I had to phone Tanner, my brand-new lawyer, mere hours after I’d hired him, and say the words that would make him regret taking my money: I think my wife is framing me. I couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine it – the eye roll, the grimace, the weariness of a man who hears nothing but lies for a living.
‘Well,’ he finally said after a gaping pause, ‘I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning, and we will sort this out – everything on the table – and in the meantime, sit tight, okay? Go to sleep and sit tight.’
Go took his advice, she popped two sleeping pills and left me just before eleven, while I literally sat tight, in an angry ball on her couch. Every so often I’d go outside and glare at the woodshed, my hands on my hips, as if it were a predator I could scare off. I’m not sure what I thought I was accomplishing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I could stay seated for five minutes, tops, before I’d have to go back outside and stare.
I had just come back inside when a knock rattled the back door. Fucking Christ. Not quite midnight. Cops would come to the front – right? – and reporters had yet to stake out Go’s (this would change, a matter of days, hours). I was standing, unnerved, undecided, in the living room when the banging came again, louder, and I cursed under my breath, tried to get myself angry instead of scared. Deal with it, Dunne.
I flung open the door. It was Andie. It was goddamn Andie, pretty as a picture, dressed up for the occasion, still not getting it – that she was going to put my neck right in the noose.
‘Right in the noose, Andie.’ I yanked her inside, and she stared at my hand on her arm. ‘You are going to put my neck right in the fucking noose.’
‘I came to the back door,’ she said. When I stared her down, she didn’t apologize, she steeled herself. I could literally see her features harden. ‘I needed to see you, Nick. I told you. I told you I had to see you or talk to you every day, and today you disappeared. Straight to voice mail, straight to voice mail, straight to voice mail.’
‘If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I can’t talk, Andie. Jesus, I was in New York, getting a lawyer. He’ll be here first thing tomorrow.’
‘You got a lawyer. That was what kept you so busy that you couldn’t call me for ten seconds?’
I wanted to smack her. I took a breath. I had to cut things off with Andie. It wasn’t just Tanner’s warning I had in mind. My wife knew me: She knew I’d do almost anything to avoid dealing with confrontation. Amy was depending on me to be stupid, to let the relationship linger – and to ultimately be caught. I had to end it. But I had to do it perfectly. Make her believe that this was the decent thing.
‘He’s actually given me some important advice,’ I began. ‘Advice I can’t ignore.’
I’d been so sweet and doting just last night, at my mandatory meeting in our pretend fort. I’d made so many promises, trying to calm her down. She wouldn’t see this coming. She wouldn’t take this well.
‘Advice? Good. Is it to stop being such an asshole to me?’
I felt the rage rise up; that this was already turning into a high school fight. A thirty-four-year-old man in the middle of the worst night of my life, and I was having a meet me by the lockers! squabble with a pissed-off girl. I shook her once, hard, a tiny droplet of spit landing on her lower lip.
‘I—You don’t get it, Andie. This isn’t some joke, this is my life.’
‘I just … I need you,’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘I know I keep saying that, but I do. I can’t do it, Nick. I can’t go on like this. I’m falling apart. I’m so scared all the time.’
She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I’d been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I’d sought her out that day – I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I’d spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy: I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can’t pretend to love you, I can’t do the anniversary thing – it would actually be more wrong than cheating on you in the first place. (I know: debatable.) But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and – the catch-22 – I craved Andie to make me feel better.
But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.
The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed.
‘Look, Andie,’ I said, a big exhale, not letting her sit down, keeping her near the door. ‘You are such a special person to me. You’ve handled all this so amazingly well—’ Make her want to keep you safe.
‘I mean …’ Her voice wavered. ‘I feel so sorry, for Amy. Which is insane. I know I don’t even have a right to feel sad for her, or worried. And on top of feeling sad, I feel so guilty.’ She leaned her head against my chest. I retreated, held her at arm’s length so she had to look at me.
‘Well, that’s one thing I think we can fix. I think we need to fix,’ I said, pulling up Tanner’s exact words.
‘We should go to the police,’ she said. ‘I’m your alibi for that morning, we’ll just tell them.’
‘You’re my alibi for about an hour that morning,’ I said. ‘No one saw or heard Amy after eleven p.m. the night before. The police can say I killed her before I saw you.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
I shrugged. I thought, for a second, about telling her about Amy – my wife is framing me – and quickly dismissed it. Andie couldn’t play the game on Amy’s level. She’d want to be my teammate, and she’d drag me down. Andie would be a liability going forward. I put my hands on her arms again, relaunched my speech.
‘Look, Andie, we are both under an amazing amount of stress and pressure, and a lot of it is brought on by our feelings of guilt. Andie, the thing is, we are good people. We were attracted to each other, I think, because we both have similar values. Of treating people right, of doing the right thing. And right now we know what we are doing is wrong.’
Her broken, hopeful expression changed – the wet eyes, the gentle touch, they disappeared: a weird flicker, a window shade pulled down, something darker in her face.
‘We need to end this, Andie. I think we both know that. It’s so hard, but it’s the decent thing to do. I think it’s the advice we’d give ourselves if we could think straight. As much as I love you, I am still married to Amy. I have to do the right thing.’
‘And if she’s found?’ She didn’t say dead or alive.
‘That’s something we can discuss then.’
‘Then! And until then, what?’
I shrugged helplessly: Until then, nothing.
‘What, Nick? I fuck off until then?’
‘That’s an ugly choice of words.’
‘But that’s what you mean.’ She smirked.
‘I’m sorry, Andie. I don’t think it’s right for me to be with you right now. It’s dangerous for you, it’s dangerous for me. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience. It’s just how I feel.’
‘Yeah? You know how I feel?’ Her eyes burst over, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I feel like a dumb college girl that you started fucking because you were bored with your wife and I made it extremely convenient for you. You could go home to Amy and eat dinner with her and play around in your little bar that you bought with her money, and then you could meet me at your dying dad’s house and jack off on my tits because, poor you, your mean wife would never let you do that.’
‘Andie, you know that’s not—’
‘What a shit you are. What kind of man are you?’
‘Andie, please.’ Contain this, Nick. ‘I think because you haven’t been able to talk about this stuff, everything has gotten a little bigger in your mind, a little—’
‘Fuck you. You think I’m some dumb kid, some pathetic student you can manage? I stick by you through all this – this talk about how you might be a murderer – and as soon as it’s a little tough for you? No, no. You don’t get to talk about conscience and decency and guilt and feel like you are doing the right thing. Do you understand me? Because you are a cheating, cowardly, selfish shit.’
She turned away from me, sobbing, sucking in loud gulps of moist air, and breathing out mewls, and I tried to stop her, I grabbed her by the arm. ‘Andie, this isn’t how I want to—’
‘Hands off me! Hands off me!’
She moved toward the back door, and I could see what would happen, the hatred and embarrassment coming off her like heat, I knew she’d open a bottle of wine, or two, and then she’d tell a friend, or her mother, and it would spread like an infection.
I moved in front of her, barring her way to the door – Andie, please – and she reached up to slap me, and I grabbed her arm, just for defense. Our joined arms moved up and down and up and down like crazed dance partners.
‘Let me go, Nick, or I swear.’
‘Just stay for a minute. Just listen to me.’
‘You, let me go!’
She moved her face toward mine like she was going to kiss me. She bit me. I jerked back and she shot out the door.