Page 54 of The Missing Half

“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—”

“Evenif 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 searchparties, 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 hidevidence,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 thatweekend, 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.

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