Morning came with the smell of straw and the low gold of sun through the coop slats. Haley woke the way she now always woke: all at once, feathers settling, head cocked to catch the sound of something moving beyond the wire. She was big for a hen — anyone could see that. Nearly twice the size of the pullets that pressed around her, with a proud white body and those black-tipped tail feathers that fanned out behind her like a statement. The farmers at the fair would run their hands along her back and murmur to each other, and Haley would lean into the touch, because that was what a good hen did.

That morning she chased Brooke across the yard. It was instinct, pure and simple — the way her legs pistoned, the way her wings half-flared for balance, the urgent little buk-buk-buk that bubbled out of her throat as the rooster strutted ahead, his green-and-gold tail gleaming in the low light. She caught up with him by the water trough, and they stood there together, warm side against warm side, doing nothing in particular.

Then Brooke strutted off toward the far coop, and Haley followed, and found the nest empty.

She stood over it for a long time. The straw was pressed down in the shape of a body — her body, she realized, though the thought came slow, like something surfacing through deep water. She had made a nest in the back coop. She had been sitting here. And now it was empty, and the emptiness was a hole in her chest that she couldn't quite name.

She turned in a circle. Clucked. Turned again.

The fog was thick that day. It was thick most days now, a white wool pulled over her thoughts. But every so often the wool thinned — just a thread of it, just a glimpse — and for one terrible, brilliant second she would remember that she was Haley. A girl. A student. Someone with a name and a mother and a bed that was not a nest.

The first time it happened, her brother was crouched in front of her.

She had been pecking at scattered grain in the yard, dimly aware of a tall shape nearby, when the fog parted like a curtain. She looked up. His face was red and wet, tears running down his cheeks in a …