CHAPTER TEN E: PETER’S QUESTION

Peter agreed to meet Florence at the bookshop before opening hours.
He asked Nora to attend because he did not trust himself to remain calm.
Nora told him that she could not promise to control his anger.
Peter said that he wanted someone who would remind him why they were there.
Florence arrived carrying a small paper bag of pastries from the bakery below her home.
Peter stared at the bag and asked whether she thought breakfast would make the meeting easier.
Florence put it on the counter and said that she had brought it because she had not eaten.


The blunt answer surprised him.
They sat across from each other at a table beside the window.
Peter asked why his younger colleagues had been dismissed without a chance to speak.
Florence said that she had followed instructions from the administrative committee.
Peter asked whether she had questioned those instructions.
She admitted that she had not questioned them enough.
He asked whether she knew who had removed the original scenery frame.
Florence said that she did not.
Peter leaned forward and asked whether she had ever tried to find out.
She answered that she had asked Malcolm once and accepted his refusal to discuss it.


Peter stood abruptly and walked toward the shelves.
Nora waited while he steadied his breathing.
Florence did not follow him or offer an excuse.
Peter returned and asked a different question.
He wanted to know whether she remembered the boy who had carried the broken wall’s support bolts to the workshop.
Florence said that no apprentice had been assigned that task.
Peter told her that a boy named Arthur had once claimed he had done it.
Florence frowned and said that Arthur had been dismissed two days before the accident.
Peter stared at her.
He said that Arthur had visited him in the hospital and described carrying the bolts after the fall.


Florence said that she could not explain the discrepancy.
Nora asked whether Arthur might have returned to collect his belongings.
Florence said that the building had remained open to former apprentices during the final week.
Peter asked whether Arthur was still alive.
Florence said that she had received a Christmas card from him three years earlier.
He now worked as a bus mechanic in the southern district.
She offered to pass along a message but refused to share his address without permission.
Peter accepted the condition.
For the first time, the conversation became less about blame and more about an unanswered question.


Florence asked Peter what he had wanted to become before the accident.
He said that he had wanted to act in stories that made ordinary people feel less alone.
She looked at the shelves around him.
She said that books could sometimes do the same thing.
Peter answered that they could, but that was not the life he had chosen.
Florence lowered her eyes and said that she understood.
He told her that understanding would not repair the years.
She agreed.
When Florence left, the pastries remained unopened on the table.
Peter asked Nora whether she thought the meeting had accomplished anything.


Nora said that they now had a person to ask about the missing bolts.
Peter looked at the bag and finally opened it.
He handed Nora a pastry and said that practical answers were becoming her specialty.