When I was a kid, the shop had been the cornerstone of an empire with a handful of stores spread all over the city. Dozens of employees, several full-time delivery drivers, a constant whirl of action. It was never quiet, nor was it empty. But now … now, it was deserted. Passersby didn’t stop at the windows, didn’t pop inside to take a look. As classic as the shop was, it wasn’t timeless—it was dated and dark and dull. There was nothing fresh about it, nothing new. Nothing to catch the eye of a man on his way to his girlfriend or a woman looking to bring something fresh into her home.

The truth was, since its establishment, the store had largely taken care of itself, providing the business needed to expand without much tending. My grandmother had been the one with the business mind, a trait she had not passed on to her daughter.

And when technology rose, Longbourne was left in the dust. Ecommerce. Social media. Big-box delivery companies. The old way of doing things died, and Longbourne withered from the drastic shift in the weather.

For years, Mom convinced us everything was fine, and we were too busy living our own lives to acknowledge it wasn’t. We started losing weddings to Bower Bouquets. The shops began to close one by one as Longbourne retreated in an attempt to stay afloat. Our inquiries and attempts to help were brushed aside.

It wasn’t until only the flagship store was left and our trust funds, which the accountant deposited in monthly based on the shop’s income, began to dwindle that Marcus finally approached Mom.

What he found was shocking.

The family accountant and shitty, outdated business advisor—who was older than actual dirt, by the way—had done a piss-poor job advising them and sent them not only into deep tax debt, but had inadvertently misled them as to the state of the estate.

So Marcus used his substantial wealth to invest in the shop, buying it from Mom so she could “retire”—which she had done very little of—and then called us all home to help. We had to save the shop, not only for Mom and our legacy, but for Marcus’s sacrifice and the future of our inheritance.

We had a long way to go, and each of us had our parts. Though mine was unclear—I’d been tapped to come back and be the shop patsy, the bulk of my responsibility seeming to revolve around menial tasks with little to no stakes. Like deliveries.

But they’d forgotten that I was an idea guy. I just wasn’t a get-it-done guy.

By the time I pulled up to Judy’s building, my imagination had painted a picture of all the things we could do, all the ways we could update the shop, ideas bubbling like a stream. So much so, before I got out of the van, I fired off a text to my siblings, calling a meeting—kids only. Tonight, after Mom and Dad went to bed, we’d formulate a plan.