My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

footsteps behind them and Joar turned around like he always did, fists clenched, prepared for war. The minister walking down the aisle jumped in surprise. “Terribly sorry, you startled me,” he smiled. “Don’t creep up on people in churches, you psychopath!” Joar roared back at him. “I… work here,” the minister said in his defense. “Like I care, you psychopath!” Joar pointed out. The minister looked like he didn’t exactly know what to do with that information. So instead he turned sympathetically toward Ted and said: “I’m very sorry for the loss of your father.” “What for? Was it you who killed him?” Joar snapped, so quickly that even Ali gasped. Joar turned to her, first sullen, then surprised, and added: “Well? Was it?” Then Ted laughed, out loud, and then they all joined in. Dear Lord, how Ted needed that. The minister had taken all this with admirable calm, the teenagers had to give him that, with just a little twitch of the corner of his mouth and a fleeting glint in the corner of his eye. Then he nodded to Ted and walked on along the aisle without any hurry, gathering up the hymnals and forgotten umbrellas. But Joar, who was strong enough to control anything except his tongue, couldn’t help calling out: “So was it God who killed him?” “Sorry?” the minister said in response. Joar held up his hands as if he were being mugged: “Don’t get mad, okay? But when someone gets sick and recovers, you always say that it was God who did that, so it’s pretty damn cowardly for Him to...

The whole conversation with minister in church is worth discussion.