Sandy: I was wondering why I thought Darryl and Sheila might not have been married in season 1 and it turns out Sheila wasn't mentioned until mid-season 2, even though I guess they were married in season 1. So it wasn't an intentional thing to make Darryl unmarried, it's just my own headcanon!

Sorry it's taken me a while to get this up, I've been pretty busy the past week and a half. Also, I've just noticed this chapter's pretty short too...sorry!

Today is the worst day of my life.

My sister, my baby sister, is lying dead in a wooden box.

We're going to cover up the box with soil. Bury her. Bury my sister.

But we have to.

Piper and I get the privilege of dropping two white lilies into the hole in the ground that is going to be her grave. The flowers can wither and rot under the earth we're going to bury her with. I find it hard to let go of my flower, only relinquishing my grip on it once my sister gives my arm a reassuring squeeze. It's okay.

All I want to do after the service is curl up in a ball on my bed, away from the entire world but that isn't an option. Why is it that people are expected to have wakes after funerals? As if the whole thing isn't hard enough you're expected to invite people into your home, most of whom you dislike, and offer them food and an opportunity to say some clichéd and empty phrases to you in order to make themselves feel better, when really it should just be a private family thing. I feel like I'll scream if I have to smile and politely thank one more person who tells me how sorry they are that this had to happen and if there's anything they can do, anything at all, then I shouldn't hesitate to call them. I'm almost certain that if I did call one of them over the next few days for a favor they'd be stunned.

There are too many people I don't know or care much about in the house, filling the hall, the living room and the sun room. It's getting harder and harder to concentrate on what any of them are saying to me and I can feel the pitying looks people keep giving me when they think I'm not looking burning into me.

I finally excuse myself when a girl who apparently worked with Phoebe two years ago begins crying in front of me. Upstairs is the only place that's devoid of people but once I get up there I realize that being by myself isn't the relief I thought it would be.

I lock the bathroom door and lean back against the wall, worried that if I don't then I won't be able to stand up anymore. I close my eyes hoping for some sort of momentary relief from what I'm feeling, but that's a mistake. With my eyes closed there is nothing to distract me and unpleasant thoughts can push through the frankly flimsy barrier I've tried to put up to prevent them. My attempts to stop these thoughts are about as effective as holding a sheet of paper over your head in a tropical storm to try to keep yourself dry; the continuous deluge soon causes the paper to disintegrate.

I'm finding it hard to decide whether the day that it happened or this day, burying her, is the worst of my life. In a way today feels far worse. I have not seen or spoken to my sister for two weeks and one day. Fifteen days. I will never see her or speak to her again, which means that those two weeks are going to turn into a month and then three months and then a year, then five, then a decade, and then a lifetime. That thought is hard to stomach.

Today also seems worse because it's starting to become more real. My sister is dead and she is not coming back, however much I might want her to. My wishing and begging and praying and making absurd deals with a God I might not even believe in is not going to bring her back. Seeing her coffin today…seeing her grave…I can hardly fathom that my sister was in them. That at this very second she is in a dark, cold wooden box that is being covered over with earth for all of eternity…forever is an unfathomable length of time by its very definition.

I stop myself from picturing her inside that coffin. My brain involuntarily conjures up images of what she might look like at the very moment complete with the horrifying injuries that ended her life. Worse, my imagination presses fast forward on that image so that I'm picturing her six months from now, a year from now…

With these images in my head I find myself stumbling forward to the bathroom to throw up. I cannot cope with this. Not only the grief and anger, but the thoughts I keep on having. I'm not equipped for it. I really can't see how I'm going to get through this. I have a vague notion that I will, simply because I must, but to use a cliché, I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. How am I supposed to accept what happened? My sister was not killed by an act of god, she was killed by an act of man. Somebody did this to her, intentionally. Someone did this to me. They knew what they were doing and they did it anyway without a thought or care as to what they were taking away.

Sitting back I take a few deep breaths and fight against the second wave of nausea. All I have to do is get through the next few hours. Let people tell me they're sorry and if there's anything they can do then to let them know. In other words, let them comfort themselves so they can go away satisfied, knowing that they were kind to me, and sleep easy tonight. That's what this is about. If it were up to me then nobody would be here right now so that I wouldn't have to force smiles with people I don't even like and who my sister probably didn't like either.

I stand up slowly and take a look in the mirror. I don't know what I was expecting to see, but I look awful. Washing my face, redoing my mascara and having a glass of water doesn't particular improve things, but my appearance isn't top of my priorities right now so I decide that this will have to do and go back downstairs.

I scan the hall for Piper. I can't see her or Leo, and I note that I don't even recognize two thirds of the people in the room. My gaze settles on someone I do recognize. The inspector, the one who told me, or rather didn't tell me, what had happened to Phoebe. He has his back to me but you don't really forget what the person who told you your sister is dead looks like. I'm surprised he came actually. I only sent the invite to him because I thought if he came to the funeral, watched Piper and me falling apart, then it might be a little more motivation to try to catch the man responsible. Stupid, really, I know. That's not how the police work.

But he came.

I think about what he said that day, namely his vehement promises that he would catch him. I want to hear him say those words again. I want him to promise it to me again, just for the comfort it might bring to hear somebody telling me that they have the same goal I do, or at least a suitably similar one. His goal justice, while mine is something more akin to revenge, but we both want to catch the man and that's enough right now. I can worry about later when it comes.