Gone Girl(82)

So the hard shove, so quick, then done, it didn’t scare me in itself. What scared me was the look on his face as I lay on the floor blinking, my head ringing. It was the look on his face as he restrained himself from taking another jab. How much he wanted to shove me again. How hard it was not to. How he’s been looking at me since: guilt, and disgust at the guilt. Absolute disgust.

Here’s the darkest part. I drove out to the mall yesterday, where about half the town buys drugs, and it’s as easy as picking up a prescription; I know because Noelle told me: Her husband goes there to purchase the occasional joint. I didn’t want a joint, though, I wanted a gun, just in case. In case things with Nick go really wrong. I didn’t realize until I was almost there that it was Valentine’s Day. It was Valentine’s Day and I was going to buy a gun and then cook my husband dinner. And I thought to myself: Nick’s dad was right about you. You are a dumb bitch. Because if you think your husband is going to hurt you, you leave. And yet you can’t leave your husband, who’s mourning his dead mother. You can’t. You’d have to be a biblically awful woman to do that, unless something were truly wrong. You’d have to really believe your husband was going to hurt you.

But I don’t really think Nick would hurt me.

I just would feel safer with a gun.





NICK DUNNE

SIX DAYS GONE


Go pushed me into the car and peeled away from the park. We flew past Noelle, who was walking with Boney and Gilpin toward their cruiser, her carefully dressed triplets bumping along behind her like kite ribbons. We screeched past the mob: hundreds of faces, a fleshy pointillism of anger aimed right at me. We ran away, basically. Technically.

“Wow, ambush,” Go muttered.

“Ambush?” I repeated, brain-stunned.

“You think that was an accident, Nick? Triplet Cunt already made her statement to the police. Nothing about the pregnancy.”

“Or they’re doling out bombshells a little at a time.”

Boney and Gilpin had already heard my wife was pregnant and decided to make it a strategy. They clearly really believed I killed her.

“Noelle will be on every cable broadcast for the next week, talking about how you’re a murderer and she’s Amy’s best friend out for justice. Publicity whore. Publicity fucking whore.”

I pressed my face against the window, slumped in my chair. Several news vans followed us. We drove silently, Go’s breath slowing down. I watched the river, a tree branch bobbing its way south.

“Nick?” she finally said. “Is it—uh … Do you—”

“I don’t know, Go. Amy didn’t say anything to me. If she was pregnant, why would she tell Noelle and not tell me?”

“Why would she try to get a gun and not tell you?” Go said. “None of this makes sense.”



We retreated to Go’s—the camera crews would be swarming my house—and as soon as I walked in the door my cell phone rang, the real one. It was the Elliotts. I sucked in some air, ducked into my old bedroom, then answered.

“I need to ask you this, Nick.” It was Rand, the TV burbling in the background. “I need you to tell me. Did you know Amy was pregnant?”

I paused, trying to find the right way to phrase it, the unlikelihood of a pregnancy.

“Answer me, goddammit!”

Rand’s volume made me get quieter. I spoke in a soft, soothing voice, a voice wearing a cardigan. “Amy and I were not trying to get pregnant. She didn’t want to be pregnant, Rand, I don’t know if she ever was going to be. We weren’t even … we weren’t even having relations that often. I’d be … very surprised if she was pregnant.”

“Noelle said Amy visited the doctor to confirm the pregnancy. The police already submitted a subpoena for the records. We’ll know tonight.”

I found Go in the living room, sitting with a cup of cold coffee at my mother’s card table. She turned toward me just enough to show she knew I was there, but she didn’t let me see her face.

“Why do you keep lying, Nick?” she asked. “The Elliotts are not your enemy. Shouldn’t you at least tell them that it was you who didn’t want kids? Why make Amy look like the bad guy?”

I swallowed the rage again. My stomach was hot with it. “I’m exhausted, Go. Goddamn. We gotta do this now?”

“We gonna find a time that’s better?”

“I did want kids. We tried for a while, no luck. We even started looking into fertility treatments. But then Amy decided she didn’t want kids.”

“You told me you didn’t.”

“I was trying to put a good face on it.”