We listened for a few more moments as Vess and Lightfoot bellowed at each other. Vess, predictably, was complaining about the unnecessary expense and trouble the choir was causing, while Lightfoot was bellowing that Vess was a philistine with no appreciation of art. They weren’t even arguing with each other, really, just venting.

“If Josh and Jamie were behaving like that, I’d put them both in a time-out,” I said.

“One of us should go in and break it up,” Minerva said, with a sigh.

“Or both of us,” Mother said, with a matching sigh.

“Let’s hold off for a few minutes,” I said. “At the rate they’re going, I think there’s a good chance that they’ll kill each other off, like the cats of Kilkenny.”

Mother and Minerva burst out laughing.

“Besides,” I added. “The choir can’t begin rehearsing until the Shiffleys have finished whatever it is they’re building, so maybe it’s a good thing someone’s keeping Mr. Lightfoot busy.”

“True, dear,” Mother said. “And it really isn’t funny: You should have seen that wretched Mr. Lightfoot carrying on! He was actually throwing things around in the sanctuary!”

“The Shiffleys’ tools and your vases and hymnals,” Minerva said. “It’s a disgrace!”

Then they looked at each other and burst out giggling again.

“Kilkenny cats!” Minerva spluttered.

“Well, obviously things can’t be so bad.” Dad appeared in the doorway, holding his trusty medical bag. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Dad agreed with my diagnosis of a possible dislocated shoulder, and he insisted on bustling me down to the Caerphilly Hospital. We nearly came to grief before we even left the parking lot. His van hit a patch of black ice and skidded to a stop against a mound of snow and his medical bag, which unlike us was not strapped in, launched itself out of the backseat into my shoulder, sending more waves of pain through my arm. By the time we reached the hospital, I was mutinous and refused to be taken down for X-rays until they gave me a painkiller of some kind.

Dad and the orthopedic surgeon whiled away the time waiting for the results by trading stories of dislocated joints they had seen in their careers. Since most of the stories involved ghastly complications rather than boringly successful outcomes, after the fourth or fifth story I told them what I thought of their bedside manner and shooed them out of my cubicle.

I was overjoyed when the X-rays finally showed that my shoulder wasn’t dislocated. Very badly bruised, but either it hadn’t been dislocated in the first place, or it was only partially dislocated and something had popped it back in. My money was on our close encounter with the snow mound in the parking lot.