Gone Girl

Part Three: Boy Gets Girl Back (Or Vice Versa) Chapter Fifty-Four
NICK DUNNE

THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN

I went to the station to fetch my wife and was greeted by the press like a rock star  -  landslide president  -  first moonwalker all in one. I had to resist raising clasped hands above my head in the universal victory shake. I see, I thought, we're all pretending to be friends now.

I entered a scene that felt like a holiday party gone awry  -  a few bottles of champagne rested on one desk, surrounded by tiny paper cups. Backslapping and cheers for all the cops, and then more cheers for me, as if these people hadn't been my persecutors a day before. But I had to play along. Present the back for slapping. Oh yes, we're all buddies now.

All that matters is that Amy is safe. I'd been practicing that line over and over. I had to look like the relieved, doting husband until I knew which way things were going to go. Until I was sure the police had sawed through all her sticky cobwebby lies. Until she is arrested  -  I'd get that far, until she is arrested, and then I could feel my brain expand and deflate simultaneously  -  my own cerebral Hitchcock zoom  -  and I'd think: My wife murdered a man.

'Stabbed him,' said the young police officer assigned as the family liaison. (I hoped never to be liaisoned again, with anyone, for any reason.) He was the same kid who'd yammered on to Go about his horse and torn labrum and peanut allergy. 'Cut him right through the jugular. Cut like that, he bleeds out in, like, sixty seconds.'

Sixty seconds is a long time to know you are dying. I could picture Desi wrapping his hands around his neck, the feel of his own blood spurting between his fingers with each pulse, and Desi getting more frightened and the pulsing only quickening ... and then slowing, and Desi knowing the slowing was worse. And all the time Amy standing just out of reach, studying him with the blameful, disgusted look of a high school biology student confronted with a dripping pig fetus. Her little scalpel still in hand.

'Cut him with a big ole butcher knife,' the kid was saying. 'Guy used to sit right next to her on the bed, cut up her meat for her, and feed her.' He sounded more disgusted by this than by the stabbing. 'One day the knife slips off the plate, he never notices - '

'How'd she use the knife if she was always tied up?' I asked.

The kid looked at me as if I'd just told a joke about his mother. 'I don't know, Mr Dunne, I'm sure they're getting the details right now. The point is, your wife is safe.'

Hurray. Kid stole my line.

I spotted Rand and Marybeth through the doorway of the room where we'd given our first press conference six weeks ago. They were leaning in to each other, as always, Rand kissing the top of Marybeth's head, Marybeth nuzzling him back, and I felt such a keen sense of outrage that I almost threw a stapler at them. You two worshipful, adoring a*sholes created that thing down the hall and set her loose on the world. Lo, how jolly, what a perfect monster! And do they get punished? No, not a single person had come forth to question their characters; they'd experienced nothing but an outpouring of love and support, and Amy would be restored to them and everyone would love her more.

My wife was an insatiable sociopath before. What would she become now?

Step carefully, Nick, step very carefully.

Rand caught my eye and motioned me to join them. He shook my hand for a few exclusive reporters who'd been granted an audience. Marybeth held her ground: I was still the man who'd cheated on her daughter. She gave a curt nod and turned away.

Rand leaned in close to me so I could smell his spearmint gum. 'I tell you, Nick, we are so relieved to have Amy back. We owe you an apology too. Big one. We'll let Amy decide how she feels about your marriage, but I want to at least apologize for where things went. You've got to understand - '

'I do,' I said. 'I understand everything.'

Before Rand could apologize or engage further, Tanner and Betsy arrived together, looking like a Vogue spread  -  crisp slacks and jewel-toned shirts and gleaming gold watches and rings  -  and Tanner leaned toward my ear and whispered, Let me see where we are, and then Go was rushing in, all alarmed eyes and questions: What does this mean? What happened to Desi? She just showed up on your doorstep? What does this mean? Are you okay? What happens next?

It was a bizarre gathering  -  the feel of it: not quite reunion, not quite hospital waiting room, celebratory yet anxious, like some parlor game where no one had all the rules. Meanwhile, the two reporters the Elliotts had allowed into the inner sanctum kept snapping questions at me: How great does it feel to have Amy back? How wonderful do you feel right now? How relieved are you, Nick, that Amy has returned?

I'm extremely relieved and very happy, I was saying, crafting my own bland PR statement, when the doors parted and Jacqueline Collings entered, her lips a tight red scar, her face powder lined with tears.

'Where is she?' she said to me. 'The lying little bitch, where is she? She killed my son. My son.' She began crying as the reporter snapped a few photos.

How do you feel that your son was accused of kidnap and rape? one reporter asked in a stiff voice.

'How do I feel?' she snapped. 'Are you actually serious? Do people really answer questions like that? That nasty, soulless girl manipulated my son his entire life  -  write this down  -  she manipulated and lied and finally murdered him, and now, even after he's dead, she's still using him - '

'Ms Collings, we're Amy's parents,' Marybeth was beginning. She tried to touch Jacqueline on the shoulder, and Jacqueline shook her off. 'I am sorry for your pain.'

'But not my loss.' Jacqueline stood a good head taller than Marybeth; she glared down on her. 'But not my loss,' she reasserted.

'I'm sorry about ... everything,' Marybeth said, and then Rand was next to her, a head taller than Jacqueline.

'What are you going to do about your daughter?' Jacqueline asked. She turned toward our young liaison officer, who tried to hold his ground. 'What is being done about Amy? Because she is lying when she says my son kidnapped her. She is lying. She killed him, she murdered him in his sleep, and no one seems to be taking this seriously.'

'It's all being taken very, very seriously, ma'am,' the young kid said.

'Can I get a quote, Ms Collings?' asked the reporter.

'I just gave you my quote. Amy Elliott Dunne murdered my son. It was not self-defense. She murdered him.'

'Do you have proof of that?'

Of course she didn't.

The reporter's story would chronicle my husbandly exhaustion (his drawn face telling of too many nights forfeited to fear) and the Elliotts' relief (the two parents cling to each other as they wait for their only child to be officially returned to them). It would discuss the incompetence of the cops (it was a biased case, full of dead ends and wrong turns, with the police department focused doggedly on the wrong man). The article would dismiss Jacqueline Collings in a single line: After an awkward run-in with the Elliott parents, an embittered Jacqueline Collings was ushered out of the room, claiming her son was innocent.

Jacqueline was indeed ushered out of the room into another, where her statement would be recorded and she would be kept out of the way of the much better story: the Triumphant Return of Amazing Amy.

When Amy was released to us, it all began again. The photos and the tears, the hugging and the laughter, all for strangers who wanted to see and to know: What was it like? Amy, what does it feel like to escape your captor and return to your husband? Nick, what does it feel like to get your wife back, to get your freedom back, all at once?

I remained mostly silent. I was thinking my own questions, the same questions I'd thought for years, the ominous refrain of our marriage: What are you thinking, Amy? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

It was a gracious, queenly act for Amy to want to come home to our marriage bed with her cheating husband. Everyone agreed. The media followed us as if we were a royal wedding procession, the two of us whizzing through the neon, fast-food-cluttered streets of Carthage to our McMansion on the river. What grace Amy has, what moxie. A storybook princess. And I, of course, was the lickspittle hunchback of a husband who would bow and scrape the rest of my days. Until she was arrested. If she ever got arrested.

That she was released at all was a concern. More than a concern, an utter shock. I saw them all filing out of the conference room where they questioned her for four hours and then let her go: two FBI guys with alarmingly short hair and blank faces; Gilpin, looking like he'd swallowed the greatest steak dinner of his life; and Boney, the only one with thin, tight lips and a little V of a frown. She glanced at me as she walked past, arched an eyebrow, and was gone.

Then, too quickly, Amy and I were back in our home, alone in the living room, Bleecker watching us with shiny eyes. Outside our curtains, the lights of the TV cameras remained, bathing our living room in a bizarrely lush orange glow. We looked candlelit, romantic. Amy was absolutely beautiful. I hated her. I was afraid of her.

'We can't really sleep in the same house - ' I began.

'I want to stay here with you.' She took my hand. 'I want to be with my husband. I want to give you the chance to be the kind of husband you want to be. I forgive you.'

'You forgive me? Amy, why did you come back? Because of what I said in the interviews? The videos?'

'Wasn't that what you wanted?' she said. 'Wasn't that the point of the videos? They were perfect  -  they reminded me of what we used to have, how special it was.'

'What I said, that was just me saying what you wanted to hear.'

'I know  -  that's how well you know me!' Amy said. She beamed. Bleecker began figure-eighting between her legs. She picked him up and stroked him. His purr was deafening. 'Think about it, Nick, we know each other. Better than anyone in the world now.'

It was true that I'd had this feeling too, in the past month, when I wasn't wishing Amy harm. It would come to me at strange moments  -  in the middle of the night, up to take a piss, or in the morning pouring a bowl of cereal  -  I'd detect a nib of admiration, and more than that, fondness for my wife, right in the middle of me, right in the gut. To know exactly what I wanted to hear in those notes, to woo me back to her, even to predict all my wrong moves ... the woman knew me cold. Better than anyone in the world, she knew me. All this time I'd thought we were strangers, and it turned out we knew each other intuitively, in our bones, in our blood.

It was kind of romantic. Catastrophically romantic.

'We can't just pick up where we were, Amy.'

'No, not where we were,' she said. 'Where we are now. Where you love me and you'll never do wrong again.'

'You're crazy, you're literally crazy if you think I'm going to stay. You killed a man,' I said. I turned my back to her, and then I pictured her with a knife in her hand and her mouth growing tight as I disobeyed her. I turned back around. Yes, my wife must always be faced.

'To escape him.'

'You killed Desi so you had a new story, so you could come back and be beloved Amy and not ever have to take the blame for what you did. Don't you get it, Amy, the irony? It's what you always hated about me  -  that I never dealt with the consequences of my actions, right? Well, my ass has been well and duly consequenced. So what about you? You murdered a man, a man I assume loved you and was helping you, and now you want me to step in his place and love you and help you, and ... I can't. I cannot do it. I won't do it.'

'Nick, I think you've gotten some bad information,' she said. 'It doesn't surprise me, all the rumors that are going about. But we need to forget all that. If we are to go forward. And we will go forward. All of America wants us to go forward. It's the story the world needs right now. Us. Desi's the bad guy. No one wants two bad guys. They want to like you, Nick. The only way you can be loved again is to stay with me. It's the only way.'

'Tell me what happened, Amy. Was Desi helping you all along?'

She flared at that: She didn't need a man's help, even though she clearly had needed a man's help. 'Of course not!' she snapped.

'Tell me. What can it hurt, tell me everything, because you and I can't go forward with this pretend story. I'll fight you every step of the way. I know you've thought of everything. I'm not trying to get you to slip up  -  I'm tired of trying to outthink you, I don't have it in me. I just want to know what happened. I was a step away from death row, Amy. You came back and saved me, and I thank you for that  -  do you hear me? I thank you, so don't say I didn't later on. I thank you. But I need to know. You know I need to know.'

'Take off your clothes,' she said.

She wanted to make sure I wasn't wearing a wire. I undressed in front of her, removed every stitch, and then she surveyed me, ran a hand across my chin and my chest, down my back. She palmed my ass and slipped her hand between my legs, cupped my testicles and gripped my limp cock, held it in her hand for a moment to see if anything happened. Nothing happened.

'You're clean,' she said. It was meant as a joke, a wisecrack, a movie reference we'd both laugh at. When I said nothing, she stepped back and said, 'I always did like looking at you naked. That made me happy.'

'Nothing made you happy. Can I put my clothes back on?'

'No. I don't want to worry about hidden wires in the cuffs or the hems. Also, we need to go in the bathroom and run the water. In case you bugged the house.'

'You've seen too many movies,' I said.

'Ha! Never thought I'd hear you say that.'

We stood in the bathtub and turned on the shower. The water sprayed my naked back and misted the front of Amy's shirt until she peeled it off. She pulled off all her clothes, a gleeful striptease, and tossed them over the shower stall in the same grinning, game manner she had when we first met  -  I'm up for anything!  -  and she turned to me, and I waited for her to swing her hair around her shoulders like she did when she flirted with me, but her hair was too short.

'Now we're even,' she said. 'Seemed rude to be the only one clothed.'

'I think we're past etiquette, Amy.'

Look only at her eyes, do not touch her, do not let her touch you.

She moved toward me, put a hand on my chest, let the water trickle between her breasts. She licked a shower teardrop off her upper lip and smiled. Amy hated shower spray. She didn't like getting her face wet, didn't like the feel of water pelleting her flesh. I knew this because I was married to her, and I'd pawed her and harassed her many times in the shower, always to be turned down. (I know it seems sexy, Nick, but it's actually not, it's something people only do in movies.) Now she was pretending just the opposite, as if she forgot that I knew her. I backed away.

'Tell me everything, Amy. But first: Was there ever a baby?'

The baby was a lie. It was the most desolate part for me. My wife as a murderer was frightening, repulsive, but the baby as a lie was almost impossible to bear. The baby was a lie, the fear of blood was a lie  -  during the past year, my wife had been mostly a lie.

'How did you set Desi up?' I asked.

'I found some twine in one corner of his basement. I used a steak knife to saw it into four pieces - '

'He let you keep a knife?'

'We were friends. You forget.'

She was right. I was thinking of the story she'd told the police: that Desi had held her captive. I did forget. She was that good a storyteller.

'Whenever Desi wasn't around, I'd tie the pieces as tight as I could around my wrists and ankles so they'd leave these grooves.'

She showed me the lurid lines on her wrists, like bracelets.

'I took a wine bottle, and I abused myself with it every day, so the inside of my vagina looked ... right. Right for a rape victim. Then today I let him have sex with me so I had his semen, and then I slipped some sleeping pills into his martini.'

'He let you keep sleeping pills?'

She sighed: I wasn't keeping up.

'Right, you were friends.'

'Then I - ' She pantomimed slicing his jugular.

'That easy, huh?'

'You just have to decide to do it and then do it,' she said. 'Discipline. Follow through. Like anything. You never understood that.'

I could feel her mood turning stony. I wasn't appreciating her enough.

'Tell me more,' I said. 'Tell me how you did it.'

An hour in, the water went cold, and Amy called an end to our discussion.

'You have to admit, it's pretty brilliant,' she said.

I stared at her.

'I mean, you have to admire it just a little,' she prompted.

'How long did it take for Desi to bleed to death?'

'It's time for bed,' she said. 'But we can talk more tomorrow if you want. Right now we should sleep. Together. I think it's important. For closure. Actually, the opposite of closure.'

'Amy, I'm going to stay tonight because I don't want to deal with all the questions if I don't stay. But I'll sleep downstairs.'

She cocked her head to one side, studied me.

'Nick, I can still do very bad things to you, remember that.'

'Ha! Worse than what you've already done?'

She looked surprised. 'Oh, definitely.'

'I doubt that, Amy.'

I began walking out the door.

'Attempted murder,' she said.

I paused.

'That was my original plan early on: I'd be a poor, sick wife with repeated episodes, sudden intense bouts of illness, and then it turns out that all those cocktails her husband prepared her ...'

'Like in the diary.'

'But I decided attempted murder wasn't good enough for you. It had to be bigger than that. Still, I couldn't get the poisoning idea out of my head. I liked the idea of you working up to the murder. Trying the cowardly way first. So I went through with it.'

'You expect me to believe that?'

'All that vomit, so shocking. An innocent, frightened wife might have saved some of that vomit, just in case. You can't blame her, being a little paranoid.' She gave a satisfied smile. 'Always have a backup plan to the backup plan.'

'You actually poisoned yourself.'

'Nick, please, you're shocked? I killed myself.'

'I need a drink,' I said. I left before she could speak.

I poured myself a Scotch and sat on the living room couch. Beyond the curtains, the strobes of the cameras were lighting up the yard. Soon it would no longer be night. I'd come to find the morning depressing, to know it would come again and again.

Tanner picked up on the first ring.

'She killed him,' I said. 'She killed Desi because he was basically ... he was annoying her, he was power-playing her, and she realized she could kill him, and it was her way back to her old life, and she could blame everything on him. She murdered him, Tanner, she just told me this. She confessed.'

'I don't suppose you were able to ... record any of it somehow? Cell phone or something?'

'We were naked with the shower running, and she whispered everything.'

'I don't even want to ask,' he said. 'You two are the most f*cked-up people I have ever met, and I specialize in f*cked-up people.'

'What's going on with the police?'

He sighed. 'She foolproofed everything. It's ludicrous, her story, but no more ludicrous than our story. Amy's basically exploiting the sociopath's most reliable maxim.'

'What's that?'

'The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.'

'Come on, Tanner, there's got to be something.'

I paced over to the staircase to make sure Amy was nowhere nearby. We were whispering, but still. I had to be careful now.

'For now we need to toe the line, Nick. She left you looking fairly bad: Everything in the diary was true, she says. All the stuff in the woodshed was you. You bought the stuff with those credit cards, and you're too embarrassed to admit it. She's just a sheltered little rich girl, what would she know about acquiring secret credit cards in her husband's name? And my goodness, that pornography!'

'She told me there was never a baby, she faked it with Noelle Hawthorne's pee.'

'Why didn't you say - That's huge! We'll lean on Noelle Hawthorne.'

'Noelle didn't know.'

I heard a deep sigh on the other end. He didn't even bother asking how. 'We'll keep thinking, we'll keep looking,' he said. 'Something will break.'

'I can't stay in this house with that thing. She's threatening me with - '

'Attempted murder ... the antifreeze. Yeah, I heard that was in the mix.'

'They can't arrest me on that, can they? She says she still has some vomit. Evidence. But can they really - '

'Let's not push it for now, okay, Nick?' he said. 'For now, play nice. I hate to say it, I hate to, but that's my best legal advice for you right now: Play nice.'

'Play nice? That's your advice? My one-man legal dream team: Play nice? F*ck you.'

I hung up in full fury.

I'll kill her, I thought. I will f*cking kill the bitch.

I plunged into the dark daydream I'd indulged over the past few years when Amy had made me feel my smallest: I daydreamed of hitting her with a hammer, smashing her head in until she stopped talking, finally, stopped with the words she suctioned to me: average, boring, mediocre, unsurprising, unsatisfying, unimpressive. Un, basically. In my mind, I whaled on her with the hammer until she was like a broken toy, muttering un, un, un until she sputtered to a stop. And then it wasn't enough, so I restored her to perfection and began killing her again: I wrapped my fingers around her neck  -  she always did crave intimacy  -  and then I squeezed and squeezed, her pulse -

'Nick?'

I turned around, and Amy was on the bottom stair in her nightgown, her head tilted to one side.

'Play nice, Nick.'