April had lived in this house for almost thirty years.
For about twenty of them, it had just been her and the girls. Haley and Tara had been her whole reason for being when Hank passed. As they grew up, moving through Middle to High School before eventually moving out, April had done her best to prepare them for the lives that they would have beyond the walls of their childhood home, just like any good mother would.
Still, April would have been lying to herself if she said that she didn't think that maybe she'd done a bit too good of a job...
"Headedtoworkmombyeeeloveyouuu~"
When Tara had been forced to move back home after a messy merger back in Charleston, April had done everything in her power to ensure that her oldest daughter had a soft nest to land in. She'd kept both her and Haley's rooms just the way that they'd left them, been insistent on letting Tara take her time and to not worry about paying rent for at least the first few months. She'd cooked her daughter's favorite meal to welcome Tara back under her wing. April had even bought her a few welcome-home presents like pajamas and blankets and other "comfy" things for Tara to nestle up and enjoy (what her mother felt) was a well-earned break from the daily grind.
"Oh but Tara, you hardly touched your—"
Tara had been out the door before her mother managed to get halfway through her objection to yet another early departure. April wasn't exactly surprised that her eager-beaver oldest daughter had found another job so quickly at the DynaCorp branch downtown, but again, she would have been lying to herself if she said she wasn't looking forward to having one of her daughters home again...
Even without that boyfriend of hers, Haley was still making it out in Charleston. She never messaged her or called her, and if it weren't for (what felt like) begrudging reactions on Facebook every time April posted an old memory on her timeline, they would probably only interact with one another once a month. Tara coming home was supposed to help alleviate that, even if it was only a little...
"—breakfast."
That was another two hours down the drain. What was the point of making her daughter these big breakfasts if she wasn't going to sit down and share a meal with her dear ol' mama?
"Well..." the older woman sighed, "Better not let any of this go to waste..."
April hadn't been slim since Tara was a little girl. She'd never dropped the pregnancy weight that she put on with Haley (for such a pretty thing, that girl had an appetite even back then!) and the ensuing years of enduring single motherhood had left her with far more than a few extra pounds hugging her once slender shape. Like all the women in her family, she carried her weight low—the Wider Hips were stronger and wider than ever when it came to April's very "domestic" body type. With age, she'd spread out into a comfortably plump two hundred pounds—at her height, while she wasn't as big as some of the other mothers that she knew in the South, it certainly wouldn't have hurt her to lose some weight.
Admittedly, two years suffering through empty nest syndrome once Haley had left had pushed her up to a little over two-twenty. So April was a little more than "comfortably" plump these days.
And these big breakfasts that Tara kept leaving on the table certainly weren't doing her any favors in that regard.
Another deep sigh as she cut into her stack of sweet buttermilk pancakes. Parting her full lips, she placed the first bite from Tara's plate onto her tongue and started the doldrum process of waste-not want-not.
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