Page 1 of Crocodile Tears
Chapter One
Dove
I never thought I’d want to murder someone for sending me a fruit basket, but movie star Deacon Harrow might make me change my mind.
"If you stare at that thing any harder it might explode," Mom said as she cradled her favorite koala-shaped mug.
"If he thinks he will win my forgiveness with a fruit basket, he's even more delusional than I thought," I grumbled, angrily refilling my coffee cup.
"It's not addressed to you. It's forme," Mom chided. "A thank you for letting us use the zoo as a filming location for his new movie. Our little zoo is about to be one step from stardom! We should make a sign that people can take selfies with that has Deacon’s face.” She swatted the air in front of me to catch my attention as I pointedly ignored her enthusiasm. “You know, Iheard Ivy Blanc is going to be his co-star. I hope we’ll get to meet her!”
I narrowed my gaze at my starry-eyed mother. “Listen to yourself. So easily wooed by a Hollywood starlet coming to the zoo.”
“Youwere the one who orchestrated this whole thing,” Mom pointed out. “The production moneysavedthe zoo. If you hadn’t barged into Mrs. Westworth’s office with that contract when you did, this place would probably be a golf course by now, hon. I’d have thought you’d be gloating about it instead of complaining.”
“I don’t want credit anymore,” I muttered, folding my arms tightly across my chest. “I don’t regret finding a solution to our problems, but I wish that solution hadn’t involved insufferable, arrogant, toxic, movie star bastard Deacon Harrow.”
“That’s a lot of adjectives for a fruit basket, sweetie,” Mom said. “A fruit basket that was addressed tome, mind you.”
Despite what my mother said, I knew it was really an olive branch that I was meant to see. Deacon Harrow might be a movie star now, but I’d known him when he’d just been dorky little Deacon, and this wasclearlyhis cowardly way of trying to win my forgiveness. He could never handle the cold shoulder with me, even when we’d been kids. Fifteen years might’ve passed since the last time I’d seen him in the flesh, but I knew an apology fruit basket when I saw one.
"It's not even signed by him," I snapped, plucking the note and flashing the curly, cursive letters to Mom. “Some assistant probably wrote it for him. There arelove heartsover the ‘I’s.”
"Lots of gift shops write the notes for people who order online.” Mom shrugged. Her breezy nonchalance made my muscles tighten with barely-restrained anger. “I think it was very sweet.”
"Sweet? Whose side are you on?" I balked.
"There are sides now?" Mom asked, amused. I swore all of my siblings had learned their provocation tactics from the master herself. She’d been present at the creation of the buttons she was now so aptly pushing.
"Hell yeah, there are sides,” I demanded with a point of my finger. “You, Evelyn Lachlan, are a noted zoologist and conservationist, and he,Deacon Harrow”—I gagged on his name for dramatics—“is the face of an energy drink company that just made the critically endangered Almadran skink go extinct in the wild. Youcannotcall him sweet or you’re siding with the species killer.”
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm siding with Dove on this one, Mom," Wren called from the couch. She sat so slumped down, working on her knitting, that only the tiniest top of her honey-brown hair could be seen.
Already in her Prickle Island Zoo khakis, my youngest sister worked away on her latest craft project. She was one of my few siblings who would rather chime in to established drama than create her own, of which I was most grateful in this moment.
"There really aren't sides, honey," Mom called. “What Zap Energy did was wrong, but how much are celebrities even involved in the products they endorse? Deacon might be tied up in contracts he can’t pull out of even if he wants to. We don’t have the full picture.”
“He has Taylor Swift level money, Mom,” I hissed. “He doesn’t need a brand deal, and he certainly has the legal teams to get him out of it if he wanted to. Instead, he just buries his head in the sand and says nothing. One Instagram post from him could probably raise enough money to start a skink breeding program, and he stays silent because he’s a selfish, piece-of-crap celebrity.”
“Well, that selfish celebrity inadvertently saved our family zoo so I can’t completely hate him,” Mom said gently. “And hewas such a good kid. I can’t believe the same guy would do something like that.” She clicked her tongue, mouth pinching in disappointment. “Shame what fame does to a person.”
“Shame,” I echoed bitterly.
I fumed over to the kitchen island, grabbing the fruit basket and getting two steps to the trash can before thinking better of it. I really couldn't handle the needless food waste, even if it would’ve feltreallygood to throw it out. I'd feed it to the baboons and then leave a basket of the leftover scraps in Deacon's trailer with my own thank you note . . . maybe even add in some feces for good measure just so he fully comprehended how I felt. That would be far pettier and far more satisfying . . . and far more of amething to do.
"It's good to have you back home, Dove,” Mom said with a surprisingly earnest smile. "The mornings have been eerily quiet since the twins moved out. I’m glad for a little angst again.”
Angst. Great. Out of my seven siblings, when had I become branded as the angsty one?
At twenty-seven, I had only lived away from home for one blissful year before my younger siblings, Heron and Crane, had ruined it by moving into the renovated monkey enclosure that my eldest brother had turned into housing down the hill from our childhood home. I’d decided that any freedom I’d gained from moving a hundred yards away had been ruined by the twin tornadoes moving in. So, I’d Uno reverse carded my way back home to the twins’ vacated bedroom and was enjoying the relative peace of just Mom, Wren, Mom's elderly collie pit bull mix, Phoebe, and me.
"What are you going to do when I move out again?" I teased. "I can give you Yellow. She sounds just like me and has plenty ofangstto spare."
The sulphur-crested cockatoo had been in my care since she’d been a chick, and even though she was happily integrated into a flock now, she still had all of the Dove-isms down.
Mom waved away my suggestion. "Soon the house will be filled with grandbabies!"
"Just one grandbaby," Wren corrected. "And that grandbaby will be living in the cottage at the top of the zoo with its parents."
