Gone Girl

jewel-toned shirts and gleaming gold watches and rings – and Tanner leaned toward my ear and whispered, Let me see where we are , and then Go was rushing in, all alarmed eyes and questions: What does this mean? What happened to Desi? She just showed up on your doorstep? What does this mean? Are you okay? What happens next?
    It was a bizarre gathering – the feel of it: not quite reunion, notquite hospital waiting room, celebratory yet anxious, like some parlor game where no one had all the rules. Meanwhile, the two reporters the Elliotts had allowed into the inner sanctum kept snapping questions at me: How great does it feel to have Amy back? How wonderful do you feel right now? How relieved are you, Nick, that Amy has returned?
    I’m extremely relieved and very happy , I was saying, crafting my own bland PR statement, when the doors parted and Jacqueline Collings entered, her lips a tight red scar, her face powder lined with tears.
    ‘Where is she?’ she said to me. ‘The lying little bitch, where is she? She killed my son. My son .’ She began crying as the reporter snapped a few photos.
    How do you feel that your son was accused of kidnap and rape? one reporter asked in a stiff voice.
    ‘How do I feel ?’ she snapped. ‘Are you actually serious? Do people really answer questions like that? That nasty, soulless girl manipulated my son his entire life – write this down – she manipulated and lied and finally murdered him, and now, even after he’s dead, she’s still using him—’
    ‘Ms Collings, we’re Amy’s parents,’ Marybeth was beginning. She tried to touch Jacqueline on the shoulder, and Jacqueline shook her off. ‘I am sorry for your pain.’
    ‘But not my loss.’ Jacqueline stood a good head taller than Marybeth; she glared down on her. ‘But not my loss ,’ she reasserted.
    ‘I’m sorry about … everything,’ Marybeth said, and then Rand was next to her, a head taller than Jacqueline.
    ‘What are you going to do about your daughter?’ Jacqueline asked. She turned toward our young liaison officer, who tried to hold his ground. ‘What is being done about Amy? Because she is lying when she says my son kidnapped her. She is lying. She killed him, she murdered him in his sleep, and no one seems to be taking this seriously.’
    ‘It’s all being taken very, very seriously, ma’am,’ the young kid said.
    ‘Can I get a quote, Ms Collings?’ asked the reporter.
    ‘I just gave you my quote. Amy Elliott Dunne murdered my son . It was not self-defense. She murdered him.’
    ‘Do you have proof of that?’
    Of course she didn’t.
    The reporter’s story would chronicle my husbandly exhaustion ( his drawn face telling of too many nights forfeited to fear ) and theElliotts’ relief ( the two parents cling to each other as they wait for their only child to be officially returned to them ). It would discuss the incompetence of the cops ( it was a biased case, full of dead ends and wrong turns, with the police department focused doggedly on the wrong man ). The article would dismiss Jacqueline Collings in a single line: After an awkward run-in with the Elliott parents, an embittered Jacqueline Collings was ushered out of the room, claiming her son was innocent .
    Jacqueline was indeed ushered out of the room into another, where her statement would be recorded and she would be kept out of the way of the much better story: the Triumphant Return of Amazing Amy.
    When Amy was released to us, it all began again. The photos and the tears, the hugging and the laughter, all for strangers who wanted to see and to know: What was it like? Amy, what does it feel like to escape your captor and return to your husband? Nick, what does it feel like to get your wife back, to get your freedom back, all at once?
    I remained mostly silent. I was thinking my own questions, the same questions I’d thought for years, the ominous refrain of our marriage: What are you thinking, Amy? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?
    It was a gracious, queenly act for Amy to want to come home to our marriage bed with her cheating husband. Everyone agreed. The media followed us as if we were a royal wedding procession, the two of us whizzing through the neon, fast-food-cluttered streets of Carthage to our McMansion on the river. What grace Amy has, what moxie. A storybook princess. And I, of course, was the lickspittle hunchback of a husband who would bow and scrape the