Winter in Mason Valley

by Eliza Bennetts

  Dee held out an open palm and Annie relinquished the knife and watched as Dee spread the butter.

  ‘You need to spread it all the way to the edge, or else I won’t eat the crusts,’ Annie warned.

  ‘Right,’ Dee said, taking care to follow the instructions. ‘So, Annie, your daddy is at work, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yup,’ Annie said, pulling the plate over so she could begin lavishing the bread with a huge helping of jam. ‘He leaves at ten minutes to six, and he wakes me up before he goes so that I don’t forget.’

  ‘Oh, okay. So who looks after you when Dad’s at work?’

  Annie giggled and Dee couldn’t help herself. She giggled, too. ‘I look after myself, silly billy.’

  ‘But, how do you get to school?’

  Annie shrugged. ‘Mrs Potts takes me.’

  ‘Mrs Potts? Who’s that?’

  ‘She’s the really grumpy lady who lives next door. Daddy pays her fifty dollars a week to walk me to school, then home again after. I don’t think she likes doing it, because she pulls on my arm.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dee said, shocked that anyone would not enjoy being around Annie and would hurt her. To be fair, Dee had only known Annie for less than a day, but she was yet to see a single quality she didn’t like. As far as Dee could tell, the kid was delightful in every way a child could be. She felt a rising swell of anger towards this Mrs Potts.

  ‘So Annie, who looks after you before Mrs Potts comes to pick you up in morning?’

  Annie laughed again. ‘I look after myself. I’m very good at remembering my jobs, except’—her little cheeks reddened with embarrassment—‘sometimes I forget to put fruit in my lunch box.’

  Dee screwed up her nose and gave the little girl a conspiratorial wink. ‘Well, fruit is very easy to forget.’

  ‘Yep,’ Annie said with nod, carefully dismounting the chair and lifting her plate from the bench. ‘I never forget my cookies, though!’

  ‘Of course not.’ Dee smiled widely, an attempt to hide the fact she thought it ridiculous that a six-year-old girl had to fend for herself for hours each day. It was reprehensible, and Travis should be ashamed of himself for leaving such a precious little thing all alone.

  Dee bit the inside of her cheek as the internal tirade towards Travis continued. But then she paused, thinking of her best friend Jo who’d also been a single parent for many years—sixteen to be exact. She remembered that Jo—who’d lived across the other side of the state at the time—had once told her that her daughter Sasha needed to fend for herself after school sometimes, because, well, simply because there was no other option. Jo had needed to work to pay the bills and Sasha had to do what the children of single parents needed to do sometimes—she had to look after herself.

  ‘So, how do you get inside after Mrs Potts drops you home?’

  ‘Mrs Potts has a key. Dad got a man to make it, but Dad is mostly home when I get home. He finishes work at three o’clock … wait!’ She looked up, her little mind working hard. ‘Yep, three, he finishes at three, but sometimes he’s a bit late if he needs to fix things up.’

  Dee nodded, wondering what these things were that needed fixing. Her business mind manned the control panel inside her brain, and she wondered if these things were costing the company money. Maybe there might be a cost-saving opportunity she could explore.

  ‘Well,’ Dee said, returning her attention to gorgeous little Annie. ‘If you need me to help you in the mornings, I can, because I’m going to be staying here a while. Maybe your daddy doesn’t have to wake you up so early. I can wake you up later, after I get up. That way you can have a little more sleep each day.’

  Annie frowned. She looked as though she might be trying to figure out how waking up later could be of any possible use to her. Dee had forgotten that kids didn’t quite worship and seek out sleep in the same way adults did.

  Annie nodded. ‘Okay, if you want,’ she said. Her tone lacked conviction, and she added a shrug.

  ‘Okay,’ Dee whispered as Annie shuffled past her and made her way to the lounge room where she promptly switched on the TV and plonked down on the floor, setting the plate of toast in front of her.

  Dee took in Annie’s cuteness for a few more beats and then got busy making herself a coffee. She found the instant coffee and switched on the kettle, making a silent promise to herself to visit the shops after work. She wanted to ensure she pulled her weight around the house domestically and financially. She didn’t want to give Travis any reason to badmouth her around the factory, and from what she knew of him so far, if the opportunity to badmouth her or make her look bad arose, he’d take it wholeheartedly.

  She pottered about in the kitchen, putting away the butter and jam and wiping the toast crumbs from the bench. Then, when her coffee was ready, she took it with her into the bathroom and began to ready her face and hair for the day.

  At around eight a.m., when Dee was ready and decided it was time to leave, she looked for Annie before she gathered her things and headed for the door. Once again, she found Annie in the kitchen, only this time, she was dressed in her green-checked school uniform. Her schoolbag was open where it lay, resting on one of the kitchen chairs. Annie loaded it up with her lunch box and drink bottle. She’d done a great job preparing herself for school, but her hair was an issue. It had been pulled into a scruffy, lopsided ponytail.

  Dee gave Annie a smile, and before she knew it, the air in the kitchen was filled with the sound of her own voice making the girl an offer. ‘Want me to do your hair for you?’

  Annie gave the top of her head a self-conscious pat, then she let out a short giggle. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  Dee moved towards her, but to her surprise, Annie scampered away. She returned seconds later with a hairbrush and a second hair elastic.

  ‘Can you do piggy tails?’ she asked.

  ‘Er, sure. Only, I’ll need a comb as well as a brush, so I can make the part.’

  Annie let out an excited gasp and sped away again. She returned with a comb and handed it to Dee.

  ‘I wondered what combs were for,’ she drawled, and Dee couldn’t help but smile at the upward inflection as the little girl spoke.

  Annie stood in front of Dee, turning her back to her.

  Dee slid the elastic from the little girl’s hair and smiled. It was a gratifying feeling, to have this mini person trust her this much after having known her for only twelve hours or so. Children had always shocked her in that way. Jo’s daughter had been much the same when she’d been Annie’s age—able to give such immediate and unwavering trust so quickly. Dee wondered, not for the first time in her life, if there were some things adults could stand to learn from children.

  She created the part, then brushed the first section, fixing the gathered hair in place with the hair tie. Then she worked on the second side, and when she turned Annie to face her, she found the symmetry of her hair only added to her cuteness.

  ‘You look great,’ Dee observed, just as an immense pounding sound reverberated through the house. ‘What is that?!’

  ‘Mrs Potts.’ Annie groaned, turned to grab her schoolbag and then slipped from Dee’s sight.

  Dee heard the front door open.

  ‘Hurry up. Don’t have all day.’ The woman sounded angry, her voice paper dry, her tone clipped.

  ‘I’m coming,’ Dee heard Annie say. She was exasperated enough to sound borderline panicked.

  Dee hurried to the front door and held out a steady hand towards the woman who had long, scraggy greying hair. She looked like a wicked witch on her day off.

  ‘I’m Dee Lovelace. I’ll be staying with the family for a while,’ she said, pushing forth the authoritarian tone she used at work sometimes, but only if she absolutely had to. This situation felt much like one of those times. She didn’t like this woman speaking to Annie that way, and she was more than happy to let the woman know she’d heard it.

  ‘You sound annoyed.’ Dee looked the woman square in the eye, a trick she’d lear
ned during her years in business. ‘If you let me know what time you’d like Annie ready, I’ll see to it that she’s on time. Were you knocking for long?’

  Mrs Potts scowled at Dee through unwashed strands of hair. ‘No.’

  ‘And what time do you usually collect Annie?’

  ‘Ten past eight.’

  Dee made a show of looking at her watch. ‘Ah, look at that! It’s only seven past. Good girl, Annie. You were ready right on time, early even. Nice work.’

  Annie’s eyes widened delightedly at the praise, and Dee’s smile, which she directed towards Mrs Potts, was positively saccharine.

  Mrs Potts looked from Annie to Dee, then back to Annie.

  ‘Okay, then. Let’s go,’ she said with begrudging civility. She turned to walk down the driveway and Annie followed behind, much like a little duck following its mother. Dee smiled when she saw Annie reach up, placing a plump hand on either side of her head and gliding them down her piggy tails.

  Travis was out in the yard, the dirtiest area of the plant. This was the place where wastepaper products rolled along the conveyor line to be sorted into bins before being fed into the pulping machines. These beasts belched and squelched like uncouth old men.

  Trav liked it out here. He liked being out in the sun, and the air, misty and crowded with paper particles, suited his mood today much better than the pristine industrial feel of the factory floor.

  The recycling plant had been his home away from home since he was nineteen. He didn’t love coming to work—it wasn’t like he jumped out of bed each day itching to fill his nose with the smell of paper pulp—but the place had been good to him. It’d given him skills and a good work ethic, and working here had helped him feed and clothe Annie since she was a baby. He’d also managed save the money he needed for the deposit on his home. Granted, his home wasn’t much; it was humble at best, but it was his and Annie’s, and he wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for the plant, so he could never bring himself to hate his job.

  Today, the setting was made even better by the fact that Pete and Drew, two of his best mates, worked alongside him, chatting as they shovelled mounds of tattered cardboard into the pulp. The subject had varied little since their shift had begun. It all revolved around Dee.

  ‘So …’

  Travis knew Drew was about to ask a question that would be along similar lines to the same question he’d asked in five different ways in the past hour.

  ‘There’s no real timeframe? She’s just staying with you till they find a rental? That could take a while. When I was looking for my last place, it was tough going. People in Mason either buy, or they park their lazy butts in a rental for twenty-odd years. You might end up with the boss in your house for a long while.’

  Pete nodded. ‘And how much did you say they’ll pay you each week?’

  ‘Three hundred,’ Trav shot back.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm and felt the corners of his mouth turn up as he took in the sight of Pete and Drew in their high-vis polo shirts. He knew he shouldn’t be smiling. He was wearing the same thing—by order of the manager.

  Drew whistled. ‘That’s a sweet deal. And, never know, you might just get lucky.’

  ‘Lucky how?’

  Drew shrugged. ‘She might end up having to stay at your place for a whole year.’

  ‘And why, exactly, would I consider that lucky?’ Trav asked.

  ‘Lots of ways,’ Pete said, adding a mischievous smile and a wink.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said absently.

  His mind wandered back to that moment, when he’d peeled away his tank and left himself exposed to her blue-eyed scrutiny. She’d looked pissed, that was for sure. He suppressed a chuckle—yeah, she’d looked good and mad, but he’d caught something else in her expression, too, mixed in among the anger. She’d given him a look of appreciation.

  ‘It remains to be seen if it’s a good situation to be in. It’ll depend on how much trouble she turns out to be.’

  Drew looked at Pete and Trav pointedly. ‘A hot little blonde in a tight skirt, living with you. Oh man, she’ll be trouble for sure.’

  ‘Yeah, well. I don’t think she’s gonna be the type of trouble you’re thinking about. I’m not sure she likes me. In fact, I’m quite sure she doesn’t.’

  Pete and Drew both threw their heads back, laughing heartily as though they’d just been told an incredibly witty joke.

  ‘Travis Parker,’ Pete drawled. ‘I’m yet to meet a creature of the female kind who doesn’t like you.’

  6

  Dee had thought the scenery coming into the town of Mason Valley had been bleak, and the entrance to the factory had done little to charm her. The drive from Travis’s house to the factory was just as drab.

  Nerves had overwhelmed her on her first day, and so she hadn’t noticed the intricacies of the exterior. Now, on day two, she was minus the intense nerves and could take it all in. There was a dense, brown, loveless office block out the front of the factory, which was adorned with a crooked sign that read Olsen Paper.

  Dee shook her head in wonder. She had worked for the Olsen family for more than a year and had come to know their brand as sleek and stylish. This place was a far cry from the plush lodge she’d worked at previously, or the modern, polished real estate developments that’d become a hallmark of the Olsen name.

  Attached to the back of the office, like a large unsightly tumour, was the factory itself. It rose up, an almighty structure clad in light-green corrugated iron. Despite the scene delivering little by way of aesthetics, Dee had to admit it was, after all, just a factory, and so little could be expected.

  She parked her hatch in the bay that read manager and removed her keys from the ignition. Picking up her briefcase, she wandered into the office building, feeling a subdued optimism about the day ahead.

  Yesterday had been a major speed hump. There’d been the “tops-off” incident, followed by the bad financial news from Vince, and then the wall of information that’d rushed at her and engulfed her like sand in a dust storm.

  Today would be different. She knew what she was walking into, the surroundings were more familiar—still depressing, but familiar at least—and despite yesterday’s drama, her first request—that all workers were to wear the prescribed high-vis shirts that’d been languishing in the storeroom—had been met. A cursory glance towards the factory floor at the end of her first day had revealed that much. One change made. One thing accomplished. Many, many more to go.

  The heavy glass office door that read push gave way. Dee stepped into the lobby and looked around, hoping to feel more enamoured with the place than she had the day before. But she was disappointed. Now that she was unencumbered by those first day nerves, she could take in the front area in greater detail.

  Dee was met with more uninspiring sights—muted brown carpet, beige office furniture and austere black frames with photos of nature coupled with words like determination and focus. Silence hung in the air like heavy drapes, excepting the distant rumble and grind of the factory.

  She’d learned yesterday that the reception desk was unmanned. Other than her and Vince, the office was a desolate wasteland. This had been a cost-saving measure according to Vince, a decision made by the previous owners to keep staffing costs low, but Dee felt it had the potential to do more harm than good. Without a reliable sales and marketing contact, sales would remain stagnant. But sales were the key, in Dee’s mind—sales and fixing the distribution mess.

  The lonely reception desk stood like a sentry before the hallway that led to her office. Once inside, she placed her briefcase on the desk and, once again, cast her eyes around the room. The walls really did look to be made of cardboard. Dee smiled as she considered that the Big Bad Wolf would have his way with them in one swift blow.

  She couldn’t see or hear any signs of Vince yet, so she reached for her vest and hard hat and made her way out to the factory. Once through the double doors, she was met with the metallic s
ound that still made her wince. She really did need to work on that. Wincing each time she entered the factory would do nothing to endear her to the workers. This time, though, the metallic sound was coupled with the constant beep, beep of a reversing truck. The roller doors were up, and a large truck was being backed into the loading bay. When it stopped, someone unlocked and swung open the back doors of the truck to reveal the large, yawning space within, and the area became a hive of activity.

  Dee watched on as the Olsen dispatch team got to work. They used the forklift to load the gaping hole with neatly shrink-wrapped towers of paper. The truck driver hung about laughing and joking and scratching various places on his extremely hefty body. Her staff were the ones doing all the work. They loaded up the truck, which looked to her to be a beaten-up pile of crap, and all the while, the truck driver stood by, appearing to be as useful as a set of teats on a bull.

  Dee watched the entire process from beginning to end, then wandered towards the space behind the dispatch area, taking care to follow the safety paths marked out by bright yellow lines. She took pleasure in the sound of her heels working against the concrete floors. The sound reminded her of how far she’d come, how hard she’d worked, and how proud her parents might be of her new accomplishment.

  Dee hadn’t shared the news of her position with them yet. She planned to wait until she was settled, until she had a solid and saleable plan for the business. When she was armed with more information and a blueprint for success, she’d ring her mum and dad and they’d be pleased.

  She hoped.

  A sudden and familiar pit of fear welled up in her gut. She knew this feeling well. It was like an old and horrid friend who seemed to rejoice in her trepidation, and it was always, always associated with her parents.

  Desmond and Bonnie Lovelace valued stories they could share with their friends at the golf club above all else. Dee and her brother Cade had often joked that the two things their parents cared about most were looking good in front of their friends and the number of steps they walked each day, in that order. A few years back, Dee’s parents had purchased smart watches, and ever since, they’d been obsessed.