It all started with a phone call on a quiet morning, one of those when the sunlight warms the kitchen table and you let yourself be convinced that life could finally open up. For fifteen years, my world revolved around my flower shop, Bloom & Blossom: pre-dawn trips to the market, sleepless nights planning weddings, holidays spent creating arrangements for parties I never attended. Selling the shop was difficult, but it seemed like the right step. I wanted a life that didn’t revolve solely around work. Maybe I would travel. Maybe I would go back to school. Maybe I would just breathe for once.

The money I made from the sale didn’t change my life, but it was the most money I’d ever had at one time. Enough to give me choices. Enough to dream. I was sitting at the kitchen table, coffee cooling beside me, when my sister Lisa called me. Her voice conveyed a tension I recognized instantly.

“Ivy… can I come? Please.”

Twenty minutes later, she was standing in my kitchen, holding a cup she’d never drunk from before. Her hair was dirty, her nails were bitten, her knee was bouncing incessantly. There was no warm-up, no conversation.

“We’re losing our home.”

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