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bizcochitos for Celia as the clock inched past midnight. A new day, the first without Victor. I didn’t think I could taste the cookies without tearing up so I made a milky decaf for myself.
    Celia came in, thankfully alone, and dropped her backpack by the fireplace, where a few embers glowed.
    â€œHave some cookies, honey. Then let’s try to get to bed.”
    Celia nibbled a cookie and poked at her smart-­phone screen while I took a stab at grief counseling. “A loss like this is hard to understand.”
    This platitude was met with sniffles and heightened tapping on the phone. I persisted. “We can’t always know how others are feeling, their pain.”
    â€œIt sucks,” my daughter said, turning away to wipe her eyes. Celia took after her dad in hiding emotions. I handed her a tissue and we sat for a few minutes in silence, until pounding on the door rattled us and the house. I didn’t need Dalia’s psychic powers to guess who it was.
    â€œOpen up!” Manny yelled in his cop voice.
    I took a deep breath, hoping to squelch my own emotions. Whatever Manny said, I was done arguing with him, I told myself. We were done.
    â€œHold on,” I said, unlatching the heavy oak door. Manny pushed past, followed by his partner, Bunny, who politely but belatedly asked if they could come in.
    I agreed, also politely, although I wished the invitation could exclude Manny. He stood in the entryway/living room, fingers looped around his weapons belt, legs apart in what I imagined was his movie-­cop pose. Manny is very conscious of his looks, and there’s no denying that he’s good-­looking. He works out, wears trim shirts tight across his muscular chest, and sets his shaver high to achieve an intentional scruff. If cast in a soap opera, he’d be the guy you know the heroine shouldn’t fall for but does, taken in not only by his looks but his charm. Although I’d seen little of it since the divorce, Manny can be truly charming. Too charming, when it came to other women. Manny also thinks he’s irresistible. That’s what probably upset him most about our divorce: that I’d been the one to ask for it. Like me, he was probably also a little sad, not that he’d ever admit it.
    He snorted, scanning the room. “Small place you’ve got here, Rita. What is this, a converted garage?”
    â€œNice vigas ,” Bunny said, towering behind my ex.
    That’s another one of Manny’s problems. Height insecurity. He and Tom Cruise could wear the same pants.
    â€œThank you, Bunny,” I said, ignoring Manny. “Would you like a cookie?”
    She patted the flat front of her jacket. “Can’t, I’m in training. Listen, Rita, we have to talk to you about what you saw.”
    Manny grumbled that I wouldn’t be able to tell them anything useful.
    Bunny also ignored him. She had that serious cop look on, the one that mingles mad and suspicious. Bunny looks this way a lot.
    â€œWe’re exhausted.” I gestured toward Celia. She sat in the kitchen, still ostensibly messing with her phone. A pile of wadded-­up Kleenex lay beside her. “Can’t I make a statement tomorrow? I’ll come in after work, at the start of your shift.”
    Bunny shrugged. “That’s fine. Looks like there’s not much to investigate here. The medical examiner will be able to tell us definitively.”
    I knew what she wasn’t saying directly. It looked like suicide. It likely was suicide. Rightfully or not, I mentally berated myself again. If only I’d stayed to check on Victor. If only I’d had time to ask what was bothering him when we were drinking cocoa.
    Bunny and I set an appointment for three the next day for what she called “routine follow-­through.”
    â€œIt’s not a closed case yet,” Manny said, in the contrarian attitude he’d taken throughout our divorce. “Celia’s