Page 55 of The Missing Half

“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. “Kaseyis 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?

Chapter Twenty-nine

My tires churn up gravel as I pull out of the drive, and five minutes later I’m flinging open the door of the nearest gas station, heading straight to the wine-and-mixers aisle. My head feels hectic and disordered, as if someone cracked open my skull, dug their fingers into my brain, and jumbled everything I once knew. Despite all the answers I got today, I feel further from the truth than ever. Why did Kasey ask for all that money? Where was she going when she put those miles on our car? What happened to scare her back then, and what happened to Jenna now? With all this roiling in my mind, I suddenly don’t give a shit about my probation. I find the cheapest brand of red, grab two bottles by the neck, and carry them to the register.

Back on the highway, I lean over to grab my phone from my backpack. I know Jenna’s with her mom right now, but I want to tell her everything I learned from Sandy. More than that, I want to know the truth—the full truth—about why she skipped today, why, after weeks of driving our investigation, she’s suddenly taking a step back. My fingers dig around my bag blindly, but the wine is taking up so much space I can’t find anything else. I slide my hand lower and discover a partially crushed bag of peanut M&M’s. I toss it into mylap because it’s already one in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten anything today, then go back to my backpack, but still, I don’t feel my phone. I glance over to find the zipper of the front pocket and swerve slightly, my tires grating loudly against the rumble strip.

“Shit,” I mutter, straightening the wheel.

That’s when a movement in the rearview mirror catches my eye, and my stomach drops. The lights of a cop car are flashing behind me. And I’m driving without a license.

“No.” I flip my blinker and pull onto the shoulder. “No, no, no.”

I’d been so careful for so long.

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