18. Tara
18
Tara
T ara turned the burners on her stove down to a low simmer and stepped outside, breathing in the cool morning air. She didn’t spend nearly enough time outside anymore. Aside from rushing through her morning and evening chores with the goats, she basically lived in her little hotbox of a kitchen.
The one day a week that she took off to hike to waterfalls with the family or get in a few hours at the beach replenished her just enough to keep her going — but even so, she felt as if she were constantly teetering on the edge of a cliff. It was exhausting to have so many plates spinning and no real room to rest.
The sun was warm on her face, but the morning was still cool. She wandered aimlessly through the backyard, past the goats and the rabbits, until she reached the aviary.
A sudden guilt pricked her heart as she realized how long it had been since she’d last visited her birds. One of the green macaws flew to the side of the aviary and climbed the wall, screeching for her attention.
“Here I come,” she soothed him.
When she let herself into the aviary, Ricky was waiting in the nearest tree. She held out her arm, and he stepped up from the branch. She brought him close enough to cuddle and scratched his neck.
Overhead, Lucy gave an indignant squawk.
“You’re welcome to come down if you want some attention,” Tara told her.
Lucy stayed about ten feet up in a tree, grooming her feathers and pointedly ignoring her. She got like that whenever Tara spent too much time away.
She hadn’t even set foot in the aviary in weeks. Piper had been keeping the parrots fed and watered, but they hadn’t gotten much attention lately. The macaws were family, first her mother’s and now hers, and she felt bad about ignoring them for weeks at a time.
It was just one more pebble on the scale of stay vs sell… and while there were a handful of pebbles on the stay side, sell was the clear winner.
After a long visit with her birds — Lucy did eventually come down for a bit of attention — Tara went back inside to check her soups.
The two enormous pots had reduced enough that she turned off the burners and left them to cool. They would be a part of that week’s meal deliveries — and in the meantime, they would feed her family.
“Kids,” she called down the hallway. “Lunchtime!”
Cody came out first, bleary-eyed from hours in front of a computer screen. He was still keeping up with his online classes in addition to working a number of part-time jobs that added up to fifty hours a week, and she worried about him. Was he getting enough sleep? Any questions along that vein just made him crabby, so she focused on at least keeping him well fed.
He ferried big bowls of squash soup to the table as she served them up, and she quickly grilled a few burger patties to go with them.
“Where are the girls?” she asked.
“Not in their room, I don’t think.” Cody rubbed his eyes. “I’ll check out front.”
He went out and came back a few minutes later with both girls in tow.
“We were restocking the farm stand,” Piper said proudly. “There are more than fifty eggs!”
Tara frowned; she needed those eggs for the quiche she’d planned to include in that week’s meals. But the girls meant well. By the time she’d flipped the burgers and turned to face them, she’d fixed her face.
“I made lemonade,” Paige said, “but only one person stopped so far.”
“Why don’t you go grab the lemonade and we’ll have it with our lunch?”
“Okay.” She ran back out, and the food was ready by the time she came back.
The four of them all sat down together at the table, and something in Tara’s chest eased. Between Cody being out of the house so much and Tara working through meals, it felt like it had been a long time since all four of them sat down together. She ate slowly, soaking in the sight of their faces and the sound of the girls’ chatter, and waited until the end of the meal to make her announcement.
“There’s something that we need to talk about,” she said as they scraped the bottoms of their bowls.
Cody looked at her warily, Paige with wide-eyed apprehension, and Piper with a dreamy sort of look that said her mind was elsewhere.
“Liam’s asked us to move up to the ranch… and I think it’s a good idea.”
Piper’s full focus snapped to her. “We’re moving?!”
“You mean we could live up by the stables?” said Paige.
“What about our animals?” Piper demanded.
“What about our house?” Paige asked.
Tara held up a hand and waited for them to quiet down. Cody was still as a statue, watching her.
“There’s a lot to figure out,” she acknowledged. “Some of the animals can come with us, and some it makes more sense to sell.”
“There’s a lot of room up there,” Paige said thoughtfully. “We could probably bring all of them.”
“We probably could, if we wanted to. But it’s a lot of work, and a good opportunity to decide which ones we really want to keep.”
“Can we ditch the geese?” Piper asked. “I am so tired of those geese.”
“And no more turkeys,” Paige added.
“We ate all the turkeys.”
“No, Madame Pomfrey is still out with the sheep.”
“I forgot about her!”
“That’s because you never feed the sheep,” Paige said crossly.
“That’s your job.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be! We were supposed to share that one.”
“You’re selling our house?” Cody asked, his voice low and quiet.
“I think that’s for the best,” Tara confirmed. “It will give me room to breathe financially. As it is, we’re one bad month away from financial ruin.”
“So it’s all about money?”
“No,” she said, surprised. “It’s about wanting to spend more time with Liam, more time with—“
“Why doesn’t Liam sell his house?” Cody growled.
“His place is way bigger,” Piper said.
“He has horses,” Paige added.
“Duh.” Piper rolled her eyes at her brother.
“This is our home!” Cody’s chair scraped the floor as he stood.
“It’s been a good home,” Tara said, trying to soothe him, “but—“
“Jun’s about to have a baby!” His voice rose in panic. “I thought that we could take things slow, because she’d be right next door and I’d be here to help. What am I supposed to do if you sell our home?”
“It would give me more time to help with the baby too,” Tara said, but he wasn’t listening.
“Where am I supposed to live?”
“You could live with us at the ranch.”
“Do we even get a say in this? Did you sell it already without even telling us?”
“It’s not even on the market yet. It will take time to make this happen, but… Cody, I really think it’s for the best.”
He turned and stalked towards the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m spending the night at Dad’s house. Maybe that’s where I live now. Maybe that’s for the best.”
He slammed the door behind him, and Tara’s heart sank.
He was trying so hard to be grown, but he was still such a child.
“Is he really going to live at Dad’s house?” Paige asked.
“No way,” Piper said. “He hates it there.”
“But is he going to live at the ranch with us or not?”
“Who knows? He’s practically a grown-up already. Maybe he and Juniper will get their own house.”
“In this economy?” Paige demanded, parroting a show they liked.
Piper snorted so hard that lemonade shot out her nose.
Tara sat back, smiling at her daughters even as she stared at the front door. Her heart was a jumble of love and excitement and fear.
Moving up to the ranch was the best thing for their family. She felt sure of that.
She just hoped that Cody would come around sooner rather than later.