Sometimes You feel like your doing it right.

This is a quick story. Last night Elena had gone to bed. It was early, about 9 pm, but not unusual. She has to get up at 6 am every week day and when she works at night, it's a long day.
     Nastia, Teri and I are watching a show called Scorpion when we hear Elena come down stairs. It is unusual because once she is upstairs she doesn't come back down. Elena is behind me and I can't see her. Teri from the couch asks , 'What's wrong?"
     Through sobbing tears I hear something like, " Iv'e got to tell you something. It is not usual for her to cry and only occasionally will she sob so we were both immediately concerned. Teri gets up as the sobbing continues and I follow. We both get to her and are both hugging her. I'm afraid her cat is dead and she had something to do with it. Teri keeps asking what is wrong as Elena continues to sob into her chest. Our anxiety keeps raising until Elena manages to get out that she had tried smoking and had promised she never would. The level of tension and dread drop to humor and sweetness.
     It turns out someone at work wanted to giveaway a pack of cigarettes and she took them. She ended up getting rid of them, all except for two. she took a couple of drags from each, her words and didn't like them.And She had been upstairs for the last hour and a half thinking about it until she had to come down and confess her sin. She had a long time ago said she would never try cigarettes and thought people who smoked were stupid. I guess like all of us the curiosity was too much.
      Teri and I also found out that Nastia's boyfriend David had seen her smoking and I think that was how Nastia had known. Elena had told her to keep it a secret and this is the first one she has been able to keep. I guess, I'm happy? sorta, maybe? I...don't know?
     On Nights like this you feel like maybe everything you are trying to teach them that some of it is getting through. And maybe we shouldn't feel like we are failures sometime. I wish we could do better by them, but.....
     We sat down and talked it over with her and got more details out of her. The story had started that she bummed a cigarette from someone at work and took 'two drags' and didn't like it. The funny thing is her repeatedly insisting that she is not yet addicted to cigarettes. The full story,it turns out was a guy was getting rid of cigarettes at work. She took the pack tried two of them at different times and didn't like them. We didn't punish her because she came to us and told us. We let it go with promises of not doing it again. It might be brought up in the future jokingly, but I hope it is over. Cigarettes have not been kind to my family, my dad, my uncle Ken,, uncle Joe, grandfather at the least.
    The thing that bothers me the most is usually I can smell when someone has been around a smoker or smoking. I did smell smoke on her once, but I dismissed it because she doesn't smoke. I can be easily fooled too it seems.