NICK DUNNE
THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN
Her pulse was finally throbbing beneath my fingers, the way I’d imagined. I pressed tighter and brought her to the ground. She made wet clucking noises and scratched at my wrists. We were both kneeling, in face-to-face prayer for ten seconds.
You fucking crazy bitch.
A tear fell from my chin and hit the floor.
You murdering, mind-fucking, evil, crazy bitch.
Amy’s bright blue eyes were staring into mine, unblinking.
And then the strangest thought of all clattered drunkenly from the back of my brain to the front and blinded me: If I kill Amy, who will I be?
I saw a bright white flash. I dropped my wife as if she were burning iron.
She sat hard on the ground, gasped, coughed. When her breath came back, it was in jagged rasps, with a strange, almost erotic squeak at the end.
Who will I be then? The question wasn’t recriminatory. It wasn’t like the answer was the pious: Then you’ll be a killer, Nick. You’ll be as bad as Amy. You’ll be what everyone thought you were. No. The question was frighteningly soulful and literal: Who would I be without Amy to react to? Because she was right: As a man, I had been my most impressive when I loved her – and I was my next best self when I hated her. I had known Amy only seven years, but I couldn’t go back to life without her. Because she was right: I couldn’t return to an average life. I’d known it before she’d said a word. I’d already pictured myself with a regular woman – a sweet, normal girl next door – and I’d already pictured telling this regular woman the story of Amy, the lengths she had gone to – to punish me and to return to me. I already pictured this sweet and mediocre girl saying something uninteresting like Oh, nooooo, oh my God, and I already knew part of me would be looking at her and thinking: You’ve never murdered for me. You’ve never framed me. You wouldn’t even know how to begin to do what Amy did. You could never possibly care that much. The indulged mama’s boy in me wouldn’t be able to find peace with this normal woman, and pretty soon she wouldn’t just be normal, she’d be substandard, and then my father’s voice – dumb bitch – would rise up and take it from there.
Amy was exactly right.
So maybe there was no good end for me.
Amy was toxic, yet I couldn’t imagine a world without her entirely. Who would I be with Amy just gone? There were no options that interested me anymore. But she had to be brought to heel. Amy in prison, that was a good ending for her. Tucked away in a box where she couldn’t inflict herself on me but where I could visit her from time to time. Or at least imagine her. A pulse, my pulse, left out there somewhere.
It had to be me who put her there. It was my responsibility. Just as Amy took the credit for making me my best self, I had to take the blame for bringing the madness to bloom in Amy. There were a million men who would have loved, honored, and obeyed Amy and considered themselves lucky to do so. Confident, self-assured, real men who wouldn’t have forced her to pretend to be anything but her own perfect, rigid, demanding, brilliant, creative, fascinating, rapacious, megalomaniac self.
Men capable of being uxorious.
Men capable of keeping her sane.
Amy’s story could have gone a million other ways, but she met me, and bad things happened. So it was up to me to stop her.
Not kill her but stop her.
Put her in one of her boxes.
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
FIVE DAYS AFTER THE RETURN
I know, I know for sure now, that I need to be more careful about Nick. He’s not as tame as he used to be. Something in him is electric; a switch has turned on. I like it. But I need to take precautions.
I need one more spectacular precaution.
It will take some time to put in place, this precaution. But I’ve done it before, the planning. In the meantime, we can work on our rebuilding. Start with the facade. We will have a happy marriage if it kills him.
‘You’re going to have to try again to love me,’ I told him. The morning after he almost killed me. It happened to be Nick’s thirty-fifth birthday, but he didn’t mention it. My husband has had enough of my gifts.
‘I forgive you for last night,’ I said. ‘We were both under a lot of stress. But now you’re going to have to try again.’
‘I know.’
‘Things will have to be different,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he said.
He doesn’t really know. But he will.
My parents have visited daily. Rand and Marybeth and Nick lavish me with attention. Pillows. Everyone wants to offer me pillows: We are all laboring under a mass psychosis that my rape and miscarriage have left me forever achy and delicate. I have a permanent case of sparrow’s bones – I must be held gently in the palm, lest I break. So I prop my feet on the infamous ottoman, and I tread delicately over the kitchen floor where I bled. We must take good care of me.
Yet I find it strangely tense to watch Nick with anyone but me. He seems on the edge of blurting all the time – as if his lungs are bursting with words about me, damning words.
I need Nick, I realize. I actually need him to back my story. To stop his accusations and denials and admit that it was him: the credit cards, the goodies in the woodshed, the bump in insurance. Otherwise I will carry that waft of uncertainty forever. I have only a few loose ends, and those loose ends are people. The police, the FBI, they are sifting through my story. Boney, I know, would love to arrest me. But they botched everything so badly before – they look like such fools – that they can’t touch me unless they have proof. And they don’t have proof. They have Nick, who swears he didn’t do the things I swear he did, and that’s not much, but it’s more than I’d like.
I’ve even prepared in case my Ozarks friends Jeff and Greta show up, nosing around for acclaim or cash. I’ve already told the police: Desi didn’t drive us straight to his home. He kept me blindfolded and gagged and drugged for several days – I think it was several days – in some room, maybe a motel room? Maybe an apartment? I can’t be sure, it’s all such a blur. I was so frightened, you know, and the sleeping pills. If Jeff and Greta show their pointy, lowdown faces and somehow convince the cops to send a tech team down to the Hide-A-Way, and one of my fingerprints or a hair is found, that simply solves part of the puzzle. The rest is them telling lies.
So Nick is really the only issue, and soon I’ll return him to my side. I was smart, I left no other evidence. The police may not entirely believe me, but they won’t do anything. I know from the petulant tone in Boney’s voice – she will live in permanent exasperation from now on, and the more annoyed she gets, the more people will dismiss her. She already has the righteous, eye-rolling cadence of a conspiracy crackpot. She might as well wrap her head in foil.
Yes, the investigation is winding down. But for Amazing Amy, it’s quite the opposite. My parents’ publisher placed an abashed plea for another Amazing Amy book, and they acquiesced for a lovely fat sum. Once again they are squatting on my psyche, earning money for themselves. They left Carthage this morning. They say it’s important for Nick and me (the correct grammar) to have some time alone and heal. But I know the truth. They want to get to work. They tell me they are trying to ‘find the right tone.’ A tone that says: Our daughter was kidnapped and repeatedly raped by a monster she had to stab in the neck … but this is in no way a cash grab.
I don’t care about the rebuilding of their pathetic empire, because every day I get calls to tell my story. My story: mine, mine, mine. I just need to pick the very best deal and start writing. I just need to get Nick on the same page so that we both agree how this story will end. Happily.
I know Nick isn’t in love with me yet, but he will be. I do have faith in that. Fake it until you make it, isn’t that an expression? For now he acts like the old Nick, and I act like the old Amy. Back when we were happy. When we didn’t know each other as well as we do now. Yesterday I stood on the back porch and watched the sun come up over the river, a strangely cool August morning, and when I turned around, Nick was studying me from the kitchen window, and he held up a mug of coffee with a question: You want a cup? I nodded, and soon he was standing beside me, the air smelling of grass, and we were drinking our coffee together and watching the water, and it felt normal and good.
He won’t sleep with me yet. He sleeps in the downstairs guest room with the door locked. But one day I will wear him down, I will catch him off guard, and he will lose the energy for the nightly battle, and he will get in bed with me. In the middle of the night, I’ll turn to face him and press myself against him. I’ll hold myself to him like a climbing, coiling vine until I have invaded every part of him and made him mine.