She hadn’t realized how battered her body had become until she started playing. Her feet, hips, arms, and fingers were sore, and her wrists ached from carrying heavy trays. Soon she forgot about work and allowed herself to get lost in what she thought of as the space between the notes and feel the music move through her. It was hot and stuffy in the balcony, and there was only one small window louvered out from the middle of the stained glass, propped open with a tattered hymnal. She was sweating.

Her mother had loved Baroque music. What made it special, she’d said, was that all voices were supposed to be equal. That was why, that day, Sherri chose to play Buxtehude, her mother’s favorite. Bach was rumored to have walked twenty-five miles to Lübeck to hear him play the organ. Sherri had memorized the Prelude in G Minor, a piece she found exciting and energetic, with two fugues that gathered together the three melody lines and lots of funny little parts, so that’s what she decided to play.

Soon the sanctuary was filled with sound. The organ made her feel powerful in a way that no other instrument could match. Her mother said that when she was a girl, she’d loved the organ because it was the only truly big thing a woman was allowed to be in charge of.