Page 79 of The Best Shot

So she was coming back. Or she’d left in a hurry. Or… I didn’t know what it meant.

Movement caught my eye through the kitchen window.

She was out in the yard, wearing my shirt, her hair caught up in chaotic spirals, swimming in my rain boots in a full standoff with my chickens.

It took me a second to make sense of the scene.

Dolores was puffed to full capacity, planted three feet in front of her, offended by something only Dolores understood. It was always Dolores.

Yasmine had a small metal bowl in one hand and was gesturing with the other like she was negotiating terms.

“I’m trying to be respectful,” she was saying. “But you’re being a bitch. No offense.”

Dolores was unmoved. She advanced a step.

Yasmine took one back.

“Easy. It’s not like I’m trying to cook you for dinner,” she informed the hen. “It’s just eggs. Or are you… attached to your babies?”

Yasmine looked horrified. “Of course you are.”

Dolores puffed up bigger.

“Okay,” Yasmine said, backing up again. “Okay, fine. You’re right. No eggs.”

I leaned against the counter and watched Yasmine lose an argument with a chicken in my rain boots in my yard at seven in the morning.

She turned toward the house and stopped when she saw me. Straightened up. Lifted her chin. “Your chickens hate me.”

“Need to get to know you, is all.”

She glanced back at Dolores, then at me. “Honestly, she might have good reason.”

I didn’t argue that point.

A few minutes later, she came inside, boots thudding through the mudroom, and set the bowl on the counter.

Empty.

“I was going to make breakfast,” she said. “We used all the eggs last night, so I tried to get more.” She shot an irritated look toward the coop through the window. “We’re having Nutella sticks and coffee. Sorry.”

I took her in. My shirt hanging off one shoulder. A bit of straw stuck to her shin. Standing in my kitchen after throwing down with a chicken on my behalf.

“Okay,” I said.

She nodded once like that settled it.

We drank coffee at the kitchen table. The quiet was the comfortable kind. Steam off the mugs. Neither of us in any hurry to do anything with the day.

She was here. At my table. In my shirt. She’d tried to make me breakfast. Dolores had shut that down, but still.

I didn’t ask about last night, and she didn’t explain anything.

I got up eventually, grabbed the Nutella sticks and the Oreos from the gas station bag we’d left on the counter, and set them between us.

She took one and ate it.

Outside, Dolores hovered by the back step, waiting for round two.