Page 29 of The Missing Half

Chapter Twenty-eight

The living room is plunged into a stunned silence. Right before she disappeared, Kasey asked for $10,000? To me now, the amount feels as out of reach as a bar of gold. To Kasey back then, making $8.25 an hour, it would’ve been inconceivable. Although, of course, if she asked for it, I suppose it wouldn’t have been.

Before I can form any of this into a question, Brad says, “She asked you for money to stay away from me? But we weren’t even seeing each other anymore. We didn’t get back together after she broke things off.” He looks almost cartoonish in his distress, his hair standing on end, the lines on his face so deep they looked etched.

“Like I said,” Sandy says, “the money was for her to keep it that way. Which I thought was worth it.”

But I can’t get myself to believe that. Kasey wouldn’t have gone to Sandy for that kind of money out of spite or opportunity. She only would’ve done it out of desperation.

“Did you give it to her?” I ask.

“Well. I wasn’t going to be able to withdraw that much cash without Brad noticing and asking questions. I just wanted him to think Kasey broke up with him on her own. So I told her to give me time to get it together. We had some cash around the house that I could replace later, before Brad found out. And I made a few smaller withdrawals that wouldn’t attract that much attention. Still, I couldn’t come up with ten thousand.”

“So, what happened?”

“A few days later, I was out here at the lake with the boys for our reunion. Brad had to stay behind for a work thing, but he was planning to join us later. Anyway, we were all at the pizza place for dinner one night, the entire family, when halfway through our meal, the bell chimes and I look up to see Kasey walking through the door. Obviously, I knew she was there for the money, and it made me livid. It was like she turned into a completely different person that summer. I mean, when I think about how close we all used to be…” Sandy shakes her head. “I couldn’t believe she’d barge into our family reunion like that.”

She gives me a look—the girl who just did the exact same thing—but I hold her gaze. “How’d Kasey know you were here?” I say.

“I don’t know. Brad? Did you tell her we were going to the lake that week?”

“Um.” He clears his throat. “I-I don’t know.”

“Maybe one of your parents mentioned something,” she says. “Or she could’ve just remembered. We do it the same week every year.” She glances out the window, at all the members of their family beyond it, laughing and drinking beer. “When I saw her, I got up and intercepted her before she could make a scene. I told her to meet me in an hour by the bait shop so she could, you know, extort me in private. She didn’t know where the shop was, so I jotted down the address on the back of some receipt I found in my purse.”

Absently, I slide my hand into the pocket where I’ve stored it, one of the last things my sister ever touched.

“I didn’t have as much cash as she wanted,” Sandy says, “but when we met up later, I gave her what I had—almost seven thousand dollars.”

For a moment, I’m quiet. It’s all so much. Then I think of those missing miles on our odometer. “Where was she going after that? Did she tell you?” Because I found the receipt in Kasey’s bedroom, she had to have gone back home that night before she disappeared. A drive to and from Nyona and then another to Grand Rapids would’ve been—what, 250 miles? It’s a big piece of the puzzle, but it still leaves another 250 unaccounted for.

“She didn’t say,” Sandy says.

“Well, what about the money? Did she say what she needed it for?”

“I was paying her to stop screwing my husband, Nic.”

I shake my head irritably. “That may’ve been what it was for you, but I don’t believe that’s what it was for her—at least not totally. Something else had to have happened, something that made her desperate for cash. I mean, she disappeared hours after you gave her that money. Hours. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Well, at first,” Sandy says, “when she went missing, I assumed she just took the money and ran.”

“No. Kasey wouldn’t have done that. Is that really what you think happened? That she was trying to run away?”

“I said I did at first, but it seemed clear soon after that, that’s not what happened. Even if she was using the money to run away—”

“She wasn’t—”

“ Even if she was, I don’t think she would’ve disappeared into thin air like she did. She wouldn’t have abandoned her car or left her wallet behind. And I don’t think she would’ve stayed away this long either.”

“How could you have hidden all of this from the police?” I say. “While my parents—your ‘best friends’—were offering money they didn’t have for any scrap of information about Kasey, you two were busy hiding evidence to protect yourselves.” Something occurs to me then. “Wait a second. At one of the first search parties that summer, you ran into Lauren Perkins, Kasey’s friend from school. You told her that Brad was at your family reunion on the night Kasey was taken, even though he wasn’t. Were you…trying to give him an alibi for Kasey’s disappearance?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Sandy says slowly. “I may have had a conversation with Lauren at one of the search parties, though if I did, I honestly don’t remember it.” But I can tell she’s lying, and a chill creeps over my skin. She is far more calculating than I ever realized. “But we never hid evidence, Nic. You need to understand that. What happened between your sister and Brad had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

“How do you know that?” I nearly shout it. “He wasn’t even with you that night—”

“Nic,” Brad says. When I look at him, I’m startled to see tears glistening on his cheeks. “I’m an idiot. I’m a fucking schmuck. And I’m sorry. For everything. But I promise I had nothing to do with what happened to your sister. I”—he shoots an anxious glance at Sandy—“I cared for her.”

“No,” I say. “You don’t get to say that. You stole the last summer of her life, and when she went missing, the only thing you cared about was yourself.” He opens his mouth to respond, but I don’t let him. “Where were you on the night she was taken? Why weren’t you at the reunion?”

“I-I was at work. I had to do inventory and we’d just had two of the waitstaff quit, so I stayed behind a day. That’s it. I swear.”

“What about the fishing trip with my dad that year? Why did you cancel?”

Brad jerks his head back. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Jules Connor went missing on August 4th,” I say, “during your annual fishing trip with my dad, but he said you canceled at the last minute.”

“Christ, Nic. Do you really think I—”

“Just answer the goddamn question, Brad.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t remember.”

“I do,” Sandy interjects. “We were in couples therapy, a sort of save-your-marriage retreat. After everything that happened, I said I wanted to go. I still didn’t tell him I knew about the affair. I couldn’t stomach the idea of him denying it, and I just wanted to move on. So I told him I hadn’t been happy for a while and I knew he hadn’t either. It was a version of the truth. I made it very clear how serious I was. It was a now-or-never kind of offer. The retreat was that weekend, two weeks before Kasey went missing. I remember because he made a big deal about having to cancel his fishing trip.”

Brad reacts to this just as he has to everything else he’s heard today, with a look of utter astonishment.

“What happened to Kasey,” Sandy says, “and what happened to that other girl were tragedies. But we’ve told you the truth. And that’s everything we know. I need you to believe me when I tell you neither one of us had anything to do with Kasey’s disappearance.”

I’m not sure what to think. My gut tells me to believe her, but how can I after everything I just learned?

“You could’ve helped,” I say. “If you’d told the truth when she first went missing, Kasey might still be alive today.” I mean it, yet here I am holding the truth in my hands, and I’m no closer to understanding what happened that night.

“All I did,” Sandy says, “is protect my family. When you have one of your own one day, you’ll understand.”

The anger that has been building inside me suddenly ignites into a storm. “ Kasey is my family. And you might not have killed her, but you sure as hell let her die.”

I stand, my eyes stinging. I want nothing more than to get away from them both, to never see them again. That I ever considered them my surrogate family makes me sick, as if I’ve swallowed something rotten. I’m turning to leave when something hits me.

“Wait.”

“What?” Sandy says.

But it’s Brad I’m staring at.

“What happened to Lauren Perkins? Did you go to her church the other week? Are you the reason she’s scared to talk?”

Sandy snaps her head sideways. “Brad? What’s she talking about?”

I’m half expecting him to say he doesn’t know what I mean. He hardly knows who Lauren Perkins is, he’s innocent, blah blah blah.

Instead, he sighs. “She was the only one who knew about me and Kasey. When you told me you reached out to her to ask about that summer, I got scared. I just tried to keep her quiet, that’s all.”

“What did you do?” Sandy says.

Brad hesitates.

“He followed Lauren’s four-year-old daughter onto a playground,” I say. “He gave her chocolate to pass along a message. Stop talking about Kasey Monroe. ”

“Jesus.”

“It was dumb,” Brad stammers. “I know. But if the affair got out, I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I just didn’t want to risk you or your dad learning the truth. I couldn’t…I didn’t think I could handle that.”

“What about Jenna?” I say. “Did you try to keep her quiet too?”

“Who?”

“Jenna Connor. Jules’s sister. She’s the one I told you about, the one who’s been looking into everything with me.” I think back to the look in Jenna’s eyes when she opened the door yesterday. It was thesame look Kasey had seven years ago when she told me to be careful that night. Wary. Scared. “I think something happened that made her want to stop.”

Brad shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Nic. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” I say. “It was you. It had to have been.”

“I didn’t do anything to her. I remember you telling me about her, but I don’t even really know who she is.”

I study his face, searching it for any sign that he’s lying, but I find none.

If Brad didn’t scare Jenna, who did?