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.
NICK DUNNE
THIRTY DAYS AFTER THE RETURN
Amy thinks she’s in control, but she’s very wrong. Or: She will be very wrong.
Boney and Go and I are working together. The cops, the FBI, no one else is showing much interest anymore. But yesterday Boney called out of the blue. She didn’t identify herself when I picked up, just started in like an old friend: Take you for a cup of coffee? I grabbed Go, and we met Boney back at the Pancake House. She was already at the booth when we arrived, and she stood and smiled somewhat weakly. She’d been getting pummeled in the press. We did an awkward, group-wide hug-or-handshake shuffle. Boney settled for a nod.
First thing she said to me once we got our food: ‘I have one daughter. Thirteen years old. Mia. For Mia Hamm. She was born the day we won the World Cup. So, that’s my daughter.’
I raised my eyebrows: How interesting. Tell me more.
‘You asked that one day, and I didn’t … I was rude. I’d been sure you were innocent, and then … everything said you weren’t, so I was pissed. That I could be that fooled. So I didn’t even want to say my daughter’s name around you.’ She poured us out coffee from the thermos.
‘So, it’s Mia,’ she said.
‘Well, thank you,’ I said.
‘No, I mean … Crap.’ She exhaled upward, a hard gust that fluttered her bangs. ‘I mean: I know Amy framed you. I know she murdered Desi Collings. I know it. I just can’t prove it.’
‘What is everyone else doing while you’re actually working the case?’ Go asked.
‘There is no case. They’re moving on. Gilpin is totally checked out. I basically got the word from on high: Shut this shit down. Shut it down. We look like giant, rube, redneck jackasses in the national media. I can’t do anything unless I get something from you, Nick. You got anything?’
I shrugged. ‘I got everything you got. She confessed to me, but—’
‘She confessed?’ she said. ‘Well, hell, Nick, we’ll wire you.’
‘It won’t work. It won’t work. She thinks of everything. I mean, she knows police procedure cold. She studies, Rhonda.’
She poured electric-blue syrup over her waffles. I stuck the tines of my fork in my bulbous egg yolk and swirled it, smearing the sun.
‘It drives me crazy when you call me Rhonda.’
‘She studies, Ms Detective Boney.’
She blew her breath upward, fluttered her bangs again. Took a bite of pancake. ‘I couldn’t get a wire anyway at this point.’
‘Come on, there has to be something, you guys,’ Go snapped. ‘Nick, why the hell are you staying in that house if you aren’t getting something?’
‘It takes time, Go. I have to get her to trust me again. If she starts telling me things casually, when we’re not both stark naked—’
Boney rubbed her eyes and addressed Go: ‘Do I even want to ask?’
‘They always have their talks naked in the shower with the water running,’ Go said. ‘Can’t you bug the shower somewhere?’
‘She whispers in my ear, on top of the shower running,’ I said.
‘She does study,’ Boney said. ‘She really does. I went over that car she drove back, Desi’s Jag. I had ’em check the trunk, where she swore Desi had stowed her when he kidnapped her. I figured there’d be nothing there – we’d catch her in a lie. She rolled around in the trunk, Nick. Her scent was detected by our dogs. And we found three long blond hairs. Long blond hairs. Hers before she cut it. How she did that—’
‘Foresight. I’m sure she had a bag of them so if she needed to leave them somewhere to damn me, she could.’
‘Good God, can you imagine having her for a mother? You could never fib. She’d be three steps ahead of you, always.’
‘Boney, can you imagine having her for a wife?’
‘She’ll crack,’ she said. ‘At some point, she’ll crack.’
‘She won’t,’ I said. ‘Can’t I just testify against her?’
‘You have no credibility,’ Boney said. ‘Your only credibility comes from Amy. She’s single-handedly rehabilitated you. And she can single-handedly undo it. If she comes out with the antifreeze story …’
‘I need to find the vomit,’ I said. ‘If I got rid of the vomit and we exposed more of her lies …’
‘We should go through the diary,’ Go said. ‘Seven years of entries? There have to be discrepancies.’
‘We asked Rand and Marybeth to go through it, see if anything seemed off to them,’ Boney said. ‘You can guess how that went. I thought Marybeth was going to scratch my eyes out.’
‘What about Jacqueline Collings, or Tommy O’Hara, or Hilary Handy?’ Go said. ‘They all know the real Amy. There has to be something there.’
Boney shook her head. ‘Believe me, it’s not enough. They’re all less credible than Amy. It’s pure public opinion, but right now that’s what the department is looking at: public opinion.’
She was right. Jacqueline Collings had popped up on a few cable shows, insisting on her son’s innocence. She always started off steady, but her mother’s love worked against her: She soon came across as a grieving woman desperate to believe the best of her son, and the more the hosts pitied her, the more she snapped and snarled, and the more unsympathetic she became. She got written off quickly. Both Tommy O’Hara and Hilary Handy called me, furious that Amy remained unpunished, determined to tell their story, but no one wanted to hear from two unhinged former anythings. Hold tight, I told them, we’re working on it. Hilary and Tommy and Jacqueline and Boney and Go and I, we’d have our moment. I told myself I believed it.
‘What if we at least got Andie?’ I asked. ‘Got her to testify that everywhere Amy hid a clue was a place where we’d, you know, had sex? Andie’s credible; people love her.’
Andie had reverted to her old cheery self after Amy returned. I know that only from the occasional tabloid snapshot. From these, I know she has been dating a guy her age, a cute, shaggy kid with earbuds forever dangling from his neck. They look nice together, young and healthy. The press adored them. The best headline: Love Finds Andie Hardy!, a 1938 Mickey Rooney movie pun only about twenty people would get. I sent her a text: I’m sorry. For everything. I didn’t hear back. Good for her. I mean that sincerely.
‘Coincidence.’ Boney shrugged. ‘I mean, weird coincidence, but … it’s not impressive enough to move forward. Not in this climate. You need to get your wife to tell you something useful, Nick. You’re our only chance here.’
Go slammed down her coffee. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,’ she said. ‘Nick, I don’t want you in that house anymore. You’re not an undercover cop, you know. It’s not your job. You are living with a murderer. Fucking leave. I’m sorry, but who gives a shit that she killed Desi? I don’t want her to kill you. I mean, someday you burn her grilled cheese, and the next thing you know, my phone’s ringing and you’ve taken an awful fall from the roof or some shit. Leave.’
‘I can’t. Not yet. She’ll never really let me go. She likes the game too much.’
‘Then stop playing it.’
I can’t. I’m getting so much better at it. I will stay close to her until I can bring her down. I’m the only one left who can do it. Someday she’ll slip and tell me something I can use. A week ago I moved into our bedroom. We don’t have sex, we barely touch, but we are husband and wife in a marital bed, which appeases Amy for now. I stroke her hair. I take a strand between my finger and thumb, and I pull it to the end and tug, like I’m ringing a bell, and we both like that. Which is a problem.
We pretend to be in love, and we do the things we like to do when we’re in love, and it feels almost like love sometimes, because we are so perfectly putting ourselves through the paces. Reviving the muscle memory of early romance. When I forget – I can sometimes briefly forget who my wife is – I actually like hanging out with her. Or the her she is pretending to be. The fact is, my wife is a murderess who is sometimes really fun. May I give one example? One night I flew in lobster like the old days, and she pretended to chase me with it, and I pretended to hide, and then we both at the same time made an Annie Hall joke, and it was so perfect, so the way it was supposed to be, that I had to leave the room for a second. My heart was beating in my ears. I had to repeat my mantra: Amy killed a man, and she will kill you if you are not very, very careful. My wife, the very fun, beautiful murderess, will do me harm if I displease her. I find myself jittery in my own house: I will be making a sandwich, standing in the kitchen midday, licking the peanut butter off the knife, and I will turn and find Amy in the same room with me – those quiet little cat feet – and I will quiver. Me, Nick Dunne, the man who used to forget so many details, is now the guy who replays conversations to make sure I didn’t offend, to make sure I never hurt her feelings. I write down everything about her day, her likes and dislikes, in case she quizzes me. I am a great husband because I am very afraid she may kill me.
We’ve never had a conversation about my paranoia, because we’re pretending to be in love and I’m pretending not to be frightened of her. But she’s made glancing mentions of it: You know, Nick, you can sleep in bed with me, like, actually sleep. It will be okay. I promise. What happened with Desi was an isolated incident. Close your eyes and sleep.
But I know I’ll never sleep again. I can’t close my eyes when I’m next to her. It’s like sleeping with a spider.
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
EIGHT WEEKS AFTER THE RETURN
No one has arrested me. The police have stopped questioning. I feel safe. I will be even safer very soon.
This is how good I feel: Yesterday I came downstairs for breakfast, and the jar that held my vomit was sitting on the kitchen counter, empty. Nick – the scrounger – had gotten rid of that little bit of leverage. I blinked an eye, and then I tossed out the jar.
It hardly matters now.
Good things are happening.
I have a book deal: I am officially in control of our story. It feels wonderfully symbolic. Isn’t that what every marriage is, anyway? Just a lengthy game of he-said, she-said? Well, she is saying, and the world will listen, and Nick will have to smile and agree. I will write him the way I want him to be: romantic and thoughtful and very very repentant – about the credit cards and the purchases and the woodshed. If I can’t get him to say it out loud, he’ll say it in my book. Then he’ll come on tour with me and smile and smile.
I’m calling the book simply: Amazing. Causing great wonder or surprise; astounding. That sums up my story, I think.
NICK DUNNE
NINE WEEKS AFTER THE RETURN
I found the vomit. She’d hidden it in the back of the freezer in a jar, inside a box of Brussels sprouts. The box was covered in icicles; it must have been sitting there for months. I know it was her own joke with herself: Nick won’t eat his vegetables, Nick never cleans out the fridge, Nick won’t think to look here.
But Nick did.
Nick knows how to clean out the refrigerator, it turns out, and Nick even knows how to defrost: I poured all that sick down the drain, and I left the jar on the counter so she’d know.
She tossed it in the garbage. She never said a word about it.
Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but something’s very wrong.
My life has begun to feel like an epilogue. Tanner picked up a new case: A Nashville singer discovered his wife was cheating, and her body was found the next day in a Hardee’s trash bin near their house, a hammer covered with his fingerprints beside her. Tanner is using me as a defense. I know it looks bad, but it also looked bad for Nick Dunne, and you know how that turned out. I could almost feel him winking at me through the camera lens. He sent the occasional text: U OK? Or: Anything?
No, nothing.
Boney and Go and I hung out in secret at the Pancake House, where we sifted the dirty sand of Amy’s story, trying to find something we could use. We scoured the diary, an elaborate anachronism hunt. It came down to desperate nitpickings like: ‘She makes a comment here about Darfur, was that on the radar in 2010?’ (Yes, we found a 2006 newsclip with George Clooney discussing it.) Or my own best worst: ‘Amy makes a joke in the July 2008 entry about killing a hobo, but I feel like dead-hobo jokes weren’t big until 2009.’ To which Boney replied: ‘Pass the syrup, freakshow.’
People peeled away, went on with their lives. Boney stayed. Go stayed.
Then something happened. My father finally died. At night, in his sleep. A woman spooned his last meal into his mouth, a woman settled him into bed for his last rest, a woman cleaned him up after he died, and a woman phoned to give me the news.
‘He was a good man,’ she said, dullness with an obligatory injection of empathy.
‘No, he wasn’t,’ I said, and she laughed like she clearly hadn’t in a month.
I thought it would make me feel better to have the man vanished from the earth, but I actually felt a massive, frightening hollowness open up in my chest. I had spent my life comparing myself to my father, and now he was gone, and there was only Amy left to bat against. After the small, dusty, lonely service, I didn’t leave with Go, I went home with Amy, and I clutched her to me. That’s right, I went home with my wife.
I have to get out of this house, I thought. I have to be done with Amy once and for all. Burn us down, so I couldn’t ever go back.
Who would I be without you?
I had to find out. I had to tell my own story. It was all so clear.
The next morning, as Amy was in her study clicking away at the keys, telling the world her Amazing story, I took my laptop downstairs and stared at the glowing white screen.
I started on the opening page of my own book.
I am a cheating, weak-spined, woman-fearing coward, and I am the hero of your story. Because the woman I cheated on – my wife, Amy Elliott Dunne – is a sociopath and a murderer.
Yes. I’d read that.