Gone Girl(32)

I rearranged my leg delicately, spoke delicately, as if my words were an unwieldy stack of fine china. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”

“We’re all tired,” Rand offered.

“We’ll have the cops round up Viorst,” Marybeth tried. “And that bitch Beverly Cleary too.” It was less a joke than a pardon.

“I guess I should tell you,” I said. “The cops, it’s normal in this kind of case—”

“To look at the husband first, I know,” Rand interrupted. “I told them they’re wasting their time. The questions they asked us—”

“They were offensive,” Marybeth finished.

“So they have spoken with you? About me?” I moved over to the minibar, casually poured a gin. I swallowed three belts in a row and felt immediately worse. My stomach was working its way up my esophagus. “What kind of stuff did they ask?”

“Have you ever hurt Amy, has Amy ever mentioned you threatening her?” Marybeth ticked off. “Are you a womanizer, has Amy ever mentioned you cheating on her? Because that sounds like Amy, right? I told them we didn’t raise a doormat.”

Rand put a hand on my shoulder. “Nick, what we should have said, first of all, is: We know you would never, ever hurt Amy. I even told the police, told them the story about you saving the mouse at the beach house, saving it from the glue trap.” He looked over at Marybeth as if she didn’t know the story, and Marybeth obliged with her rapt attention. “Spent an hour trying to corner the damn thing, and then literally drove the little rat bastard out of town. Does that sound like a guy who would hurt his wife?”

I felt a burst of intense guilt, self-loathing. I thought for a second I might cry, finally.

“We love you, Nick,” Rand said, giving me a final squeeze.

“We do, Nick,” Marybeth echoed. “You’re our son. We are so incredibly sorry that on top of Amy being gone, you have to deal with this—cloud of suspicion.”

I didn’t like the phrase cloud of suspicion. I much preferred routine investigation or a mere formality.

“They did wonder about your restaurant reservations that night,” Marybeth said, an overly casual glance.

“My reservations?”

“They said you told them you had reservations at Houston’s, but they checked it out, and there were no reservations. They seemed really interested in that.”

I had no reservation, and I had no gift. Because if I planned on killing Amy that day, I wouldn’t have needed reservations for that night or a gift I’d never need to give her. The hallmarks of an extremely pragmatic killer.

I am pragmatic to a fault—my friends could certainly tell the police that.

“Uh, no. No, I never made reservations. They must have misunderstood me. I’ll let them know.”

I collapsed on the couch across from Marybeth. I didn’t want Rand to touch me again.

“Oh, okay. Good,” Marybeth said. “Did she, uh, did you get a treasure hunt this year?” Her eyes turned red again. “Before …”

“Yeah, they gave me the first clue today. Gilpin and I found the second one in my office at the college. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“Can we take a look?” my mother-in-law asked.

“I don’t have it with me,” I lied.

“Will you … will you try to solve it, Nick?” Marybeth asked.

“I will, Marybeth. I’ll solve it.”

“I just hate the idea of things she touched, left out there, all alone—”

My phone rang, the disposable, and I flicked a glance at the display, then shut it off. I needed to get rid of the thing, but I couldn’t yet.

“You should pick up every call, Nick,” Marybeth said.

“I recognized this one—just my college alum fund looking for money.”

Rand sat beside me on the couch. The ancient, much abused cushions sank severely under our weight, so we ended up pushed toward each other, arms touching, which was fine with Rand. He was one of those guys who’d pronounce I’m a hugger as he came at you, neglecting to ask if the feeling was mutual.

Marybeth returned to business: “We do think it’s possible an Amy obsessive took her.” She turned to me, as if pleading a case. “We’ve had ’em over the years.”

Amy had been fond of recollecting stories of men obsessed with her. She described the stalkers in hushed tones over glasses of wine at various periods during our marriage—men who were still out there, always thinking about her and wanting her. I suspected these stories were inflated: The men always came off as dangerous to a very precise degree—enough for me to worry about but not enough to require us to involve the police. In short, a play world where I could be Amy’s chest-puffed hero, defending her honor. Amy was too independent, too modern, to be able to admit the truth: She wanted to play damsel.