Page 8 of The Missing Half

Jenna shrugs. “She said she wanted a change. We’d lived and worked in the same square mile our whole lives, and she’d sort of gotten into a funk. She’d stopped going out, stopped seeing friends. I think she wanted a fresh start. To shake herself out of it.”

“By moving from Mishawaka to Osceola?” I say. They’re all of ten minutes apart.

“I didn’t really understand it either at first,” Jenna says. “But she really leaned into it. She’d saved like crazy since she got her first job at, like, fifteen, and she used the money to buy a house, put down roots. It wasn’t big or nice or anything, but she was happier there. Do you know anyone in Osceola?”

“I don’t think so. No one I can think of.”

She jots down a note. “What schools did you and Kasey go to?”

I list them—elementary through high school—and am not surprised when she nods blankly in response.

“We went to schools closer to us. Over on Bittersweet Road. And you said Kasey was in college, right? When she went missing?”

“Yeah. Arizona State.”

“Oh, that’s right. So, far.”

I nod.

“What about jobs?” she says. “Where all did Kasey work over the years?”

“Well, she worked at Funland during high school. Just during the summers. The manager, Brad, is a family friend, so he got both of us jobs there. But that summer she was working at that record store, the one on Grape Road. Rosie’s Records.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” I say. “What about Jules? I know she was working at Harry’s Place that summer, but what about before?”

“By the time she went missing, she’d been there for three years—since we moved. Before that, she worked at a barbecue place waiting tables. It’s on Grape Road too, called Famous Jake’s. Have you heard of it?”

I scrunch up my face. There was a barbecue place by the record store, but that was called Mesquite or something. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s keep going. What about extracurricular activities?”

We go back and forth on life details, striking out with each. Kasey played soccer as a kid. Jules took dance classes until their mom decided they were too expensive. They went to different parks, different skating rinks. We play the name game, and it seems impossible that, even in our small area, we come up completely dry. It feels like we’re stuck in a loop: running into a brick wall, dusting ourselves off, then running into it again. After a while, I look at my phone and see over an hour has passed.

“The problem is,” I say, my voice sharp with frustration, “the guy is the connection. The man who took them. He could’ve shopped at the record store a few times and had Jules as a bartender at Harry’s. He could’ve worked near Jules’s high school and brought his kids to Funland.” Picturing my sister’s killer out in the world with a job and a family does bad things to my body. My skin starts to hum with hatred. “Hell, he could’ve coached Kasey’s first soccer team and then, ten years later, eaten at the restaurant where Jules was a waitress. There’d be no way to ever fucking know.”

“That’s why I’m taking notes,” Jenna says. “I’ve written down allthese places so we can go back and look into them more. Here. I’ll take a picture and send it to you now.” She asks for my number, and a moment later my phone pings with a new text.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “How can you be so…” I wave a jittery hand in her direction.

“What?”

“So…I don’t know, calm? There’s nothing we’ve brought up that the police haven’t looked into, so how can you think this isn’t futile? Aren’t you frustrated? Aren’t you angry?”

Jenna stares at me. “Nic, I’ve followed my sister’s case from day one. I’ve consumed everything ever made about it. And now my mom has cancer, and she’s probably gonna die without knowing what happened to her youngest daughter unless I can somehow, despite being a dentist’s receptionist and completely unqualified to do this, uncover something new. I’m calm because I have to be. Being calm is the only way we’re gonna find anything out.”

I know she didn’t intend for her words to dagger into my chest, but that’s what they do. She has spent almost her entire adult life looking for her sister, while all I’ve done is numb myself to the fact that I lost mine. “I didn’t know about your mom,” I say. “I’m sorr—” But then something hits me. “Wait. You said you’retryingto uncover something new?”

“Well…yeah? That’s sort of what all this is about?”

“But you’vealreadyuncovered something new. Right?”

“I don’t—”

“The thing you found in Jules’s diary?” I say. “The thing you think connects to Kasey? That’s what you were gonna tell me in exchange for talking.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. No, I just meant, something else new. That’s all.” But her eyes dart down as she says it.

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