I stopped three feet back and pulled the collar of my dark blue wool cardigan tight against my chest.

“Sloan, please,” I said.

“The doctor told us at the clinic that twenty years of shoe factory dust left my lungs scarred.

I can’t breathe around smoke.”

Sloan didn’t turn her head.

She flicked her ashes directly into a clean china saucer sitting on the counter.

“This house belongs to Mark and me, so we set the air standards,” she said, her voice light and thin as paper.

“I pay twelve hundred dollars every month into this house,” I said, smoothing the front of my cardigan down with both thumbs.