Page 53 of The Missing Half

“But,” Sandy continues, “she clearly didn’t understand themagnitude of what she was doing. Didn’t understand how many people she would hurt if it got out. I told her to break things off with him. She didn’t need to tell him why, just that it was over.”

Brad is quiet, but I can feel the horror radiating off him like a smell.

“What’d she say?” I ask.

“She said she would. I believed her.”

“When was this?”

“End of July? Beginning of August?”

Right around the time Kasey started acting off. “But I don’t understand. If she ended things with him, what was she doing here the night she went missing?”

“I’m getting there,” Sandy says. “Over the next few weeks, I kept an eye on them both. I went back to the alley behind the record store almost every day, but as far as I could tell, Brad was staying at Funland and Kasey at the shop. It seemed they’d stopped seeing each other.”

“We did,” Brad says. “That was the end of it. I swear.”

She ignores him. “But then one day Kasey came over to the house.”

“What?” he says. “Why?”

“Brad,” Sandy snaps. “I’m reliving the worst few weeks of my liferight now. And if I have to sit here and explain how my husband risked everything we built together because of his utter stupidity and a pair of perky breasts, the least you can do is not interrupt me.”

He opens and closes his mouth like a fish.

“Kasey came over to our house one day,” she says again. “When I opened the door and found her standing there, I could tell she was terrified.”

That memory resurfaces:Be careful tonight, okay?Kasey told me just a few weeks before she disappeared, her eyes electric with fear.Don’t go anywhere alone.So, I hadn’t rewritten history after all. “Why was she scared?” I say. “Did she tell you?”

Sandy cocks her head, giving me an odd look. “She didn’t need totell me. It was obvious. She was scared about what she was there todo.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it required quite the set of balls. Your sister told me if I wanted her to leave Brad alone, I was going to have to pay.” Sandy gives me a bitter smirk. “Ten thousand dollars.”

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 couldreplace 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.”

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