“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 snapshots. From these, I know she has been dating a guy her age, a cute, shaggy kid with ear-buds 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.