Page 121 of XO Karma

“I don’t know. Just… anything that seems out of the ordinary for a typical thirty-year-old who deals art for a living.”

“Got it.”

We split, searching around the room. I don’t allow myself to linger in any one place out of fear of breaking down again. I almost lose it at the multi-colored butterfly figurine on her desk. It was my Christmas present to her the year before she passed. Aster says I’m strong, and I know I am, but that doesn’t make this any easier.

Her dresser is as she left it. A mixture of workout clothes and clubbing outfits.

Her desk is so empty, I wonder if she ever even used it.

“Anything yet?” I ask Aster.

“Not yet.” Hangers clink as he fingers through them. “Did she have any hiding spots?”

“Hiding spots?”

“Yeah, like do you know if there are any false walls or anything in the house?”

I rack my brain from the time we spent here as kids. “Well, this used to be her grandma’s room, but there was a floorboard in the attic where we hid things.”

“Let’s check there,” he suggests.

“I’ve been up there since she died,” I say, exiting the room, and he trails behind me. “But only to move some boxes around.”

A minute later we’re in the dusty attic, the only light coming from a small window. We step carefully through the dusty room, the wooden floor creaking beneath us. “I swear this house was built in, like, the 1800s,” I tell Aster while racking my brain for the spot where Violet used to keep the weed when we were teenagers.

It was near a lamp, which is now gone. Closing my eyes, I sift through memories, and the realization hits me. Turning, I find an old dresser and go over to it. Kneeling, I reach under and find a loose board. “I think it’s here.”

Aster and I shove the dresser out of the way. He pulls out a switch blade, sticks it between the planks, and pops the piece of wood off. He tosses it to the side with a clatter, and I shine my flashlight in.

A silver pistol glints at me.

A gun?

Violet hated guns. She always made Liam leave his locked in a safe by the front door when she was home. I grab the weapon off a leather bag, then Aster reaches in, and tugs it out. I glance at the pistol in my hands, racking my brain for any memory of it, and finding none.

“Lily.” Aster’s tone raises alarm bells, and I glance over to the sight of the leather bag tumbling open to reveal different knives in a variety of sizes and shapes.

“I don’t understand… She didn’t like weapons.”

His cocked brow says he disagrees. “She had a funny way of going about it, then.”

“Maybe it was exposure therapy?” I suggest weakly.

“What? Keep a secret stash of knives and Glocks so you’re not afraid of them anymore? Surely you’re not that naive.”

Anger bubbles under the surface. “I am not naive. But I knew her. You didn’t.”

“Yes, but sometimes we can be blinded the closer we are to someone. You stop looking to learn new things. You don’t question behavior. You just simply exist near one another.”

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

“I wish I wasn’t.”

My mind wanders back to the last few months before Violet’s death, and my stomach sinks. Aster’s right. We were more roommates than best friends those days. We had opposite schedules, and when we were both home, we mainly just binged true crime documentaries and ate our weight in chips and dip.

It was all so… surface level.

I return the gun to the hole, then sit on the floor. “How could I have been so blind?”