“France, like macaron-ville France?”

“I think so,” said Maggie in a tiny voice.

“Fabulous,” said Joy. “Really wonderful.” Not only did Maggie have vaping equipment, it could be traced back to Joy’s mortal enemy, the owner of the Roving Patisserie. Lu had been right.

“Don’t tell Holly, Mom, please. Riley will kill me.”

“I’ll worry about what to tell Holly later.” (She had already told Holly.) “Right now I’m going to worry about you. Have you used this?”

Maggie hesitated.

“Maggie! Answer me.” Joy hated the way her voice sounded, loud and shrill, and she also hated the way she felt, on the precipice of a severe panic attack, filled with a burgeoning rage.

“Once or twice,” said Maggie finally. “Okay, and now you’re going to freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out!” Joy could feel her blood pressure skyrocket, and she almost couldn’t see for the anger. She was definitely freaking out.

“You are. You’re freaking out all over the place. What’s the big deal? Everybody vapes. The summer kids all do it.”

“The big deal! It’s a gateway drug, and I’m sure not everybody does it. I’m positive not everybody does it.”

“It’s not a drug. It’s just, like . . . flavored air.”

“It’s not just flavored air. And it’s a gateway activity. It leads to other activities. Regular cigarettes. Pot. It can make it harder for your body to fight germs. You can get popcorn lung!” She had learned that from the same article.

Maggie blanched. “You made that up. There’s no such thing.”

“I did not. There is.” Joy reached for her phone, to prove it. Siri, she wanted to say. Help me raise my daughter.

“You don’t have to show me. I don’t really want to know.” Maggie then treated Joy to some statistics about everybody in France smoking and four-year-olds drinking wine and eating beurre blanc sauce. “French people are so much more sophisticated,” Maggie finished.

“I don’t care what French people do,” said Joy. “I care what you do.” She realized this was a completely unoriginal version of what mothers had been saying to their daughters since the beginning of time, but she couldn’t help herself.

“You are completely and totally overreacting,” said Maggie. She folded her arms over her chest. “This is so typical.”

“You’re thirteen years old, Maggie! If anything, I think I’m underreacting.” How was Maggie managing to make her feel old and stodgy? It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t stodgy. Hadn’t she, Joy, smoked a bunch of weed junior year in high school when she was dating that pothead Marco Brotelho? You bet, but she’d been sixteen her junior year, almost seventeen. Maggie was thirteen. Joy had brought her beautiful baby girl, heart of her heart, to live on this beautiful island so she could breathe the purest air, be surrounded by some of the world’s most natural beauty, protected by miles and miles of ocean and within glimpsing distance of any number of endangered species. Now that beautiful baby girl was letting some summer assholes fill her young, unsullied lungs with poison. And her mind with who knew what. No, Joy wasn’t overreacting. She was reacting exactly right. Confident in her rightness, she was figuring out what to say next when Maggie pulled out the big gun. And aimed. And fired.