She gave her self-mocking pout. “Sorry! Mom always says I take off like a rocket ship when everyone else is still riding in buggies. Let’s go see Back of the Yards and your house today. We can go to Norridge Park tomorrow.”

“Or even on the weekend, my little Saturn booster. I have plans for tomorrow night.”

I put my stove-top espresso maker on to heat, asking my cousin to turn it off when the pressure built up, while I rinsed sand out of my hair and off my skin. When I returned to the kitchen, there was espresso all over the stove and floor and no sign of my cousin. I turned off the flame, cursing loudly, and began mopping up coffee.

“Oh! Sorry!” Petra suddenly appeared in the doorway. “I didn’t know how long it would take, so I thought I’d just try to find your trunk.”

“Damn it, Petra, why couldn’t you stay in here long enough to turn off the stove?”

“I said I was sorry!”

“That doesn’t solve the problem. I don’t want you helping yourself to my home, especially not when you don’t do a very simple task that would have kept this explosion from happening!”

“I’ll clean it up while you get dressed,” she muttered.

I’d used the towel I’d dried off with after my shower to soak up the worst of the mess. I put it in her arms, wet grounds and all, and stalked back to the bathroom to rinse coffee from my hands. When I returned to the kitchen dressed for work, Petra was standing in front of the stove, anxiously monitoring my little espresso pot. The floor was washed and the bath towel I’d dumped on her was hanging on the porch railing outside my back door.

She looked at me with an expression so much like Mitch’s after he’s been caught digging up the backyard that I couldn’t help laughing.

Her own face relaxed into a smile. “Gosh, Vic, do you know how scary you look when you get mad? I hope I’m doing your coffee thingy the right way.”

I turned the flame off as the pot started to burble, and offered to lend her some clothes; her own were stained with coffee, both from the towel and her energy in diving in to clean up the kitchen. She took a T-shirt, and trailed after me into the living room.