The Bennet home—a five-thousand-square-foot Victorian brownstone—had been in our family for a hundred and eighty years, passed down through generations of women. It occupied the space next to and above the flower shop, purchased along with four properties on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, behind which my predecessors had built our greenhouse.
We were a novelty in the Village, the only greenhouse of its kind and size in Manhattan. It had once brought us fame and fortune. My grandmother had sold the properties adjacent to ours in the seventies, which had previously been rented out to fund the expansion of Longbourne to include a handful of shops throughout the city. But under Mom’s rule came the internet boom, the introduction of 1-800-ROSES4U, and the rise of Bower Bouquets, our rival flower shop. The Bowers bought into the internet bouquet business, and as they flourished, we withered, retreating slowly until only our flagship remained.
We only stayed afloat because Longbourne was a staple in our community, supplementing our income selling wholesale flowers to local shops. None of my siblings knew how bad it was, only me. I was here in the trenches—literally—and knew. Or suspected at least. It coincided with the progression of Mom’s rheumatoid arthritis and the gradual loss of her hands, her duties sliding on a slow scale into Tess’s lap. It was easy to ignore, as I spent my days in the greenhouse with Dad, avoiding the shop. But my brother Marcus figured it out when the deposits into our trusts dwindled. And when he really looked, he found the shop was in ruin.
So everyone came home to help save Longbourne, and at the lead was my little brother, Luke. He and Tess had given the shop the makeover to end all makeovers, and just like that, we were back on the map. Of course, that was just one step toward recovery—Marcus, the moneyman, assured us we’d be in debt for half a decade. But it was a start.
Luke had seen to that. We were twins of the Irish variety—though we looked it too, harboring the trademark Bennet blue eyes and black hair—born in the same calendar year and in the same class in school. Our old room was a time capsule of our boyhood, complete with bunk beds and baseball posters. The desks were still topped with relics, like Luke’s Batman paperweight and a row of classic Hot Wheels I’d lined up next to my lamp. When Luke came home, we shared this room again—I’d moved into our sister Laney’s room when she left, and she reclaimed it on her return. But Luke had moved in with Tess, leaving me alone again.
Of course, solitude never bothered me like it did Luke. He couldn’t stand to be alone. I could just as easily not see another human for a week as I could share bunk beds with Luke without committing homicide.
I was pulling on my shirt when I heard the thunder of feet on the staircase and the word, “Dinner!” from Laney’s mouth, two syllables stretched infinitely as her voice faded away and up the final staircase.
We all had our jobs around the house, and Laney’s was the town crier.
I raked my hand through my damp hair to put it in place before exiting my room, making my way down the old, creaking staircase. Just before I reached the landing, I heard Laney coming and braced myself—a wise move. She jumped onto my back like a spider monkey, clamping my neck in a puny excuse for a sleeper hold.
I hooked her legs and kept going. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
“Meathead.”
I trotted down the stairs with an exaggerated bounce, squeezing the giggles out of her with every thunk of my feet. I put her on the ground when we hit the main floor.
“How’s the garden?” she asked.
“I’m digging it.”
A chuckle. “You’re going to make the best dad, you know that? You’ve already got a treasure trove of jokes on hand.”
“I learned from the best,” I said as we turned for the dining room. “How’s social media going?”
“Well, we just hit thirty thousand followers on Instagram, and considering we had no presence a few months ago, I’d say it’s going well. That article was the ticket, and Tess’s pictures are just too good. Really, she's made my job easy.”
Like I said, we all had our jobs to do.
Laney—Elaine, named after our grandmother—had come from a high paying, stable job in Dallas to run Longbourne’s social media. Jett, or Julius if you were itching to get popped in the nose, had been working the last few years managing a bookstore bar, Wasted Words, on the Upper West, but came home to help around the house, since Mom could no longer cook, her hands too gnarled to manage anything requiring fine motor skills. Marcus—who sat at the table across from Dad in a suit, scrolling his phone and watching the Dow, no doubt—was our independently wealthy financial genius, having abandoned his Wall Street job to day trade, then to manage the shop. Luke and Tess managed design and production in the shop.
As for me, I worked in the greenhouse, as I always had. Because some things never changed, and I was one of them.
I wandered into the kitchen behind Laney to find the rest of the brood—Jett at the stove, Mom at the breakfast table talking Tess’s ear off, Luke sitting on the counter, watching Tess with a goofy, lovesick smile on his face. Honestly, he took up the entire counter, the edge hitting him mid-thigh. He was a beast, the tallest of all of us, which was saying something. The Bennet boys were well over six feet of muscle, sharp jaws, and irreverent smiles—well, except for Marcus. His smiles were hard-won and reserved for only the most patient of women.
I followed my nose to peer into the sizzling pan around Jett. “Smells good, Janie,” I snarked, flicking Mom’s ruffly pink apron tied around his neck, dotted with big red begonias.
His elbow fired into my rib cage, knocking the wind out of me. “Been slaving over it all day, Kitty.”
My hand clamped his shoulder as I caught my breath. “Don’t let me stop you,” I croaked, using the distraction to sneak a piece of chicken out of the pan, spinning away before he could grab me around the neck.
“Hope you burn your mouth,” he shot.
I’d never admit that the chicken was molten lava, covered in cheese that I swore was a trillion degrees and razed every tastebud in my mouth. Instead, I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, heading to the breakfast table.
“I don’t care what Lila Parker says,” my mother started, nose in the air. “You all have done an exemplary job handling the demands she’s put on you. Really, to come in and complain about the shade of flower that she chose? Wedding planners are notoriously difficult, I’ll admit, but she takes the cake.”
“The business is good,” Tess offered in Lila’s defense. “It’s the best kind of publicity for the shop, and there’s so much money in it, far more than we can make just on the storefront or deliveries.”
Mom sighed. “Weddings and funerals—the bread and butter of any flower shop and work we haven’t seen much of in the last decade.”
“It’s taken years for Ivy to convince Lila to use us for weddings, but she wouldn’t even entertain the idea until the article came out in Floral,” Tess said. “It probably doesn’t help that Ivy’s her sister. It blurs the professional boundaries normally in place, leading her to believe she can march into the greenhouse and bawl Kash out about the color spectrum.”
I chuckled. “She can bawl me out all she wants. Won’t bother me.”