How modest these houses—and so near the church, almost snug up against it. As if the secular and the sacred, as in feudal times, had no strict boundary, and were part of each other. The midcentury church rises up like a massive windbreak sheltering the small houses. No wonder the residents of these tidy postwar homes heard the first shot that sweet late-summer morning, a Wednesday. If the shooter had just pivoted from his position facing the church, he could have taken out someone in the nearest white bungalow.

Instantly, these neighbors were calling 911.

The cops were there within minutes. Though, of course, too late for two of the children, Harper Moyski, age 10, and Fletcher Merkel, eight, murdered in their pews at a Mass marking the beginning of the school year, everyone singing. Twenty-seven others, mostly children and three parishioners in their 80s, were also hit. And then “the shooter,” as we’ve come to call these now familiar figures of our desperation, shot himself at a side church door, his litter of weapons—shotgun and semiautomatic rifle and pistol—scattered near his body.

A few days after the attack, I went to pay my respects, to be in solidarity—just to see, just to *be *there. Well, who knows what instinct, high or low, draws a person to the site of mayhem. There was an element of sleepwalking to it, driving across the Mississippi River from St. Paul, where I’ve lived all my life, to this church in Minneapolis I never before had occasion to visit. Even the neighborhood was unfamiliar to me. I had to use GPS to get there, though it is a well-known Minneapolis neighborhood. The little houses circling the big church shear off to more upscale houses along the sylvan Minnehaha Creek. A friend told me that his sister, living there, heard the shots, too. Her husband raced over, saw the bloodied kids screaming as they came out the church doors.

These two areas are part of the Annunciation neighborhood, the church itself an enduring sentinel of stability. I passed a “We love Annunciation” sign on a Methodist church on Lyndale Avenue, a nearby main street. And a hand-lettered message in black marker amid the bright pastel flowers at the church itself: “Our hearts are with the Annunciation community,” signed, “Sudanese Community.”

Here, it seemed, the postwar dream of a decent middle-class life still had a chance. None of the houses, not even the ones along Minnehaha Creek, bore the bombastic extravagance of the McMansions sprawling across the also sprawling suburbs that have extended “the Metro” of the two old cities. Nor were there any barracks-like multiple “units” that are becoming the panicked planning answer to urban housing needs.

Actually, I do know why I was drawn to the Annunciation. It was not the murders exactly. How many we’ve had here. We’re still pulling ourselves together—or apart—from the murder of George Floyd in 2020. That happened half a decade ago, in another part of Minneapolis, what used to be called “the inner city,” an area taking the blows of poverty, of racism, of displacement, and all the woes of crowded urban life as it tries to absorb new populations.

It wasn’t the murders themselves that drew me like a ghost across the river. It was the green-and-navy school uniforms the children wore.

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Patricia Hampl is the author of numerous books, including The Florist’s Daughter, A Romantic Education, I Could Tell You Stories, and The Art of the Wasted Day. She is Regents Professor Emerita of English at the University of Minnesota.