Free The Wildwood Sisters by Mandy Magro Page A

again.’
    His throat constricted so much that Dylan found it almost impossible to answer. ‘I’ll do my best, sweetheart.’
    Ripping himself away from her, Dylan ran for the front door, called Bossy in, and made her sit beside Annie on the couch before switching on the telly. The Muppet Show was on, Annie’s favourite, but the distraction did nothing. Annie wrapped her arms around her pooch, burying her head into Bossy’s neck as she wept. Dylan fought to keep it together. He wanted to stay here and hold Annie to him, but he needed to cover his wife’s naked body before the ambulance officers turned up. Even in death she deserved some dignity. He didn’t want strangers seeing her exposed.
    Heading back towards the bathroom, Dylan rang his mother’s granny flat down the back of the cottage, the words that spilled from him sounding like they were coming from another’s lips. After breaking down and quickly recomposing herself, his mum assured him she’d be there in two minutes.
    Dylan sucked in a few deep breaths. Surely this was all just a bad dream, and he was going to wake up any minute now. This, right here, wasn’t his real life. It couldn’t be. Things like this didn’t happen to him.
    Stepping through the bathroom door, reality punched him in the chest once again and his legs gave way. He crumpled to the floor beside Shelley. Tenderly pushing the hair from her face, he leant in and kissed her cheeks repeatedly as he slipped his arms around her limp body. Blood stained her beautiful blonde hair and soaked through his shirt, the sensation of it against his skin crushing his soul. It was then he spotted what had killed her; the entirety of the back of her head was caved in. It looked like she had stepped from the bath, and while reaching for the towel she had slipped and hit her head on the bathroom sink. A simple accident, a devastating outcome, three lives changed in an instant, forever. He could now hear his mum consoling Annie in the lounge room, his little girl’s sobs crushing him even more. How were they going to survive this?
    Sobbing to the point he could barely breathe, Dylan placed a towel over his wife, lay back down beside her and hugged her to him, telling her over and over how much he loved her, and how he couldn’t imagine his life without her. This was it. She was gone. He was never going to get to kiss her lips, laugh with her, cuddle her or make love to her, ever again. His earthly angel was now flying with the angels in heaven.
    Gasping for air, Dylan sat bolt upright, his sheets in disarray around him and his doona in a pile on the floor. Although it was cool with the ceiling fan going, sweat covered his body and his cotton boxers stuck uncomfortably to his skin. He took a few wheezy breaths, trying to stop his heart from bolting like a startled horse. Calmly grabbing his inhaler from the bedside table, he drew in the lifesaving medicine, his constricted airways opening up in seconds.
    Having suffered with it for most of his life, asthma didn’t faze him—he’d learnt to live with it. What did scare him, though, was that Annie suffered from it too, at times quite badly, especially if she was anywhere near tobacco smoke, cats or musty mouldy places. By using a specially designed spacer along with her daily preventer they’d at least got it under control, but it didn’t lessen the risk of a bad attack if something set her asthma off.
    It was a never-ending job reminding her to take her inhaler with her wherever she went—a major reason he’d decided to buy her a locator watch for her upcoming birthday, along with the inflatable bouncing house and backyard waterslide she’d been begging him for. The watch looked pretty as a picture with a pink band and a fairy themed face—so Annie would love wearing it. It worked off GPS—and thankfully Opals Ridge had great coverage in most areas other than the