The Missing Half

Jenna is a primary character in the novel. Like Nic, her sister, Jules, disappeared seven years ago. Jenna’s arrival is the inciting incident that starts the novel’s plot, as she comes to Nic’s work to beg her to help her reinvestigate their disappearances. She is 33 years old and works as a receptionist in a dental office. Throughout the course of the novel, as Jenna learns more about Jules’s disappearance, she becomes the novel’s primary antagonist, working directly against Nic in her search for information.

Jenna is defined by her intelligence and her ability to remain calm and calculating. As she investigates the disappearances with Nic, she is always calm and collected, seeking to get as much information as she can. In this way, Jenna serves as a foil to Nic in the text. Where Nic is reactive and short-tempered, Jenna thinks everything through and handles her emotions much better; when Nic loses her temper, Jenna. Additionally, while Nic largely tried to ignore the media coverage of Kasey’s disappearance, Jenna tracked and recorded everything. She fulfills the trope of the amateur sleuth in detective fiction as she works to uncover information that the police missed; she even has the stereotypical wall of information with news clippings, maps, and pictures. However, this wall also hints at her obsession with finding out what happened to Jules; when Nic sees it, she comments, “This is the kind of wall serial killers have, or detectives in TV shows when they’re slipping into obsession” (46). Her differences with Nic highlight two distinct reactions to trauma: one tries to bury and ignore it, while the other obsesses over finding the truth and getting closure.

Despite their differences, Jenna and Nic are similar in one key characteristic: their loyalty to their sisters. From the novel’s start, Jenna is ruthless in her pursuit of information, as she lies directly to Nic about new evidence. Then, when she discovers that Kasey may have been complicit in Jules’s death, she lies to Nic further, using her own mother’s illness as an excuse to avoid working with Nic. In a plot twist, she finds Kasey and confronts her with a gun, fixated on getting revenge for Jules’s death. Like Nic, she is dedicated to her sister, willing to risk her own death or incarceration to finally bring what she perceives as justice to Kasey. Like Nic, her life—and her death—come to be defined by her sister’s disappearance.

Kasey is Nic’s sister. At the age of 19, she disappeared, and her car was found abandoned by the side of the road with all her belongings in it. She is believed to be dead for much of the novel but, in a plot twist, it is revealed that she has been living secretly in Nashville for the last seven years. After Nic accidentally killed Jules while driving under the influence—something Nic doesn’t even remember—Kasey hid the crime, disposing of the body and getting their car repaired. Two weeks later, out of fear, she went into hiding, faking her own disappearance and then changing her appearance and name.

Like Nic and Jenna, Kasey is defined by her loyalty to her sister. Early on in her life, she realized that her father—who worked multiple jobs—and her mother—who had an alcohol use disorder—were not going to care for Nic as they should; instead, Kasey decided that her younger sister would be her responsibility. As a result, when she discovered that Nic had killed Jules, she took the blame for it and actively worked to hide the truth from the police, even though she resented it—as she makes the decision to dispose of Jules’s body, she “stare[s] at her sister’s peaceful face and [feels] as if a deep fault line were tearing through her—love on one side, loathing on the other” (246). However, like Nic, Kasey is partly defined by her loyalty to her sister. In this way, Kasey is a morally ambiguous character. While she was trapped by Nic’s actions, she also chose not to tell the police and to take the blame for herself, causing irreparable damage to Jenna, herself, and even Nic. Ultimately, Kasey and Nic choose to hide Jenna’s body together, reaffirming their sisterhood and their commitment to hiding the truth.

Steve is an antagonist in the novel. He was Jules’s boss when she worked at Mesquite Barbecue, a restaurant next door to the record shop that Kasey worked in. He is the first connection between Jules and Kasey that Nic and Jenna discover, as he knew both of them. He is described by Nic as having “an objective sort of attractiveness” that allows him to “lure women in,” yet there is a “too eager glint in his eyes” that reveals his dangerous side (88). He is characterized as misogynistic and abusive, as he has a history of being arrested for harassment and sexual violence toward women. It is revealed near the end of the novel that he also raped Jules, causing her to quit her job and move to a new town with Jenna.

Despite the evil nature of Steve’s character, he largely serves as a red herring, or false lead, in the narrative. For much of the novel, Nic and Jenna believe that he is responsible for their sisters’ disappearance, even though the police ruled him out as a suspect years before. He is a stereotypical villain, with no redeeming qualities. Although he gives key information about the case to Nic and Jenna, he does so to manipulate them, intentionally enraging Nic by goading her about Kasey. In the end, he is absolved of any responsibility for Kasey and Jules’s disappearances—even if he harmed them and many other women in different ways.