Chapter 12
KYRA
One morning, Kyra woke to the sound of hammering coming from a short distance away.
She hadn’t been at all disturbed by the construction of the crib so far, so she had to assume Adam had moved the project out of the garage.
Maybe he was doing some finishing work and wanted a better-ventilated area, she thought.
But there was so much hammering, she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
Overcome with curiosity, she threw her clothes on and went outside before she’d even eaten breakfast.
The weather that morning had grown a bit cooler, but not so bad that she needed a winter coat. A windbreaker did the trick just fine. It felt like autumn now, which had always been her favorite season anyway.
She followed the sound of hammering around the side of the main house until she found Adam, kneeling before a structure she couldn’t begin to make sense of, hammering together a frame of some kind. It was definitely not the crib.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
He jolted, startled by her presence. “Oh, Kyra, good morning. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“You did, but that’s OK.” She smiled down at him. “My alarm was going to go off in half an hour anyway.”
“My apologies,” he said, turning back to his work.
She chuckled and moved closer. “I’ll only forgive you on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to tell me what you’re making. I can’t figure it out.”
“Well, you know how I went to town for supplies the other day?” he said. She nodded, and he began hammering again while he explained the situation. “I picked up some eggs.”
“Eggs?” No chance he was talking about breakfast.
“Chicken eggs,” he clarified, which was not much of a clarification in her opinion. “Fertilized ones.”
“Oh!” That made more sense. “So, you’re going to hatch them?”
He turned back to her and smiled, and she couldn’t help catching that smile with her whole heart, like it meant something more. “No,” he said. “You are.”
“Me?” She pointed to her chest. “Oh, I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not sure I’m qualified.”
“That’s why I’m going to show you what to do. They’re in an incubator. You really just have to turn them and keep an eye on them.”
She sighed like she was relieved. “Oh, good. I thought I was going to have to sit on them or something.”
Adam laughed and then asked her the question he always asked when they had spent their mornings separately. “Did you eat breakfast?”
“Not yet,” she admitted.
He shook his head at her and stood, placing his hand on the small of her back to gently guide her back to the house. “Come on. If you’re not nauseated anymore, you have to eat. I can’t have my hired hand passing out in the middle of the workday.”
That was typical of him, too. He always tried to act like his concern for her was business-related, when it was obvious he was really concerned about Kyra and the baby.
She decided to let him wear whatever mask he chose for as long as he needed it.
She was simply grateful he was staying by her side for one reason or another.
He led her back to the main house and sat her down at the dining room table. “What kind of breakfast do you want? And don’t you dare try to convince me you’re not hungry.”
In the past, Kyra had tried to argue with him.
She hadn’t wanted him to hover over her and look after her as though she were his wife.
If he did, she worried her hopes would eventually be crushed.
She had taken her mother’s advice in that respect, at least a little.
But now, after the crib and the parenting book, she was feeling like her hopes were not completely unfounded.
Little by little, she had begun to picture a future with him. So now, when he asked what she wanted for breakfast, she comfortably answered, “Oh, eggs on toast, please.” Then she quickly added, “But not the fertilized ones. Thank you.”
He laughed and fixed her breakfast. When she was finished eating, they both went outside and got some work done on Adam’s new project, which turned out to be a chicken coop.
“I wanted to be ready for springtime,” he explained. “There’ll be a place inside for the chicks over the winter.” He turned and smiled at her. “And I’m counting on you to look after them.”
Kyra had to wonder if he wasn’t giving her all the best jobs to keep her from running off as soon as the baby was born.
Taking care of an adorable colt and newly hatched chicks seemed like the kind of job she might have dreamed up as a child, something her mother would have had to explain wasn’t a real job.
But it was a real job. And Kyra had nabbed it somehow.
“How do you look after baby chicks?” she asked.
“I’ll teach you,” he said. “It’s mostly cleaning up after them and regulating temperature, keeping an eye on their health. That sort of thing.”
They chatted a bit more about Stormy and the future coop, all the while working without needing to say much about the work itself.
Together, they operated in perfect sync.
She knew when to hand Adam what he needed when he needed it.
All he had to do was hold out a hand, and she’d put the right tool into it.
Their ease in working together, in just being together even, gave Kyra more reason to hope.
Kyra took her job of looking after the eggs seriously.
She checked them even more regularly than she needed to because she was so excited to see them hatch.
It only barely occurred to her that part of the reason she was doing this job was to keep her away from some of the more strenuous activities on the ranch.
If this was a perk of being pregnant, she wasn’t going to fight it. Why say no to a good thing?
One day, she started hearing little peeps coming from two of the eggs, and she got ridiculously excited.
She immediately texted Adam to let him know.
He texted her back to tell her not to count her chickens before they were hatched.
It was the most literal use of that saying she’d ever heard, which made her laugh.
Then he told her to keep her hopes in check; they may not all hatch successfully, and they were most certainly going to take longer to do it than she expected them to.
She replied, You sound exactly like my mother, with no explanation whatsoever.
He texted back, I’ll take that as a compliment, which made her love him all the more.
It did feel like ages before she saw a crack in one of the eggs. Then it took another round of ages before a little beak finally found its way through. She kept Adam abreast of the entire process with a seemingly endless stream of text messages.
I think I see a foot!
Is it normal to take this long?
So close!
He rarely replied with anything other than an emoji or advice like, Resist the urge to help them. I will come to check them in a bit.
She texted back, That’s right. Mustn’t spoil the kidlets.
Then she whispered to a chick. “You can do it, little one. If you hatch first, you’ll be my favorite. There are big perks to being my favorite.”
Finally, the first chick kicked off the last piece of its shell and started the long process of learning to use its legs.
She was so thrilled that she gave it a soft applause.
“Congratulations!” she said in a loud whisper.
“I’m calling you Blue since you were the first, and you get the blue ribbon. ”
Later, when the chick’s feathers had dried into bright yellow fluff, she was able to put a little leg band on it. She chose the blue one and gave the chick another little pep talk before putting it back in the incubator with the rest of the eggs. “Encourage your siblings now,” she said.
No matter how many times she’d seen them on screens, Kyra couldn’t have begun to predict how hard she would fall for baby chicks when she was finally able to hold them in her hands.
Their little peeps gave her so much joy.
Even though they’d done the hatching all on their own, she couldn’t help but feel a little pride over having been the person to witness it.
She was there to protect them, and she felt a maternal instinct for the little yellow balls of fluff.
When Adam got back to the main house that night, he helped her to move the chicks to the indoor brooder he had built for them.
It looked quite cozy, with soft bedding and a nice warm heat lamp.
Kyra had taken to calling it the Sage Hotel, after Adam’s surname, and it stuck.
She looked up pictures by other breeders and was pleased to find that Adam’s brooder seemed extra luxurious.
“All our babies deserve the best,” she said to herself when Adam wasn’t listening. “I’ll accept nothing less.” Reflexively, she patted the bump of her belly as she said, “That includes you, little one.”
The chicks turned out to be a bit of a handful, but they were an adorable handful regardless.
Little Red — the second chick to hatch — was the first to escape the brooder.
Adam had to build higher walls for them after a while because they had so much energy and very little fear.
When they were a bit bigger, he would let them run around in supervised play sessions.
Kyra couldn’t get over the man’s ability to be gentle.
At first glance, he didn’t come off as a gentle person at all.
He was tall, brawny, a man of few words and a whole lot of action.
But when he handled those little chicks, he did so as if he thought they might break at any moment.
She’d never seen anyone be so gentle with anything in her life.
It wasn’t only the way he handled them, either.
The coop he’d made for them was the nicest one Kyra had ever seen, and he’d even let her help.
The interior had individual laying boxes and lots of flat perches for them to rest on.
It opened into a large outdoor area, too, so they could choose to go out and see the sky even when raptors were around.
The whole setup reminded Kyra of those super fancy “catios” people made for their spoiled cats.
Now they were going to have spoiled chickens.
She chuckled at the thought. “Little Blue and Little Red are going to love this,” she said to herself while she admired it one morning.
It felt so good to have made something like this with her own hands, even though she did have help.
She took some pride in it and decided she was going to learn to build more things in the future.
Getting to know chickens turned out to be more fun than Kyra could have anticipated. They really did have their own personalities, she noticed. She was glad these chickens were going to be egg-laying chickens, so she could get attached without worry.
Kyra was not the sort of person to not get attached, no matter how hard she may try, in any given situation.
She couldn’t help falling in love. She’d always been this way, ever since she was a little girl.
Her mom used to tease her about it when she had trouble saying goodbye to certain toys, or when she cried at her graduation because she didn’t want to say goodbye to the high school.
“This is Alder Creek, honey,” her mom had assured her. “You’ll still see your friends. Even if they move away, you can keep in touch.”
But it wasn’t only losing her friends that upset Kyra.
It was losing school, her teachers, her routine, her extracurricular activities, even daily lunch in the cafeteria.
She had loved all of it, and she was reluctant to say goodbye to anything.
Though she craved new things, she also wanted to hold on to the old ones.
It wasn’t change that scared Kyra at all; it was letting go.
So, if she could help it, she always held on to the things she loved.
If she had been a little more self-aware, she might have realized this was happening with the ranch, too.
It wasn’t only Adam she didn’t want to lose.
Just the thought of letting go of the ranch itself hit her so hard, she chose to think of it as seldom as she could.
Every cow, every chicken, each and every horse, she loved.
The detached apartment, the green barn she’d painted, and now the chicken coop.
How she wished she could hold on to it forever.
Deep down, she knew that might be impossible, but she shut that thought down the second it occurred to her and continued to hope for the best.