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produce as she stacked tomato slices, then crispy bacon onto two slabs of homemade bread. Yum.
    Supper over, Joanna helped her hostess straighten the kitchen, then went to her egg-processing room, which had been an unused, tumbledown outbuilding Clova had let her convert. Joanna used the room to wash and store the eggs until they could be delivered to their respective markets.
    She had designed the interior herself. A friend who worked as a mechanic had saved her a few dollars by bringing his steam washer out and steam cleaning the floor and walls. She hired a handyman to insulate the walls and ceiling and hang new wallboard. Then she painted the room herself with a soft blue enamel paint so she could easily wash the surfaces. The room’s finish was one of the many expenses that had been covered by the money she had borrowed against her home.
    For the most part, she was pleased with the project. She felt a surge of pride every time she walked into the clean, brightly lit blue room. Just like her businesses downtown, she had done the best with what she had to make her egg operation look professional.
    She had already put on her work clothes before she left the shop in town, so all she had to do was pull on a pair of canvas gloves. From the utility storage shelves against the back wall, she took wire baskets and a plastic bucket in which to put any broken eggs she might pick up and moseyed out to the nests.
    “Evening, ladies,” she said to a few hens scratching and pecking near the gate. “Let’s go see if you girls have been busy while I’ve been gone.”
    Three of them trailed along with her as she gathered eggs. People had told her that chickens, with little-bitty brains, were stupid. They might be, but her hens had personalities.
    Some of them had become pets. Dulce, an Ameraucauna named by Alicia, was one that had. Alicia had originally named her Pequeño Pollo Dulce, or Sweet Little Chicken, but Joanna talked the teenager into shortening the name to Dulce. The hen would hop up on Joanna’s lap, and if Joanna rubbed her head with her finger, Dulce would cluck and sing. Sometimes the little white hen faithfully followed, pecking and clucking, all through the egg gathering.
    Joanna usually gathered eggs morning and evening. Frequent emptying of the nests prevented breakage and egg eating by the hens as well as too many egg losses to predators she couldn’t keep out—snakes and skunks and bobcats. Because Alicia had collected some of the eggs this morning, the afternoon’s gathering would be it for today.
    From two hundred chickens, she collected an average of fourteen dozen eggs per day. She lost a few in the washing process and rejected some misshapen ones. Sometimes she set a carton aside for Clova or Mom and a few more to sell to locals who came into the beauty shop to buy them. But she had to admit, she hadn’t found many in Hatlow willing to pay five dollars for a dozen eggs.
    Today she would end up with roughly twelve dozen to add to the order she was accumulating for the Better Health stores in Lubbock and Amarillo and a couple of restaurants near the college. That number would net about thirty-six bucks for the day, not much profit for the amount of work she did. If she was going to make it big as an egg farmer, she needed to find some superhens that could lay more often than every three days or she had to have more than two hundred producers.
     
    Before Dalton was ready to leave his office, Candace came in. Apparently she had recovered from her snit. “She doesn’t sound old,” she said.
    Funny how they both knew what she meant without her actually saying it. Since his return, she had started to show a possessive streak and insert herself into what he claimed as “his space.” He didn’t recall her being that pushy before he left.
    “No, I guess she doesn’t,” he replied warily.
    “Are you going to call her back?”
    He had never discussed his family with Candace. Or with anyone. “I don’t