Jess was not having a good day—she was having one of the worst days of the year, in fact, if not of the decade. After five different calls with the bank, and another with the mortgage company, she still couldn’t figure out how she was going to get their finances straight. Their bills were too high and their income too small. No matter what scenario she ran through, Jess could not think of a solution.
She sat in the little back room of the shop for hours, neglecting the rest of her duties as she desperately tried to balance the numbers on either side of her spreadsheet. She’d known they were in a precarious position—they’d been in a precarious position since before she took over the shop—but she’d just received the new bill for her uncle’s medication. It’d gone up, and that—alongside the r
