Adele was left with her original kitchen, a bathroom, and her bedroom—and most importantly, private access to her courtyard. She converted that space into something of a miniature farm, keeping chickens and rabbits, and a small collection of fruit trees, berries and vegetables growing in boxes and tubs. Adele had a network of widowed friends all across the city, and in the worst times, I’d watched a seemingly endless stream of silver-haired women visiting each day, leaving with a basket of produce. I once saw Adele’s best friend, Martha Breuer, holding a box as she waited for the trolley. As I approached her, one slender gray ear appeared from the top.

“Is that a rabbit?” I said blankly.

“Two,” she chuckled.

“Where on earth are you taking those?” I asked her, and Martha shrugged.

“There’s a poor family on my block with a new baby on the way. Adele insisted I take this breeding pair of rabbits for them. They’ll have fresh meat for the babe next summer.”

Adele was savvy, hardworking, stubborn, and compassionate. It stung sometimes that she seemed capable of boundless love for strangers, but she still seemed to have little affection for me.

“Sofie, you and I also know that my nephew is a man of great intelligence…but he is not without his limitations.” Adele sighed heavily. “We both know he’s unlikely to ever find work outside of academia, and even when the economy stabilizes, your family income will be modest. What is your plan for the future?”

“We’re getting by,” I said stiffly. But she wasn’t wrong about Jürgen’s employment prospects. His undergraduate focus was engineering and physics, but he’d focused his postgraduate studies narrowly around rockets—a technology that remained in its infancy. The last time I went to a space society launch, I’d watched the little prototype fly as high as forty or fifty feet, then tilt alarmingly to fall right back down toward the group of men who’d designed it, sending them all scattering in a panic. No one was going to pay him to play with dangerous toys.

“Why don’t you take whatever money you have left and remodel, as I did? You could sell or rent the top floors as apartments.”

“No one is buying apartments now, Aunt Adele,” I pointed out.

“A house is always worth something, Sofie, even in a bad market,” she said patronizingly. “Now, if you were really smart, you could sell the whole lot and move in here.”

“Are some of your tenants leaving?”

“No one is leaving,” she said abruptly. “I meant you could move into this apartment with me. It would be a little cramped—”