Chapter two :D

Criminal Minds is on tonight, so I had to post this before I got distracted!

"Hey," A man said, looking up from a clip board. "Who let her in?" He asked, gesturing in my direction. I stood gaping at the scene in front of me with only one word that seemed to echo around my brain. Dead. He was gone.

A figure stepped in front of me, trying to block my view. "Belle," A familiar voice said quietly. I let my gaze linger for a second longer before looking up at the person. Mac Taylor. I blinked and opened my mouth to say something. "I… He was…" But my mouth wouldn't listen to what my brain wanted to say, and I did the only thing that I could think to do, I cried.

Not knowing what else to say or do, I let my body fall forward and hugged Mac around his midsection, mourning the loss of my dad. "Let's go outside." Mac said, pushing me back towards the door. "I tried calling you." He led me out onto the lawn. "I turned my phone off after school. I thought I was just going to come home, but then I ended up going to a friend's house for a few hours. The ambulance, it passed us on the road… I could have… This is my entire fault, Mac." I rambled, feeling very guilty for not just coming home after school.

"If I had just come home, maybe I could have tried to stop the person, I could have done something. He's dead because of me." Mac shook his head and put his hands on my shoulders. "He is not dead because of you. He is dead because of whoever killed him. If you had been home, you could have been killed too."

"I could have done something…" I whispered. "Come on," Mac said, putting an arm around my shoulders. "We should go get your stuff and I'll take you back to the apartment." He said. We walked back to the house in silence, and I immediately ran up the stairs to my bedroom. Once I was inside my own domain, I shut the door and let a few choked sobs escape.

This couldn't be happening. I had always heard of members of other families, not just in New York, all over the world, being murdered. But I never imagined that it could happen to my own family. Quickly wiping my eyes, I went to my closet and pulled down two zebra decaled suit cases and began to stuff the first one full of clothes.

The second I filled with objects that I wouldn't be able to live without; my laptop, pictures, my old black stuffed horse that I couldn't bear to leave behind, and other meaningful things. Once I was done, I sat on my bed and looked around my room.

The purple walls were almost bare, most pictures had been packed away to go to Mac's. Empty clothes hangers hung on the closet rod, and shelves were cleared of porcelain horses and other miss matched collected items, but the shelves themselves remained just as dusty.

On the top of one shelf, sat a single dusty picture. A woman with light brown hair, holding a smiling four year old girl while she sat on a front porch swing. That woman is also my mother. I don't know where she is now, because she left when I was six.

I never understood why she left, just that one morning I woke up and she had gone. I always wondered what about her life could have been so bad that she felt the need to leave, she just did. She always seemed happy to me, always smiling and laughing.

I decided to leave the picture where it sat, the memory no longer important to me. I may have only been six at the time, but I never forgave her for leaving. Whenever friends asked what happened to my mum, I would just tell them she was killed in an accident, it made me feel better about her leaving.

I was always too embarrassed to say what really happened, that she felt her life was so miserable she left her husband and six year old daughter. But now thinking, while I sit on my bed, I can't help but wonder where she might be right now. How would she react if she ever found out that dad was murdered?

How would she even find out he's dead?

I sat up. Would she even care? It was likely that she wouldn't. She probably moved to California and started another family, totally forgetting about us. The thought made my heart ache. I got off my bed and walked across the room to the shelf.

I reached up and pulled the picture down, wiped the dust off and studied the captured moment for a second. Then I remembered what that woman had done and quickly deposited the framed photo in the garbage can.

I felt numb, like I was living in a dream. Maybe this all was just a dream? Sometime I'd have to wake up; I just didn't know when that was.