Bucktown was Chicago’s newest Yuppieville, about a mile south of us. Ten years ago, it was a quiet working-class neighborhood, mostly Polish and Mexican, when the ominous happened: young artists looking for cheap studio space moved in. Now the artists can’t afford the rents and are moving farther west, while the natives are long gone, to the depressed fringe neighborhoods on the far South Side.

I took my groceries out of the trunk and walked up the sidewalk with my neighbor. If this was a Warshawski cousin, it had to be one of my uncle Peter’s kids. He’d been a lot younger than my dad, and had started his family late in life, after he left Chicago for Kansas City, so I didn’t know him or my cousins at all. I’d gotten birth announcements over the years, one daughter after another. Petra, Kimberly, and then a blur of Stephanie, Alison, Jordan, something like that.

As we got to the door, a young woman bounced down the steps with all of Mitch’s enthusiasm. She was tall and blond, and her low-cut, skimpy peasant blouse, with vest, skirt, leggings, and high-heeled boots, proclaimed her a serious Millennium Gen fashionista, but her wide smile was genuine. It made her look so much like a vibrant, feminine version of my father that I put down my groceries and held out my arms.

“Petra?” I ventured.

“I am, I am.” She hugged me back, bending over my five-foot-eight frame and squeezing hard. “Sorry to drop in uninvited, but I just got settled this afternoon, and Daddy told me you lived here, near me, and I didn’t have any appointments, so I came scurrying up to see you. Uncle Sal—isn’t he sweet? He told me to call him that!—he’s been feeding me tea in the garden and telling me all the cases he’s worked on with you. You’re awesome, Tori!”

Tori. My family nickname. Since my cousin Boom-Boom’s death twelve years ago, no one had used it, and it was startling to hear it on this stranger’s lips. And now Mr. Contreras was her “Uncle Sal.” And Mitch was slobbering over her. We were just one big happy family.

Mr. Contreras said he knew “you gals” had a lot of catching up to do, so why didn’t we go on up to my place, and he could make us spaghetti later if we wanted. With the dogs racing ahead of us, stopping at each landing to see if we were following, I led Petra to the third floor.

“You should have let me know you were coming to town,” I said. “I’d have been glad to put you up while you got settled.”