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“What was it?” I say.

“ ‘Stop talking about Kasey Monroe.’ That was my four-year-old’s secret.”

Chapter Twenty

In the weeks after Kasey went missing, our house transformed. Where it had once been the quiet home of two parents who didn’t quite love each other and two teenagers who spent more time outside the house than in, during the fall of 2012, it was a swarm of activity. A stream of local volunteers flowed through the front door at all hours of the day, collecting flyers and staple guns and bottles of water. Sandy organized a meal train and was constantly rearranging dishes in the fridge or packing homemade sandwiches into little plastic bags for people to eat on the go. Brad and my dad sprawled a huge map of Michiana over the dining room table and huddled around it as they strategized where to search next.

Thinking back on it now, our efforts seem dinky and useless. All it did was give us something to do with our hands while we slowly came to the realization that Kasey was never coming back.

One evening that September, after I got home from the day’s search party, I walked straight through the dining room, where my parents were talking with Brad and Sandy, and into the kitchen to make myself a vodka Sprite. By then, I’d started drinking more brazenly and more often. I kept waiting to get caught, but my dad was too distracted to notice anything, and my mom seemed to think shewas the one going through the alcohol so quickly. Whenever she got to the bottom of a bottle, she’d just sigh and go out for more.

I was screwing the top back on the vodka when Brad walked into the kitchen, and I froze. Surely this was going to be the moment I finally got caught. But with one look at his unfocused eyes, I could tell that he, like everybody else, was lost in his own world.

“Hey, Nic, I’ve been meaning to ask you—” He shot a glance over his shoulder. “This summer, did Kasey ever, you know, mention anything?”

I stepped in front of the bottle of vodka, blocking it from view. “Anything about what?”

“I don’t know. Did she ever tell you what she was up to? How she was spending her time? I know you guys are close. She tells you things she doesn’t tell other people.”

In those days, this was the one thing everyone asked me: Had Kasey told me anything that could explain where she was?

“Brad, I told all of this to the police already.”

“I know, I know. But I just want to make sure.”

“Make sure what?”

“Just…that we’ve covered our bases. Did Kasey ever, I don’t know, mention anything about work?”

By then, I was starting to get irritated. His questions were maddeningly vague, and like I’d said, I’d gone over this dozens of times already with Detective Wyler. “I mean, yeah, she talked to me about work sometimes.”

“Really? Did she ever mention anybody coming by? Anybody specific?”

Before I could answer, Sandy walked in. “Brad,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Then, looking between the two of us, she added, “Oh. I’m sorry. Did I interrupt something?”

“We were just talking,” Brad said.

I brought the vodka Sprite to my lips and drank deeply. For a moment, the kitchen was plunged into silence that felt awkward for reasons I didn’t understand.

A strange, strangled noise cut through the quiet, so thick andwatery, it was like a parody of a sob. I looked up to see that Brad’s face was red and twisted and realized with a jolt that the sound had come from him.

“Honey?” Sandy said evenly. This was clearly not the first time he’d broken down that week. “Why don’t you get some fresh air?” She gestured with her chin to the door that led to our backyard. When it closed behind him, she said, “I’m sorry. He’s just scared. We all are.”

I don’t know what I said in response. My mind was on Kasey, and I was already starting to feel floaty from the alcohol, and none of Brad’s behavior had struck me as odd. Sandy was right—we were all scared.

But now, sitting in Lauren’s living room, knowing what I know about his affair with my sister, I wonder: Was Brad scared that night because Kasey had disappeared? Or was he scared because he thought their secret hadn’t gone with her?

—

Jenna shifts beside me on the couch. “How did Beth Anne know to tell you?” she says to Lauren. “About the ‘secret,’ I mean.”

Lauren wipes a tissue beneath both eyes. “A man told her he’d give her a piece of chocolate if she told her mom. She had it all over her face.”

“Jesus…I’m sorry.”

Lauren stares into her lap.

“Did you ask her what the man looked like?” I say.