Gone Girl(131)

“I see only Sharon Schieber before me,” I said.

She turned the camera on, sat down across from me, let out a breath, looked down, and then looked up. “Nick, there have been many discrepancies in this case,” Betsy said in Sharon’s plummy broadcast voice. “To begin with, can you walk our audience through the day your wife went missing?”

“Here, Nick, you only discuss the anniversary breakfast you two had,” Tanner interrupted. “Since that is already out there. But you don’t give time lines, you don’t discuss before and after breakfast. You are emphasizing only this wonderful last breakfast you had. Okay, go.”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. The camera was blinking red; Betsy had her quizzical-journalist expression on. “Uh, as you know, it was our five-year anniversary, and Amy got up early and was making crepes—”

Betsy’s arm shot out, and my cheek suddenly stung.

“What the hell?” I said, trying to figure out what had happened. A cherry-red jellybean was in my lap. I held it up.

“Every time you tense up, every time you turn that handsome face into an undertaker’s mask, I am going to hit you with a jellybean,” Betsy explained, as if the whole thing were quite reasonable.

“And that’s supposed to make me less tense?”

“It works,” Tanner said. “It’s how she taught me. I think she used rocks with me, though.” They exchanged oh, you! married smiles. I could tell already: They were one of those couples who always seemed to be starring in their own morning talk show.

“Now start again, but linger over the crepes,” Betsy said. “Were they your favorites? Or hers? And what were you doing that morning for your wife while she was making crepes for you?”

“I was sleeping.”

“What had you bought her for a gift?”

“I hadn’t yet.”

“Oh, boy.” She rolled her eyes over to her husband. “Then be really, really, really complimentary about those crepes, okay? And about what you were going to get her that day for a present. Because I know you were not coming back to that house without a present.”

We started again, and I described our crepe tradition that wasn’t really, and I described how careful and wonderful Amy was with picking out gifts (here another jellybean smacked just right of my nose, and I immediately loosened my jaw) and how I, dumb guy (“Definitely play up the doofus-husband stuff,” Betsy advised), was still trying to come up with something dazzling.

“It wasn’t like she even liked expensive or fancy presents,” I began, and was hit with a paper ball from Tanner.

“What?”

“Past tense. Stop using fucking past tense about your wife.”

“I understand you and your wife had some bumps,” Betsy continued.

“It had been a rough few years. We’d both lost our jobs.”

“Good, yes!” Tanner called. “You both had.”

“We’d moved back here to help care for my dad, who has Alzheimer’s, and my late mother, who had cancer, and on top of that I was working very hard at my new job.”

“Good, Nick, good,” Tanner said.

“Be sure to mention how close you were with your mom,” Betsy said, even though I’d never mentioned my mom to her. “No one will pop up to deny that, right? No Mommy Dearest or Sonny Dearest stories out there?”

“No, my mom and I were very close.”

“Good,” said Betsy. “Mention her a lot, then. And that you own the bar with your sister—always mention your sister when you mention the bar. If you own a bar on your own, you’re a player; if you own it with your beloved twin sister, you’re—”

“Irish.”

“Go on.”

“And so it all built up—” I started.

“No,” Tanner said. “Implies building up to an explosion.”

“So we had gotten off track a little, but I was considering our five-year anniversary as a time to revive our relationship—”

“Recommit to our relationship,” Tanner called. “Revive means something was dead.”

“Recommit to our relationship—”

“And so how does fucking a twenty-three-year-old figure in to this rejuvenative picture?” Betsy asked.

Tanner lobbed a jellybean her way. “A little out of character, Bets.”

“I’m sorry, guys, but I’m a woman, and that smells like bullshit, like mile-away bullshit. Recommit to the relationship, please. That girl was still in the picture when Amy went missing. Women are going to hate you, Nick, unless you suck it up. Be up-front, don’t stall. You can add it on: We lost our jobs, we moved, my parents were dying. Then I fucked up. I fucked up huge. I lost track of who I was, and unfortunately, it took losing Amy to realize it. You have to admit you’re a jerk and that everything was all your fault.”