Page 65 of The Missing Half

“Police you?”

“Babysit me. You know. ‘Stop smoking, Mom,’ ” she parrots in a whining voice. “ ‘Did you take your pills? You know you can’t drink when you’re on medication.’If it were up to her, I’d sit here all day doing nothing but drink celery juice.”

I thought my dad’s silent treatment was bad, but this open hostility is so pointed, so cruel. “When she’s over here,” I say, forcing my voice to stay pleasant, “has she ever mentioned anything about someone scaring her?”

“Scaring Jenna? Please.”

“Well, has she ever mentioned anything about me?”

“First I learned about you was when you knocked on my door.Don’t take it personally though. My Julie was sweet as pie, but not Jenna. It’s why I always said I wish that man would’ve taken her instead.”

I lurch out of my chair, a snapped mousetrap. Jenna hasn’t confided in her, and it’s no wonder why. Coming here was a mistake. “I need to go.”

“You sure?” she says. “It’s nice to have some decent company for a change.”

But I’m already at the front door. I fling it open and am about to step through when I whirl back around. “You know what? Jenna is one of the best people I’ve ever met. You’re lucky to have her for a daughter, and if you can’t see that, then you’re a fucking asshole. Thanks for nothing. Sorry about the cancer.”

To my surprise, Mrs. Connor starts to laugh. “I told you Jenna’s a liar.”

My hand, which had been reaching toward the door, stills midair. She’s baiting me, I know. And yet. “What’re you talking about?”

“Like I said, if Jenna really loved me, she’d tell her friends about my cancer.”

“She did tell me about it. That’s why I brought it up.”

“Not the diagnosis. The remission. If my daughter truly loved me, she would’ve told you my cancer was in remission, now, wouldn’t she?”

“You mean…”

“That’s right,” she says. “Got the news three weeks ago. I’m clean as a whistle.”

Chapter Thirty-four

I stare at Mrs. Connor, the wordremissionbouncing around my skull like a pinball.

She takes a drag from her oxygen mask, peering at me with a look of amusement in her beady, watery eyes. “What do you think now?” she says. “You still think Jenna’s one ofthe best people you’ve ever met?”

I think of the tears on Jenna’s face when she told me only last Monday that her mom was dying.I’m not going to spend the last few weeks of her life chasing answers we’re never going to get.

Mrs. Connor laughs. “Like I said, liar, liar, liar.”

I fantasize about striding to the kitchen and throwing open the drawers, banging around their contents until I find a pair of big, rusting scissors. In my mind, I grab them, go to the living room, yank the plastic tube of Mrs. Connor’s oxygen mask, and snip. I see the tube flailing around the old rug like a snake with its head cut off. I see Mrs. Connor smacking her lips open wide, sucking in air that isn’t enough. A fish in the bottom of a boat.

I open the front door and walk through without another word.

At the curb, I throw myself onto my bike and pedal fast out of the neighborhood. Within minutes, my muscles are on fire and my lungsare tight. It’s not smart to bike this recklessly on the busy roads between Mrs. Connor’s home and mine, but I need to feel the distance between me and her growing, need to focus on my burning thighs instead of that word:liar.I’m so preoccupied, I swerve into a lane of traffic and a car slams on its brakes, its honk loud and long. I swerve out again, waving an apologetic hand as it passes. The driver flips me off.

A sweaty half hour later, I’m back in my apartment, my helmet and bag dumped by the door. I pluck my shirt from my damp skin and billow it back and forth.

Before today, I assumed Jenna was lying in order to get me off our sisters’ cases because she thought it was dangerous. But that conviction is waning with every passing second. If that were the case, why would she be pursuing the investigation on her own? Because she clearly used her mom’s cancer as an excuse to buy herself time. It’s possible, I suppose, that she could be keeping me safe and not herself. But another possibility, the one that’s seeping into my mind like poison, is that she has a more self-interested reason for lying.

The deception is like a switchblade between my ribs. Jenna has confided in me about Jules and opened me up about Kasey. She’s given me rides, laughed when I tried to be funny, she’s talked straight to me instead of dancing around all my shit like everyone else. More than that though, she’s inspired me to be better, to stop running away from my problems and commit to our sisters’ cases. How could the person who did all that possibly be the same one who lied about her mom’s impending death?

But then I think back to the first day I met Jenna and the way she dangled a made-up development about Kasey’s disappearance just to get me to talk. So I guess it’s my fault for giving her a second chance, for letting her in. But even so, I keep coming back towhy.The first time Jenna lied, she was trying to get information about Jules. Why is she doing it now?

My instinct is to call her this very moment, to demand answers, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Jenna, it’s not to be rash.Come up with a strategy first,I imagine her telling me.Get the facts before you go confronting someone.

I think through all the possible ways I could learn the truth, but none of them seem even remotely likely to work. Jenna’s not going to get tricked into letting something slip, nor do I think she’ll break no matter how many times I ask her. I could straight-up tell her I know she’s lying, but she’s fast enough to come up with some plausible excuse to explain it away. She probably already has another lie ready in the event I do just that. And there’s no point in me threatening to walk away from the investigation, because it’s clear that’s exactly what she wants me to do.

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