand to my face and it came away wet. Was there the slightest tinge of accusation to his voice?

“Peter said—”

“What?”

But he didn’t go on. Yet that final week, every time he looked at me it was like he had something he wanted to say, but then drew back from saying.

Mrs. White pointed me in the direction of the church. As I walked down the familiar stone path, the bells were silent in the tower. One was cracked. It always rang flat, a weird dissonant BOOOONG, clearly audible among the peals.

Peter was sitting at the organ and as I entered the nave and walked toward him down the aisle, he toyed with a number of chords, first this one and then another. The pipes breathed out and the air within the church hummed.

“What’s that you’re playing?”

“I’m just fiddling really.” I went to stand at his side, the place I took when I turned the pages for him. His long white fingers moved over the keys as though he was searching for something. “I suppose I was thinking people are like chords. I mean they can be. Listen.” His left hand roamed toward me. He played something that sounded like a wet fart and raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t it make you think of Mrs. Duncan?”

Mrs. Duncan had been a dinner lady at our infant school, a gigantic, myopic Scot forever bursting into tears.

“I see what you mean. And what chord am I?”

Peter shrugged. His fingers picked out again the notes he had been playing with when I came in. His brow furrowed. Who was he thinking of? Then I knew who he was thinking of.

“Peter? What have you been saying about me to David?”

“Nothing.”

“Because if I want to tell people about myself, I will. Just like I let you tell people about yourself.”

“Not everything is about you.”

“He said after the pills, you said stuff. You don’t get to talk about me. You don’t get to tell people things you think you know, when you don’t know anything. I never told you anything. When Joe was around you hid in your bedroom with your head in a book while downstairs your mum cooked your tea. Then after, you treated me like I had a disease. Telling me he wouldn’t come back, because it was what you wanted to believe, like life’s fucking wish fulfillment—”

“Joe’s not coming back.” Peter pushed the stool back and got up. He looked sick, the color draining from his face. I followed him back down the aisle. “Just leave me alone, Andy, for fuck’s sake.”

Suddenly, he was on the verge of tears and my own eyes prickled in response. He had his back to me, taking long strides I couldn’t match. He couldn’t wait to get away.