She drove home so carefully that the trip took nearly twice as long as usual. Every pothole made her shoulders tighten. The truck smelled of cardboard, old quilts, feed dust, and the particular mineral scent of shells that reminded her of the years when the incubation barn had been the busiest place on Halstead Acres. As she turned through the gate, she could see the empty coops beyond the house and the roof she had patched three times. There was no sensible reason to believe eight hundred eggs would save any of it.
But for the first time since the bank letter arrived, she had something to do besides wait for someone else to take the farm.
The incubators were still where Walter had left them, beneath dusty canvas covers in the north end of the hatching barn. There were four machines of different ages, their metal cabinets scratched and their controls marked with pencil lines where previous settings had worked well. Kora pulled the covers back and stood before them long enough to understand what she was proposing to herself. She had not merely recovered a valuable-looking batch; she had committed to keeping unknown living embryos warm for nearly a month with equipment she could barely afford to repair.
The barn was not ready. A mouse had chewed one length of cable, the ventilation louvers stuck when Kora tried to open them, and one thermostat casing had cracked in a way that made its reading unreliable. She fetched Aaron's old tool bag, cleared a space on the workbench, and began testing each circuit as carefully as if she were preparing a nursery for an entire town. When the first machine came on, its fan made a rough scraping noise that stopped after she cleaned the housing and replaced the worn bearing.
By evening she had spent almost five hundred dollars on components she had intended to save for the mortgage. By the next afternoon, after finding a second fault and arranging for a replacement thermostat, the total would approach seventeen hundred dollars. She looked at the receipt and felt fear close around the decision. Even if every egg hatched, birds could not eat her certainty, and she had nearly emptied the account that paid for feed.
She called Dr. Leah Carver before opening the first carton. Leah had worked with farm animals in the county for more than fifteen years and had never been inclined to soften difficult information. When Kora told her where the eggs came from, Leah asked three questions about transport history, disease status, and the paperwork before she asked whether Kora had any hope of making money. The order mattered, and Kora appreciated it.
"You have no verified flock-health records," Leah said. "And you don't know why a commercial hatchery discarded them. If we proceed, we treat them as a separate flock under strict isolation until we've tested what needs testing."
"Agreed."
"And if we find disease indicators, we're not going to make exceptions because you can't afford the loss."
"Agreed."