Niall's POV:
It had been a year.
A year since the beginning of the month that completely ruined everything and everyone I had built up in life.
It all began with a call.
Even after a year I still wake up with the same nightmares. Everytime I hear the phone ring I can still hear the policeman's voice, after a goddamned year telling me that my parents are gone.
I did not blame Amelia for leaving home after they were gone.
Every single board and beam in the now trashed house that is rotting represents them in their graves.
I could not blame her for leaving.
It was the asshole who couldn't even call a fucking cab that night.
I did not blame my girlfriend for leaving Mullingar 6 months ago with my only friend. I understood now that I was a mess and still am. I'm not sure if I will ever see them again but knowing that they are somewhere in the world, breathing (even if they are sucking face at this very moment) it felt a hell alot better knowing they were not 6 feet under like my parents.
Yeah, it pissed me off that after everything, Sophia left me here alone in this sadness that I refused to leave, but I couldn't blame her. Truthfully, I kind of missed her, and my old friend she was mostly likely with.
I walked passed the letter on the table, like I had for the passed 364 days, and emerged into the piercing wind of Mullingar in December.
The sun was just making it's way over the horizon as I slowly strolled down the streets, anything to get out of the house where I was restless with my drowning memories of exactly one year ago.
---
I opened the door to the library just as Mary, the librarian, unlocked it.
"Good morning, dear friend." she called, already behind the first bookshelf.
"Good morning Mary," I smiled for the first time since my last visit with the gray-haired woman.
"You know it's been a year, right?" she whispered so softly I had to strain to hear her. I wanted to pretend like I didn't hear at all but I couldn't do that to the only person left remotely close to family.
"Yes but it still hurts as though it was yesterday," I replied with my voice just above a whisper.
"Maybe you should try to live again," she said, not expecting an answer.
With that I looked over the titles of books until I found one I had not yet read.
I spent the day with my nose in a play written by Arthur Miller. I usually did not read dramas but since I have read half the fairly small library I didn't have much of a choice, books being my escape to a new world, other than the hell my life has been turned into.
The play was called "Death of a Salesman" and was probably the worst piece of literature I ever held in my medium-sized hands.
The storyline is about a man that wants to kill himself and how he thinks he is a failure to his family and in the end he finds the balls to do it.
Willy Loman, even though a fictional character, is a coward. He ended his life, leaving his family left behind.
No one ever thinks about the ones left behind.
---
I walked home in the chilly dusk, just as the street lights began to flicker on and I unlocked the door to the empty house.
I stared at the dusty envelope that sat untouched all this time.
I opened it and read aloud to myself as my voice bounced back from the walls of my childhood home, once filled with life.
Just as I remembered it, the letter said:
Dear Niall,
I can't bare to be here without mum and dad. Remember that I love you.
Amelia
That was all I had of my sister, the last family I had and will ever have.
I needed to find a way to get out of this maze of suffering that I have lost myself in.
It had been a year, it was time for me to start living again.
Not forget, but live.
---
Amelia's POV:
I awoke with a start.
I brushed my teeth and changed quickly, out the door before the sunrise.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, passed the steps to my little house I barely made enough to rent, I was sprinting. I didn't even have to think.
My legs moved with my arms in rhythm, taking long strides a crossed the pavement. I loved this feeling, even though I didn't really know how to describe it.
I was lost in my run when the date occurred to me.
It had been a year.
My legs moved faster and my chest went up and down slowly at first, then quickening.
My heart was about to explode from my chest.
Before I was running for exercise but now I ran to get away, away from my past. Away from my memories, away from my regrets.
When I turned the corner of a street name I hadn't seen before, I felt myself hit heads with another person and the cement under me.
Just before I moved to get up I heard the tall curly-haired guy say, "Goddamn watch where you are going." before standing up and running in the direction he came from.
Asshole, I thought as I got up and started walking home.
"This is going to be a long day," I said to the ground beneath my feet as a tear rolled down my right cheek.
After the longest walk I'd ever taken I opened the door to my tiny house and immediately fell to the ground.
I quietly sobbed until I fell asleep, wondering how I could have been so stupid to have let them leave that night, exactly one year ago.
