The Missing Half

Nic decides to visit Jenna’s mother. She hopes that Jenna said something about the case that would help her figure out why Jenna would lie.

Mrs. Connor answers the door. Nic notes that she has an oxygen tank and a mask but isn’t bedridden or frail, as she expected. She is initially rude to Nic but then lets her in when she sees the flowers that Nic brought.

Nic brings up Jenna, but Mrs. Connor calls Jenna a “liar.” She says that Jenna only visits to reprimand her for doing things like smoking and drinking and not taking her medication. She insists that she wishes Jenna had been killed and not Jules.

Despite her anger, Nic repeatedly asks Mrs. Connor if she knows anything about what Jenna has been doing. Mrs. Connor insists that she knows nothing about Nic or Jenna’s investigation. Nic asks if anything happened lately that would’ve scared Jenna, but she dismisses the question.

Deciding that she needs to leave, Nic excuses herself and heads toward the door. On the way out, she tells Mrs. Connor that she is lucky to have Jenna, as she is “one of the best people” she knows (198). After reprimanding Mrs. Connor, Nic feels guilty and apologizes, mentioning her cancer. Mrs. Connor laughs in response and tells Nic that her cancer has been in remission for three weeks.

Seeing the shock on Nic’s face, Mrs. Connor laughs. She again calls Jenna a “liar,” as Nic angrily leaves the house.

Back at home, Nic considers why Jenna would lie, but none of the answers make sense. She realizes that the first time she met Jenna, Jenna lied to get information from Nic, so it shouldn’t surprise her. She wonders if Jenna is lying out of “self-interest” and investigating the case alone. She decides that she needs to break into Jenna’s house to look at the wall of information and see if she found anything new.

The next morning, Nic goes to Jenna’s house. She is overwhelmed with stress about breaking the law again but decides that she has to do it. She puts a hammer in her bag just in case she needs it to get in, but she manages to unlock the back door with an old debit card.

When Nic goes into the living room, the wall of evidence is gone. She decides that Jenna must have found something that she felt solved the case, so she goes searching for the evidence. She eventually finds it in a box in Jenna’s room, but it is all stuff Nic has already seen.

Nic then turns on Jenna’s laptop. She checks her email and her open tabs but finds nothing. She then sees an app that connects to Jenna’s phone and has all her text message conversations. She sees one with herself, Jenna’s mother, a woman named Amy Miller, and one named Shawna Jackson.

The conversation with Amy Miller starts with Jenna asking her to meet up and talk about Jules. Amy is evasive, repeatedly making excuses about why she can’t meet. However, Amy finally agrees to answer questions via text, so Jenna asks her about the weeks before Jules’s disappearance. Amy, who worked with Jules, agrees that she was acting strangely. When Jenna asks why, Amy apologizes, saying she thought Jenna already knew. Amy reveals that Jules was raped by an old coworker they called Skeevy Steve.

Nic begins to sob. She considers how devastating it must have been for Jenna to discover this and then realizes that the same thing could have happened to Kasey. She forces herself to continue checking the messages on the computer. She opens the one from Shawna and quickly learns that it’s one of Jenna’s coworkers. In her last message, Jenna told her that she was taking a half day at work that day, and Nic realizes with horror that it is already noon.

Nic closes the laptop and hurriedly tries to make the room look untouched. She spots the nightstand by Jenna’s bed, which is partially open. When she looks inside, she sees a Smith & Wesson gun box. Nic remembers what Jenna told her when they first started investigating the case: She would shoot the person who hurt Jules. Nic realizes that Jenna must have tried to push her away because she wanted to protect Nic when she got her revenge on Steve. However, before she can think about it more, she hears a car in the driveway.

Panicked, Nic decides that her only way out is through Jenna’s bedroom window. She pushes out the screen and then climbs outside just as Jenna comes into her room. She hears Jenna rummaging around her room for several moments and realizes that she must not have been seen. She crosses the yard to her bike but stops when Jenna comes out the front door. Jenna goes to her truck, puts something in it, then goes back inside.

Nic looks inside Jenna’s truck and sees a bag inside. It is partially unzipped, and Jenna recognizes the blue gun box inside it. She realizes that Jenna is planning to go to Steve’s right now. After hesitating for a moment, she climbs in the back of Jenna’s truck and covers herself with a tarp.

A few minutes later, Jenna comes outside, gets in her truck, and pulls away. After they get on the highway, Nic checks her phone. They are heading south—the opposite direction of Steve’s work and where she would expect him to live.

After a few hours of driving, Nic tries to check her phone again, but it is dead. Eventually, they stop on a country road, and Nic hears Jenna get out. Nic hesitates, wondering if she should stop Jenna, support her, or simply leave. However, she pulls the hammer out of her bag, deciding that she needs to follow Jenna. She follows closely behind as Jenna walks along the driveway and up the steps to the front door.

Jenna knocks on the door, waits, then knocks again. A moment later, the door opens. To Nic’s surprise, she then hears Kasey’s voice.

Nic feels a flood of emotions at hearing Kasey’s voice. She realizes that the most predominant one is love, even after all these years.

Kasey asks Jenna who she is. Jenna tells her that she is Jules’s sister. Kasey insists that she doesn’t know who that is and starts to close the door, but Jenna calls her by her name. She explains that, even though she is now going by her middle name and working in a record store in Nashville, she knows that she is Kasey.

Kasey asks how Jenna found her, but Jenna interrupts her, insisting that she’s not going to answer her questions. Kasey starts to ask her another one, but Jenna interrupts her again. She angrily tells Kasey that she knows she’s “the one who killed Jules” (224).

Jenna tells Kasey that she knows Kasey hit Jules with her car—she saw her car the night that Jules went missing. She remembers the bumper sticker with the words “We are not two, we are one” written on it (226). She had forgotten about it until she saw the CD Nic brought back from Kasey’s car.

At the mention of her sister’s name, Kasey interrupts to ask about Nic. However, Jenna ignores her and continues. She says that after that, she went to O’Neil’s Auto because of the business card. They pulled the records from August 2012, and there were pictures of Kasey’s car with extensive damage to the front bumper.

As Nic listens, things finally click into place. She realizes that Jenna was trying to get Nic off the case not to protect her but to investigate Kasey without Nic knowing. When Jenna asked if Nic ever pictured Kasey alive, she was fishing for information about where Kasey would go—and Nic told her Nashville.

Kasey tries to say that the situation is more complicated than that, but Jenna pulls out her gun. She points it at Kasey and demands that she admit to killing Jules.

As Jenna holds the gun on Kasey, Nic can see the hate and anger in her eyes. She realizes that Jenna never planned on talking to Kasey but instead came here intent on killing her. Kasey pleads with her, insisting that Jules’s death was an accident, but Jenna refuses to listen to her. She repeatedly tries to force Kasey to confess to killing Jules.

Nic decides that she has to stop Jenna. She sneaks up behind her onto the porch. She sees Kasey again for the first time in years, and the sight floods her with emotions. She pauses, thinking of everything Jenna has done for her and how much she has come to love her. She then swings the hammer, hitting Jenna in the back of the head.

Kasey checks Jenna’s body and tells Nic that she is dead. Nic starts to vomit, but Kasey instructs her not to do it near the body. Nic turns, vomiting over the side of the porch.

When Nic turns back, Kasey is using towels to mop up Jenna’s blood. Nic starts to talk, but Kasey interrupts her, insisting that they need to get rid of the body. Nic suggests calling the police, but Kasey tells her that they can’t. She admits that what Jenna said was true: She killed Jules, even if it was an accident. Nic also killed Jenna, so they would likely both go to jail.

Kasey’s cold assessment hits Nic, as she realizes that she had been holding out hope that Jenna was wrong about Kasey. However, she knows that although she came to love Jenna, she would always choose Kasey. She asks what she can do to help.

Nic helps Kasey load Jenna’s body into the back of the truck and they drive away from the house.

Nic tells Kasey to explain what happened. She admits to knowing about the affair and the money from Sandy. Kasey is surprised by the revelation, but Nic insists that she has been doing everything she could to find her. She accuses Kasey of not caring about her, as faking her death ruined her life. However, Kasey is adamant that she was only trying to protect everyone by disappearing.

As Kasey talks, Nic feels as though there is a “piece” that she is missing. She angrily demands that Kasey explain everything, but Kasey just keeps insisting that she did what she thought was “best.” Nic then grabs the steering wheel, jerking the truck to one side and then the other. Kasey yells at her, but Nic does it again, demanding that Kasey tell her the truth.

When Kasey still refuses, Nic calls her selfish. She says that Kasey always tried to protect her, making Nic incapable of caring for herself. She yells at Kasey that she is a “fuck up” because Kasey “babied” and then “abandoned” her (240). Kasey repeatedly tries to get her to stop, but Nic keeps yelling. Finally, Kasey interrupts her, saying that Nic is the one who killed Jules. She covered it up to keep Nic out of prison.

Back in 2012, at two o’clock in the morning, Kasey is woken up by a phone call from Nic. She can tell that Nic is drunk as she explains that she hit a tree on the way home from the bar. Kasey gets her location and bikes out to find her.

Kasey finds Nic by the side of the road, the front of her car damaged. She loads Nic into the car, where she immediately falls asleep. Kasey then looks for the tree but instead finds Jules’s body by the side of the road. She starts to dial 911 and then realizes that Nic will go to prison.

Kasey thinks back to a time when she was six years old. She was with Nic at a pool party. When Nic nearly drowned, Kasey saved her life, pulling her from the pool. She then realized that the entire time, their mother was drinking and talking with their friends. From that point on, Kasey realized that it would be her job to protect Nic.

Kasey decides to put the body in the trunk of the car. She finds Jules’s car nearby and realizes that it must have broken down. She returns Jules’s phone to the car and then wipes down all the fingerprints. Just as she is driving away, she sees headlights in the distance behind her.

Over the next few days, Kasey is racked with guilt over what happened. She also begins to “loathe” Nic, blaming her for ruining her life.

A couple of weeks later, Kasey goes into Nic’s room and finds a business card from a detective. She panics, wondering what the detective asked Nic and how Nic answered. She realizes that they are going to continue to investigate, which will likely lead them to Nic or Kasey. 

In the end, she decides to stage another kidnapping. Although she is upset to be leaving her life behind, she is also relieved at the thought of no longer having to face Brad or deal with the guilt anymore. She decides that she has no choice, as she has to protect Nic.

The memories flood back to Nic. She exits the car, stumbling to the side of the road, then screams into the night. She realizes that she was looking for the man responsible for her sister’s death, but all along, the “monster” was her.

When Nic returns to the car, she apologizes to Kasey, but Kasey insists that she did what she needed to do. Nic notes the “relief” on her face and realizes Kasey was finally able to let go of some of the burden of that night.

The two women get back in the car. Nic asks where they are going to put the body. Kasey tells her that they are going to the same spot she put Jules’s body: a swamp they used to pass each time they visited their aunt and uncle in Dayton. As kids, they would joke that there must have been a lot of dead bodies in it.

After a few hours, Nic and Kasey arrive at the swamp. They work together to carry Jenna’s body, a flashlight in Nic’s mouth. They push through the brush, then walk through the mud and into the water.

Kasey tells Nic that they need to find rocks to weigh down Jenna’s body. As they search, Nic tells Kasey that she’ll understand if Kasey never wants to see her again. However, Kasey insists that she will always love Nic because they are sisters. The response floods Nic with relief, as she felt that she could never be loved again.

Nic then asks Kasey if she can “disappear” with her to somewhere new. Kasey tells her that she will have to go home for a while and act like everything is normal. They will need to wait and see what happens when Jenna’s disappearance is discovered. After that, though, Kasey agrees that they can run together this time.

After they load Jenna’s body with rocks, they drop it into the water. As it disappears, Nic thinks of how both sets of sisters are finally “reunited.” However, she wonders whether “the right ones survived” (257).