Page 21 of The Missing Half

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 she was 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 and watery, 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.

“Of course I did. She said he was tall. Said he was wearing sunglasses and a hat, but that description could’ve fit almost every man there. I pushed for more but, you know, she’s four.”

“And did you do anything?” Jenna says.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you tell anyone? Did you think about going to the police?”

“God no. I have nothing to do with any of this. All I wanted to do—what I still want to do—is exactly what that man said and never talk about it again.” She seems to hear the harshness of her words, because she gives me a guilty look. “I’m sorry, Nic. Kasey was the closest thing I had to a sister, so I get why you’re doing this. I really do. But please don’t come to my house again. I can’t put my family in any more danger.”

I hear Jenna asking one more time if Lauren knows any other information she didn’t tell the police and Lauren murmuring no, nothing, but I’m too troubled by what she’s just told us to absorb much of anything. I need to get out of here. Finally, we say our goodbyes, then Lauren deadbolts the front door behind us, and Jenna and I walk quickly to her truck.

“That was Brad at the playground last week,” she says once we’re inside. “It had to have been.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

Only an hour ago, the idea that Brad was capable of using a four-year-old girl to threaten Lauren into silence would have struck me as absurd—the man I know wouldn’t do that, he couldn’t. But after everything we just learned, I’m not so sure. Still, Lauren was right. Beth Anne’s description was so vague, it could’ve been anyone at the church last Friday. McLean or someone else.

“Nic,” Jenna says. “Look at the evidence. Lauren was the only one who knew about the affair, and Brad has enormous incentive to keep her quiet about it.” She hesitates. “I think we should go to the police.”

“What?”

“Someone is actively trying to prevent us from learning the truth. If approaching a four-year-old on a playground is this guy’s opening move, what’s he gonna do next?” Her eyes dart around, looking through the windows. “We should probably get out of here.” She turns her key in the ignition and pulls away from the curb. “I say we go to the police. Tell them about the affair and what happened to Beth Anne.”

“No.” I shake my head. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not? What happened at Lauren’s church is relevant to the case. This is the kind of thing that could make the police reopen the investigation.”

But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

That summer, Brad was—what? Late forties, early fifties. More than twenty years older than Kasey. More disturbing though is that he truly was an uncle to us. The man who, when we were kids, slicked countless Band-Aids onto our scraped knees, got us juice boxes when our parents had their hands full. He held us when we were babies, carried us as toddlers, took photos while we played naked in the mud.

The idea that the hands that tied my shoes when I was a kid were the same ones that took Kasey’s clothes off fifteen years later makes me sick. Then there’s Sandy. It’s not like I ever believed she and Brad were some storybook romance, but the idea of him betraying her so cruelly infuriates me.

And yet, no matter how much I hate him right now, I don’t want to destroy his and Sandy’s and my dad’s lives by making him the target of an investigation. And that’s exactly what would happen if we go to the police with the affair. They would reopen the case and only look at Brad.

“If Brad was the one at the playground the other day,” I start to say, and Jenna gives me a look. “If he was, he only would’ve been trying to hide the affair. Nothing else. He didn’t have anything to do with Kasey going missing. You heard Lauren. He has an alibi.”

“Yeah. One we heard secondhand seven years after the fact. It’s not exactly airtight,” Jenna says, but her voice has softened slightly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he had nothing to do with Kasey’s disappearance, but he knows a hell of a lot more about her and that summer than he ever let on. At a minimum, the police need to interview him about that.”

My eyes rove around the truck, desperate for any sort of argument or leverage. “Lauren doesn’t want to tell anyone. If we go to the police with the story of what happened to Beth Anne, she may not even corroborate it.”

“Nic, this affair is a huge piece of the puzzle that no one knew about until now. We have to tell the police.”

Something inside me snaps. “It’s not a puzzle, Jenna! It’s my goddamn life. Brad is—” The word family turns sour in my mouth. Brad is not my family. He never was.

“Brad cheated on his wife with a nineteen-year-old girl,” Jenna says slowly. “What he is is a piece of shit.”

I’m quiet for a moment. She’s right. Of course she is. And yet. “What about Jules?”

Jenna’s gaze flicks from the road to me and back again. “What do you mean?”

“Brad’s affair with Kasey has nothing to do with Jules. If we bring it to the police, they’re just going to focus on that. They may not look into your sister’s case at all. I say we take a few days. See if we can find any connection between the affair and Kasey and Jules going missing.”

Maybe it’s shitty of me to use Jules as bait, but what I said wastrue. And I know Brad had nothing to do with my sister’s disappearance—I just need time to prove it.

Jenna is quiet as she drives. An electrical tower outside my window catches my eye, and I realize we’re already at my apartment complex, taking the winding road to my building. “Fine,” she says eventually. “Let’s take a beat. Digest all this and talk in a few days.”

“Thank you.”

We pull up to my door and she puts the car in park. “But, Nic, be careful. Okay? Someone out there knows what we’re doing and doesn’t like it. I know you don’t want to believe Brad was the one who got to Lauren or took our sisters, but if he was, your relationship with him is not going to keep you safe.”