by Mandy Magro
The glass now empty, Renee grabbed the key, brushed the dust from the timber top her father had so painstakingly carved for her for Christmas all those years ago, took a deep breath, and then began unlocking the box with quivering hands. Flicking open the lid, her heart broke when she spotted a small stack of photos with a rubber band around them. The top one was a picture of her and Scarlet with their mum and dad on their tenth birthday, the four of them with a five-metre python wrapped around their shoulders.
They’d spent the day at Cairns Tropical Zoo and Renee felt like it was only yesterday that she and Scarlet had been hand feeding the kangaroos, cuddling koalas and nursing baby crocodiles—it had been like a day at Disneyland for them. One day later, a horrendous car accident had stolen both her parents’ lives—the bull her father had hit on the blind corner of the highway would have been impossible to see before it was too late. But here they were all so happy, their smiles outshining the sun, all of them without a care in the world. Little had they known the following day was going to change all of that, forever.
Renee began to look through the photos, smiling at one of her and her best friend from high school, Hayley Gregory. The pair of them were dressed in stonewash denim jeans and matching jackets. Good Lord, the fashion had been atrocious back then.
Continuing on through the pack, the next one made her heart squeeze tight. She was sitting bareback on her very first horse with her arms wrapped tightly around her dad’s waist, her gappy five-year-old grin as enormous as her dad’s. She smiled sadly as she ran a finger over her father’s youthful face.
Throughout her early childhood years, he had been both her and Scarlet’s hero. His passion for life and obsession with cattle and horses had been addictive. He had taught her so much in the short time she’d had with him on this earth, her undying love for horses all thanks to him. And her mum had been the typical country housewife, cooking, tending to the homestead and loving her girls and husband with everything she had. Renee closed her eyes and allowed the memories to flood her mind—she could still smell her mum’s rose-scented perfume and feel her tender kisses on her cheeks. Why did God have to call them, and Scarlet, home so early? She missed them all so much.
Gently placing the photo in her lap as if it were made of the frailest glass, Renee finally got to the bottom of the pile—the last one making her belly do a backflip. Dylan Anderson’s handsome chiselled face smiled back at her from where he was lying in the golden sunlight, the way his hands were tucked beneath his head making his muscular arms prominent. Her entire body tingled with the memory of his touch. With his dark hair and rugged looks, he really was the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on. And the intense look in his blue eyes, it swept her back to a time and place where love meant everything. She’d been the one who had taken the photo, and she recalled moments before this she and Dylan had been lying in the grass in each other’s arms, cuddling and kissing for hours. Those were the days—if only she could get them back.
Placing the photographs down on the floor beside her, she slowly began to empty the box. She pulled out old birthday and Christmas cards, knick-knacks she and Scarlet had collected on their many adventures out on Wildwood Acres—including a lump of golden rock that they had at the time thought was a nugget of gold—high school yearbooks and snapshots of their years spent in Opals Ridge. Everything she touched sent waves of bittersweet emotions rushing through her.
When she pulled out a silver chain with a split heart pendant on it she broke down and wept. Scarlet had bought her this for her fourteenth birthday present, as a symbol of the way they were tied together through their twin bond. They both wore a half, and when put together the pendant read ‘Sisters’. She’d taken it off a few months after Scarlet’s disappearance, unable to bear the pain it brought every time she looked at it. But now she unclasped the latch, lifted the chain to her neck and fastened it, her desire to wear it once again outweighing the sadness. Bringing her fingers to the pendant, she pressed it against her chest, feeling a closeness to Scarlet that she hadn’t experienced in many years.
Choking back sobs, she reached the bottom of the glory box, where some of her most treasured items had been kept buried—her diary, which matched the one of Scarlet’s they’d never been able to find, along with a Queensland State of Origin scarf Scarlet had bought her for her sixteenth birthday present. Unknowingly, Renee had gone and bought the exact same thing for her sister—she and Scarlet had often unintentionally bought the same things for each other, like perfumes, CDs and books, their connection one that many identical twins shared—the only difference being that she had plaited the tassels on Scarlet’s scarf before giving it to her. It had been their little thing—both of them always plaiting each other’s hair while they had watched telly. Their whole family had been State of Origin addicts, their voices having enough decibels to carry for miles as they’d screamed encouragement at the mighty Maroons on the telly. Those were the good old days.
Renee smiled softly as more buried memories began to rise to the surface. Scarlet had been in the habit of wearing her scarf to bed every night, and she had apparently been wearing it when she’d disappeared as they’d never been able to find it since.
She hugged hers to her chest, deep in thought, her heart aching. Who had Scarlet met with that night? She remembered Billy Burton, Scarlet’s boyfriend at the time she’d gone missing. Billy had always been a keen hunter, guns and knives his absolute passion, and his pride had been badly hurt when he and Scarlet had had a very public fight at a party the week before she’d disappeared. He used to always make Renee’s skin crawl and she found it hard to understand what her sister saw in him. But like chalk and cheese, she and Scarlet had had very different ideas about what was attractive in a man. Billy swore black and blue he’d had nothing to do with Scarlet’s disappearance, and had put forward a believable alibi—that he was home all night with his family. His parents had firmly backed him up, but wouldn’t most parents protect their child, no matter what?
Renee had her doubts about him, and she had made the fact well-known around Opals Ridge. She still felt justified in doing so although she was very sorry about the unjustified accusations she’d made about a few others. She hadn’t been in a very good state of mind at the time, desperately wanting to find who had taken her sister from her, and everyone had been a suspect.
She shook her head sadly. Nothing about that night added up—then or now—and it still infuriated her that the investigating police had met with dead ends every which way they had turned. Nearly ten years had passed, and Scarlet was now just another missing girl. She sighed despairingly. It was time she shone some light on the shadows of her past. Then she might be able to finally put it all behind her and move forward; for her sake, her grandparents’, and for Scarlet’s.
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First Published 2016
ISBN 978 176037424 2
BLUEGRASS BEND
© 2016 by Mandy Magro
Australian Copyright 2016
New Zealand Copyright 2016
Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being impose
d on the subsequent purchaser.
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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