Page 6 of The Missing Half

One woman who disappears from the side of the road, according to the police, is an anomaly. She could’ve run away to start a new life, could’ve been high on something and wandered into the wilderness, could’ve been tracked by an angry boyfriend / ex-lover / fill in the blank, then lured out of her car and murdered. It was a setup, an accident, a personal attack. It was a one-off. On the flip side, if there had been a string of disappearances, it would have been foul play, perpetrated most likely by a stranger. A Ted Bundy. A Zodiac Killer. Some people still argue this theory, say a serial killer was just getting started but then got locked up for another crime. Or died. Or moved because the investigators were getting too close. But that’s just people on the internet sensationalizing the story.

Two women from the same area who disappeared under almost the exact same circumstances points to someone on the periphery of their lives. Someone who knew Kasey and Jules, at least in some small way. Someone with a screw loose who believed that if he wanted something, he should have it.

That has been the extent of the prevailing theory among local law enforcement since 2012, which is such shit—not because it’s not accurate but because it’s nothing. It’s like saying the victim who was stabbed thirty-seven times in the back died from murder.

I remember one of the many visits from Detective Wyler, the detective assigned to Kasey’s investigation. It was squeezed in between Christmas and the New Year, and he’d called ahead of time, which was unusual. My mom made coffee, poured a little something into her own, then she, my dad, and I sat in the living room to hear what the detective had come to say. I could tell by the way he was staring at the carpet that it was going to be bad news.

“You all know how we’ve profiled the perpetrator in Kasey’s disappearance,” he began. “The man we’re looking for is probably hiding in plain sight. He has a job, not necessarily a good one, but he pays his taxes. He functions in society and most likely owns or is familiar with some sort of property where he took Kasey after the abduction. But in a case like this…” Wyler rubbed his hands together. “In the case of an abduction, it is unlikely that this man would keep a hostage alive indefinitely. I want to let you know we’re still doing everything we can to find out who took her, but I also feel I need to set expectations. After almost six months, the odds of finding Kasey alive—well, they’re not good.”

He walked out shortly after this, coffee untouched. Before the front door even shut behind him, Dad dropped his head into his hands, and I heard the choked sounds of him trying to stifle his sobs. Mom stalked wordlessly into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of her favorite grieving drink, vodka Diet Coke. Without even deciding to, as if I were one of those puppets with the strings, I followed the detective out the front door and onto the driveway. I’d been drinking soda out of a coffee mug, and as Wyler pulled out, I smashed it onto the concrete and screamed.

“I don’t know how it worked with your sister’s investigation,” Jenna says, and my head snaps up to look at her. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten she was in the room with me. “But when the police talked to me, they were so focused on Jules’s present day-to-day life. Like, they asked about her co-workers and people who went to the bar. They asked about our family and whether or not she was seeing anyone. But then they never really dug into her past, you know. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was so…” She waves the fingers of one hand vaguely. “But now I wonder—what if they were focused on the wrong thing? What if Jules knew this guy years before she went missing and then crossed paths with him again right before it happened?”

“I mean…” I suddenly feel exhausted, scraped out. I know I agreed to this, but I just want to hear whatever her sister wrote in her diary that summer. Did she mention a person the police never interviewed? A place they never checked out? And how could it possibly connect to Kasey? After years of disappointment, I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but maybe this would all feel less futile, less painful, if I understood whatever new puzzle piece Jenna discovered. “Yeah. That seems possible.”

“Right?” Jenna says. “So, I was thinking we could go through Kasey’s and Jules’s past together. You know, sports teams, schools, after-school programs, all the places they worked, friends, friends of friends.”

I pop an M&M into my mouth. I want to track down Ilana from AA and tell her to go fuck herself. Candy will never replace a glass of wine. “Don’t you think this would be easier if you told me what Jules wrote in her diary? Right now, we have nothing to go on. It’s a needle in a haystack. But if you told me what you found, we could work backwards from there.”

“Right, I get that, but…” Jenna’s gaze flicks over the carpet.

“Oh my god,” I say, “it’s not like I’m gonna hear your thing and just stop talking.”

“No, it’s not that. I just—I don’t want to plant some idea in your head and then have us only look in one direction. I want you to stay objective, you know? Open.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“Look,” Jenna says. “Your sister got the Grand Rapids police on her case. Jules got fucking Podunk Mishawaka PD. I honestly don’t know if they botched her investigation because they were shitty or because they just didn’t care, but if I’m doing this, I’m gonna do it right.”

I lift my palms. “I said okay, didn’t I?”

“Thank you.” Jenna glances at the little notebook open in front of her. “So. What part of town are you from?”

“The south side, kind of. Near the train tracks. You?”

“North. Up Grape Road, past the memorial park, just east of the apartment complexes.”

I know the neighborhood she’s talking about. Kasey and I didn’t grow up with much, but I realize now Jenna and Jules might’ve had less. From everything I’ve gleaned about Jenna so far, I would’ve guessed the opposite. She seems to have salvaged so much more of her life than I have. “Why’d you guys move to Osceola?” I say.

“That was all Jules. It happened about three years before she went missing. We were living together in an apartment in Mishawaka, working there too. Then one day out of nowhere she woke up and announced she wanted to leave. She’d already found a place in Osceola and a new job in South Bend. I didn’t really care where I lived, I just liked living with her, so I said okay.”

“That seems pretty sudden. Did she say why?”

Jenna shrugs. “She said she wanted a change. We’d lived and worked in the same square mile our whole lives, and she’d sort of gotten into a funk. She’d stopped going out, stopped seeing friends. I think she wanted a fresh start. To shake herself out of it.”

“By moving from Mishawaka to Osceola?” I say. They’re all of ten minutes apart.

“I didn’t really understand it either at first,” Jenna says. “But she really leaned into it. She’d saved like crazy since she got her first job at, like, fifteen, and she used the money to buy a house, put down roots. It wasn’t big or nice or anything, but she was happier there. Do you know anyone in Osceola?”

“I don’t think so. No one I can think of.”

She jots down a note. “What schools did you and Kasey go to?”

I list them—elementary through high school—and am not surprised when she nods blankly in response.

“We went to schools closer to us. Over on Bittersweet Road. And you said Kasey was in college, right? When she went missing?”

“Yeah. Arizona State.”

“Oh, that’s right. So, far.”

I nod.

“What about jobs?” she says. “Where all did Kasey work over the years?”

“Well, she worked at Funland during high school. Just during the summers. The manager, Brad, is a family friend, so he got both of us jobs there. But that summer she was working at that record store, the one on Grape Road. Rosie’s Records.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” I say. “What about Jules? I know she was working at Harry’s Place that summer, but what about before?”

“By the time she went missing, she’d been there for three years—since we moved. Before that, she worked at a barbecue place waiting tables. It’s on Grape Road too, called Famous Jake’s. Have you heard of it?”

I scrunch up my face. There was a barbecue place by the record store, but that was called Mesquite or something. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s keep going. What about extracurricular activities?”

We go back and forth on life details, striking out with each. Kasey played soccer as a kid. Jules took dance classes until their mom decided they were too expensive. They went to different parks, different skating rinks. We play the name game, and it seems impossible that, even in our small area, we come up completely dry. It feels like we’re stuck in a loop: running into a brick wall, dusting ourselves off, then running into it again. After a while, I look at my phone and see over an hour has passed.

“The problem is,” I say, my voice sharp with frustration, “the guy is the connection. The man who took them. He could’ve shopped at the record store a few times and had Jules as a bartender at Harry’s. He could’ve worked near Jules’s high school and brought his kids to Funland.” Picturing my sister’s killer out in the world with a job and a family does bad things to my body. My skin starts to hum with hatred. “Hell, he could’ve coached Kasey’s first soccer team and then, ten years later, eaten at the restaurant where Jules was a waitress. There’d be no way to ever fucking know.”

“That’s why I’m taking notes,” Jenna says. “I’ve written down all these places so we can go back and look into them more. Here. I’ll take a picture and send it to you now.” She asks for my number, and a moment later my phone pings with a new text.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “How can you be so…” I wave a jittery hand in her direction.

“What?”

“So…I don’t know, calm? There’s nothing we’ve brought up that the police haven’t looked into, so how can you think this isn’t futile? Aren’t you frustrated? Aren’t you angry?”

Jenna stares at me. “Nic, I’ve followed my sister’s case from day one. I’ve consumed everything ever made about it. And now my mom has cancer, and she’s probably gonna die without knowing what happened to her youngest daughter unless I can somehow, despite being a dentist’s receptionist and completely unqualified to do this, uncover something new. I’m calm because I have to be. Being calm is the only way we’re gonna find anything out.”

I know she didn’t intend for her words to dagger into my chest, but that’s what they do. She has spent almost her entire adult life looking for her sister, while all I’ve done is numb myself to the fact that I lost mine. “I didn’t know about your mom,” I say. “I’m sorr—” But then something hits me. “Wait. You said you’re trying to uncover something new?”

“Well…yeah? That’s sort of what all this is about?”

“But you’ve already uncovered something new. Right?”

“I don’t—”

“The thing you found in Jules’s diary?” I say. “The thing you think connects to Kasey? That’s what you were gonna tell me in exchange for talking.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. No, I just meant, something else new. That’s all.” But her eyes dart down as she says it.

“Okay,” I say. “So, what is it then?”

“What is what?”

“What did you find, Jenna? What did you read in Jules’s diary? And don’t say I still owe you. I relived the worst day of my life for you. And the months after. And the years that led up to it. Now it’s your turn.”

“Nic, I…” Jenna lifts her head to look into my eyes and that’s when I see it—the truth. She has uncovered nothing.

“You lied.”

She doesn’t respond.

“I don’t get it—what’s in the diary? Just a bunch of nothing?”

“There is no diary,” she says softly. “I made it up.”

I stand so quickly my chair falls over behind me, landing on the carpeted floor with a dull thud.

“Look.” Her voice is urgent, pleading. “You don’t understand. I had to get you to talk. My mom—”

“Oh, your mom with the probably fake fucking cancer?”

“She does have cancer. That part was true.”

“That doesn’t give you a pass for lying to my face.”

“I know it was shitty,” Jenna says. “I do. But my mom, she’s…Even before the cancer, she was—unwell. Sometimes, she won’t get out of bed for days. Other times, she rages at everyone she sees. I’m sure there’s a diagnosis somewhere, but whatever it is, Jules’s disappearance made it worse. The cancer was the cherry on top.”

“All right, Jenna, I get it.” My voice is cold. “You can leave now.”

“I just need you to understand—”

“I do. And now I’m telling you to leave.”

“I will, I will.” She stands from the couch, hastily stuffing her notebook into her bag. “But please, just listen. These days, all my mom can talk about is missing her baby girl. When she goes into a rage, it’s at me, because I’m not Jules. I feel like if I can just give her this one thing, if I can just give her an answer before she dies, then maybe…” She doesn’t finish the thought, but she doesn’t have to. It’s already corkscrewing through me, leaving an unexpected pang of sympathy in its wake. But I’m too angry to let it take hold.

“Good luck with that,” I say, opening the front door. “Now please. Get the fuck out of my house.”

I wait a few minutes to make sure she’s gone, then I bike to the grocery store—the only place that’ll be open this late—buy as many bottles of wine as I can afford, and drink until the pain turns to sleep.