Page 59 of The Missing Half

I stare at her for a moment, then finally, close my eyes. “Okay,” I say. “I’m imagining her on a beach—”

“No. Don’t use mine. It has to be specific to Kasey. Where did she always say she wanted to go?”

“I don’t know,” I say, but then suddenly I do. “Nashville, I guess? She always said it had one of the best music scenes in the world.”

“Good,” Jenna says. “Picture her there.”

I envision Kasey in a piano bar. Not one of the big ones that only do covers of country songs but a dive that specializes in seventies rock. She’s in ripped jeans and a T-shirt, nursing a glass of red wine. I imagine her singing softly beneath her breath while the man at the piano plays something by the Rolling Stones. For a moment, she looks happy. But then I think of her car pulled over on the side of the road, her door flung open, the overhead light flickering in the black night. I picture a man walking toward her, and the happy version of my sister vanishes.

“It’s not working,” I say. “I can’t just imagine Kasey alive and force my brain to believe it. I want to find answers.”

“Well, I don’t,” Jenna says. “It’s too much. It’s too hard. Between that and my mom—” Her voice cuts off. “I’m sorry, Nic. I know I pulled you into this.”

“Wait. You’regiving up?”

“I need to be there for my mom.”

“And you can be,” I say. “You can take as much time as you need. I know I’m not the most patient person in the world, but there’s no deadline on this. Take a week with your mom. Take a month. I don’t fucking care. But you can’t just drop this. Not now.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I really am. But maybe you should think about taking a break from all this too. It’s obviously not helping with everything else you have going on.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” I say. “And I know why you said it too. You’re trying to get me to stop. You’re trying to shelter me. I just wish you’d tell me what you’re trying to protect me from.”

“I’m trying to protect you from the pain of it,” she snaps. “Okay? The pain of continuing to look into our sisters’ cases only to findnothing…Believe it or not, and despite how much of an asshole you can be most of the time, I’ve actually come to kind of like having you around. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

My throat tightens. I’ve always gotten the feeling that everyone who’s showed up for me these past few years—my dad, Brad, Sandy—they’ve all done it out of a sense of obligation, a leftover love for the person I was before Kasey disappeared. But Jenna has only known the person I am today. And despite my impatience and bitterness and cynicism, she cares about me. I want to tell her that I like having her around too, that she’s the first person I’ve let in in years. No one could ever fill the place that Kasey occupies in my heart, but during these past few weeks with Jenna, the enormous weight that settled onto me when my sister disappeared has begun to feel just the tiniest bit lighter.

But all I can say is “I’m not going to stop. I can’t.”

“Fine. In that case, you’ll be okay without me. You’re stronger than you think. I know you don’t believe that yet, but you are.”

“I’m really not. The first time I tried to talk to someone without you, I wound up in fucking jail.” I shake my head. “The point is, we can work around whatever you need to do for your mom. Hell, I can help you.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Jenna says. “It’s too much. I can’t do it anymore.”

“You don’t actually expect me to believe that, do you? I know you, Jenna. On the first day we met, you told me that when Jules didn’t come home that night, you went looking for her. It’s been seven years and you haven’t once stopped searching—until now. So, what happened? Just tell me the truth.”

“Nothing happened! How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Then you’re a fucking quitter.”

“Says the woman who’s never finished a single thing she’s ever started.”

The words crack against my cheek like a blow. Still, they just reinforce my belief that something else is going on here. Jenna wouldn’t aim that low unless she was deliberately trying to push me away.

“I’m not quitting this,” I say. “Because we are closer than we’ve ever been. When we started, I didn’t think we’d learn a single thing the police hadn’t already told us. But we did. You can’t just drag me into this and then leave when the answers don’t fall into our laps after a month.”

Jenna smacks her palms against the steering wheel. “This is the end, Nic.”

“It doesn’t have to be—”

“For my mom,” she says. “It’s the end for my mom. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take, and I know I don’t have the best relationship with her, but I’m not going to spend the last few weeks of her life chasing answers we’re never going to get. I wish I could have given her some closure, but we’re never gonna know what happened to Jules and Kasey. We never had a chance.”

Her face is wet, tears slick against her lips. “So, please,” she says, “don’t call me or text me about it again. You can do whatever you want, but you’re gonna have to do it alone.”

---