“I really hope you like this,” he says again, and flings open the door.
It’s a glass room, a greenhouse, I realize. Within are tulips, hundreds, of all colors. Tulips bloom in the middle of July in Desi’s lake house. In their own special room for a very special girl.
“I know tulips are your favorite, but the season is so short,” Desi said. “So I fixed that for you. They’ll bloom year-round.”
He puts his arm around my waist and aims me toward the flowers so I can appreciate them fully.
“Tulips any day of the year,” I say, and try to get my eyes to glisten. Tulips were my favorite in high school. They were everyone’s favorite, the gerbera daisy of the late ’80s. Now I like orchids, which are basically the opposite of tulips.
“Would Nick ever have thought of something like this for you?” Desi breathes into my ear as the tulips sway under a mechanized dusting of water from above.
“Nick never even remembered I liked tulips,” I say, the correct answer.
It is sweet, beyond sweet, the gesture. My own flower room, like a fairy tale. And yet I feel a lilt of nerves: I called Desi only twenty-four hours ago, and these are not newly planted tulips, and the bedroom did not smell of fresh paint. It makes me wonder: the uptick in his letters the past year, their woeful tone … how long has he been wanting to bring me here? And how long does he think I will stay? Long enough to enjoy blooming tulips every day for a year.
“My goodness, Desi,” I say. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
“Your fairy tale,” he says. “I want you to see what life can be like.”
In fairy tales, there is always gold. I wait for him to give me a stack of bills, a slim credit card, something of use. The tour loops back around through all the rooms so I can ooh and ahh about details I missed the first time, and then we return to my bedroom, a satin-and-silk, pink-and-plush, marshmallow-and-cotton-candy girl’s room. As I peer out a window, I notice the high wall that surrounds the house.
I blurt, nervously, “Desi, would you be able to leave me with some money?”
He actually pretends to be surprised. “You don’t need money now, do you?” he says. “You have no rent to pay anymore; the house will be stocked with food. I can bring new clothes for you. Not that I don’t like you in bait-shop chic.”
“I guess a little cash would just make me feel more comfortable. Should something happen. Should I need to get out of here quickly.”
He opens his wallet and pulls out two twenty-dollar bills. Presses them gently in my hand. “There you are,” he says indulgently.
I wonder then if I have made a very big mistake.
NICK DUNNE
TEN DAYS GONE
I made a mistake, feeling so cocky. Whatever the hell this diary was, it was going to ruin me. I could already see the cover of the true-crime novel: the black-and-white photo of us on our wedding day, the blood-red background, the jacket copy: including sixteen pages of never-seen photos and Amy Elliott Dunne’s actual diary entries—a voice from beyond the grave … I’d found it strange and kind of cute, Amy’s guilty pleasures, those cheesy true-crime books I’d discovered here and there around our house. I thought maybe she was loosening up, allowing herself some beach reading.
Nope. She was just studying.
Gilpin pulled over a chair, sat on it backward, and leaned toward me on crossed arms—his movie-cop look. It was almost midnight; it felt later.
“Tell us about your wife’s illness these past few months,” he said.
“Illness? Amy never got sick. Once a year she’d get a cold, maybe.”
Boney picked up the book, turned to a marked page. “Last month you made Amy and yourself some drinks, sat on your back porch. She writes here that the drinks were impossibly sweet and describes what she thinks is an allergic reaction: My heart was racing, my tongue was slabbed, stuck to the bottom of my mouth. My legs turned to meat as Nick walked me up the stairs.” She put a finger down to hold her place in the diary, looked up as if I might not be paying attention. “When she woke the next morning: My head ached and my stomach was oily, but weirder, my fingernails were light blue, and when I looked in the mirror, so were my lips. I didn’t pee for two days after. I felt so weak.”
I shook my head in disgust. I’d become attached to Boney; I expected better of her.
“Is this your wife’s handwriting?” Boney tilted the book toward me, and I saw deep black ink and Amy’s cursive, jagged as a fever chart.
“Yes, I think so.”
“So does our handwriting expert.”
Boney said the words with a certain pride, and I realized: This was the first case these two had ever had that required outside experts, that demanded they get in touch with professionals who did exotic things like analyze handwriting.