It was a pleasant day, a sort of mini-vacation after the trauma of the past ten days, and we finished it by eating supper with Max at a little bistro on Damen. He and Lotty drove me to my apartment, where Mr. Contreras and the dogs tumbled out to greet me. The dogs showed such ecstasy that the medical resident across the hall threatened to call the cops if Mr. Contreras and I didn’t silence them at once. Even that didn’t dampen my pleasure at coming back to my own home. Lotty gave me a long hug and relinquished me to Mr. Contreras, who insisted on carrying my bag up the stairs.

My pleasure died as soon as I opened the door. I was so shocked that I couldn’t take it in at first. My home had been ripped to shreds. Books lay on the floor, my stereo was dismantled, music had been dumped so the inside of the piano could be inspected, my trunk stood in the living room with my mother’s evening gown wadded up on the floor next to it.

My first reaction was a kind of despair, a desire to get on a plane for Milan and spend the rest of my life in the little hill town where my mother grew up. My second response was fury with my cousin.

“Come on, Vic,” my neighbor protested. “Cut the kid some slack. How could she be behind this?”

“There are no signs of forced entry,” I said. “You let her in with my keys, right? She’s been obsessed with this baseball I found with my dad’s stuff, and this has all the earmarks of a spoiled kid wanting what she wants when she wants it.”

“I let her in, yeah, but that was two days ago when she stopped in for your phone charger. She didn’t stay long enough to do this kind of damage. And, anyway, you got her all wrong. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, cookie, but it’s like you’re jealous of her for being young and pretty and lively. I thought you was better than that. Really, doll, I thought you was.”

“How can you talk like that when my apartment has been trashed! Look at this!” I held up my mother’s gown. “She knows how much this matters to me and she just wads it up and dumps it like it’s an old dish towel.”

“I’m just saying, Petra couldn’t a done this no matter what you think. And I didn’t let anyone else in, so this was a professional, someone who could bypass all your locks and gates and stuff and get in anyway. They had to’ve done this late at night, when me and the dogs was sound asleep. Your cousin wasn’t here in the middle of the night.”