Chapter 1
She rose to my level,murderous intent settling into her cold, dark eyes. I froze, daring only to steal a glance at the fuzzy-headed baby sleeping beneath her feet. I quickly met her stare dead on, answering her unspoken challenge. A line from a movie burst into my head. I set my jaw into a hard line and took a breath.
“Get away from her, you bi?—!”
“Ba-GAWK!”
She spread her black wings and launched herself from her perch atop the metal cage, flying over my head as a spray of straw and hemp chips covered the ground between us.
“Sorry,” Eric called out. He stood in the doorway of the chicken coop. He held a small rake in his gloved hand, his face covered with an N95 mask. He overshot his mark by a few inches when he tossed out the pile of winter bedding. I waved the flying dust from my face, grateful for my ownmask.
A tiny chirp drew my attention. Four black chicks rose from their oblivious slumber, finally disturbed by the ruckus. A whoosh of air hit my cheek as Zelda came down and landed on my shoulder. I was grateful for the protection of my hoodie as she curled her talons and found her balance.
“I don’t know,” I said to Eric. “She’s been eyeing those babies all morning. What if she never accepts them?”
Zelda, our gray and white Easter Egger hen, had emerged as the flock leader after staging a coup against our larger black Australorp. Until yesterday morning, she’d coasted on sheer bravado, having been the final hen from last spring’s flock to lay an egg. But she produced a well-formed green beauty and screeched to wake the dead until Eric and I climbed up to see it.
“She just needs time,” Eric said as he jumped down from the coop. I stood in the center of the run, a giant black garbage tote beside me. Eric raked more of the winter coop bedding into it. I chanced a look into the tote and scrunched my nose.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that,” I said. In the last nine months, I’d gotten an education about chicken husbandry. We used the “deep litter” method over the winter, allowing the chicken’s own droppings to help insulate them against the harsh Michigan weather. They formed their own greenhouse gases. An ecological marvel, I still couldn’t shake the fact that I now led a life where I routinely mucked out chicken poop.
“Black gold!” Eric proclaimed. “Nothing better on earth to fertilize the garden.”
“All you,” I said as Eric hoisted the tote and dumped it out into the bed of his brand-new four-wheeler. He’d taken to our mini-farm life like a natural. I had to admit, even covered in chickendust, he cut a handsome figure in his faded jeans, muck boots, and flannel shirt.
“Ba-Gawk!” Zelda squawked in my ear, then hopped off my shoulder, ready to stare down the new chicks again. Two days out of the brooder, we separated them from the six older birds with the use of my dog Mabry’s old crate. There, the rest of the flock could acclimate themselves to the smell and presence of the babies without hurting them.
“You be nice,” I admonished her. “It’s not too late for you to be a meat bird, Zelda.”
“Don’t you listen to her,” Eric said, reaching down to pick her up and hold her against his chest. He was the only human Zelda would allow to hold her like that. She let me pet her and scratch her belly, but if I tried to handle her, she’d scream and run. “She’ll be fine. Just need another two weeks or so for them to grow enough to hold their own.”
“You better be right,” I said. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I’d grown pretty attached to this new group of chicks. Last year, we’d started out with a flock of eight but lost two over the winter. Replacing them with four was perfect chicken math.
“That’s about the last of it,” Eric said, putting Zelda down. I swear that bird looked smug as she hopped on the ladder and strutted into the coop to inspect Eric’s work. “I just want to pull the tarp off the roof of the run. They’ll be glad to have the sun shining down on them again.”
“So will I,” I said. This had been a particularly brutal winter, with significant snowfall starting at the end of October and barely letting up until February. But spring was fully in the air now. We’d had a, hopefully, final thaw last week. It broke the ice on the lake. The open water glimmered like diamonds now.
“I need a shower,” Eric said as he finished dumping the last of the compost.
“When are you leaving?” I asked. He had taken a job as a background investigator for the Feds. Though part time, it took him out of town several days each month. But he seemed to enjoy the work and much of it he could do from home. Not a bad gig, when your office overlooked Finn Lake on one side and the wooded hill leading up to the coop on the other.
“Things got pushed back,” he said. “I’m heading up to Traverse City Monday morning. You wanna come with me? We can make a mini vacation out of it.”
Though tempting, I had a mound of work of my own waiting for me at the office. Tori, my sister-in-law and best associate attorney, had left to give birth to my newest nephew two months ago. I’d picked up her workload until I could find a permanent replacement. I kept things in the family though. My niece, Emma, would be ready to take the bar exam in about four months. I hoped by the end of the year she’d get her license and agree to stick around for a while. Though I didn’t want to pressure her.
“I wish I could,” I said, peeling off my mask. I leaned down to get closer to the chicks. After hopping around to watch Eric for a few minutes, three out of four of them were already falling back asleep on their feet. “One of Tori’s probate cases is headed to trial next week. I’ve got to get up to speed.”
“A long one?” Eric asked.
“Should only take half a day,” I said. “But they’re a consistent client and have generated a ton of referrals over the years. I need a seamless transition for them.”
Eric frowned. “You’ve been taking on a lot more lately. You sure you’re not spreading yourself too thin?”
I went to him. Eric folded an arm around me. He still managed to smell good despite two hours inside the coop.
“It’s temporary,” I said. “Jeanie comes back from Barbados tomorrow. She’ll tackle all the probate and estate work after that until we can find a permanent replacement for Tori. And though it may not seem like it, business is actually kind of slow at the moment. Let me just get past this trial next week and Iwilltake some time off. Promise.”
He kissed me on the top of my head, then picked some straw out of my hair. “I’ll hold you to that. I think we both could use some R and R.”
