“Don’t be dramatic, Harold. It’s only smoke.”

My daughter-in-law said it without looking at me. She stood beside the kitchen sink in my late wife’s house, holding a cigarette between two polished fingers while gray smoke drifted toward the ceiling fan.

Rain tapped softly against the windows. A pot of vegetable soup simmered on the stove, and the digital clock above the oven showed 7:18 p.m.