12. Tara

The rain was coming down in sheets, which meant that Tara was wearing a raincoat and boots to do her usual evening chores. Not her usual waterproof muck boots, but actual rain boots that came most of the way up to her knee. If she had tried to wear her usual shoes, she would have lost them in the mud.

It had taken years to build this soil up on top of the lava rock, and she was grateful for the fertile ground… usually.

Until a particularly heavy rainstorm hit and her land turned into one enormous, treacherous mud pit.

Once the animals were finally squared away, she tromped back towards the house. She paused at the aviary on her way back, but she couldn’t see the macaws through the heavy rain. The sun hadn’t set yet, but with the heavy layer of storm clouds above it was nearly dark as night.

She was tempted to bring Lucy and Ricky inside, but they had weathered plenty of storms before this one. They were rainforest birds, after all.

The main reason that her mom had decided to move to Hawai’i had been to give her precious macaws a more natural life outdoors. They had moved there in hope of a fresh start when Tara was a teenager.

Then her mom had gotten sick, and all of her plans for an aviary were put on hold. The macaws had free run of the house when they were home, but more and more they were shut up in their cage while Tara and her mom were at the hospital.

Then she was gone, and all that Tara had left of her mother were the two macaws. For years, Lucy greeted her every day with, “Good morning, sunshine!” just like her mom had.

When she and Mitch had purchased this property nearly twenty years ago, the first thing that Tara did was build a massive aviary for the two birds. The enclosure encompassed multiple trees, including a huge guava. It had taken nearly a year to complete on a shoestring budget, but she did it.

Years after her mom died, Tara had finally made her dream a reality.

She had started to put out feelers, searching for good homes for some of her most expensive farm animals, but she would never part with Lucy and Ricky. They were family.

As the wind picked up, the albizia trees in the adjacent lot swayed dramatically against the gray sky. It was incredible how much they had grown in the time she had lived there.

The tall trees were beautiful, but they were dangerous. Heavy branches dropped off of albizia trees with such alarming regularity that the trees were sometimes called “widow makers”.

When she first arrived, there was nothing in the empty lot next door but weeds. The ten-foot variety of weeds that plagued any tropical lot, but still. Weeds.

Nearly two decades later, the trees were well over one hundred feet tall.

Over the years, she had tried without success to contact the owners of the adjoining lot and speak to them about cutting down the invasive trees. They didn’t pose a danger to the house, thank goodness, but falling branches had taken out her fence more than once, letting in the wild pigs that roamed the neighborhood.

As the rain picked up again, she ducked into the mudroom.

Inside, the house was incredibly cozy. The kitchen smelled like chocolate chip cookies, which Piper had whipped up with a bit of help from Cody. The living room glowed with the fairy lights that Paige had begged for after seeing them at Lani’s house. She had hung them up herself.

The three kids were watching a movie all piled onto the couch under one big quilt that their grandmother had made long before any of them were born. Her mother had never gotten to meet her grandbabies, but it warmed Tara’s heart to see them draped in her love all the same.

Plates on the table held cookie crumbs and smears of chocolate alongside empty milk cups.

“Hi Mom!” Piper called. Her siblings shushed her, and she ignored them. “We saved you some cookies.”

“Thank you.” Tara found them in the kitchen, still warm, and poured herself a warm glass of milk before putting the rest of it into the fridge. The cookies were perfect, crispy at the edges and gooey in the center.

She loved the unusual desserts that she was concocting out of island carbs like breadfruit and purple sweet potato, but there was something deeply comforting in the old staple of a simple chocolate chip cookie – particularly one made with love by her daughter.

She settled into her favorite chair to enjoy the treat, then reluctantly returned to the kitchen to get a head start on prep work for the next batch of meals.

The kids had finished their movie and were halfway through a game of Settlers of Catan when their dad arrived, his hair and shoulders soaked from the ongoing rainstorm.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“We’re all packed!” Paige assured him.

“Can’t we finish our game?” Piper asked.

“What if you pack it up and bring it to my place? We can play together.”

“But I’m gonna win this one,” she whined.

Cody laughed. “No way. You don’t even have any brick.”

“I don’t need brick! I’m on a sheep port. I’m building a kingdom of sheep!”

“Come on,” Paige said, already putting her cards away. “We can play at Dad’s house.”

“Dude!” she protested as her sister cleared the pieces from the board.

Paige rolled her eyes. “I’ll play the one with the boats.”

“You’ll play Seafarers with me? You hate Seafarers.”

“Or the one with the soldiers.”

“Cities and Knights?” Piper’s grin turned devious. “Both? At the same time?”

Paige sighed. “Fine. Let’s just go.”

“I’ll get the boxes!” Piper ran off, leaving her siblings to clean up the game.

“Do you want to come with us?” Mitch asked Cody. He was trying so hard to sound casual, but Tara could hear the anxiety in his voice. “We could get some pizza, have a board game and movie night?”

“We were already having a board game and movie night,” Cody muttered.

“Please, Co?” Paige asked.

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll go grab some clothes.”

“Yay!”

“What?” Piper asked as she came back into the living room.

“Cody’s coming!”

“Huzzah!” She lifted the boxes over her head in celebration. The one on top slid off and fell to the floor, spilling its contents everywhere. “Aw, dagnabbit.”

In the kitchen, Tara stifled a laugh. Piper was a voracious reader, and Paige loved black and white movies. Between the two of them, they picked up the funniest old words and phrases.

Cody came back with a canvas bag in hand, looking conflicted.

“Ready to go?” Mitch asked. He was still hovering near the front door.

Cody looked at Tara and asked, “Will you be okay in this storm?”

“I’ll be fine. You should get on the road before the wind picks up.”

“Okay.” He turned to his sisters. “Ready to make a run for it?”

“Just a sec.” Tara grabbed a trash bag and put the three cardboard Catan boxes inside. “Okay, you’re good to go.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Piper hugged her fiercely before picking up the games and sprinting through the rain to Mitch’s car.

Tara hugged the other two… and then she was alone.

Well, mostly alone. Their old German Shepherd settled onto her bed with a tired sigh while the younger dog whined miserably at the front door, devastated that his people had gone out into the storm without him. Tara’s heart felt much the same.

The house was almost eerie with all three kids gone.

She didn’t like it.

But she made the best of it, turning her music up and getting a fair bit of prep work done while the wind howled outside. Eventually she found a novel that she had started years ago and settled down on the couch to read, a luxury that she hadn’t allowed herself in ages.

Maybe she could get used to the kids being at their dad’s house every now and again.

She had just gotten into her book, fully transported to rural Appalachia, when a thunderous crash sounded outside.

Not thunder. Something far worse.

Tara threw the quilt off of her lap and went to assess the damage. If there was a fence down, there was nothing that she could do about that now, in the middle of a storm. But she at least needed to make sure the animals were alright.

Just a few years ago, the goat shed and the rabbit shelter were a safe distance from the albizia trees. But now, in this wind… she wasn’t certain.

Even with a flashlight, she couldn’t tell from a distance where the branch (or tree) had fallen. It was raining too hard, sheets of water in front of her face obscuring her vision. She moved slowly, scanning back and forth with her light in search of damage. The goat shed looked fine, and the rabbits were still safe and snug.

Then she heard the parrots scream.

It was barely audible over the sound of the storm, but she could hear sounds of distress from her birds. They had probably been frightened by the crashing branches. She made her way across the yard, wondering if they would be willing to sit on her shoulders and ride through the rain into the house, where they could shelter overnight. She still had their old perch in the garage somewhere…

Then she saw the damage. She nearly tripped over the outermost branched in the darkness.

A massive branch had crashed down from the outermost reaches of one of the giant trees. The central branch itself was as wide as a tree trunk, and it had taken out a section of her fenceline. She followed the crisscrossing mess of broken branches with her light and gasped.

It had also hit the aviary. The wall nearest her was crumpled into a mess beneath the branches. Instinctively she moved towards it, but there was too much wreckage to climb over without hurting herself.

Lucy’s cries of distress grew louder as Tara circled around to the aviary door.

“Mama!” she called. It was a habit she’d picked up when Cody was small.

“I’m here,” Tara crooned. “I’m here. Let’s get you inside.”

Lucy screeched so loud that Tara winced.

“I know. I know, that was so scary. Come here. Step up.” She tried to coax Lucy onto her arm, but the bird put one foot onto the slick surface of the rain jacket and then pulled it back to the branch, pulling her body into an agitated crouch.

Finally, when Tara shed the raincoat and put out her arm with just the soaking wet long sleeve cotton shirt, Lucy climbed on and consented to transfer over to her shoulder.

“Where’s Ricky?” Tara could hardly hear herself over the wind and the rain.

Lucy shrieking right next to her ear, on the other hand, just about busted her eardrum. Tara decided to take her inside first and then go back out to find Ricky. She hurried inside, scanning with her flashlight as she went for more dropped limbs.

In the house, she went straight to the bathroom. The dogs and parrots had never been confined to a room together, and that wasn’t an experiment that Tara was willing to conduct without her direct supervision.

Lucy flew up to perch on the shower rod, and Tara slipped back out the door.

Already soaked to the skin, she didn’t bother with her raincoat. She went straight back out to the aviary in search of Ricky.

It frightened her that she didn’t hear him.

She looked everywhere. Every perch in the aviary, every wall and corner. She even looked under the wreckage, fearing the worst, but there was no sign of him. She scanned the surrounding trees with her flashlight, searching desperately for a glimpse of emerald feathers amongst all the green. He wouldn’t be easy to spot, but surely she would hear him?

“Ricky?” she called, walking all around the yard.

Confused and frightened, the cows started to bawl.

“Ricky?” she called again and again, working her way back towards the house.

It was no use.

He was gone.