"Still six dollars, last time I checked."
The corner of his mouth moved. "I owe you an apology."
"You told me to wait until fall before deciding. It's nearly fall." Vera rested her forearms on the rail. "You can hold on to the apology another week if you'd rather be exact."
Daniel laughed softly, then grew serious. "What will you do next?"
She had rehearsed the answer alone so many times that speaking it aloud felt like opening a gate. "I'm going to build the flock. First I need to establish whether these birds breed true, or how much of what I see will pass to their young. If it does, I want a hundred laying hens next year, perhaps more after that, but I won't spend the money until the records support the plan."
"A hundred?" Daniel repeated.
"If the results hold. The eggs alone won't make me rich, but breeding stock might give me another market, and hatching eggs another. A flock big enough to produce reliably could be worth more than these dry acres have paid in wheat for three seasons."
Daniel followed her gaze toward the old barn and considered the space. "You'd need another coop, feed storage, more nesting boxes, probably a separate place for young stock."
"Two hundred square feet for the next stage, at least, and more room later. I've got lumber from the windbreak Father took down in thirty-two. The north corner of the barn can hold feed if I move the old cultivator."
"That's a considerable job for one person."
"I have Saturdays," Vera said.
"I have Saturdays, too."
She looked at him. "I'm not asking."
"I know you're not." Daniel put his hat back on, then removed it again because he seemed unable to decide where it belonged. "I'm offering. We might disagree about the birds, but I can build a square wall and a roof that doesn't leak."
"You were fairly sure I'd lost my mind."
"I've revised that opinion."
"Since Martha said thirty cents?"
Daniel met her eyes. "Since you kept showing me the work instead of pretending the work was easy. The thirty cents helped me understand the arithmetic."
Vera wanted to answer with something sharp, but the honesty in his face stopped her. She looked at the barn, the lumber stacked beside it, and the light coming through the doorway, then back at the fence that had separated their conversations for two years. "Saturday," she said. "Seven in the morning. And if we're building it, we're building it right."
"Seven," he agreed.
"Bring your square. Mine's bent."
"I know. That's why I'm bringing mine."
Their first Saturday began before the sun cleared the shelterbelt. Daniel arrived with a carpenter's square, a saw, and a tin box of nails he had collected from jobs where extra materials remained. Vera had already marked the ground with string and driven four stakes to show the corners. She