Chapter Text
Gustave had better things to do with his time than wait.
He tapped his steel-toed boots against the gravel impatiently, checking the time on his phone for the sixth time in as many minutes. A constant running catalog of every task on his to-do list flicked through his mind.
The rabbits were cleaned and fed. Cross that off.
The baby squirrels and opossums were being tended by Jerome and a new volunteer. Cross that off.
Sciel had taken over the baby birds in Gustave’s absence for this morning. Cross that off.
The adult birds still needed attention. Gustave had already thawed and chopped the frozen feeder rats, but had not yet had time to distribute them to the hungry raptors, nor had they cleaned any of the outdoor habitats. The reptiles all still needed tending, as well.
Sighing, Gustave took a quick look around the entrance of the sanctuary. Nothing looked out of place to him, but he imagined it would seem like a complete mess to a newcomer. The front of the main double-wide trailer was cleared of tools and debris, and even sported some nice new pots of pink petunias next to the hand-painted sign that read Brigitte’s Wildlife Refuge. The wooden steps and railings had been recently painted and swept.
However, the barn off to the side was in its usual state of organized chaos, with loose fencing, old wire kennels, tarps, wheelbarrows, and various tools stacked in untidy piles under the long porch roof. There were a few brightly colored plastic kiddie pools filled with clean water for the ducks. A lively chicken coop sat back near the woods.
Gustave shrugged mentally. As long as there were no safety issues, everything looked just fine to him. With the dappled morning sunlight filtering through the new spring leaves, it was the picture of peace and tranquility.
Besides the occasional honking of turkeys and guinea hens, anyway.
Upon arriving for his shift a couple of hours prior, Gustave had been able to complete most of the water changes and a few random chores before being instructed in no uncertain terms to go and welcome a family of new potential sponsors by the gate.
“You’re the most charming one here,” Brigitte had told him over their morning check-in with her own disarming smile. “No one wants to talk to an old woman like me. You have a way with people.”
“Surely they would rather talk to the person this place is named for than me,” Gustave had protested.
“I’ll see them off before they leave. Go on, it shouldn’t take too long.”
Brigitte had then taken off back to the house, where she spent her days monitoring the phones, writing grant proposals, and maintaining impeccable records of every animal that passed through their gates.
There were half a dozen reasons Gustave could think of that even Sciel would be more suited for the job of managing visitors (she was far more charming than he was, for starters), but was unable to convince Sciel to go in his stead. She was happily in the middle of treating the first crop of baby birds for the year, cooing back at the featherless starlings, house finches, and wrens as they squawked endlessly.
But Gustave knew the real reason Brigitte liked to use him this way, even if she never said it: that his missing left arm was an almost automatic point in his favor when trying to wheedle people out of their money. It was a rescue facility, after all, and if the sympathetic donors felt they were helping to ‘save’ a poor disabled human as well as the animals, then all the better.
It was a bit shameless, but he did not really mind. As long as the money came in.
So Gustave stood at the edge of the woods that surrounded the trailers and waited, seething at the thought of how much he could have accomplished in the last twenty minutes instead of leaning uselessly on the gatepost.
He tried to remind himself that he actually enjoyed showing new people around the sanctuary. Most of the times he did this, he was able to tell someone something new, and watch a spark light up in their eyes. It even happened with snooty rich people. Sometimes.
That was how the three Dessendre siblings found him.
They drove a nice, shiny car, like the few other wealthy donors Gustave had seen at the refuge over the years. They stepped out of the vehicle with varying expressions of curiosity and mild disgust, which also tracked with Gustave’s past experience with new sponsors. They wore clothes entirely unsuited to the working environment, complete with the most impractical shoes imaginable for a place that was at times covered in mud and animal waste. Gustave was sure Brigitte had a warning about wearing proper clothing in her canned emails to future visitors, but they obviously did not always pay attention.
Most people had never visited a wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary before. From their mannerisms alone, Gustave guessed the Dessendre siblings not only fell into this category of ‘most people,’ but also that the basic concept of simply going into the woods was likely foreign to them.
The usual motley flock of ducks, geese, turkeys, and guinea hens approached the new arrivals cautiously, and then scattered with much fluttering of wings once the oldest woman strode confidently forward. The other two rich kids picked their way forward more delicately, obviously distasteful of the smears of goose poop on every few feet of the loose gravel of the driveway. The younger girl eyed the nearby birds distrustfully.
“Hello there,” Gustave greeted them cheerily. His mood was already boosted by their slightly disgusted expressions as they looked down their noses at their surroundings. For some reason, Gustave was endlessly entertained by the idea of confronting such urbane people with their innate aversion to real work.
The older woman stepped close to shake Gustave’s hand. “Clea Dessendre,” she said warmly enough. “This is my brother Verso, and my sister Alicia.”
“Pleased to meet you all. I’m Gustave. I’ll be showing you around the facility today,” Gustave said pleasantly, shaking hands with the others in turn. “We’re very glad to have you consider us for sponsorship.”
All three were striking figures in their own ways. Gustave would have felt wildly dressed-down next to them in any other setting, with his untamed hair and paint-stained shirt, but they were on Gustave’s turf today.
Clea was tall with beautiful long hair that was braided down her back. She was dressed impeccably in a loose button-down shirt and skinny slacks that ended in kitten heels.
Verso was wearing dress shoes—Gustave bit his cheek to keep from laughing at the absurdity, dress shoes!—and a suit complete with a waistcoat, of all things. His pale eyes were intense, and one of them was bisected by a fascinating scar that ran from forehead to cheek. Gustave would have liked to ask about it, but really, it was none of his business.
When it came time to shake Alicia’s hand, Gustave was surprised to see that upon closer inspection, Alicia’s face was covered in her own scars. Burns, it appeared, perhaps chemical. The poor girl was even wearing an eyepatch. Gustave wondered if she was young enough to still be a teenager; her two siblings seemed to be around Gustave’s age.
Gustave smiled a true, warm smile at her, recovering from his shock quickly. It was none of his business. Alicia, for her part, gave him an almost challenging smile back, even going as far as to eye Gustave’s prosthetic left arm. She was, at least, wearing comfortable boots, however fancy and expensive.
“Pleased to meet you as well, Gustave,” said Clea. “And what is it you do here?” She sounded bored, but she had the same intense eyes as her brother.
“I am one of the full-time rehabilitators,” Gustave replied. “Let me tell you a little bit about us before I show you around. Are any of you familiar with what a wildlife rehabilitation center does?”
With no affirmative answer forthcoming, Gustave continued, reminding himself to exhibit a friendly smile. “It’s pretty much what it sounds like: we take in wild animals and we treat their injuries or illnesses, with the goal of releasing them back into the wild where they were found. There is a lot of specialized work that goes into such care. Our facility was founded about twenty years ago by Brigitte and her husband, Hector. They live in that farmhouse over there,” Gustave gestured.
“I’ve been here for four years now, loving every moment of it. Well, almost every moment.” He turned and indicated for them to follow him into the nearby trailer. “Some days are harder than others. It’s not exactly fun and games, having to deal with things like orphaned neonates, wing amputations, and turtle ear infections.”
“Turtle what?” the man, Verso, said, as if he had never heard of such a thing.
“Oh yeah,” Gustave said, trying to hide his amusement. “We dealt with a pretty bad one just yesterday, so it was on my mind. I’ll show you our recovering patient when we get inside. Ready to see the inner workings of a wildlife rescue facility?”
As Gustave opened the door, they were inundated with all the usual sounds and smells of morning at the refuge. None of the siblings were able to hide their displeasure at the odor.
Pale gray formica countertops and oaken wooden cabinets lined the sides of the interior. The bits of visible walls were painted a pale green, with flower and ivy designs drawn by a particularly artistic group of students some years ago. Rows of plastic kennels, glass terrariums, and bird cages lined the counters on each side of the long room. A handful of larger cages stood in the middle of the room, mostly empty and awaiting new patients. At one end of the trailer, a pair of incubators stood on a counter next to a large sink.
Crowley the crow squawked from his corner along with every single one of the dozen or so baby birds. The squirrels chirped. Tom the turkey gobbled loudly.
At the sound of the turkey, all three of the Dessendres jumped, earning a chuckle from Gustave. “Don’t mind Tom. He’s almost done with his treatment, and he’s definitely ready to be out of his cage and back with his ladies outside. He lets us know every few minutes just how displeased he is.”
Gustave led the family down the length of the trailer slowly. “This is Jerome, and—what was your name again? Right, Julian—Julian is a new volunteer. Comes in every Friday morning for a couple of hours. Jerome is another full-time staffer.”
Gustave handed some peanuts to each of the three siblings, encouraging them to feed the nuts into a cage of docile half-grown squirrels while he and Jerome explained how many orphaned babies they cared for in a year, and what usually brought them in. Alicia was delighted, displaying the first real smile of their visit and glancing at Verso happily. Verso smiled tolerantly back at her, poking peanuts into the squirrel cage with an almost bemused expression.
“What about that one?” Clea said, pointed to the cage of an adult squirrel nearby. “Does he like peanuts too?”
“He loves peanuts,” Gustave informed them. “But I would like to caution you to stay away from Goku. He bit someone once, years ago, and whenever that happens, it generates an obscene amount of paperwork. He’s a permanent resident, see how he’s missing part of his tail? We think he was injured as an infant, taken in by a well-intentioned person, and then not cared for properly. His bones never developed properly.”
Alicia nodded enthusiastically, pulling a tiny notebook out of a pocket and scribbling something down. Gustave squinted at her scrawl, wondering internally if her writing meant she could not speak aloud. “Metabolic bone disease, yes! Exactly. I didn’t know I was speaking to an expert.”
Alicia shrugged nonchalantly, making Gustave smile.
“Yes, Alicia was the one who suggested we try to find animal-related non-profits to sponsor,” Clea said, projecting her voice over the cacophony of animal sounds. “We are going to meet with two dog rescues later today as well.”
“Oh, which ones?”
“Happy Tails Rescue, and what was the other one?”
Alicia scrawled, Sherwood Animal Allies.
“Good,” Gustave said. “I’ve heard good things about both of those groups. I’ve actually worked with Happy Tails along with the municipal shelter to place a dog that was found on our property. There’s a whole network of us that work with various animals, and we always try to help each other out.”
They passed to the reptiles next, leaving Jerome and Julian to their chores.
“Our President, Brigitte—her daughter Lune is the refuge Director. She’s a wildlife biologist and she specializes in turtle care, so we end up with a lot of turtles once the warm months really kick in. We’ve only got a few in care at the moment. Take a look at this one.”
Gustave lifted the ear infection patient he had mentioned earlier out of its enclosure. “See her ear, here on the side of her head? It looks pretty good now, but yesterday it was a massive bulge of pus.”
“Ugh.” Verso made an involuntary noise next to Alicia. He then glanced at Alicia’s next scribbled message before Gustave could see it. “Oh Alicia, no, that’s disgusting—”
Gustave chuckled harder than he meant to as he read Alicia’s insistent message. “Yes, I have plenty of pictures. I posted some on our social media page, if you want to take a look later.”
Clea looked around analytically, displaying no great amount of either disgust or enthusiasm, simply taking in information. “There is a great variety of animals in a relatively small space,” she observed.
Gustave placed the box turtle back in her temporary habitat and squirted his hand with hand sanitizer. “We’re coming off the winter months, with relatively few patients. In the next few weeks, it’ll ramp up, and both trailers will be stuffed full. Usually we try to keep the baby birds separate from everything else, but it just makes sense to consolidate when there are this few.”
“This few?” said Verso, perturbed. “You mean you usually have more? It can get louder than this?”
“Absolutely,” Gustave confirmed. “It gets to the point where I recommend volunteers to wear noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs. We feed all the baby birds every hour for fourteen hours a day, so even just working one shift for a few hours, you can be stuck next to them for a long time. Sometimes we have so many, it takes an hour or more to feed them all, so you just start again at the beginning as soon as you finish. You can see Sciel is already wearing her headphones.”
Sciel was indeed wearing headphones that completely covered her ears, bobbing her head to whatever music she was listening to. At that moment, she looked up and saw the trio of newcomers approaching.
“Hello, welcome,” she said brightly. “How are you liking our humble sanctuary so far?”
Alicia smiled hesitantly. “It’s loud,” said Verso. Clea gave him a look.
Sciel turned her attention to the teenage girl. “Would you like to see how I feed the babies?”
Alicia nodded, and paid rapt attention as Sciel launched into her explanation. “Birds have what we call an epiglottis right in the middle of their mouths. We don’t want to get any food into it, because that’s where they breathe, and they would aspirate. So we take our trusty syringe of baby bird food mush, and we stick it far enough down and to the side of their mouths that we avoid the epiglottis. See?” Alicia stared at the cluster of blind starlings as Sciel pumped the mush into their gaping mouths bit by bit. “Want to try?”
Alicia eyed the syringe Sciel offered to her, looking at first as though she would reach for it, but then seemed to change her mind and shook her head.
“That’s all right,” Sciel said with a friendly smile. “Knowing your limits is important in a place like this. If you’re not confident in doing something, it’s best to not do it on your own, or get help until you can. If you ever,” Sciel leaned forward conspiratorially, “decide you really, really want to feed the babies, I will give you a full training session so you know you’ll be able to do it, with no doubts whatsoever. Deal?”
Alicia nodded determinedly. They shook on it. Gustave’s heart swelled with affection at how Sciel was always so accepting and understanding of other people’s differences. He knew he could count on her to treat Alicia like a normal teenager, without even batting an eye at the scars on her face.
“Be sure you say hello to Crowley on the way out,” Sciel called as they made to walk away.
Gustave rolled his eyes. “As if we could avoid him.”
“Who is Crowley?” asked Clea.
“This is Crowley,” Gustave said, stopping in front of a tall, vertical cage and pointing at the care card zip tied to the front. “Our permanent crow resident. Say hello, Crowley.”
“Hello,” said Crowley.
“Whoa, all right, I didn’t know crows could do that,” Clea said with mild surprise.
“Hello,” said Crowley.
“Hello,” Clea said uncertainly.
“Hello,” said Crowley.
“All right, hush, you,” said Gustave, plopping a peanut into Crowley’s cage. “Between Crowley and Tom, we haven’t had a moment’s peace in here for the last month.”
“Have you ever had a moment’s peace in here?” Verso said, looking around with what seemed to be a permanent wince on his face. “I mean, ever?”
“Probably not,” Gustave said pleasantly. Tom took that as his cue to gobble loudly, making the siblings jump again. “Let me show you one more thing before we head outside.”
They stopped at the old refrigerator. “I wanted you to see exactly where your money would be going, should you choose to sponsor us.”
It felt gauche, sometimes, to Gustave, to talk to sponsors directly about money. But he had learned over the years that donors usually appreciated when the staff did not beat around the bush, and liked seeing the tangible effects their donations could have.
He slapped the front of the fridge. “This thing has been on its last legs for about half a year. I’ve repaired it twice already. Having it go out on us would be completely unacceptable, considering how important all of this is.” He opened the fridge and gestured to its contents. “Not only would we have hungry animals for at least a day if their food spoils, it’s a lot of money to replace it all. We could do with a new freezer as well,” Gustave added, closing the door.
“Let’s go back outside, shall we?” Gustave grabbed the bowl of rat pieces he had chopped earlier off the counter and guided the siblings out of the trailer, where they all stood visibly grateful to be enjoying the relative peace and quiet.
“Now that we’ve got the noisiest and smelliest part of the day out of the way,” Gustave said, “Why don’t you all tell me about yourselves a bit? We can visit the pond and the outdoor habitats as we walk.”
“What would you like to know?” asked Clea. She seemed genuinely engaged in the conversation, which Gustave took as a good sign.
“I understand that you are looking to donate a portion of your proceeds from—what was it, your art shows? What kind of shows? What sort of art do you all make?”
Alicia detached herself from the conversation and wandered away to stand at the edge of the small duck pond, watching all the waterfowl less guardedly than she had earlier.
“We are a whole family of artists,” Clea began. “Our parents are very well-known painters, so we grew up learning under them. Their charitable foundation collects and donates and proceeds from all our work. I have a show opening soon in the city that will show my sculptures for the first time. Let me show you.” She sounded proud, rightfully so, thought Gustave, and she pulled out her phone to show a few quick photos of her work.
“Oh, wow,” Gustave said, impressed. Her pieces were striking, with bold colors and contrasting angular shapes. “I’m afraid I can’t speak intelligently about anything art-related,” he said with a rueful smile. “But it looks like you put a ton of time and thought into those.”
Clea smiled and put her phone away. “Verso is a musician, so his proceeds would come from every concert he puts on.”
“What do you play?” inquired Gustave.
“I am a pianist.” Verso adjusted the sleeves of his coat.
“He’s got a bunch of solo concerts coming up over the year, and he’s playing with the state orchestra.”
“A very multi-talented family,” Gustave said, impressed.
“Alicia is still in school, so we shall see what medium she ends up preferring,” Clea said with a bland smile. “Perhaps at this rate she’ll become a veterinarian.”
Alicia turned to look at them and rolled her eye.
“It’s a tough job, so I hear,” Gustave said to Alicia encouragingly. “Lots of ups and downs. But I’m sure you’ll do great at whatever you put your mind to.”
“Is that not what your job is? Veterinarian?” Verso asked mildly as they approached one of the outdoor habitats.
“No, that can be a common misconception,” Gustave said, opening the outer door to the enclosure. Its resident barn owl hissed unhappily. “While we are permitted to perform a certain level of care to certain animals, it’s a very different career path. Not many veterinarians spend their mornings chopping up dead rats to feel to owls.” He closed the habitat’s outer door and opened the inner door, dropping a few rat pieces onto a nearby platform.
Upon exiting the enclosure, he nearly ran into Alicia holding her notepad in front of his face. “What’s this one’s name? Ah, this barn owl is not one of our permanent residents, so she doesn’t have a name.”
Gustave gazed fondly at the ghostly face watching them from her nest, waiting for them to move out of sight before descending upon her breakfast. “We try to not get attached to every individual animal because that can get exhausting, emotionally. Keeping them unnamed can help a little bit with that. This one is actually almost ready for release.”
Alicia stared at the owl for a few moments with fascination before following the others to the next enclosure.
“So, some animals stay here permanently and some don’t?” Clea asked. “How do you decide which ones to keep?”
“That,” Gustave said, “is a very good question. If we keep an animal, it’s because it cannot be released safely back into the wild. There are dozens of reasons an animal might be unreleasable, but basically, if they can’t survive in the wild, they can’t be released. If an animal shows good temperament in captivity, we can keep them as a permitted ambassador educational animal. Like Jeep, here.”
They approached a smaller habitat where a rotund opossum watched them sleepily from a pile of sawdust. Gustave placed the bowl of rat pieces on top of the enclosure’s roof, opened the door, and reached in to grab Jeep’s tail and easily haul her out. Alicia gasped.
“Jeep is a fan favorite here,” Gustave said fondly, showing them the opossum clinging to his forearm. “She has a wonderful, calm temperament. She doesn’t mind being touched. You can pet her a little. Just make sure you wash your hands before you leave.”
Alicia reached out and touched the coarse fur on the opossum’s back, yanking her hand back with a laugh as Jeep turned her inquisitive whiskers around to investigate.
“Go on,” Gustave encouraged Verso with a mischievous smile.
“I’m good,” Verso said coolly. Gustave shrugged.
“Whenever we set up a booth at a local fair or bring animals to a school for a demonstration, Jeep comes with us. She doesn’t seem to mind the loud noises or excitement of traveling at all. Most opossums, of course, are not like that. Just a disclaimer,” Gustave said with a smile. “Make sure you don’t go around trying to pet any wild opossums you see.”
“Duly noted,” Clea said dryly.
Alicia scribbled down, What’s her story?
“What’s Jeep’s story? Jeep was hit by a car two years ago.”
“So you named her Jeep?” Verso said. “Seems a bit cruel.”
Gustave shrugged. “I didn’t name her. And she doesn’t mind it, do you, Jeep?”
Jeep’s whiskers kept twitching. Alicia laughed a scratchy laugh.
“Lots of our patients were hit by cars. Jeep never quite recovered neurologically, so she’s one of our ambassadors now. She’s getting up there in age these days, and is even more chill than she used to be. Opossums have a lifespan of only about three years.”
“So she’s an old lady,” Verso observed.
“Very much so,” Gustave replied, gently placing Jeep back into her enclosure and shutting the door. Once more, he found himself with Alicia’s notebook shoved into his face.
“Is Jeep the opossum from the video?” he read. “What video?”
Clea chuckled. “You know what video. There was a Tiktok from here that went viral last year sometime. There was a clip of someone, maybe it was even you, carrying an opossum around on their shoulders.”
Gustave groaned as the memory came back to him. “Right, right. Yes, that was me, and yes, that was Jeep. I had almost forgotten that we were famous for our fifteen minutes, there.” The students had made fun of him for the whole rest of the semester after Sciel’s video had gone viral. It was not even a particularly funny or entertaining clip, in Gustave’s opinion. Why it went viral would forever be a mystery to him.
“That’s how Alicia found this place,” Clea informed him. “When she saw it was relatively local, she wanted us to consider sponsoring it. And honestly, I’m glad we came. I never knew places like this existed. It’s been enlightening.”
“It’s been something,” Verso said. Gustave decided to focus on Clea’s friendly words instead.
They walked around a few more outdoor enclosures, Gustave stopping by each one and feeding more raptors while answering Alicia’s eager questions. He offered the bowl of rat pieces to Verso, asking if he wanted to try feeding the vultures. The haughty look Verso gave him in return was completely worth it. Gustave was barely able to contain his laughter.
They eventually reached a small clearing.
“This,” Gustave gestured, “is where we will be building a new enclosure next weekend. You can see the studs are already in place, and most of the materials are ready nearby. We’re lucky enough to have a good number of volunteers that come out pretty reliably for projects like this.”
“It must be difficult to do such work with only one arm,” Verso said with what Gustave imagined was a hint of scorn. “I’m sure you need quite a few volunteers to help you.”
That got Gustave’s attention. Despite knowing better, he shot back, “We do, in fact. We’re a community here, and we have each other’s backs. Though, I’m probably more capable than you think I am with this.” He raised his prosthesis. It was simple device with a hook on the end, and it suited Gustave’s needs just fine.
“Certainly more capable than a precious pianist who’s never done a day’s hard work in his life,” Clea said unexpectedly, in a soft and mocking voice.
Gustave tensed, but took his cue from Alicia, who merely rolled her eye at her siblings. It’s not that serious, he reassured himself. They’re just teasing.
So he relaxed and did his best not to laugh out loud at how Verso’s face darkened.
“I’m plenty capable,” Verso snarled at Clea.
“Oh please,” Clea said sweetly.
“If you like, you can come out next Saturday,” Gustave said smoothly, his face the picture of innocence. “We’ll put you to work. See just how capable you are.”
Alicia snickered.
“That’s a marvelous idea,” Clea said, eyes lighting up. “Why don’t you give the man a hand next weekend?”
“I have rehearsals,” Verso protested.
“Only in the late afternoon, if I’m not mistaken,” Clea countered.
“Works starts at ten AM sharp,” Gustave said cheerfully. “Make sure you dress appropriately.”
Verso stared at Gustave for a moment, and then, matching Gustave’s falsely sunny tone, said, “I’ll think about it.”
Clea did not quite hide her laugh.
Gustave did not kid himself for a moment that Verso would actually show up to get his hands dirty building anything, but it was certainly an entertaining image. Almost as entertaining as Verso’s current discomfort.
They meandered back towards the driveway, Alicia growing more reticent as they approached the end of their visit. Brigitte appeared to introduce herself and see the Dessendre siblings off.
One more quick trip inside to wash hands was in order, and then Gustave was waving goodbye to the retreating car, smiling both at Alicia’s hand waving out the window and the memory of Verso eyeing his dirty dress shoes with displeasure.
Gustave felt a moment’s embarrassment thinking about how he had needled Verso. Not because he regretted his words or actions, but because antagonizing potential donors was not generally a smart move, and he hoped fervently that Alicia’s evident enthusiasm for the place was enough to keep them in the family’s good graces. Good enough to get some much-needed funding, anyway.
Brigitte gave Gustave a slow high-five, which he accepted with a sheepish smile. “Went well, yeah?” she said.
“I think so,” Gustave replied. “We’ll see.”
His mind was already turning back to his extensive task list. He felt quite sure that whether the refuge received any donations from the Dessendres or not, he would not have to worry about actually seeing them ever again.