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out the barest explanation of what I’d seen.
    â€œSorry,” I said, wiping at the soggy spot I left on her shoulder. Dalia didn’t care. A forever flower child with a tech-­wizard’s income, she wasn’t one to worry about her clothes, which she wore in floaty tie-­dyed layers.
    â€œI warned him . . .” she murmured. “I said there was danger . . .”
    Her words stopped me mid-­dampening of my own sweater sleeve. “Warned him?” Why was Victor in danger?
    Dalia stared up at the night sky, sparkling with constellations you only see away from city lights. “I sensed a negative aura,” she said, her tone as dark as the heavens.
    I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Dalia and her divinations. She was a certified tarot master, as she pointed out frequently, and a little too eager to offer her celestial ser­vices. I tended to politely fend her off. So did Victor. Perhaps we should have listened.
    Dalia tugged her long chestnut braid across her chin. “He should have let me read his cards. Maybe I could have foreseen his inexorable forces.”
    Maybe I should have seen them myself. I might not be certified in anything but pastry, but why didn’t I notice that my friendly neighbor was hurting? Dalia’s husband Phillip moved in to comfort her, giving me the chance to slip away. Celia stood in front of the ambulance. Its lights flashed, but the siren and engine were silent. There would be no desperate race to the hospital.
    â€œHey,” I said, touching my daughter’s elbow.
    She flinched.
    â€œCome on, sweetie, let’s wait inside. The police will know where to find us if they need to.”
    â€œI want to see what happens,” Celia said, without conviction. She stared toward Victor’s house. The living room was bright with lights and camera flashes.
    No you don’t, I thought, and I didn’t want to see either. I made her an offer that even her teen self usually can’t resist. “We’ll have some cookies. Your friend can come too if she wants.”
    My daughter twisted her spiky hair. “Okay, if you want, but you, like, know who she is, don’t you?”

    Y our father’s girlfriend?” I failed to keep a snarky emphasis off girl.
    The woman in question sat in her orange Jeep a few yards away, seemingly texting and singing along to music. This is not how you behave at a tragedy, I thought. Then I acknowledged that at least she hadn’t barged in and terrified the victim’s brother.
    â€œYeah, whatever,” my daughter said, in classic teen understatement. “She’s cool.”
    She might be cool. She was definitely young. I’d guess she was a good fifteen years younger than Manny or, put another way, not that much older than Celia.
    â€œOh,” I said, to avoid saying something I might regret.
    â€œYou’re not weirded out by this, are you, Mom?” Celia asked, her tone changing from weepy to well-­honed defiant. “You’re the one who wanted to divorce Dad.”
    The latter was true. And no, I assured myself, I didn’t give a pancake’s flip that Manny was dating again. Why should he stop now, after he’d had such an active social life during our marriage? I was, however, a bit weirded out by the thought of him dating someone so close to Celia’s age. I also didn’t like the idea of Celia becoming best friends with her father’s girlfriend.
    â€œNo,” I said, for the sake of her feelings and my pride. “I’m not weirded out. But it looks like she’s busy, so let’s go inside by ourselves.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll tell Ariel where we’re going.”
    Ariel? Celia jogged off past the cluster of neighbors, leaving me to come to terms with my ex dating a young, cool, Jeep-­driver with a cleavage tattoo and a Disney character’s name.

    I set out a few of Victor’s