Page 63 of Big Island Sunset
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 hegetting 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.”
