Gone Girl

I’m just being a silly old divorced lady. Oh, mother of pearl, I think I had too much wine .’ And she fluttered a goodbye at me and scampered away through all the other disappointed couples.
    ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ Bill Dunne was suddenly saying, and he was saying it to me. ‘Why are you here? You’re not allowed here.’
    ‘I’m Amy,’ I say, touching his arm as if that might wake him. Bill has always liked me; even if he could think of nothing to say to me, I could tell he liked me, the way he watched me like I was a rare bird. Now he is scowling, thrusting his chest toward me, a caricature of a young sailor ready to brawl. A few feet away, Go sets down her food and gets ready to move toward us, quietly, like she is trying to catch a fly.
    ‘Why are you in our house?’ Bill Dunne says, his mouth grimacing. ‘You’ve got some nerve, lady.’
    ‘Nick?’ Go calls behind her, not loudly but urgently.
    ‘Got it,’ Nick says, appearing. ‘Hey, Dad, this is my wife, Amy. Remember Amy? We moved back home so we could see you more. This is our new house.’
    Nick glares at me: I was the one who insisted we invite his dad.
    ‘All I’m saying, Nick,’ Bill Dunne says, pointing now, jabbing anindex finger toward my face, the party going hushed, several men moving slowly, cautiously, in from the other room, their hands twitching, ready to move, ‘is she doesn’t belong here. Little bitch thinks she can do whatever she wants.’
    Mama Mo swoops in then, her arm around her ex-husband, always, always rising to the occasion. ‘Of course she belongs here, Bill. It’s her house. She’s your son’s wife. Remember?’
    ‘I want her out of here, do you understand me, Maureen?’ He shrugs her off and starts moving toward me again. ‘Dumb bitch. Dumb bitch.’
    It’s unclear if he means me or Maureen, but then he looks at me and tightens his lips. ‘She doesn’t belong here.’
    ‘I’ll go,’ I say, and turn away, walk straight out the door, into the rain. From the mouths of Alzheimer’s patients , I think, trying to make light. I walk a loop around the neighborhood, waiting for Nick to appear, to guide me back to our house. The rain spackles me gently, dampening me. I really believe Nick will come after me. I turn toward the house and see only a closed door.

NICK DUNNE
    FOUR DAYS GONE
    R and and I sat in the vacant Find Amy Dunne headquarters at five in the morning, drinking coffee while we waited for the cops to check out Lonnie. Amy stared at us from her poster perch on the wall. Her photo looked distressed.
    ‘I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t say something to you if she was afraid,’ Rand said. ‘Why wouldn’t she tell you?’
    Amy had come to the mall to buy a gun on Valentine’s Day, of all days, that’s what our friend Lonnie had said. She was a little abashed, a little nervous: Maybe I’m being silly, but … I just really think I need a gun . Mostly, though, she was scared. Someone was unnerving her, she told Lonnie. She gave no more details, but when he asked her what kind of gun she wanted, she said: One that stops someone fast . He told her to come back in a few days, and she did. He hadn’t been able to get her one (‘It’s not really my bag, man’), but now he wished he had. He remembered her well; over the months, he’d wondered how she was now and then, this sweet blonde with the fearful face, trying to get a gun on Valentine’s Day.
    ‘Who would she be afraid of?’ Rand asked.
    ‘Tell me about Desi again, Rand,’ I said. ‘Did you ever meet him?’
    ‘He came to the house a few times.’ Rand frowned, remembering. ‘He was a nice-looking kid, very solicitous of Amy – treated her like a princess. But I just never liked him. Even when things were good with them – young love, Amy’s first love – even then I disliked him. He was very rude to me, inexplicably so. Very possessive of Amy, arms around her at all times. I found it strange, very strange, that he wouldn’t try to be nice to us. Most young men want to get in good with the parents.’
    ‘I wanted to.’
    ‘And you did!’ He smiled. ‘You were just the right amount of nervous, it was very sweet. Desi wasn’t anything but nasty.’
    ‘Desi’s less than an hour out of town.’
    ‘True. And Hilary Handy?’ Rand said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I don’t want to be sexist here – she was scarier than Desi. Because that Lonnie guy at the mall, he didn’t say Amy was afraid of