Page 78 of The Missing Half

“How’re you feeling?” Kasey asked, fighting to keep her voice neutral.

Nic moaned into her pillow.

“You were pretty drunk last night. Do you remember what happened?”

“Oh god,” Nic said. “No. What did I do? Was I awful?”

Kasey watched Nic’s face for any glimmer of recollection, but it was clear the only thing her sister was preoccupied with was her hangover. “No,” she said. “Well, I mean, yes. You called me from the bar to pick you up, and I had to bike all the way to South Bend. Other than that, you were fine.”

Having kept the affair with Brad from her sister all summer made hiding this secret a tiny bit easier, but lying to Nic didn’t come naturally. And the horror over what she and her sister had both done felt like a fever—a disease that wouldn’t go away. Kasey stopped taking Nic up on offers to hang out, claiming school was too stressful. She stopped going out at night, stopped seeing her friends. The idea of continuing to live in the same house as the person who put her in this position felt unbearable, but neither could Kasey imagine going back to college. She didn’t want to go to parties where people drank from Solo cups and yelled at each other over bad music. She didn’t want to sit in class taking notes on how to save lives—not when Jules Connor’s twitching hand haunted her every waking moment.

And then one morning, something happened that changed everything.

Nic was in the shower while Kasey got dressed for work. She was looking for her old Rolling Stones T-shirt when she remembered that Nic had borrowed it a few weeks before.

“Nic!” she called through the bathroom door and over the running water. “I want my Stones shirt back. I’m going in your room to find it.”

Kasey didn’t wait for an answer. She just opened the door to her sister’s bedroom and went to her closet. When she didn’t find the shirt hanging up, she bent down to sift through the clothes in the dirty hamper. As she did, she spotted something on the floor—a business card. She picked it up, flipped it over, and her breath caught in her throat.

Mishawaka Police Department, the card read. Then, beneath that,Phillip Johnson, Detective.

Kasey knew from her online searches that Detective Johnson was the one investigating Jules’s case. How much did he know? Whatquestions had he asked Nic? More terrifying still, how had she answered?

This whole time Kasey had thought Nic’s greatest defense was that she believed herself to be innocent, that she wasn’t even aware a crime had occurred. But if the police asked her about the night Jules disappeared, Nic would have no reason to hide that she’d been at Harry’s Place. Would they put two and two together? Would they pull up a map and see that the most direct route from the bar to Nic and Kasey’s home was the road where Jules’s car was found? Had they done all of that already? With the business card in her hand, Kasey understood the unnerving reality: If the police had Nic’s name in association with Jules’s case, surely it was only a matter of time until they uncovered the truth.

Kasey fought back the weary tears that had begun to fill her eyes. After everything she’d done to insulate her sister from the accident, it wasn’t enough. But what more could she do? The only thing she could think of was to somehow bolster the image that Jules had been taken, to do something that would steer the police away from the theory of a drunk driving accident and toward an abduction.

Another missing girl.

The idea was impossibly heavy. Disappearing would mean Kasey would never see her friends or parents again. She’d never finish college. She’d miss Nic’s life, her future. But at least Nic would have one. Plus, if Kasey were being honest, a very small part of her felt relieved at the thought of the anonymity disappearing would afford her. No longer would she have to look her dad in the eye while thinking,I fucked your best friend.She’d never have to see Sandy and witness the pain she’d caused. She wouldn’t have to study for school when all she could think about was Jules Connor’s face as she lay curled inside the trunk. She’d no longer run into Nic in the hallway and feel her chest constrict with everything she’d lost.

Kasey didn’t want to leave forever. She didn’t want to vanish from her own life. But as she looked down at the worddetectivestaring up at her, she realized she didn’t have any other choice. This was the only way to protect her sister—and she’d do anything to keep Nic safe.

Chapter Forty-five

When Kasey stops talking, the only sound is the distant buzz of insects, the night unfurling quiet and expansive beyond the truck windows. But I feel suffocated—as if all the loose threads I’ve been working so hard to weave together are forming a straitjacket around me.

There’s that time Kasey had said, with a look of fear in her eyes,Be careful tonight.Don’t drink too much. Don’t go anywhere alone.She hadn’t been trying to keep me safe from McLean or some stranger. She’d been trying to protect me from myself.

There’s the business card that apparently scared her into leaving, the one I got one random night when my friends and I went to Harry’s Place. I dredge up the memory, so benign I hadn’t thought twice about sharing it with Jenna the first day we met. A detective had approached us at the bar, told us one of the bartenders had gone missing, and asked if we knew anything about it—but we didn’t even know who Jules Connor was. Then he gave all of us his card in case we thought of something relevant. He hadn’t been onto me; it had just been routine.

There are the headlights Kasey told me she saw that night as shedrove off from the scene. They hadn’t belonged to a cop car, as she’d originally feared, but to Jenna’s.

And then there’s the accident. Kasey assumed I’d blacked out the night Jules died, but as she relived it, the memory started coming back to me: swerving drunk in the dark, my tires squealing as I clipped what I thought was a tree. It’s the same memory that’s been haunting me since my DWI months ago, ever since I started trying to get sober and my mind started to get just a little clearer. The two accidents were so similar, I’d conflated the memories of them in my mind.

I push the truck door open and stumble out, the night spinning around me. I gulp in a breath, then another, my face tingling with the sudden influx of oxygen. A scream rips through me, cutting through the night like the wail of a wounded animal. After everything Jenna and I did to find the monster who took our sisters, it turns out the monster is me. Darkness fills me up, turning my insides black and rotten. I am nothing but a mixture of badness and self-loathing. I’m unforgivable, unlovable.Killer,a voice sneers inside my head.Murderer.

I scream until it gags me, then I contract over myself. But I vomited everything up earlier, and nothing comes out except saliva and the acidy dregs from my stomach.

Finally, I drag a hand over my mouth, then turn back to the truck, to Kasey. Wordlessly, I slide onto the seat beside her. All I want is to turn back time, to undo everything I did that summer, to start again. But there’s nothing I can do or say to change all the damage I’ve done. I am scraped out by pain, hollowed by guilt.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Kasey says.

Yes,I think. “No. You were right to. You shouldn’t be the only one who has to live with the truth.”

I look over at her. Her eyes are full of despair and pity, but there’s a glint of something else behind that—something like relief—and I know a part of her must feel lighter to be telling the truth after all these years. To finally be sharing the burden.

“Fuck, Kasey, I—I’m so sorry.” I will never be able to say it enough. “I ruined your life.”

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