Several were badly broken.
Others looked nearly intact.
A worker lifted the crate.
“Dump them with the rest?”
Harold Briggs stood near the shed door.
He barely looked.
“Every one.”
The worker hesitated.
“Some only got little cracks.”
Briggs waved him away.
“I said dump them.”
Clara watched three men carry crate after crate behind the hatchery.
Curiosity pulled harder than caution.
She tied her horse near the road and walked around the side of the property.
Behind the buildings was a shallow refuse trench where feathers, spoiled feed, broken boxes, and dead eggs were discarded.
That morning, the trench was filling with goose eggs.
Hundreds of them.
Clara stopped.
She stared at the pile.
Some shells were crushed.
Some leaked.
But many showed nothing more than fine fractures.
She crouched beside one.
The crack ran less than an inch.
Another had a small dent.
Another had a star-shaped fracture at the blunt end but no leakage.
Clara picked one up gently.
The shell was still warm.
“What are you doing?”
She looked up.
Harold Briggs stood twenty feet away.
He had followed her around the building.
Clara rose.
“How many were in those crates?”
“None of your concern.”
“You’re throwing them all away?”
Briggs glanced at the trench.
“Wagon tipped. Shells are damaged. Customers won’t buy cracked eggs.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
His mouth tightened.
“Yes. I’m throwing them away.”
“How many?”
He sighed as though she were wasting valuable minutes of his life.
“Five hundred. Maybe a few more.”
Clara looked down again.
Five hundred eggs.
Even if half failed, the survivors could change Whitmore Farm.
“How long have they been sitting here?”
Briggs laughed.
“You planning to make an omelet?”
“I asked how long.”
“Twenty minutes.”
Clara picked up another egg.
She knew enough about poultry to understand that cracked shells did not automatically mean dead embryos.
Contamination was the danger.
Moisture loss was another.
Temperature mattered.
Handling mattered.
She had once watched her mother save two cracked chicken eggs by sealing the damaged shell with warmed beeswax.
That memory had remained buried for years.
Now it came back sharply.
Clara looked at Briggs.
“Can I have them?”
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Then he laughed.
Not politely.
He laughed loudly enough that two workers turned around.
“You want the garbage?”
“Yes.”
“You understand they’re cracked?”
“I can see that.”
“They won’t hatch.”