It had now been a full year. A full year without her.

I couldn't believe I had survived twelve months alone. Twelve months sounded like a lot but I could recall every painful second.

As I knelt by the grave, I took out the marker I carried around in the back pocket of my jeans just for her.

Dad had been here earlier but I had not seen any sign of Avan all day. I hoped he was okay wherever he was.

My tears were steady now as I thought about her, and not as hysterical as when I had first woken up this morning. I still felt crushed, but it was a far cry from true distress—the kind of distress I felt a year ago.

—A year ago when that phone call first came in. Dad and I were settling in on the couch to watch the first baseball game of the high school season. He had bought a car for Riley's eighteenth birthday and after spending the morning celebrating with us, she had taken off to show it to Avan.

One of Dad's pet peeves was having to move from the couch once his games started. And naturally, like any teenager would, Riley and I went out of our way to make sure he had to, by casually forgetting to turn off the oven or forgetting to mention that we would have friends over.

So, when the house phone rang, like the mature sixteen-year-old I was, I hurried to yell "Not it."

He groaned and shook his head but still stood up to walk to the phone.

Distress was what I felt as I watched his amused expression melt into panic. The phone slipped out of his hand and he ran to grab his keys on the coffee table, knocking over the vase of flowers without a second glance.

"Is there something wrong, Dad?" I asked, but something inside me must have sensed the anxiety in his clumsy actions.

"Accident. She's— Accident," he stammered, barely making sense, already rushing toward the front door. "Please, stay here," he said, but he must have known that I wouldn't listen.

I ran after him, unable to register the contact of the broken pieces of glass under my bare feet. I did not think about changing from the pajamas I was wearing either.

Everything else between this and arriving at the hospital was a blur: doors slamming, my heart pounding in my chest, rain pouring over the windshield, Dad breaking all the rules of driving he had lectured to my sister this very same morning, and the silence in the car that, in hindsight, seemed to scream that nothing would ever be the same.

The doors of the hospital flew open before us as if sensing our affliction.

We rushed to the admittance desk, drenching the clear marble floor with the water dripping from our clothes. I despised the white-colored walls intended to bring me tranquility when all I could really feel was gnawing anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

I vaguely noticed that we were out of place in the immaculate building. Around us, everyone else calmly strolled as if the hospital was nothing more than a literal walk in the park. But I couldn't see any of them. My mind was too busy playing over and over the accident scenes that I watched in movies.

I tried to ignore the smell of blood and pills filling my nostrils as Dad and I ran to the nurse behind the desk.

She looked up at us, her eyes narrowing slightly at our appearances. She shook her head, chasing the disapproval away, and offered a polite smile. "How can I—"

"My daughter. She's been... accident," Dad cut in, and I hoped she could understand his stammers because my words probably wouldn't make any more sense. "Where is she?"

The woman patiently turned to her computer screen. "What's her name?"

Her face was devoid of any hint of empathy. After all, she had probably seen us all day, week after week. She saw us in the faces of parents blubbering nonsense, petrified of what could have happened to their children. She heard us in the yells of paramedics flying behind ambulance beds and in the concerned sobs of witnesses.

We were all of these people at the same time and to her, we were all the same. Riley was neither her sister nor her daughter. She was just another patient at a hospital that had seen too much distress already.

"Riley Taylor," Dad answered, his voice a little calmer now.

Had he reassured himself that she would be okay? If Dad thought she would be fine, then I had nothing to worry about, right? The pitting feeling in my stomach telling me that my body wouldn't be able to endure this much stress was lying, right? Riley was okay. She had to be... right?

The woman's fingers slowly crept over the keyboard as she stared at the screen, emotionally detached from the situation. I wanted to reach over the desk between us and make her feel my pain somehow, force her to understand the terror that was eating away at my brain cells then maybe she would have typed faster.

"Taylor... Taylor," she mumbled. "Oh, there it is. She was in a car collision with—" she squinted at the computer as she tried to read the brief file— "uh, a truck. The truck driver is also admitted here. They are both in critical condition."

My brain only registered the phrase "critical condition" and it echoed throughout every inch of my being. This couldn't be right. Maybe she read it wrong. Maybe this was the wrong file. The nurse looked young enough to be right out of med school. These mistakes could happen, right?

My sister had to be okay.

She was probably laughing right now at something Avan said. She was probably giving him a ride in her new car... her new car... car... car accident.

My mind snapped out of its blissful reverie and I understood that this was all real. This was not me imagining things. This was indeed a hospital and my sister had been in an accident.

"She's probably in surgery right now," the nurse said and pointed to an invisible spot behind her.

The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up with an exasperated sigh. "Yes, Northwood Cares," she answered.

Cares? I yearned to grab the phone from her hand and tell the speaker at the other end the truth. Tell them that this was the last hospital they should contact.

I itched to do anything to wipe the patient smile off the nurse's face. My own aggressiveness startled me and I took deep breaths to attempt to appease it.

She noticed we were still standing in front of her desk and asked the person on the line to hold.

"I would guess room 217 since it was the last vacant one, but I'm not sure. It's not like anyone around here ever keeps me updated," she rambled on about useless details I didn't care for, before finally adding, "Upstairs. I'm sure you'll find it easily."

Dad and I ran up the stairs and I didn't feel the cold ceramics under my feet nor the ache of the exercise until we were sitting on the uncomfortable brown seats in front of the room, staring blankly at the doors.

Across from us, a young man sat and rubbed his forehead with his hand, sobbing as he typed on his phone.

Dad's hand rested on mine and he rubbed my knuckles but I didn't feel it. I didn't feel anything. Blocking all feelings was for the best or else I would also feel the devastating pain of being on the brink of losing the most important person in my life.

A pleasant voice from the speakers paged some doctor to some random room. I heard Dad mutter something about calling Avan as he rose from his chair, but I barely heard his voice. The one in my heart whispering that this was the end was much louder than any other sound.

Avan joined us barely fifteen minutes after Dad's call, droplets of water falling down his hair and his clothes. He didn't ask for any information as if he could just read what happened on both of our faces. He didn't sit but paced the corridor, unable to hide the torment from his face.

His pacing increased my discomfort if that was even possible.

None of us spoke a word. That would have only made it more difficult, perhaps. None of us needed to hear reassuring nonsense. Our worlds were falling apart and we were all very conscious of it.

A woman came out of the door that my eyes had not left for a second. Dad and I jumped off the chairs, afraid to waste any second.

She looked much more empathetic than the nurse at the desk but I didn't like the expression on her face. It didn't look like a "good news" expression. Maybe I already knew the words that she would say. A part of me had known since the call first came in.

"Taylor?" she asked with a small crack in her voice, and my heart sank fast like a boulder plummeting to the very bottom of the ocean

"Good news, good news, please," I heard the voice inside my heart beg. "Good news."

"I have bad news," she said and looked down at her clean white shoes in shame. "I'm so sorry." She paused and fidgeted with her fingers. "Riley Taylor's gone."

I felt Dad's arms wrap around me, as the doctor continued to rant about concussions, broken bones, and something about her heart and the cause of her death.

Dad's arms were limp around my shoulders. He meant to comfort me but I felt nothing but the heaviness that enveloped my heart.

The sheer weight of it was dragging me down. Down and away from his embrace. Down to a place where he couldn't reach me... where no one could. Down, down to the bottom of the ocean.

My fingers wrapped around Avan's and I read the shock on his face that kept him from sobbing like I was. It was silly to hope to comfort him when I couldn't comfort myself.

I felt a small pat on my back before the doctor walked away. I wished I could do the same.

I wished I could walk away and leave behind this panic at having to go on living without her. Without my precious sister. Without her uplifting words and her encouraging smiles.

I couldn't even fathom spending a second in this world without her light. How would I survive a lifetime of her absence?

The anguish of that day never subsided. I simply chased it to the back of my mind where it permanently loomed, condemned to replay again and again forever. It was a broken record on the radio that wouldn't stop regardless of how many times my fingers smashed against the button.

But as I ran my hand over Riley's gravestone, I felt an unsettling calm I had not experienced before, even as my mind played over the day of her accident.

Time was indeed the only thing that could mend a grieving heart.

"Riley," I said, brushing my fingers against the encryption of her name on the tombstone, "I'm slowly realizing that it's foolish of me to even try. It's ridiculous. I won't ever stop missing you." And maybe that was okay.

"Me neither."

I turned around, startled by the voice that interrupted me. I had not heard anyone approach but a woman now stood behind me, with her hands in her pocket, staring directly at Riley.

I cleared my throat and wiped my cheeks.

As soon as my eyes regained their primary function, I saw the sun embracing the light brown strands of her hair and I instantly recognized her.

The woman in the family portrait in our library, cradling me in her arms, wearing a smile as big as Riley's.

"Mom?" I heard myself ask hesitantly, the words still unfamiliar on my lips.