Gone Girl

Part Three: Boy Gets Girl Back (Or Vice Versa) Chapter Fifty-Six

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 f*cking crazy bitch.

A tear fell from my chin and hit the floor.

You murdering, mind-f*cking, 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.