Page 56 of Sugarplum Dreams
“I have all the things you need.”
“You do?” Of course he did. He wouldn’t have gotten chicks without getting everything that was needed to take care of them.
“It’s all out in the addition I put on the barn. That’s your chicken coop.”
“Are you serious.? You’ve been spending all this time putting an addition on the barn, and the whole time you’ve been doing it, you’ve been intending to use it as a chicken coop for me?”
“You said you wanted chickens.”
“I did. But I didn’t realize…”
“You should have.” They looked at each other, and while the kids were still talking around them, encouraging her to open the box as quickly as she could, it felt like the world faded away and it was just the two of them. She was bemused and charmed and surprised, and he could read all those expressions on her face and looked pleased as punch that he had made her so happy.
It wasn’t that he had bought her anything, it was that he had listened, and he had cared, and he had paid attention to her when she was talking and had taken it to heart.
That meant more to her than anything, and she felt like he truly cared about her.
“Thank you,” she said, and she didn’t just mean thank you for the chicks, she meant thank you for everything.
“Thank you,” he said, and she had no idea what he was thanking her for, but he seemed sincere, and then he pointed to the knife. “You better open that, before the kids go crazy.”
“Where are we going to put them?”
“I have a place ready over in the addition in the barn. We can head over there, but you want to peek inside first?”
“I’d love to. I can’t wait to see what they look like. You said Rhode Island Red? I assume those are red chickens?”
“They are, but the chicks are going to be orange and yellow. They won’t be red until they shed their baby feathers, around four to six weeks.”
“You sound like you’ve done this a time or two.”
“Back when I first bought the farm, I had several batches of chicks, but I was always drowning in eggs and giving them away, which wasn’t terrible, but it was a lot of hassle to try to take care of everything, and I just couldn’t keep up.”
“Well, now that you have a wife and five kids, you shouldn’t lack for people to help you out.”
“That’s what I figured.” He grinned at her.
She snapped off the plastic tie and handed the knife back to him. Then, she carefully lifted the corner of the lid.
The chicks were adorable, peeping and blinking as the light slowly filtered into their tight home.
“Oh. They’re adorable.” She didn’t touch them, although she was tempted, because she didn’t want all the kids to think they needed to touch them too.
“I have water and feed over in the barn. When we get them out of the box, we’ll dip their beaks in the water, to show them where it is. I’ve never had a problem with chicks finding the water, but I’ve always just dipped their beaks in one at a time to give them a taste of it, so they don’t die of thirst before they get it figured out.”
“They’re probably two or three days old and right at the limit of what they can survive.”
“Exactly. And shipping is a little bit stressful on them, although that’s why you have to get at least fifteen, so that they stay warm without the heat light.”
“You have a heat light too?”
“I do. We’ll keep it on them for the first four weeks. After they grow their adult feathers, they’ll be able to keep themselves warm without it.”
“Wow. Okay. My goodness,” she murmured, unable to resist putting one finger out and touching a downy head. So soft, so delicate.
“Let me!” Banks said.
“No, chicks are one animal that are better off if they’re not handled a whole lot. So it’s best if we just look and don’t touch.” Wilson said that matter-of-factly, but he probably understood how difficult it was going to be for Banks especially to not touch.
