The Wildwood Sisters

by Mandy Magro

  Claire placed her hand on Dylan’s cheek. ‘We’d love for you to join us. But before we go, I reckon you need to tidy yourself up a bit—you know, have a shave and maybe give that hair of yours a brush. You’re looking a little worse for wear.’ She tipped her head to the side, holding his gaze, as though reading his thoughts. ‘I’m worried about you, love. You’re constantly tired, and under so much pressure with the farm. I wish you’d let me go and get a job in town so I could help out more financially, and I wish I could take away your sorrow. It breaks my heart to see you suffer so much and not be able to do anything about it.’

  Dylan’s emotions welled, but he swallowed them down. He had to stay strong for the women in his life. He was the only man they could rely on. ‘Mum, you do more than your fair share around here with cooking and cleaning and looking after Annie when I’m working. I don’t know what I’d do without you. But I do have some pride left and I’m not going to let you go and work for a measly couple of hundred bucks in town, when I can just get a second job somewhere.’ Claire went to protest but he shushed her. ‘And as for my sorrow, I’m finally going to follow your advice and make an appointment to see the shrink in town. It won’t hurt to give it a go, I suppose.’

  A broad smile softened Claire’s features, and her eyes filled with tears as she reached out and wrapped her arms around him. Her lack of height was made even more obvious alongside Dylan’s six-foot frame. ‘Oh, Dylan, you don’t know how happy that makes me. Good on you, son. It helped me so much, talking to someone, and I know it’s going to help you too.’

  Dylan squeezed her back. ‘Thanks, Mum, I reckon it’s about time I moved on with my life. And who knows, maybe if I make the first move, life will grant me some miracles. Lord knows I need some—we all bloody well do.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ she said, smiling. ‘Now let’s go have ourselves a lovely day.’

  CHAPTER

  6

  The following day was a perfectly relaxed Sunday afternoon for a birthday party. Adam Harvey and Troy Cassar-Daley’s version of the classic song ‘Lights On The Hill’ played unobtrusively on the jukebox at the corner of the dance floor, the atmosphere of the Opals Ridge Hotel bright and friendly.

  Well over a hundred years old and with publicans who loved anyone with a story to tell, the two-storey colonial style pub dripped with history. Warm sunlight dappled through the many leadlight windows, sending a scattering of multicoloured beams bouncing across the antique timber dining tables. Plush dark-red carpet lined the dining room floor and soft lighting glowed from strategically placed lamps. Refurbished train bench-style seats gave the eating area a romantically cosy feel. Reclaimed timber floorboards—saved from a few of the timeworn cattlemen’s huts around the area—took pride of place around an equally impressive horseshoe-shaped bar, and a guitar signed by the country music legend Slim Dusty hung proudly as the centrepiece. Old boots, hats, whips, spurs, belts, halters and horseshoes—in fact almost anything a stockie wanted to leave behind to make his mark on the pub—hung around the walls amongst many new and old photographs, all of it thoughtfully put together and creating a distinct country atmosphere.

  It was an atmosphere Dylan felt right at home in. As a younger man he had frequented the pub quite often before he met Shelley, trying to drown his sorrows after losing his first true love so abruptly and unexpectedly when she skipped town—the horrible fight they’d had when she’d accused his father of the unthinkable marking the beginning of his bad drinking habit. But thankfully Shelley’s unconditional love had helped heal his broken heart, and taught him that true love can happen more than once in a lifetime. He’d known he was lucky for a deep love like that to have struck him a second time round, but a third time would be an absolute bloody miracle. He had Buckley’s of ever feeling it again. Now, he rarely drank at all—a glass of wine here and there, and the odd stubby when it was roasting hot and he wanted to quench his thirst, or if he was at a party just a few to get his dancing groove on. Long gone were his days of being a wild boy. Getting married and having a child had certainly got him on the straight and narrow, and he was thankful for that. There was no way in hell he ever wanted to end up like his drunken low-life father. ‘Like father, like son’ was a saying Dylan took great offence to, and also one he worked hard at proving very wrong to the sometimes-suspicious elderly locals.

  The iconic pub was unusually busy for Sunday lunchtime—the fact the owners, Lorraine and Rex Thompson, had been advertising a spruced up new gastro-style menu probably having something to do with it. Dylan was sad to see most of the normal pub grub off the menu—although they had kept the reef and beef and good old-fashioned battered fish and chips—but like almost everything in life, the pub had to move with the times. Numerous tourists stopped off at the pub en route to the many attractions on the Atherton Tablelands, and the call for a more modern menu had finally won over the usual chicken parmigiana—‘chicken in pyjamas’ as Dylan liked to call it, much to Annie’s amusement—and the almighty seafood basket. Lorraine and Rex were still going to do their famous Sunday roast dinners that brought families from far and wide, but today it was the mouth-watering steak and Guinness pies, salt and pepper calamari, crispy pork belly with orange sauce, and mussels cooked in white wine and garlic doing the job, and rightly so. Dylan had indulged himself with the mussels yesterday when he had come in for lunch with his mum and Annie, and today he’d ordered the crispy pork belly with caramelised brussels sprouts and crunchy sweet potato chips. His tastebuds were still thanking him for it.

  Leaning up against the handcrafted mango wood bar, Dylan smiled to himself. His family-friendly local pub was full of squealing kids so sky-high on sugar they were having a wow of a time. And with one child on each hip and the others swarming around her like bees around a flower, his mum was clearly enjoying every second of being in the thick of it. It was both entertaining and heartening to watch. Over near the indoor play area, young Waylon Markesan was spinning round in circles, making himself stupidly dizzy so he’d fall over while seeing stars, as a few of the girls watched on in utter hysterics. And the newly assembled indoor slippery slide was proving popular—with the majority of the kids deciding it was more fun to slide down backwards. Most of the children who had been invited to Annie’s sixth birthday party had turned up in the requested cowgirls and Indians costumes—the boys being the Indians. Annie hadn’t stopped smiling since they’d got to the pub mid-morning, and it was a beautiful thing to see her so happy.

  A tap on his shoulder pulled Dylan’s attention behind him and he was met with his neighbour’s unsmiling face. But he didn’t take it personally, Craig Campbell’s last few years involved a fair bit of heartache, and his time spent working with the law made him appear ten years older than his thirty years and always a little on the cantankerous side. He held out his hand and Craig shook it, his grip vice-like. ‘Hi Craig, glad you made it mate.’ He eyed Craig’s police uniform, smirking. ‘The invitation said cowgirls and Indians though, nothing about coppers.’

  Craig chuckled, his laughter deep and throaty, and a little too loud as though it was forced. ‘Oi, fair play, I’m on duty today. Just thought I’d pop in to wish birthday girl a happy one.’

  ‘Appreciate it, Craig.’ Dylan’s smile faded. Craig looked like absolute shit. He really felt for the bloke with his wife leaving him the way she did, and with his son too. ‘I know how hard things have been for you lately…always here if you need to talk.’

  Craig held his hands up as if stopping traffic. ‘Not one for deep and meaningfuls, Dylan, that’s for sheilas.’ He glanced around the pub. ‘Anyways, where is the little anklebiter?’

  Dylan pointed to where Annie was doing somersaults across the play area with one of her friends. ‘She’s over yonder, and may the force be with you wading through the kids—they’re all a little cray-cray thanks to the sugar.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to handle them.’ Craig smirked suggestively as he tapped his handcuffs. ‘The uniform t
ends to make them behave.’ He wandered towards where Dylan had pointed. ‘I’ll catch ya later on.’

  ‘Yup, catch ya.’

  He watched as Craig crouched down to Annie and wished her a happy birthday, and Annie responded by giving him a firm hug, along with four other kids at the same time. Dylan laughed at how Craig was handling the kids—it appeared more like he was being mauled.

  Pulling up a bar stool, Dylan sat down beside ‘Freaky’ Frank Watterson, nodding his head in greeting. Frank nodded back, his crooked grin, scarred left cheek and tiny beady eyes a little unnerving. Although the pad of the seat was basically moulded to the shape of his butt from the amount of time he spent at the pub, Frank was known for not being one to indulge in idle chitchat. And Dylan was fine with that. He and Frank were of similar age, but didn’t have much in common. Frank was what he’d call a little peculiar, actually his entire family were. Dylan had once gone into Frank’s house as a young teenager with his dad, and it had terrified him when Frank and his father had been extra keen to show off their interest in taxidermy, the countless stuffed dead animals reminding Dylan of the many horror films he’d watched. He’d wanted to run from the house screaming, but had instead stood firm, not wanting to tarnish his hard-as-nails reputation. It had mortified him for weeks.

  That’s when he’d nicknamed Frank ‘Freaky’, and the nickname had stuck amongst his friends at high school. It had never seemed to bother Frank; in fact one day after school he’d actually thanked Dylan for his cool nickname. Dylan was sure there were more dead animals in Frank’s house than alive at the zoo. It probably explained why Frank had never married—no decent woman would be caught dead in a house like that. There was just something about the man that made Dylan’s hair stand up on the back of his neck, but it took all sorts in this world, and he just tried his best to act nonchalant around him.

  Turning his attention back to the kids, Dylan smiled. Watching the overly excited group be entertained by the clown was just what the doc had ordered, the children’s laughter containing something magical. Dylan loved kids. He and Shelley had been trying for a brother or sister for Annie before she had passed away. He wondered if he would be able to grant Annie a sibling one day. An only child himself, it broke his heart to think she could grow up like he did, pining for the special best mate that only a sibling could be.

  Another tap on his shoulder broke his train of thought, and he turned to see a lobster-faced Rex grinning back at him, the stocky man’s weekend out fishing in the northern sun clearly evident in his beetroot-coloured skin and the glowing white marks where his sunglasses had been. He looked like he’d been shoved in the oven and left to cook to a crisp while wearing goggles.

  Dylan turned on his stool, resting his forearms on the bar while trying not to laugh at the state of Rex’s face. ‘Hey, Rex, how’d you go mate? Catch any bigguns?’

  Rex grinned and clapped his hands together, his wiry copper hair reminding Dylan of a rusty scourer. ‘Yup, I sure did. I caught a bloody shark, this big!’ Rex proudly stretched his arms as wide as they’d go, giving Dylan an image of the size of his catch while he whistled through his teeth. ‘I reckon we might have flake and chips on the menu for a month, thanks to my handiwork.’

  ‘Shit hey! That would’ve been a bit of a hairy moment for you, pulling the bugger into your little tinny.’

  ‘It sure was. The bastard tried to bite my bloody arm clean off. Talk about crap my pants! Thank God Trev was there to give me a hand, otherwise I woulda been in deep shit—’ Rex chuckled, ‘—literally!’

  Dylan laughed, raising his glass of Coke. ‘You’re a bloody legend, mate. Here’s to ya.’

  Rex puffed his chest out, smirking stupidly. ‘That I am, Dylan, that I am.’ He leant on the bar and took a swig from his freshly poured beer, still grinning. ‘Listen to this. I got a ripper joke for ya… A man and his wife are sitting in the living room and he says to her, “Just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.” So what happens? His wife gets up, unplugs the TV and throws out all of his beer.’

  Rex burst into uncontrollable snorting laughter, making Dylan do the same. His laughter was contagious. Rex was the king of jokes round these parts, his good-hearted nature one of the big reasons the Opals Ridge Hotel was so popular amongst the locals and returning travellers. Being a publican was certainly Rex’s calling, and Lorraine’s too for that matter.

  Their laughter finally subsiding, Dylan remembered what he had come into the pub for yesterday, only to find out from a slightly annoyed Lorraine that Rex had taken the weekend off to go fishing. ‘Hey, Rex, you don’t know of any farmers looking for some hired help, do you? I really could do with some extra dosh at the moment.’

  Rex’s bushy copper eyebrows met in the middle as he rubbed his stubbly chin in thought. ‘Hmm, there’s not a lot of work about, Dylan, with the cattle market the way it is. Somebody mentioned the other day that a cocky was looking for someone, but I can’t for the life of me remember who it was…’ His eyebrows parted and shot up in recollection. ‘Ahh, that’s right, it was old Stanley Wildwood. I bumped into him at the supermarket and he mentioned he was looking for a bloke to help out a few days a week.’

  Dylan almost fell backwards off his stool in shock. Stanley Wildwood. Renee Wildwood’s grandfather—how bloody ironic. ‘I’ll give Stanley a call. Do you have his number?’

  ‘Nope, but you could look him up in the phone book.’ Rex gave him a friendly shove. ‘Although, if I were you, I’d just call out there. Stan strikes me as the kind of bloke that would rather do business in person. You might have a better chance of snapping the job if you turn up ready for work and raring to go.’

  ‘Yeah, good idea, I’ll pop out there first thing tomorrow morning. It’s right over the other side of town from me, and I was hoping to get something a little closer to home, but beggars can’t be choosers hey.’

  ‘Exactly. You gotta take what you can get at the moment, buddy. It’s lean times for everyone in Opals Ridge, the worst I’ve ever seen it in my twenty-five years as publican here. That’s why Lorraine and me had to—’ Rex drew quotes in the air, ‘—la dee dah the menu up a bit, to pull in more of the tourists. Sadly, we just can’t survive off the locals alone, like we used to. Times are a-changing, and you gotta roll with them or you’ll get left behind in this dog-eat-dog world.’

  Dylan nodded solemnly. ‘You got that right, mate. I’m feeling the pinch pretty bad myself, and if I don’t do something soon, I could lose my property to the bloody bank. I’ve worked too damn hard for that to happen, and over my dead body am I gonna let Annie, or my mum, go through any more shit in their lives.’

  Rex sculled the last of his beer, frowning. ‘Well, asking Stan for the job’s a bloody good start. And if there is anything Lorraine and I can do to help out, you let us know. You’re kinda like the son we never had, Dylan. I hope you know we’re here anytime you need us, okay?’

  ‘Yup, thanks Rex, I know you guys are, and I really appreciate it.’

  Rex gave him a nod and a smile. ‘I better go do the rounds, but let me know how you go with Stanley.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Watching Rex strolling over to the other side of the bar to chat to some of the other patrons, Dylan took a sip from his Coke as he wondered what had ever happened to his first love, the beautifully spirited and always enchanting Renee Wildwood.

  The woman had stolen his heart and then vanished without a trace, without even a goodbye, crushing his soul in the process. If she hadn’t left her mark so deeply on his heart, he would have doubted she’d even existed. How hard would it have been for her to pick up the phone to tell him she was leaving, or where she was going, to at least put his mind at ease? It still saddened him when he thought about how easily she had discarded him. Had she really been that mad at him for telling her how wrong it was to accuse people of Scarlet’s disappearance without proof
, or was it that she had been too ashamed of herself after what she had so wrongly assumed about his father?

  Maybe she just hadn’t loved him as much as he’d thought she had. Or maybe he’d been young and naive, and she’d taken advantage of him. He’d probably never know. The only thing he knew, from the word around town, was that her grandparents had believed it best for her to leave town. No explanations, no clues as to where she’d gone. End of story. It was as if she’d vanished like her sister, Scarlet.

  Although the big difference was that Renee was living her life somewhere whereas Scarlet would never be coming home. The amount of blood the investigating officers had discovered in the wilderness beyond the family property was enough to prove Scarlet had most certainly met with foul play. He remembered the horrific day the detective had informed Renee and her family of the discovery like it was only yesterday. Renee had turned up on his doorstep, her body wracked with sobs, and he had lain with her in his arms all night, soothing her as she’d wept. It had torn him to pieces, seeing her like that, and knowing that Scarlet had very possibly been murdered. Poor Scarlet, she’d been a light in everyone’s life—he still found it hard to believe someone would want to harm her. And the fact that her body had never been found and her killer was still roaming free was all kinds of wrong. Life could be so fucking unfair.

  Trying to make sense of the thoughts and long-ago feelings now rolling around inside him, he pictured Renee’s pretty face. It had torn him to pieces for the first year, not knowing where she was—his love for her at the time was so intense he was completely lost without her. For months he couldn’t take a decent breath because his chest was so tight with the grief of losing her. He’d once googled her name before he’d got with Shelley, but nothing had come up other than the stuff about Scarlet’s disappearance.