They finished the boxes on a Saturday, and Vera found herself beginning to anticipate his visits even when she wished she did not. Daniel never asked her to tell him about her loneliness, though he had probably recognized it long before she did. He spoke of soil conditions, the condition of the fence, and which families were having trouble getting water from their wells. Sometimes he stayed only ten minutes. Sometimes he worked beside her until the sun lowered and she could no longer pretend supper was an inconvenience to be postponed.
Vera remembered how much she had resented other people's concern after her father died. Sympathy had arrived in casseroles, prayer, and unsolicited plans for what she should do with the farm, and she had pushed nearly all of it away because she was afraid that accepting help would confirm their judgment of her inadequacy. Daniel's presence was beginning to feel different. He could disagree with her, and often did, but he seemed increasingly willing to regard her decision as the beginning of a conversation rather than the end of one.
By the beginning of August, the birds were moving through the run with the confident weight of young hens approaching their first laying season. Their combs had changed, their bodies had settled into adult proportions, and the soft silver sheen across their feathers deepened in the late afternoon light. Vera watched one inspect the new nest boxes three times in a single morning, circling and settling before getting up again as if the box were not quite to her satisfaction. She marked the date in her notebook without allowing herself to write the word she wanted to write.
The first egg appeared on a Thursday. Vera entered the coop expecting to collect the two ordinary eggs from the older hens in the adjoining run, and there it was on the clean bedding, large, pale blue-white, and unmistakably different from anything her farm had produced before. She stood with the feed bucket in one hand and simply looked at it, afraid for an instant that touching it would undo the moment. Then she put the bucket down and lifted the egg carefully into her palm.
It was heavier than she expected. The shell had a smoothness and firmness that seemed unusual, but she knew appearances could mislead, and she turned it beneath the morning light looking for cracks. There were none. She carried it to the kitchen as carefully as though it were made of glass, weighed it on the same scale she used for the birds, and wrote the result in the notebook. Only after the number was recorded did she allow herself the pleasure of smiling.
She broke it into a white bowl. The yolk rose high and deep gold, darker than the yolks she remembered from the ordinary hens, and the white spread slowly around it. She knew the yolk color could reflect what a bird ate, and she would not claim special nutrition on sight alone, but the difference was striking enough to make her pause. She stirred the egg without milk or seasoning and cooked it in a small skillet, wanting to understand the flavor before improving it with anything else.