“No, ma’am.” He waved her off. “You got a hose out back, right?”
Ramona’s smile fell slightly but returned again. “Behind the rose bushes. I’ll get your check.”
“’Preciate it,” Corentin said as he hefted his bucket, with one Barbie doll ready for her dreamy date with an incinerator. The hose sprawled around the rose bushes in a tangled jumble of kinks and coils. Corentin reached into the bushes and felt around blindly for the spigot. When he found the familiar contours, he gave the faucet a stubborn, creaky turn, and the hose bulged with the first burps of water.
Corentin set his bucket on the grass and pulled out 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 and down his spine.
“She and I had a hard time getting on at first,” he said as he concentrated on making his back relax.
He made the correct decision to leave out the crucial details of how he and Phillipa had played cat and mouse for years. He, a hunter after a beast; she, a beast after her prey. In the end, he wasn’t sure if he was the hunter or the hunted. Just when he almost had her, she struck back. Phillipa had left him with more scars than the miles he’d traveled in his lifetime. “Once we made amends….” He snapped his wet fingers. “Gone. Just like that.”
Ramona lowered her gaze to the grass, remaining silent. He was grateful for the silence. It was a small reprieve where he could work through processing it all. His grief of losing not only his greatest nemesis, the beautiful beast, but understanding he had been wrong about her.
“Life is a precious thing,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper over the pitter-pat of water pooling at Corentin’s feet. “I lost my fiancé in Afghanistan.”
That caught his attention. The war, he recalled. Or
a
war. There had been a few. He turned to her, watching the distant sadness flow into her features. She wrapped her arms around herself for a lover’s embrace she’d never have again.
“I didn’t want him to go. We fought. I found out I was pregnant when his boots hit the ground.” She looked into the sky, her grief deep on her face. She turned into an old widow far before her time. She gave a small broken smile.
The water splashed and collected into a puddle between them, but it was an ocean between their worlds.
“You remind me of him.” She shrugged and talked to the clouds. “You have his eyes. His kindness.”
Corentin shut off the hose without a word. This was going to get awkward. He knew what she wanted. If his notes were any indication, he had known for quite some time. Why else would someone shove inappropriate objects into the septic system three times in two months?
Corentin flexed his fingers. He had to clear the air. “Ramona, I—”
“I know about you and Taylor.”
The hose hit the ground. Corentin swallowed. But her smile was brighter than before.
“It’s not a bad thing. You two are good for each other.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry.” He chuckled with his embarrassment. “I guess I had it all wrong.”
Ramona laughed. “Well, can you blame me? At least you don’t have to act around me, like with your little fan club.” She held up her hand as if to indicate the width and breadth of Hancock County. “You do realize how much money you’d make if you did more than plumbing and roofing.”
“Taylor and Devon make constant jokes at my expense about what I should be doing for a living. I get it, okay?” He smirked, but his face heated before he could hide it.
“It’s the Southern thing,” she said, shifting her weight. She seemed to appraise him. “The accent. The tattoo. The lack of a ring.”
Corentin looked up into the clear skies and held out his hands. He internally begged Mother Storyteller for a message. He sighed with the lack of response.
Thank you for praying to the Mother Storyteller Hotline. All of our agents are currently taking other calls, please enjoy the Muzak.
They laughed together. His troubles washed away into the muddy puddles at his feet. Would it have been like this with Phillipa? The easiness? The laughter? After all his discomfort and uncertainty, Ramona only wanted his friendship.
“You are married, right? You just don’t wear a ring.” Her words hit him like a shot between the eyes.
“Um….” She had put him on the spot, and his stomach dropped to his feet. Mother Storyteller abandoned him in his moment of need. “It’s a bit complicated,” he said, then coughed into his fist. He thought if he gave her the right stare, she’d pick up the hint to let it drop.
“How so?”
Shit. She was a pushy one.
Corentin rolled his shoulders and popped his neck, buying some time before settling on an explanation.
You see, Ramona, Taylor is a fairy tale princess, and I’m the descendant of a witch and a horny fuckwit who ate a gingerbread house. Oh. And ate his sister too. Weird, right? Just go with it. So, Taylor is technically royalty, and by proxy, good. And I’m… not. We aren’t exactly meant to fraternize. Ever. In fact, I was assigned by Idi the Witchking to hunt and kill Taylor. Oh, who’s Idi the Witchking? Well. That’s someone else entirely. Head hurting yet? I can draw a diagram. But then I’d have to kill you. I may or may not be joking about that. I’m probably not.
“We come from very different backgrounds,” Corentin said instead. He shrugged. “His father isn’t the most accepting guy in the world.” There. That was mostly true. Well, true enough. “I don’t have any family to call my own.”
“I’m sorry,” Ramona said sheepishly. “I shouldn’t have pried.”
Corentin pulled the trash bag from his bucket and yanked the plastic ties. He tilted his head away from the stench as he sealed the bag into a tight knot. He dropped it back into the bucket with a
plunk
,
then gave Ramona a two-finger salute.
Ramona held out the towel, and he accepted. It was still warm, fresh from the dryer. He blotted his face and noted the lavender fabric softener. Honeysuckle’s favorite brand that she loved to torture him with. Levis that smelled springtime-fresh conjured visions of the Barbie Dreamhouse. He cringed.
Corentin rubbed the towel in his hair. “Taylor’s my family,” he said as he scrubbed. “And I’m his. We may not have much, but we make it work.” It felt so freeing to say it out loud and not have to pretend. He dried off his arms once again. It was as dry as he was going to get anyhow. He could deal with wet jeans. “Taylor has really taken to volunteering at the library. The kids flock to him like ducklings. Like….” He glanced at Ramona.
She grinned. “Like anyone with functioning ovaries flocks to you?”
He chuckled. “Fuck, that’s so embarrassing.”
“I’d enjoy it before age catches up to you.” She winked.
The words concerned him. How old was he? Taylor hadn’t told him. And his journal only gave a rough estimate. Was he really almost fifty?
“I don’t know. I think I’d make a rather dashing seventy-year-old.” He winked at her in return.
“Don’t let your ego bite you in the ass, okay?” She pulled the check from her pocket, and he took it between two fingers and nodded. “Here. For all of your trouble. And thanks for putting up with me luring you out here. You should bring Taylor by. How about dinner?”
Corentin thumbed his chin. “I have to admit, if you can rescue me from another bean supper, I’ll gladly dig out another Barbie doll, on the house.”
“It’s a date.”
“OF ALL
the four traffic lights in Ellsworth, you forget the difference between green and red,” Corentin grumbled at the puttering Neon in front of him. He leaned back in the driver’s seat of the truck and dropped his left arm out the window. The Neon timidly crept into traffic. “Go. Move. There’s a gas pedal there, Granny.”
The sun turned the Chevy interior into an oven. Corentin rolled his wrist, working out the crinkle and pop of bones. He lazily soaked up the heat like a sleepy lizard. His jeans were another matter. At least Ramona was nice enough to loan him some extra towels to line the seats. He couldn’t afford to mess up the Chevy.
As the Neon scooted on, Corentin let off the brake and the truck coasted. He ran his hand over the warm leatherette of the steering wheel. The bumps and ridges struck him with an odd unfamiliarity. The off feeling tingled in the back of his mind.
He shook his head.
This is my truck
, he repeated, as if he’d convince himself. His slow, meditative strokes held him present in the moment. He was here, in this place, in this moment, this truck.
The truck was perfect. What could be wrong? He frowned, then considered Ramona’s check tucked into the cupholder. She had paid him double this time. And not only was it a considerable sum the first time around, but he and Taylor could go far with the extra money.
He scratched at his hairline and then pulled the tie off his short ponytail. He stared straight ahead at the trees, but into a place in his head. Maybe he could go to the Enchanted Forest inside his mind and find a place of comfort. Away from all of this. This… perfection.
The truck was a Chevy. He hated Chevys, or so he thought. The shiny black paint shone like an obsidian arrowhead as he drove down Route 1. The seats grew warm against his aching back. Seat warmers. He snorted with halfhearted derision. No tattered, well-worn, lumpy seats with splits in the seams. The driver’s seat wasn’t old enough to mold to his body.
He halted at a stoplight and watched the sky stretch out well into forever. One could see the mountains from here. Every star when night fell. Every sunrise and sunset, no matter where he was. The leaves smelled of new growth—fresh, crisp, and herbaceous. Even in the mundane world of Maine, the forests painted across the landscape with intense, verdant strokes.
The light turned green, and the poor Neon, which desperately needed to be junked, coughed exhaust and then puttered along in front of him. He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the driver’s side doorframe.
According to the position of the sun, it was going on 2:00 p.m. Taylor would be home soon. Corentin would lure him into a hike down the trails behind their property. Do the little things that couples did. The picture-perfect Norman Rockwell shit that couples did.
The idea left sourness in his mouth. Perfect. There was that thought again.