I called Petra’s cellphone, but there wasn’t any answer. I left a message telling her to call me the instant she picked up her voice mail. With the dogs and Mr. Contreras accompanying me, I walked through my apartment, looking at wreckage. The old man was right: Petra wouldn’t have been so wanton. But neither would a professional. Unless it was a professional deliberately trying to terrify me. In which case, they had done a great job.

“But what could they be looking for?” I asked Mr. Contreras. “Except for that Nellie Fox ball, there’s nothing here that anyone would want. Besides, as I keep saying, there’s no sign of forced entry.”

“Maybe Petra forgot to lock up behind her,” my neighbor suggested.

“Then why was it locked when we came up the stairs just now?” I was teetering on the brink of meltdown and kept hysteria out of my voice by effort of will alone.

Mr. Contreras wanted me to call the police, but I’d had my fill of the law. Although the more chaos I saw, the less I thought my cousin had caused it, I didn’t want a crime unit to find some trace of Petra there. If she’d done this, I’d tackle her myself.

I spent the rest of the night cleaning. Mr. Contreras stayed to help, picking up books, helping fold clothes, cleaning the kitchen with me. In my dining room, dishes had been pulled from the shelves with the same recklessness apparent everywhere else. The old man knelt, grunting, to pick up cups and plates and wipe them before putting them back on the shelves.

My mother’s red Venetian wineglasses, which she had wrapped in her underwear and carried in her one small suitcase when she fled Italy, were piled on the floor. I picked them up, my hands shaking so badly I was afraid I would break them, and held each up to the light. I had lost two over the years and cracked a third. Now a fourth had a chip in the base.