28. Tara
28
Tara
T ara could feel her whole nervous system winding down as she drove up the mountain towards the ranch. A feeling of home and comfort came over her as soon as she turned off the main road and onto the private drive lined with trees. Cows and sheep grazed peacefully on either side of the road, and it was all as green as Ireland – without the chill.
Usually Liam was there waiting for her on the front porch, but today the chairs were empty. She checked inside of the house, but there was no one home. She thought about settling in to wait for him until he came back from whatever minor farm emergency had called him away, but his house didn’t feel like home. Not yet.
It was Liam himself who gave her that sense of peace and security. Liam and the land.
So she went back out into the warm green day and wandered past the stables. She walked until she reached the goats, which occupied the highest point of Liam’s land, where the ground was rocky and never flooded even in the worst tropical storms. There was no one there, and so she wandered back down towards the house.
She finally found him in a quiet field out behind the ranch house. A faint mechanical sound caught her attention and grew louder as she crested a hill and made her way towards the back pasture. Liam was using a giant drill to bore holes in the volcanic rock that lay close beneath the rich soil. Here on this young island, they commonly had to go straight into the rock to make post holes deep enough for fencing.
He wore faded blue jeans and a plain t-shirt. She paused for a moment to admire him, watching his strong arms bend and flex as he worked in the last of the golden sunlight that slanted across the mountains.
Tara was just a few feet away when he finally noticed her. His face lit up with a broad grin, and he shut off the drill.
“You’re here.” He glanced up at the sun, already low over the mountains. “I must have lost track of time.”
“Putting in a new fence?” she asked, looking at the line of metal posts that he’d put in place. It seemed like an odd location, right in the middle of the field, but then he often practiced rotational grazing, pushing large numbers of animals though small areas of land so that they would graze it down completely before moving on. He usually used mobile electric fencing for that, though.
“Sort of.” He moved closer and greeted her with a kiss. “I’m building an aviary.”
She gaped at the line of fence posts, overwhelmed, and Liam put a strong arm around her waist. The space that he had laid out was huge, easily twice the size of the already generous aviary that her macaws had at home. It was a huge expense, and for a pair of animals who were nothing but an extravagance. For a rancher to give such a beautiful piece of land to a couple of birds was an immense act of generosity.
“It’s too much,” she said, her voice faltering. There were fruit trees in the perimeter he’d laid out, and his house stood on the nearest hill. He was essentially giving his backyard over to the macaws.
“This is where we had a trampoline when the kids were little, do you remember?”
She nodded, her mind traveling back through the years. “A picnic table too. You used to have Maddie’s birthday parties back here.”
“She practically grew up in this little field. But it’s been looking so sad lately. The trampoline was disintigrating, and the picnic table too. It was a relief to haul out the junk.”
“She doesn’t mind you turning her old playground into an aviary?”
“You know Maddie. She’s an animal lover. She’s excited to have the birds up here.”
Tara sighed and leaned into him. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
He held her close and kissed her just above her cheekbone. “You being here is enough.”
“Is it?”
“I feel such a deep sense of peace when you’re here with me. I’ve always wanted to go and do and build. There was a sort of restlessness in my chest, always. But with you next to me, I could be happy just sitting in a couple of rocking chairs on the lanai.”
“We’re not that ancient yet.”
“Give it a few more months, grandma.”
She pressed her face into the crook of his neck and let out a muffled groan.
“You’ll love that baby as much as you loved your own,” he said with a laugh. “It’ll be all of the joy and none of the pacing the house at three in the morning.”
She lifted her head and took a breath. She wasn’t ready to think about becoming a grandmother, not yet. In that moment, it was enough to stand with him in the gentle evening sunlight, enjoying the quiet sheltered hollow he had chosen for the macaws.
“It’s official,” she told him. “As of today, the house is on the market.”
He put a hand under her chin to tilt her face up and then kissed her, long and slow. When he finally broke away, he smiled down at her and said, “I’d better get this aviary up, then.”
“I’ll help.”
In the last of the day’s golden light, they set about building their new life. Together.