Twenty-Five

Hudson

The more I found out, the less I knew. After speaking with Dad, I thought it was odd how happy he sounded. Thinking back, it had been a long time since he'd been excited about anything. I was thrilled to see him get some of the spark back, but I hadn't thought about how much it might have impacted the store.

"Hudson?" Jack said and walked over to where I was sweeping.

"Yeah?"

"I'm a little worried for the floor," he said and pointed at the spot I'd been furiously sweeping.

"Fuck, I'm just worried what else I don't know about. I mean has he been paying all the bills?" My mind raced with different scenarios and none of them were good. "When was the last time you had a raise? I know I asked you about it before, but I didn't check on the books yet."

He squinted one eye and let his head drop back while he thought about it. "It's been a while, but to be honest I haven't given it much thought. Mostly I just wanted to keep the store going," Jack said.

"I'm going to check the books today, I've put it off long enough." He gave me a worried look before turning to help a customer who had just walked in. While he was busy, I walked back to the office. There was an old, dust covered Dell desktop computer that I knew was half as old as me and I was pretty sure wasn't what Dad had been using to do the books on. I opened a few of the drawers and found a variety of product manuals and books to order supplies from, most of them dated at least three years ago.

In the middle drawer was an old ledger book. "Fuck you've got to be kidding me." I pulled it out and recognized it as the same as the one he used to write in when I worked here as a teen. I flipped through it and sure enough this was how he'd been doing the books. "I guess I should be thankful he's been doing them," I grumbled, but when I got to the last entry, the date was over a year ago.

To say I was shocked would have been putting it mildly. I slumped into the old office chair and hunched over the book hoping he'd at least done an accurate accounting of the last year. Comparing it to past years it did look complete, but I'd need to have access to all the records and the business bank account to know for sure.

There was a file cabinet next to the desk and I eased the bottom drawer open and secretly hoped it was empty, but luck was not on my side today. Receipts, cancelled checks, and handwritten purchase orders were all packed into the small space. The top ones were dated just a month or two ago, and when I got down to the bottom they were where the ledger had left off. I wondered once again, what had happened to make him just stop trying, but at this point it didn't matter. It was my problem now, or it would be. And I'd take care of it.

"Guess I know what I'll be doing for the foreseeable future," I once again grumbled to myself.

"What's all that?" Jack asked when he walked into the office.

" That is all the receipts, and everything connected to the business for the past year and a half," I said and continued to dig through the papers.

He cringed when he saw how many there were before pulling up the other chair in the room. "How can I help?"

I handed him a stack of papers without even thinking about it. "Put them in supplier then date order. I'm going to order a laptop so I can start fresh and not do it all by hand."

He nodded and after picking up the stack he made a few piles on the desk. "Is this correct?" I asked and showed him what hourly wage was recorded in the ledger. It was barely above minimum wage, and it pissed me off that he'd been acting as manager and employee but wasn't being rewarded for it. His eyes met mine and I knew the answer without him even answering.

"It really is okay," he said.

"No, it's not. He could have done many things to avoid all this shit but instead it looks like he just dropped the ball and let it all go. I'm giving you a three dollar per hour raise, that's proactive to your last check. You should be making more than that, but I'll need to look closer at the financials first." I took out another stack of receipts and added to the piles Jack had started while starting a few of my own. We were interrupted a few times by customers, but Jack took care of them while I kept digging for more.

Once we'd organized all the receipts, Jack stapled them together and I found an empty large envelope to store them all in. I chanced it and opened the top drawer, and it contained past ledgers for the entire time my dad had owned the store. I thumbed through the most recent one, and it was all in neat order for the complete year.

"Why would he just stop doing his books? He did them every year until last year," I said to Jack but didn't expect an answer.

"That's about the time he started not coming in every day. Maybe he just got tired of it?" He shrugged and looked at the neatly written pages. The bank statements were also in that drawer and while he did have money in the account, and the store was still making enough to pay the bills, it had slowed considerably in the past year.

"Maybe. Hey, he had mentioned he was going to contact a company about selling the business. Do you know if they've been here before?" I asked because there had to be something more going on than Dad just not wanting to run the business anymore.

Jack thought for a moment before his eyes met mine. "There was a guy who came here one day a while back. He said they were considering a big construction project by the lake and were trying to buy up any businesses or land that was available before that happened."

"When was that?" I asked.

"A little over a year ago."

"Do you know what his name was?" I asked because this was starting to make sense. He reached across the desk and picked up a business card that was tucked under the edge of the plexiglass cover.

"This one." He handed it to me.

"Gibbons Real Estate Sales," I read out loud. "This is who offered to buy the store and resell it?" He nodded his head. "I think I need to find out more about this company." I had a bad feeling about this, but I'd know for sure soon enough. But if I found out they were harassing my family in any way, they were going to find out the hard way how wrong that decision had been.