Crocodile Tears (Prickle Island Zoo #4)

Chapter 1

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 for me ," 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, I heard 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.”

“ You were the one who orchestrated this whole thing,” Mom pointed out. “The production money saved the 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 to me , 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 was clearly his 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 are love hearts over 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. You cannot call 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 he was 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 felt really good 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 a me thing 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 of angst to 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."

"I'm sure Hawk and Hannah wouldn't mind if the baby had a couple sleepovers with me so they could get a full night's rest," Mom said, practically bouncing with excitement.

“You’d think you’d be tired after decades of rearing orphaned baby animals,” I snarked.

Mom beamed. “It just means I’m well practiced.”

“This is a human, not a baby monkey we’re talking about,” Wren reminded us.

“Close enough,” Mom and I said at once, and she laughed.

“And I’ve had seven humans of my own too,” she reminded us, as if we could ever forget.

Prickle Island Zoo was officially on “baby watch” this spring. And it wasn't baby giraffes, or kangaroo joeys, or marmosets we were on high alert for this year. This time, it was my eldest brother’s, Hawk's, partner, Hannah, who was about to pop.

We had eighteen different contingency plans for when she went into labor. I was incredibly grateful that the baby was coming outside of the busiest season. The zoo was closed outside the summer months, except for school groups and private events—a new initiative I had launched in the recent years—and for the next three weeks, we were about to be the filming location for Deacon Harrow's latest project. Still, even with a movie filming on site, the workload would be small enough that we could cover Hawk and Hannah's shifts. And Lark and her husband, Logan, were coming over for the summer to cover for Hawk and Hannah with the new baby.

It was going to be an amazing summer. All of us together at the zoo again, plus my new, little nephew.

"That baby's feet aren't going to touch the floor for the first two years of its life," Wren joked.

"If ever," I added.

"Eventually there will be more babies to hold," Mom said wistfully. “Maybe even yours.”

"Well, time to get to work," Wren said, practically leaping off the couch.

I grabbed the radio off my hip. "Roger. Go ahead."

Mom rolled her eyes. "Very slick. Your radio's still off, Dove."

I was already halfway out the door. "Sorry, Mom, got a radio call," I shouted from the doorway as Wren and I darted out.

You'd think having her three eldest children successfully shacked up would have made my mother a little more lenient on the four of us still unpaired, but no. Evelyn Lachlan was forever on the hunt for the rest of her children. She put Mrs. Bennet to shame.

As we hastened down the path to the prep kitchens, Wren said, "What in the world?"

I spotted the crowd gathered at the back gates. Five girls in their late teens stood in a tight group, peering in through the chain-link fence. They squealed when we turned the corner, but their exuberance was short-lived when they realized we were just staff members and not whoever they were searching for.

"Are they . . . fans?" Wren asked, looking at a gaggle of teen girls pressed against the gate.

“Deacon! I love you!” one shouted, and the others tittered.

I spied one exuberant girl who held a fluorescent green poster covered in cut-out images of Deacon. I ground my teeth as I was confronted by the sight of him. His coiffed flaxen hair, his deep blue eyes, his ever-present layer of stubble, his cheeky, lopsided grin as if he always had a secret . . .

“Ugh!”

So he had a Shonda Rimes level glow up between the ages of 12 and 27, so freaking what? He was still a terrible human being.

“Marry me, Deacon!” another girl squealed.

I rolled my eyes.

Of course they were here to catch a glimpse of a movie star—and grade A asswipe—Deacon Harrow. How had they even known he was coming here?

"He's not here for another few days," I shouted. “But if you come back in the summer, you can say you walked through the same zoo as Deacon Harrow.”

The group’s shoulders all collectively drooped as Wren murmured, “Always trying to sell another ticket.”

“Always trying to keep this place afloat,” I corrected.

“Which is how the zoo became a movie set,” my little sister replied.

I shrugged. “I guess I’d sell my soul to the devil to keep our dad’s dream alive.”

“Oof,” Wren said with a light laugh. “This guy couldn’t have always been that bad if you two were friends as kids.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a weary, little ache in my chest. “People change, I guess.” The sweet and nerdy boy I’d once known was gone. Deacon Harrow was a brand now—an actor, a pretender, and I should've known better than to call him after fifteen years, but desperate times had called for desperate measures.

I looked to see the gaggle of girls still hadn’t disappeared. “He’s not here!” I shouted again. “And even if he was, you should pick better people to worship. Deacon Harrow is a piece of?—”

"Okay," Wren said, grabbing me by the arm and steering me back toward the kitchens. “How are you going to survive the next three weeks of this?”

“Easy,” I said, walking ahead of my sister. “Stay far away from the crew and avoid Deacon Harrow at all costs.”

“And if you do bump into him?” Wren asked. “Think you can manage not to murder him?”

I gave my sister a sideways glance. “I make no promises.”