The Missing Half

Nic decides to check Kasey’s car, which they have kept in storage all these years. She notes the bumper sticker still on the car that reads “We are not two, we are one” (125)—a line from her favorite song. She collects everything from the car, including some random papers and receipts off the floor and their old collection of CDs. She then takes pictures of all areas of the interior.

That night, Jenna comes over. Nic knows that she is going to try to pressure Nic to go to the police over Brad, but she is prepared. She explains to Jenna that the night of Kasey’s disappearance, Brad was three hours away at a family reunion. The night Jules went missing, August 4, he was at the same place, on a fishing trip with Nic’s father. She tells Jenna that she is planning to talk to her father about the trip that year. Placated, Jenna agrees to wait a few more days to talk to the police.

Jenna and Nic go through the items from Kasey’s car. As Jenna looks at the CDs, she comments on a few of her favorites. She spots one that Kasey made with the same lyrics from her bumper sticker written on the front. Jenna seems surprised by the lyrics, explaining that it reminds her of Jules.

They also find a business card from O’Neil’s Auto. Nic checks the receipt from Kasey’s oil change, but it is from a different auto mechanic. She then notices the odometer. When Kasey got her oil changed on August 2, the mileage was at 164,021; however, when she disappeared on August 17, the mileage was almost five hundred miles higher. Nic insists that she must have been driving somewhere secretly, as their normal driving would not have accounted for that many miles.

On Saturday, Nic goes over to her dad’s house. She and Jenna made plans to meet there, but Nic has not heard from her since they went through the things from Kasey’s car on Tuesday.

Nic has dinner with her father. Their conversation is awkward and stilted—he avoids talking about her DWI or Kasey, instead talking a lot about work. Eventually, their conversation turns to Brad. Nic realizes that it is past seven o’clock, which means that Jenna is late. She checks her phone but has no messages from her. She decides that she can’t miss the opportunity to talk to her dad.

Nic brings up her father’s fishing trips with Brad. He insists that they still go every year, as they have since 1988. This brings Nic relief, as she begins to believe that things were the same in 2012. However, her father then corrects himself. He remembers that Brad only missed one trip; he doesn’t know why, but it must have been something “big” for Brad to miss it. It was 2012, the year Kasey went missing.

With this new revelation, Nic can barely hide her anger toward Brad. She tells her father that Brad wasn’t that good to their family, especially since he was out of town at a family reunion the night Kasey went missing. However, her dad corrects her, telling her that Brad didn’t go to the family reunion that year. Nic realizes that Brad changed his plans the night of both Kasey and Jules’s disappearances.

Nic asks her father to talk about Kasey, but he turns his back on her and starts washing dishes. However, Nic presses, insisting that they need to talk about it eventually. She then hears the dishes in the sink break and can feel her father’s anger. When he turns, he has blood running down his hands. He tells Nic that she needs to go so he can watch a baseball game.

Nic leaves the kitchen, planning to go to the bathroom. She hears her father turn on the television and start watching the game. Instead of going to the bathroom, Nic goes to Kasey’s bedroom.

She looks around the room, which has been completely untouched since Kasey’s disappearance. There are still clothes around the room and a textbook on her desk. The bed is unmade. Nic finds Kasey’s favorite jacket in the closet and puts it on.

As Nic turns to leave, she sees Kasey’s bulletin board of photos and focuses on one that she hasn’t noticed before. In the background is the dock at Brad’s family’s lake house. Nic takes down the photo and goes to put it in her pocket but feels a paper alongside the back of it. It is a gas receipt. On the back is an address, which Nic pulls up on her phone; it is near Brad’s lake house. She then sees that the date of the receipt is August 17, the night of Kasey’s disappearance.

On the way out of her father’s house, Nic calls Jenna, but she doesn’t answer. She then sends a text, telling Jenna that she has more information. As she calls her again, it dawns on Nic that something may have happened to Jenna.

Panicked, Nic goes to Jenna’s house. As she goes up to the door, she realizes that all the lights are off. She knocks on the door for several moments and decides to look in a window. However, as she starts around the side of the house, Jenna opens the door.

After a moment, Jenna tells Nic to come inside. She confesses that her mother’s illness has gotten worse, and she refuses to go to a hospital. With all the energy Jenna had been putting into the investigation, she felt as though she was neglecting her mother. She insists that she forgot about the meeting with Nic’s father. Although Jenna’s story makes sense—and Nic feels bad for forgetting about her mother—Nic can’t help but feel like Jenna isn’t being truthful.

Nic tells Jenna what she learned at her father's house. She asks her to talk to Brad with her, but Jenna insists that she is too busy right now. Nic wonders if Jenna is trying to stop her from talking to Brad, so she tells her that she will talk to him alone. Based on Jenna’s reaction, Nic gets the feeling that she called her “bluff,” as “she looks taken aback” (150). However, after a moment, Jenna tells her to be careful, whatever she decides to do.

Jenna gives Nic a ride home. Before Nic gets out of the car, she asks Jenna if she was threatened like Lauren was. Jenna swears that she wasn’t and that she is just overwhelmed with her mother right now. Despite this, Nic still gets the feeling that someone caused Jenna to change.

The next day, Nic decides that she needs to go speak with Brad, who is at his annual family reunion, as she can’t wait any longer. With no other way to get there, she takes her own car, even though her license is suspended.

When Nic gets to the reunion and sees all of Brad’s family, she hesitates. She starts to leave, but Sandy sees her and stops her. When Nic spots Brad, her anger returns. She marches up to him at the grill where he is cooking. Loudly, she demands to know why Kasey visited him the night she disappeared. Brad immediately grabs her, forcefully gripping her arm. He then turns to his family and makes a joke, then forces Nic inside.

When they are alone, Nic demands to know what Brad knows about Kasey’s disappearance, but they are interrupted by Sandy. Nic doesn’t want to hurt Sandy, so she tries to get her to leave—as does Brad. Sandy tells them that Kasey wasn’t visiting Brad the night she disappeared; she came to the lake house to see Sandy.

Sandy tells the story: Near the end of July, she was in town near the record store. She spotted Kasey’s car behind the record store with her husband’s and saw them in Kasey’s car having sex. She decided that she needed to talk to Kasey to get her to stop, as the affair would ruin their marriage and their children’s lives. Sandy says that after she confronted Kasey, she promised to end things with Brad. Brad tells Nic that Kasey kept her promise. They stopped sleeping together a few weeks before she disappeared.

Confused, Nic asks why Kasey went to see Sandy at the lake house the night she disappeared. Sandy reveals that a few days before her disappearance, Kasey showed up demanding $10,000 to keep the affair a secret.

Sandy explains to Nic and Brad that she was desperate to keep the affair a secret, so it seemed like a reasonable price to pay. She told Kasey that she would get the money for her in a few days. 

On the day of Kasey’s disappearance, she demanded the money, so Sandy wrote down the address of a bait shop on a receipt Kasey had. An hour later, they met there, and she gave Kasey the $7,000 she managed to collect, promising to get her the rest.

Nic angrily accuses Sandy of hiding information from the police. However, Sandy insists that she was just protecting her family and that the information wouldn’t have helped the investigation at all. She is adamant that Brad had nothing to do with Kasey’s disappearance. Nic then asks Brad why he canceled the fishing trip, and Sandy interjects to say that she and Brad had gone to a couple’s retreat to work on their marriage.

Nic accuses Brad of scaring Lauren, and Brad admits that it’s true. He knew that Lauren knew about the affair, so he used her daughter to scare her into remaining quiet. However, when Nic accuses him of doing the same to Jenna, Brad insists that he did nothing to her and has never even met her.

Nic leaves the lake house and goes to the nearest gas station. She buys two bottles of wine, deciding that she needs a drink after everything she went through.

Back on the road, she tries to call Jenna to tell her about what happened. However, she can’t find her phone. As she looks through her bag, she briefly swerves off the road. A minute later, she sees a police car’s flashing lights in her rearview mirror.

The officer asks Nic for her license and registration. She gives him her registration and pretends that she can’t find her license. The officer goes back to his car.

A minute later, he returns and tells Nic to get out of the vehicle. He explains that her license is suspended, and she also missed a court date a few weeks ago. It dawns on Nic that, with everything going on with Jenna, she forgot about her court date. The officer tells her that there is a warrant out for her arrest.

Nic calls Jenna from jail. She is embarrassed and ashamed but feels as though she has no other choice. She asks Jenna to pick her up from jail the next morning and to bring bail money. Jenna sighs but promises to be there. Nic then tries to ask Jenna why she is no longer interested in the case but before she can get an answer, an officer ends her call.

The next morning, Jenna picks Nic up and brings her coffee and food. She asks if Nic needs anything, but Nic insists that she just wants to tell her about the conversation with Brad and Sandy.

Nic recounts the events from the day before, but at several points, she notices that Jenna looks “distant” and unfocused. When Nic pauses, trying to get Jenna’s attention, Jenna asks if she ever thinks about Kasey being somewhere happy. She says she thinks of Jules that way a lot lately—as if she is on a beach somewhere—and it makes her feel better about everything. Nic tries to do the same, imagining that her sister is in Nashville, a place she always wanted to go, but her thoughts are interrupted by fear of what truly happened to Kasey.

Jenna then tells Nic that she can’t keep looking for answers when she knows they won’t find them. Nic argues that they are discovering a lot, but Jenna insists that it isn’t worth it, especially when she needs to spend time with her mother. Nic again asks why Jenna had a sudden change of heart, but Jenna doesn’t answer; instead, she tells Nic that she wants to protect her from the “pain” of reliving what happened to her sister.

Angry, Nic calls Jenna a “quitter.” Jenna responds that Nic “never finished a single thing she’s ever started” (179). The comment crushes Nic. However, she decides that it only proves what Nic knows: Jenna is deliberately trying to hurt her to get her to stop investigating the case. With tears running down her face, Jenna tells Nic to stop reaching out to her about the case.

For the next few days, Nic drinks heavily. She often goes to sleep drunk and then wakes up hungover, trying not to think about anything. One night, she gets a call from Pam at the animal shelter, who tells her that Banksy was adopted. Devasted, Nic smashes a ceramic cup full of wine in the sink and then drinks directly from the bottle.

The next morning, Nic wakes up exhausted and hungover. She is picking up the pieces of the mug when her phone goes off. It is an email from Detective Aimes, the detective who took over Kasey’s case. She suggests several dates and times for when they can meet.

Nic hesitates. She contemplates closing the email and not responding at all, but she remembers Jenna’s words, that she never finishes anything. She decides to dump out all three bottles of wine that she has left. She then decides that she is going to finish the investigation for herself.