Page 12 of A Violet Obsession

“I’m busy, Bob,” I say, using her childhood nickname just to irritate her.

I pocket my wallet and keys, scanning the house to make sure I’ve shut off all my electronics. I flip the switch that lowers the false wood paneling over my wall of monitors, then lock the front door behind me.

“I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t super-duper important.”

I snort. “Like the last time you said I needed to meet a friend of yours, and it turned out to be a blind date.”

“Okay, I’ll admit I probably should have told you. But Ashley really was lonely… and you never know what lonely people might do… and you never talk about going out⁠—”

“Emma.”

She sighs. “This isn’t a setup, I swear. I’m really worried about Lily.”

The uncharacteristic seriousness in my sister’s tone makes my shoulders slump. I already know I’m about to cave. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know all the details,” she admits. “But when the cop answered her phone⁠—”

My antennae shoot up. “Cop? Is she injured?”

“No, he said there’d been an incident or something, and I guess, after I called her phone multiple times, he finally answered. But he wouldn’t tell me anything.” She sounds annoyed. “Which, of course, scared me. And then, when I finally got hold of her, she said not to worry. That it was just a misunderstanding at work.”

Bullshit. Cops rarely answer someone’s phone. “What kind of misunderstanding?”

“There was a robbery at the auction house where she works, and a couple of guards were shot.”

“And the police had her phone because…?”

There’s a pause, and I swallow my urge to groan.

“She wouldn’t do something like that,” Emma snaps, instantly defensive, and correctly interpreting my silence.

“Emma, you can’t know that. You haven’t seen her in over a decade, and you know you have the worst judgment when it comes to people.”

“Just because I don’t think everyone is out to get me doesn’t mean I have⁠—”

“Lars.”

“Oh my god,” she shrieks. “You are such an asshole. I can’t believe you said his name. He is nameless. He who shall never be called by his stupid, sexy, Swedish name ever again.”

“Or Samantha,” I add, because apparently I can’t help myself.

My sister hisses out an angry breath. “You’re right, Finn. My college boyfriend tried to scam me for a green card, and a roommate stole my identity—but just for a little while. This is different. This. Is. Lily. I know know her.”

There’s something in Emma’s voice, though, that tells me she’s holding back.

“You’ve only been back in touch for, what, six months? You’re telling me she hasn’t changed… at all? Did you ever find out why she ghosted you, or did you just decide to forgive her because you know know her?”

I hadn’t paid much attention when Lily moved away from Grangerton. I was finishing my senior year and getting ready for boot camp. But I remember my sister crying... a lot.

“That’s not what’s important right now!” Emma insists hotly. “We’ll talk about whatever happened when it’s time. And yeah, she only reached out a few months ago, but I still know her.”

I cover my face with my hand, and not for the first time, wonder if I was somehow given to the wrong family at the hospital. How can my sister be this naïve?

“A couple of months and she’s already got you involved with the police and an armed robbery. And don’t pretend you’re chill with not knowing what happened when she moved. I distinctly remember babysitting you on your twenty-first birthday, and you were sobbing to your friends about how unfair it was.”

I shudder as memories of that night roll over me. I will never forgive my mother for guilting me into playing chaperone to Emma and her drunk sorority sisters. Mom had deployed her superior guilt technique: “You were gone for so long with the Army, and now you do… whatever it is you do. And we never see you. It’s like you don’t even want to be part of this family. You will be sorry you missed all these key moments when we’re all dead.”

My sister clearly comes by her dramatics naturally.