Leah was quiet for a moment. "Then I'll come in the morning. I want to see the shells and the manifests. And Kora? Promise me you won't spend your last dollar before we know what you've got."
Kora looked at the pile of receipts. "I'm already a little late on that promise."
Leah did not scold her, which was one of the reasons they had remained friends. She arrived before sunrise with sanitized equipment, clean clothing, and a notebook that was not the one Kora kept. Together they examined the eggs under controlled light, looking for damage, improper air-cell development, and signs that made continued incubation pointless. They rejected sixty-seven outright because they were cracked, empty, or showed abnormalities that could not be justified by wishful thinking.
Of the remaining 733, six hundred forty-two looked promising enough to classify as the strongest candidates, while ninety-one required a second look after several days. It was too early to call them living chicks, Leah reminded Kora; eggs that appeared intact and fertile-looking could still fail. Kora wrote the distinction in Walter's notebook because she wanted no inflated numbers on a day when hope was already doing enough to influence her judgment. They numbered the trays and put the rejected eggs aside for proper disposal under the veterinary protocol.
"If that scanner said none of these had any potential," Leah said, checking her notes, "either the machine was wrong or somebody wasn't using it to answer the question we're asking."
"That's what I thought."
"Thinking isn't proving."
"I know."
Leah looked at her over the top of her glasses. "Good. That's why I like working with you. You can be foolish, but at least you document your foolishness."
They laughed for the first time in several difficult weeks. It felt strange enough that Kora almost apologized for it.
The first night passed in a blur of gauges, ventilation checks, and the soft shudder of aging fans. Kora taped a schedule above the workbench and set alarms on her phone, though she was already waking before they sounded. The four incubators were not identical, so each required its own careful record; she would not trust a general average to tell her that a cooler corner of the barn was safe. She wrote down readings by hand the way Walter had taught her, noticing patterns only because the numbers sat in rows where she could compare them.
On the third day Caleb called and heard machinery humming behind her. He knew every machine on the farm by sound and recognized the old incubator fans immediately. He asked whether she had found a customer, and Kora told him she had found eight hundred eggs in a waste station. There was a very long silence.
"You rescued garbage?" he finally asked.
"Potentially useful garbage."
"Mom."
"I checked the paperwork. Leah's helping."
"You need money."
"I'm aware."
"No, I mean real money. The bank's not going to accept turkeys that don't exist yet."
Kora sat on a bucket and pressed her fingers into her temple. "I know that, Caleb. You don't have to explain the bank to me."