Gone Girl(164)

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—”