She had to stop this. She'd known it the first time she tried to end things with Craig. Two months ago she'd broken it off—because it was wrong and greedy, because her husband was a good man and didn't deserve to have only pieces of her, because her firm did too much business with Craig's flagship client and it was only a matter of time before they had a direct conflict of interest. Now here she was again, her promises to herself broken and that big speech—about how he couldn't expect her to just drop everything whenever he called (though if she were honest, it was her doing most of the calling) and if he really wanted to turn her on, then he'd let her go, delete her number, focus on his own marriage and let her live her life—all for nothing. She had to do something. She had to rewrite the pathways in her mind, the ones that sent her, again and again, racing away from her responsibilities into her lover's arms. She'd never imagined, when she was the one sending out wedding invitations, that one day she'd find herself here, lying to her family, breaking her vows. But after she'd crossed the line once, it was so simple to step over it again.
She couldn't lie to herself anymore. Quitting Craig cold turkey hadn't worked. He was just too easy to find. True change wouldn't take root without reinforcements. She needed to get far, far away—an ocean and a plane ride away. She needed to escape the escape.
The next morning, she called her mom. She chalked up the missed engagement dinner to a work emergency and bemoaned the way her hectic life interfered with her priorities. Then she said, "Let's take a trip. Just you and me."
CHAPTER TWO
MAY
"Go ahead," Keith radioed back to May. Her supervisor had served as a medic in Afghanistan before heading up the large mammals section of the Chesapeake Zoo, and he still brought an army captain's zeal to comms. May pictured him at the drive-through ordering large fries, over, or on the phone with his doctor's office, spelling out his name KILO-ECHO-INDIA-TANGO-HOTEL.
"Scout's hurt," May said over the airwaves. "His right front foot."
The elephant calf was limping. Her best guess: he'd developed a crack in his toenail or the sole of his foot, common enough among animals in captivity, though no signs had been present when they'd examined him three days ago. To be certain, the keepers would need to take him inside the elephant barn and get him to raise his foot for inspection, and that meant separating him, briefly, from his mother, against whom he was leaning for support.
"Roger that."
"I'll grab Randy and Kristen and we can get started on the footwork." May waited a bit, hated herself, and then added: "Over."
"Negative. Do not examine him without me present. I repeat, do not examine the elephant without me. Do you copy?"
"Yeah, I got it."
"What's your 20?"
"I'm at the puzzle feeders." The puzzle feeders were holes in the enclosure wall, into which she'd stuffed alfalfa, sweet potatoes, and zucchini. She'd accessed the feeders by climbing a ladder, and from there, she had a clear line of sight into the enclosure.
"Roger. Rendezvous at the barn in fifteen minutes. Out."
May put the radio away. "Prick."
Last month Keith had caught her rubbing a lion's mane during enrichment time, a violation of protected-contact regulations, so she'd been moved off large cats, where she'd spent the bulk of the last three years, over to elephants. The reassignment should've been punishment enough—both for her and for the cats, who probably didn't understand why they no longer saw her every day—but she was still on Keith's shit list.
For weeks May had been working at a painfully respectful distance from the giant beasts—refilling the feeders; dragging browse into the enclosure while the elephants were in the barn; acting as the third set of hands during footwork—but mostly she'd been falling in love. On trips to this zoo as a child, she'd whisked past Sabrina, the matriarch, sparing a few quick gawks and then dashing off to see the monkeys. But spending every day with the small herd, she was in thrall. Not to anthropomorphize, but look how gently Sabrina tended to her son with her massive foot. See how eager her daughters were, particularly the adolescent, to babysit the baby, fighting for the chance to nuzzle him when Sabrina was indisposed.
