Free Bayou Fairy Tale by Lex Chase

another trash bag. He unfolded the neat plastic square, then snapped the bag open. There was a tiny bit of ceremony as he lined his bucket with the trash bag and covered his tools.
    He spied Ramona in the kitchen window over him. She smiled brightly. He smiled back. It seemed like the right thing to do.
    The neighborly thing. Corentin could do neighborly.
    He stripped off his tank top, which he was certain Honeysuckle would send to a fiery grave along with Barbie. The hose hissed with a handful of kinks in the line. After dropping his tank with a wet, smelly thump into the bag, he searched for the culprit in the coils and then jerked back when a blast of water hit him square in the bare chest.
    Snatching the hose, he turned away from the kitchen window. He ducked his head and busied himself with scrubbing his hair. As the water dribbled over his fingers, he muttered, “Well, there’s the porn shot of the day.”
    Had it been Taylor, it would have been a different story. And Taylor would have pissed himself with laughter at the ridiculous sexy-wet-guy cliché.
    He wiped down his arms, and the grime bled away like the happy thoughts of Taylor, dripping into the soft grass. His hands caught him by surprise. As if he didn’t recognize them for a moment. He noted the deep marks of lifelines and heartlines, the lattice of lines in his joints, and the marks that beheld his destiny. That is, if one believed in such a thing.
    Destiny be damned when he needed a good scrubbing under his nails. Did destiny collect dirt too?
    “I have a towel if you need one,” Ramona said, her eyes alight with wonder. She was being nice again, and Corentin sucked up the awkward adoration.
    “Thanks.” He forced a kind smile.
    Playing it cool and suave had become incredibly difficult when he and Taylor settled down. According to his notes, they had a rather cute little life. Simple. Peaceful. A place where they could blend in with the mundanes. Be mundanes themselves if it suited them.
    He glanced at Ramona again, and she smiled in return. Her green eyes shone brighter in the sun. He had never noticed they were green. Combined with her honey-blonde hair, she looked so much like Phillipa. He turned away, looking down at the blackness pooling around his feet.
    Phillipa Montclair was the one Corentin never forgot, no matter how he tried to eradicate her from his memories before Taylor came along. Now, he treasured the last memories of her that he had.
    Corentin cast a discreet glance over his shoulder at Ramona.
    She met his gaze, and her smile grew. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
    Corentin took a breath and then looked toward the trees. He couldn’t look at her. Of all the times he’d come over to fix something she purposely sabotaged, he only now recognized she could have been Phillipa’s twin. Or Phillipa herself.
    She couldn’t be. Taylor wanted to believe everyone was a witch. Corentin wanted to believe she could be some relation to Phillipa.
    “Sorry,” he muttered. “You remind me of someone I lost.”
    Ramona pressed her fingers to her lips. Her eyebrows drew upward with notable concern. “Your wife?” she asked softly.
    Corentin sputtered. He coughed, trying to figure out how to recover from that one. “N-No,” he croaked. “An old friend. She died years ago. Car accident.”
    Had it been years? Corentin wasn’t sure. Each of his journals only held the last four years of his life. Even presidents had come and gone without him remembering the election.
    “Oh… oh, Corentin,” Ramona whispered. All of her girlish flirting fell away into concern and sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
    The frigid Maine well water numbed his fingers as he scrubbed at his tattooed arm. It was impossible to tell lines of dirt and muck from the intricate Gustave Doré tree illustration inked from his left wrist to his shoulder. The seven branches reached across his chest and back of his shoulder. He seized with a jerk as he rinsed over his neck