Gone Girl(85)

I won’t have an abortion. The baby is six weeks in my belly today, the size of a lentil, and is growing eyes and lungs and ears. A few hours ago, I went into the kitchen and found a snap-top container of dried beans Maureen had given me for Nick’s favorite soup, and I pulled out a lentil and laid it on the counter. It was smaller than my pinkie nail, tiny. I couldn’t bear to leave it on the cold countertop, so I picked it up and held it in my palm and petted it with the tip-tip-tip of a finger. Now it’s in the pocket of my T-shirt, so I can keep it close.

I won’t get an abortion and I won’t divorce Nick, not yet, because I can still remember how he’d dive into the ocean on a summer day and stand on his hands, his legs flailing out of the water, and leap back up with the best seashell just for me, and I’d let my eyes get dazzled by the sun, and I’d shut them and see the colors blinking like raindrops on the inside of my eyelids as Nick kissed me with salty lips and I’d think, I am so lucky, this is my husband, this man will be the father of my children. We’ll all be so happy.

But I may be wrong, I may be very wrong. Because sometimes, the way he looks at me? That sweet boy from the beach, man of my dreams, father of my child? I catch him looking at me with those watchful eyes, the eyes of an insect, pure calculation, and I think: This man might kill me.

So if you find this and I’m dead, well …

Sorry, that’s not funny.





NICK DUNNE

SEVEN DAYS GONE


It was time. At exactly eight A.M. Central, nine A.M. New York time, I picked up my phone. My wife was definitely pregnant. I was definitely the prime—only—suspect. I was going to get a lawyer, today, and he was going to be the very lawyer I didn’t want and absolutely needed.

Tanner Bolt. A grim necessity. Flip around any of the legal networks, the true-crime shows, and Tanner Bolt’s spray-tanned face would pop up, indignant and concerned on behalf of whatever freak-show client he was representing. He became famous at thirty-four for representing Cody Olsen, a Chicago restaurateur accused of strangling his very pregnant wife and dumping her body in a landfill. Corpse dogs detected the scent of a dead body inside the trunk of Cody’s Mercedes; a search of his laptop revealed that someone had printed out a map to the nearest landfill the morning Cody’s wife went missing. A no-brainer. By the time Tanner Bolt was done, everyone—the police department, two West Side Chicago gang members, a disgruntled club bouncer—was implicated except Cody Olsen, who walked out of the courtroom and bought cocktails all around.

In the decade since, Tanner Bolt had become known as the Hubby Hawk—his specialty was swooping down in high-profile cases to represent men accused of murdering their wives. He was successful over half the time, which wasn’t bad, considering the cases were usually damning, the accused extremely unlikable—cheaters, narcissists, sociopaths. Tanner Bolt’s other nickname was Dickhead Defender.

I had a two P.M. appointment.

“This is Marybeth Elliott. Please leave a message, and I will return promptly …” she said in a voice just like Amy’s. Amy, who would not return promptly.

I was speeding to the airport to fly to New York and meet with Tanner Bolt. When I’d asked Boney’s permission to leave town, she seemed amused: Cops don’t really do that. That’s just on TV.

“Hi, Marybeth, it’s Nick again. I’m anxious to talk to you. I wanted to tell you … uh, I truly didn’t know about the pregnancy, I’m just as shocked as you must be … uh, also I’m hiring an attorney, just so you know. I think even Rand had suggested it. So anyway … you know how bad I am on messages. I hope you call me back.”

Tanner Bolt’s office was in midtown, not far from where I used to work. The elevator shot me up twenty-five stories, but it was so smooth that I wasn’t sure I was moving until my ears popped. At the twenty-sixth floor, a tight-lipped blonde in a sleek business suit stepped on. She tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the doors to shut, then snapped at me, “Why don’t you hit close?” I flashed her the smile I give petulant women, the lighten-up smile, the one Amy called the “beloved Nicky grin,” and then the woman recognized me. “Oh,” she said. She looked as if she smelled something rancid. She seemed personally vindicated when I scuttled out on Tanner’s floor.

This guy was the best, and I needed the best, but I also resented being associated with him in any way—this sleazebag, this showboat, this attorney to the guilty. I pre-hated Tanner Bolt so much that I expected his office to look like a Miami Vice set. But Bolt & Bolt was quite the opposite—it was dignified, lawyerly. Behind spotless glass doors, people in very good suits commuted busily between offices.