I’ve never smoked before. Collette smokes. She’s perpetually stepping out back during her shifts at the gallery. The other day I bummed this one off her and tried to ignore the look of surprise she gave me as she passed it over. “Little miss goody two shoes likes to smoke?”

“Whatever,” I said with a shrug, trying to come off as nonchalant when it was obvious what I was doing: trying to be someone I’m not.

No, I don’t smoke. No, I likely won’t start. But I might.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. I really should get some sleep, but I can’t seem to make myself move. Then, with a stroke of brilliance, I remember the matches I have stuffed in my bedside table from the boutique hotel we stayed at in Paris last year. I thought the lettering on the box was too cute not to keep for a souvenir. I dig around in my messy bedside drawer until I come up with the tiny pink and white box.

Back out on the balcony, I strike the match three times before it lights. Then a gust of wind kills the flame and I have to do it all over again.

I finally manage though. I light the tip and take the smallest inhale possible to avoid the stereotypical choking episode that usually follows someone’s first pull from a cigarette, but it happens anyway.

I’m hacking like it’s the 1800s and I’ve got typhoid fever when a knock sounds at my door.

“Lainey?”

It’s Margaret.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Without thinking, I toss the cigarette over the side of the balcony, and then, in a panic, I lean over and watch as it flutters through the air, the tip still glowing orange.

Even though it’s late, there are plenty of people out and about, which means I’m not at all surprised it manages to land on a woman’s shoulder. She jumps back, startled, then looks up.

I megaphone my hands.

“Sorry!” I whisper-hiss. “It was an accident!”

My bedroom door opens and I whirl around just as Margaret walks in with a tray of tea and a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies. In her early 60s, Margaret wears her white-blonde hair in a French twist every single day. There are always reading glasses hanging from a lanyard around her neck, and she’s never worn pants as long as I’ve known her. Her uniform consists of crisp shirt-dresses that she neatly irons every morning before leaving her room. She has a taste for pomp and circumstance, and her strict adherence to social etiquettes could rival Emily Post. It’s why she’s been able to keep her position here at my grandmother’s house for as long as she has. Two peas in a pod, the pair of them. I think if they had it their way, they’d persuade all of Boston to adopt Regency-era style of dress and social customs. Corsets, calling cards, chaperones. The idea of “Netflix and chill” is utterly lost on them.