The Maxwell Sisters Read Online Free PDF

tell him. So instead she stifled her tears in her pillow. During the day, she managed to fill her mind with activities to stop herself from thinking about it.
    Eight-thirty to three she focused all her energy on her students at Busselton Primary, a school thirty minutes from her home in the neighbouring town of Dunsborough. After school, she helped Spider with the television show called Spider’s Kitchen that he filmed locally and sold to the Channel Nine network. In her meagre spare time, she threw herself into wedding planning. Keeping busy kept her positive. And of all the Maxwell sisters, this was definitely Phoebe’s greatest skill.
    When she’d broken her leg at age seven she’d covered it in glow-in-the-dark fairy stickers and become the envy of all her friends. After university when she hadn’t been able to score a job in Perth she’d come home and met Spider – the love of her life. When Eve and Tash had fallen out months ago, leaving her the piggy-in-the-middle, she’d taken the opportunity to get closer to both sisters. And that had worked beautifully until recently.
    Whatever the case, perhaps this was the reason why she’d been permitted to know the secret in the first place. She was the only Maxwell capable of finding a way to put a positive spin on it.
    If that was even possible.
    How could she mask a future that was going to rip her family apart? And then she realised something. Her family was already broken.
    Once so tightly knit, the Maxwells were now distant at best. She barely spoke to, let alone saw much of her sisters any more. Where had all that closeness gone? Whatever happened to ‘Club members only’?
    Surely their different geographic locations wasn’t the only thing to blame for their lack of communication. Phones, email, texting, Skype, Facetime, Facebook, Twitter. Did they really have an excuse not to stay in touch regularly? The only person to make an effort, in fact, was her mother. Though, Phoebe realised guiltily, how often she groaned when she received that call. Small and vibrant with dark Greek features only slightly fading with age, Anita Maxwell did not have the ‘crazy gene’ but made up for it with her tendency to worry about anything and everything.
    In any event, it was because of this complete and utter family breakdown that Phoebe had come to a decision one night.
    â€˜We should have the wedding at Tawny Brooks.’
    Spider, who had been reading a book on the couch opposite hers, looked up and smiled. ‘You’re speaking your thoughts out loud again, love.’
    â€˜Am I?’ She looked across at him, marvelling again that he was hers. He had a smile that could melt steel, a floppy brown fringe that often fell in his laughing eyes. Tall and gangly, he was a far cry from the kind of man she used to think was her type. Spider’s look was more intellectual than brawny, more boyish than manly, more sincere than smooth. And yet one look from him made her heart race faster than a Japanese bullet train. He was perfect for her and she could not have been more happy or satisfied that in just six months’ time they would be husband and wife.
    â€˜My family needs some time together.’ At last she had something to aim for, something that made her feel better about the dreadful knowledge she carried around inside of her.
    â€˜I think your family will come together wherever we have the wedding.’ Spider’s brow furrowed.
    â€˜No,’ Phoebe had shaken her head, ‘I don’t just mean in the same room. I mean, close again. It has to be at home with all our memories.’
    â€˜Even the bad ones?’ Spider grimaced.
    She nodded. ‘Especially those. There are some things we Maxwells have swept under the rug for far too long. Do you mind, darl? Do you mind if we get married at Tawny Brooks?’
    He raised his eyebrows, a wry, resigned smile twisting his mouth. ‘Are you sure your