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reputation for disasters in the kitchen. Although she had improved some since Aunt Rose left, the truth was that almost everyone in the family preferred Annie’s cooking, and Annie liked being the best at things.
    Sunday dinner was always at one. That afternoon the main dish was pot roast, simple but succulent, and the smell of it filled the house. Annie and her mother worked together in the kitchen, both agreeing that Annie was in charge. Stevie’s job was to set the table. It was all a familiar pattern, yet that day felt anything but usual to Annie. Before he’d gone out to the reservation with the sheriff that morning after church, her father shared with them what had happened to the Kingbirds, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the tragedy.
    She knew Rayette Kingbird mostly from visiting with her at St. Agnes. She’d liked Rayette, liked that at first glance she appeared to be a hard woman but in fact was quite kind and very sensible when you got to know her. Alex Kingbird she knew only a little. She’d seen him around town with Rayette. They’d stopped together at Sam’s Place a few times for burgers and shakes. He was quiet, but he seemed to laugh often when he was talking with Rayette. Annie knew the stories about him: kicked out of the marines, an L.A. gang member, prison time, and the Red Boyz. What she saw was a man who seemed to be a good husband and a good father, someone in love with his wife and his child.
    She knew Ulysses Kingbird best. Again, this was through the St. Agnes connection, where music brought them together. At school, he didn’t fit in anywhere. He wasn’t a brain. He wasn’t a jock. He wasn’t a preppie or a stoner. Despite his musical talent, he didn’t hang with the band geeks or the artsy kids. Mostly he was quiet and tried to disappear. Moving down the hallway at school, he reminded her of a piece of driftwood floating, purposeless, down a river.
    He might have been successful at being overlooked if it hadn’t been for the fact that his brother was Alexander Kingbird, head of the Red Boyz. As a result, kids at school hit on Uly for drugs. Teachers made assumptions about him. His asshole classmates—and there were a lot of assholes—tormented him with insults. Since Kristi Reinhardt had died, things had become worse. Uly might never have come right out and said anything, but the music connected him and Annie in a powerful way. When they got together to practice the songs Uly had arranged for Sunday’s service, Annie sometimes got him to talk. Not a lot, but through the crack in the door that opened, Annie saw much.
    Uly’s biggest problem, it seemed to her, was that his father was Will Kingbird. Him, she didn’t like at all. Mostly she saw him at Mass, where he sat so stiffly he looked as if he’d been carved out of the pew itself. He made her think of the old Louisville Slugger her parents had given her when she started playing softball: hard and perfectly capable of delivering a good, solid smack. Mrs. Kingbird often seemed to have a wary look on her face, and though Uly never talked about abuse, it made Annie wonder.
    Her father came home a few minutes before the potatoes were done. He went upstairs to wash his hands. When he came back down, everything was on the table and ready.
    At first the conversation was about Jenny, Annie’s older sister who was nearing the end of her first year of college at the University of Iowa, and who’d called to check in, as she always did, after the family came home from church. But Annie was dying to know what exactly had happened at the Kingbird place. Her father didn’t want to talk about it, except to say that it was true, Rayette and Alexander Kingbird were dead. They’d been shot.
    Stevie, who seemed not to know better, kept pressing. “Where?”
    “They were found in the meadow behind the house.”
    “I mean where were they shot?”
    Her father looked up from dishing roasted potatoes onto his plate. “In the back,” he