I found the vomit. She’d hidden it in the back of the freezer in a jar, inside a box of Brussels sprouts. The box was covered in icicles; it must have been sitting there for months. I know it was her own joke with herself: Nick won’t eat his vegetables, Nick never cleans out the fridge, Nick won’t think to look here.
But Nick did.
Nick knows how to clean out the refrigerator, it turns out, and Nick even knows how to defrost: I poured all that sick down the drain, and I left the jar on the counter so she’d know.
She tossed it in the garbage. She never said a word about it.
Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but something’s very wrong.
My life has begun to feel like an epilogue. Tanner picked up a new case: A Nashville singer discovered his wife was cheating, and her body was found the next day in a Hardee’s trash bin near their house, a hammer covered with his fingerprints beside her. Tanner is using me as a defense. I know it looks bad, but it also looked bad for Nick Dunne, and you know how that turned out. I could almost feel him winking at me through the camera lens. He sent the occasional text: U OK? Or: Anything?
No, nothing.
Boney and Go and I hung out in secret at the Pancake House, where we sifted the dirty sand of Amy’s story, trying to find something we could use. We scoured the diary, an elaborate anachronism hunt. It came down to desperate nitpickings like: ‘She makes a comment here about Darfur, was that on the radar in 2010?’ (Yes, we found a 2006 newsclip with George Clooney discussing it.) Or my own best worst: ‘Amy makes a joke in the July 2008 entry about killing a hobo, but I feel like dead-hobo jokes weren’t big until 2009.’ To which Boney replied: ‘Pass the syrup, freakshow.’
People peeled away, went on with their lives. Boney stayed. Go stayed.
Then something happened. My father finally died. At night, in his sleep. A woman spooned his last meal into his mouth, a woman settled him into bed for his last rest, a woman cleaned him up after he died, and a woman phoned to give me the news.
‘He was a good man,’ she said, dullness with an obligatory injection of empathy.
‘No, he wasn’t,’ I said, and she laughed like she clearly hadn’t in a month.
I thought it would make me feel better to have the man vanished from the earth, but I actually felt a massive, frightening hollowness open up in my chest. I had spent my life comparing myself to my father, and now he was gone, and there was only Amy left to bat against. After the small, dusty, lonely service, I didn’t leave with Go, I went home with Amy, and I clutched her to me. That’s right, I went home with my wife.
I have to get out of this house, I thought. I have to be done with Amy once and for all. Burn us down, so I couldn’t ever go back.
Who would I be without you?
I had to find out. I had to tell my own story. It was all so clear.
The next morning, as Amy was in her study clicking away at the keys, telling the world her Amazing story, I took my laptop downstairs and stared at the glowing white screen.
I started on the opening page of my own book.
I am a cheating, weak-spined, woman-fearing coward, and I am the hero of your story. Because the woman I cheated on – my wife, Amy Elliott Dunne – is a sociopath and a murderer.
Yes. I’d read that.