She’d looked up during my speech, her eyes soft and rich, stirring something in my chest. A familiarity, like a memory I couldn’t grasp, like a dream that had slipped away when I woke. But then it was gone.

“All right, I’ll do it.”

A chorus of cheering and relieved laughter filled the room.

“Ivy can take over for you in the back while we get plans together for the front and implement them for the weekend—there’s a big event in Washington Square, and we should have more foot traffic than usual. It’s the perfect time to unveil the new look,” I said. “Kash, you keep doing what you’re doing in the greenhouse. Jett, you’ll float between doubling for me and helping Mom around the house. Marcus, keep working on untangling the finances. Laney, you let us know what you need for marketing. And I’ll back up Tess. Tomorrow, we start. Tomorrow, we’re going to take the first step to turning this ship around. And if we don’t make Mom cry from sheer joy by the time it’s done, I’ll eat Laney’s raincoat.”

Another laugh, this one a little bawdier.

Chatter broke out among them, and for a moment, I stood at the head of that table and watched them all, the accomplishment empowering and the excitement intoxicating. I could see it all, see the shop full of customers, that little bell dinging until the clapper wore out. Ideas on ideas on ideas fluttered through my mind—painting the front door a bright, cheery shade of blue, running beams across the ceilings so we could hang planters and racks and installations from them, imagining the walls crisp and white against the dark old counter and the black-and-white-tiled floor. I wondered what kinds of ideas Tess would have, wondered if she’d let me in on them or if she’d just give me orders and expect me to march on them.

Either way, it was going to be a thrill. We were going to make this place everything it was meant to be, everything it had once been. We were going to save it.

I wandered into the front while their attention was off of me, making lists of inventory, considering how we might organize it. Golden streetlight streamed in through the grate outside the window, and I made a mental note of the approximate size and depth of the window space, noting the casings and devising ways to hang things from it without ruining the old wood. There were so many things I could build out of raw wood, and I felt a greedy anticipation at what I’d find in storage. A hundred seventy years of history, I supposed, history we’d bring back into this space with its second life.

My siblings weren’t wrong, ribbing me about the lemonade stand. I loved the rush and possibility of new ideas, but follow-through had never been my strong suit. The only thing I’d really tried to stick out was my marriage, which taught me two important things: sticking things out could ruin you, and I was terrible at relationships.