“Hey, it’s nice now, right? And it’s all yours. We can decorate it for the Memorial Day parade on Monday, stick playing cards in the wheels, wrap streamers around the handlebars, whatever you want.” Memorial Day was a big deal in East Troy, marking the start of summer. There were parades, school bands marched and played patriotic songs, cheerleaders cheered, guest speakers orated from the stage, and Badger Boys and Girls, the top students from the district, had a chance to speak and show off while everyone ate hot dogs and bratwurst sold by vendors on the square. The day was capped with a grave count at area graveyards, where people somberly tallied the number of graves of fallen veterans.

“Your bike is mine for real?”

Sherri had a feeling that nobody had ever given the kid a gift. “What am I going to do with it? It’s all yours.” She reached into her pocket and gave Raylee a dollar. “Now go to Javell’s and buy yourself some candy.”

“Seriously?”

“Get lost,” Sherri said. She liked being with Raylee, but another place was calling her: St. Peter’s.

The church doors were unlocked, and Sherri was glad to find that all the pews were empty. Good. This was her space, and she was surprised how much she missed it. She was gripped by the familiar smell of old Bibles and candle wax. More than the apartment above the store, this place was where she truly felt at home.

St. Peter’s was old, built by settlers in the mid-1800s. It wasn’t the biggest or grandest church—her mother had often complained about its narrowness and lack of pillars. It had no frescoes, no dome. The pews were not original. It was neither traditional nor modern. But to Sherri it always seemed big and grand—sacred even. She wasn’t a particularly religious person, because her mother had turned away from the church but not the music, and her father was agnostic at best. Playing the organ here was a deeply personal and even transcendent experience for her, a way of escaping herself and her life. That afternoon, escape was exactly what Sherri needed.

Her sandals slapped up each creaky wooden step of the curved staircase that led to the narrow balcony, a clap, clap, clap that echoed as loud as holy thunder. The console sat waiting for her like an old friend. It was common for an organ to face the pipes in the back of the congregation; still, it struck her as odd, as though the organist were somehow being punished, sitting with their back to the priest. She could only see the altar in a mirror that hung at a slant in front of the instrument.