1
JOY
The bell above the door chimed its soft, glassy note, and for a second I let it make me believe in order.
That a day could be as simple as someone comes in, someone leaves happy.
That a bouquet could fix what was broken.
That I could.
“Welcome in!” I called, because my momma had trained the words into my bones the same way she’d trained me to deadhead roses and strip thorns without looking.
The shop smelled like promise—eucalyptus and gardenias, damp moss, citrus peel. We kept the air cooler than most places downtown because flowers were temperamental like that. They needed stability. They needed someone to notice the first sign of wilting and do something about it before it became irreversible.
I understood that.
Sunlight spilled in through the front windows, catching on the glass vases lined like soldiers on the shelves. Outside, King Street was already alive with Charleston’s particular kind of bustle—tourists drifting like they had nowhere to be, localsmoving like they did. My reflection in the window looked small against the brightness. Blonde hair in a loose braid. Cotton dress. Hands stained faintly no matter how much I washed them.
Joy McKinley.
A name my momma had chosen like a prayer.
I pushed the thought away and focused on the work in front of me. A ribbon order for a bride who wanted “blush but not too pink,” an anniversary arrangement with hydrangeas and white ranunculus, two dozen mini bud vases for a restaurant event tonight. I had a list taped to the counter—color-coded, of course.
“Joy?” My assistant, Britney, called from the back room. “Did you check the invoice for the peonies?”
“Yes,” I said automatically, then softened it with a smile she couldn’t see. “The peonies are priced wrong again. They billed us for the premium stems.”
There was a pause, then the sound of her laugh—half amused, half exasperated. “Sounds about right.”
I slid my laptop closer, the screen already filled with neatly arranged columns. Most girls I knew—girls I’d grown up with on Wadmalaw Island, girls who’d gone to school with me at College of Charleston—had been good at things that shined in obvious ways.
I was good at numbers.
It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was the reason this shop existed.
I’d gone to CofC without a grand plan, just a quiet sense that I wanted to understand how things worked. Business sounded practical, maybe even dull, until I realized how much I liked the order of it.
My first accounting class surprised me. Numbers didn’t lie.
They showed you what was possible, what was working, and what needed fixing.
And I liked knowing the difference.
I’d always had a knack for it—balancing the books on Momma’s kitchen table when I was barely twelve, counting out tips in Mason jars at the farmers market on Saturdays, making little charts of what sold best in spring versus fall. When my parents talked about expanding off the island, about opening a shop downtown where tourists and wedding planners and the women who wore pearls on grocery runs would see our work … I was the one who made it possible.
I didn’t just want beauty. I wanted profit margins.
And I loved my family enough to want both.
I clicked through the invoice, highlighting the incorrect line items and drafting an email that was firm but polite. I didn’t have it in me to be sharp with people, even when they deserved it. That was the thing about being sweet. People assumed it meant you weren’t strong.
They didn’t realize sweetness could be stubborn as hell.
The bell chimed again.
A couple stepped inside—mid-forties, matching wedding bands, a kind of weary love between them that made my chest hurt a little. The woman drifted toward the cooler, her eyes soft as she took in the white lilies. The man stood near the door like he was afraid to break something.
