Page 9 of The Missing Half

“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.

Chapter Six

The website of the local animal shelter is splashed with colorful photos of glossy-haired dogs licking faces and fluffy kittens sleeping curled in palms, but the actual shelter is a pretty depressing place. It has the kind of kibble-y, wet-fur smell that stings my nostrils and clings to my skin long after I leave, and walking past dog after dog with sad, lonely eyes makes my chest cave in. On top of that, it serves as a weekly reminder of my own inability to take care of Slink, but when presented with the list of community service options from the court, the animal shelter was the only one that didn’t sound terrible.

I’m here now, sitting on the floor of the air-conditioned cat room, my mouth cottony and my head throbbing. It’s been twelve hours since I kicked Jenna out of my apartment. Twelve hours since she took a pickax to my finely tuned numbness. In the short amount of time since then, I’ve been a live wire, jumpy and suspicious. Every woman I’ve seen is either Jenna, following me again, or Kasey, come back from the dead.

I’ve also had this strange nagging feeling since Jenna walked out my door last night, the kind you get after you leave for a trip and know you forgot to pack something but can’t remember what. Maybeit’s just Jenna getting to me, but I can’t stop replaying what she said:No one knows our sisters like we do. If there’s any similarity between their lives, maybe we can find it.I resent Jenna for dredging up a past I’ve worked so hard to forget, and I’m still furious at her for lying, but I can’t help wonder if she could be right. What if this feeling is something important? What if it’s something everybody else missed?

Tryingto remember is a sensation I’m not familiar with. In the past, whenever memories of Kasey invaded my brain, I’d bury them. Now, for the first time in years, I want to reach out and grab them, but they’re murky and ethereal, impossible to catch.

I hear the door open, and I look over to find Pam, one of the animal shelter employees. “Here you are,” she says.

As far as volunteers go, I’m the lowest in the pecking order, below the new empty nesters filling their time and the high schoolers who are only here for a line on their college applications. I have to get Pam’s signature on my community service sheet every week, and even though she doesn’t know what I did to wind up here, it’s clear she thinks I’m a criminal. Which, I suppose, I am.

“You were supposed to hose out kennel three,” she says. “I just walked over there and it clearly hasn’t been—” Her eyes lock on my lap. “Is that Banksy?”

Banksy is a skinny calico with a crook in his tail and a missing eye, and he’s currently asleep in my lap. I met him on my first day here and knew the moment I saw his face, with one surly-looking eye and a sewn-shut hole where the other should be, his chances of getting adopted were slim, but the first thing I do when I walk through the door every Saturday is check to make sure he’s still here. Every time I see him curled in the far corner of his cage, glaring through the bars, I feel both relieved and sad.

“Yeah,” I say. “I just had to get him out of his cage, because he threw up in it and I wanted to clean it out.” I can tell she doesn’t believe me. And even if she did, I’m still breaking protocol. There’s a separate room where we put the cats while we’re cleaning their cages, and I am not in it. Nor am I allowed to interact with the animals until all my other duties are done.

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