Page 43 of Blackout

When I got to the office situated upstairs over our factory and main bakery, I walked in the rear entrance and climbed the stairs to the second level. When I opened the door to the office, no one was there. Relieved I was alone, I got to work to find the information I needed.

One side of this square room had a leather lounge, the same leather lounge I had spent many a night on, while the other side had a bookcase with a few of Grandpa’s favourite books, his cookbooks and achievements. Next to the bookcase were four cabinets which were, as far as I knew, filled with paperwork.

I sat down at the desk ready to start my search, only to find paperwork scattered across the desk. Addison had been here. I could tell she had been trying to help enter the daily figures. I tucked the paperwork under the keyboard to deal with later and opened the drawers on the left-hand side of the desk, as that was where I’d stumbled across and found out about the business terms about a week ago. But they were not here today, so they must have been filed away.

What I did find in the bottom desk drawer was a leather-bound A4 zipped-up folder that looked like the one my dad had once carried around. I didn’t even open it, just shoved it into my handbag. I would look at it later when there was no chance of being interrupted.

I moved from the desk to the cabinets, and I searched each drawer in the hope that I would find something. The first cabinet of four drawers had employee records in it, two for current and two for past employees. I stopped for a few moments to check each of my family member’s files, and they were pretty consistent. Nothing was hidden in them, and not even my dad’s file had anything out of the ordinary in it.

The second cabinet of four drawers had the bakery paperwork in it, all of Grandpa’s paper records that I’d digitised over the last five years. This filing cabinet stored years and years of invoices, receipts, budgets, profit and loss, tax returns, and assets and liabilities statements.

The next cabinet had two drawers of supplier information; the other two drawers contained special order information. The last cabinet was the one I really wanted to have a good look through as it was where I thought all the information I needed was filed.

I didn’t get to look, not right now anyway. I heard voices and footsteps coming up the staircase towards me. Halting my search, I took a seat back at the desk and fired up the computer. I know I said I wouldn’t work at the bakery anymore, but I needed answers and the only way to get them was to hang around.

‘Harley?’ My mother and grandfather said at the same time. They were surprised that I was here.

‘Mum, Grandpa,’ I answered in a voice that was higher than I normally used to give my them the impression they had caught me by surprise, but what I didn’t want them to know was what I was doing.

‘What are you doing here, Harley?’

I wondered if my grandfather was suspicious of me.

‘Consider this my two weeks' notice. I’m not quitting, just going to take a little break from the family business.’

Grandpa wasn’t happy but he didn’t press me on the issue. I turned away from him and towards my mother. ‘What are you doing here, Mum?’

‘I’m here for the tour of the bakery. After yesterday’s family meeting, your grandfather offered for me to take a look around. He also thinks I need to pull my weight.’ My mother elbowed me before she grinned at my grandfather in jest.

‘Well, if you’re here for the tour, we may as well get it started.’ I turned to Grandpa James and said evenly, ‘I can take it from here. I know the bakery better than anyone. While I show Mum around why don’t you take Grandma out for lunch.’ Grandma James would love for him to show her some attention. He had, after all, put in as many hours as I had, and he needed to spend more time with Grandma. But he offered again to show my mum around.

‘I know you own the bakery, but you are retired, Grandpa, and you left me in charge the day you did. I’m the manager, and I do a good job, so let me show Mum the ropes.’ The words were out of my mouth before I knew it as I stood up from the behind the desk.

‘Okay Harley, if you’re sure,’ Grandpa responded. ‘Lunch out would be nice.’ He said goodbye before walking out.

It would a chance to spend some time with my mother. We hadn’t spent a lot of time together since the accident. With my mother’s depression and my insomnia, I’d never seen her out of her bedroom. By the time my grandparents insisted Mum, Addison and I move out, I had become the manager of our family business and was stuck in Groundhog Day whereas my mother was coping with living her new normal. There were only a couple of times a year that Grandma James would make us all get together. I knew my mother would appreciate the tour I would give her.

‘First of all, how much do you know about administration?’ It was a question I felt stupid asking. I was interviewing my own mother on her work experience. Where did she work when we lived in Melbourne? I remembered she worked at the bakery named ‘Sweets’ in Mulwala for the four years we lived there. Did my mother know anything about managing a business? Was she currently working in administration? Could she handle working in a bakery this big? I had to believe the answers were yes.

‘You mean can I manage an office?’

Okay, that was not the answer I expected from my mother, but I guess you learned something new every day.

‘Harley, I can do this job with my eyes closed.’ My mother’s next words stopped me in my tracks. ‘This was my job back in the day when you and your sister were little. It was actually how I met your father. He would always make an effort to get to work early when he worked night shift just to see me before I left for the day. Then he would walk me to my car, and one day after a few months, your dad finally worked up the nerve to kiss me, and we spent every day together ever since. I worked here at the bakery up until Addison were born. I moved on from James Family bakery to another office job when you and Addison started school.’

It had been a long time since I’d heard those stories, or my favourite story of how my dad had met my mum. ‘When Dad wasn’t telling Addison and me about his crazy days in his band, you were telling us the story about how Ethan fell for Princess Mia.’ I waited for Mum to look at me. ‘I know we don’t talk about Dad anymore, but I want to. I don’t want to forget him or the crazy things he told us he did.’

‘I fell apart after your dad died. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you girls. But we won’t forget your dad, and we can talk about him and the crazy stories he told whenever you want. ’

‘I would like that. Will you be alright working here, Mum, with memories of Dad all around you?’

‘Somehow I think I’ll have to take each day as it comes,’ my mother answered before she asked a question of her own. ‘How do you feel about me being here now that you’re stepping down?’

How did I feel about spending the next couple of weeks working alongside my mother as she transitioned in and I transitioned out of working at the bakery? I had missed my mother’s recovery the same as she had missed my spiral into insomnia as I grieved my father’s death. We never checked in with each other; we were just trying to get through our days the best way we knew how. Now that neither of us were living in our own dark days, my family needed to work on the closeness we’d once had before my dad died. So, I told my Mum as much.

‘I know losing Dad was hard on you, and having Grandpa and Grandma James around after he died kept you, Addison, and I together, but our close-knit family fell apart. It will take some time, but we should work on being close again, especially now that Addison is having a baby.’

‘I would like that,’ my mother repeated my words back to me. ‘I would like us to be close again.’