Gone Girl

sound. ‘I can’t tell you anything. Like you said, I don’t know her.’
    ‘But you just said you did.’
    ‘I certainly don’t know her like you know her.’
    ‘You stalked her in high school.’
    ‘I stalked her? Nick. She was my girlfriend.’
    ‘Until she wasn’t,’ I said. ‘And you wouldn’t go away.’
    ‘Oh, I probably did pine for her. But nothing out of the ordinary.’
    ‘You call trying to kill yourself in her dorm room ordinary?’
    He jerked his head, squinted his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, then stared down at his hands. ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Nick,’ he finally said.
    ‘I’m talking about you stalking my wife. In high school. Now.’
    ‘That’s really what this is about?’ He laughed again. ‘Good God, I thought you were raising money for a reward fund or something. Which I’m happy to cover, by the way. Like I said, I’ve never stopped wanting the best for Amy. Do I love her? No. I don’t know her anymore, not really. We exchange the occasional letter. But it is interesting, you coming here. You confusing the issue. Because I have to tell you, Nick, on TV, hell, here , now, you don’t seem to be a grieving, worried husband. You seem … smug. The police, by the way, already talked with me, thanks, I guess to you. Or Amy’s parents. Strange you didn’t know – you’d think they’d tell the husband everything if he were in the clear.’
    My stomach clenched. ‘I’m here because I wanted to see for myself your face when you talked about Amy,’ I said. ‘I gotta tell you, it worries me. You get a little … moony.’
    ‘One of us has to,’ Desi said, again reasonably.
    ‘Sweetheart?’ A voice came from the back of the house, andanother set of expensive shoes clattered toward the living room. ‘What was the name of that book —’
    The woman was a blurry vision of Amy, Amy in a steam-fogged mirror – exact coloring, extremely similar features, but a quarter century older, the flesh, the features, all let out a bit like a fine fabric. She was still gorgeous, a woman who chose to age gracefully. She was shaped like some sort of origami creation: elbows in extreme points, a clothes-hanger collarbone. She wore a china-blue sheath dress and had the same pull Amy did: When she was in a room, you kept turning your head back her way. She gave me a rather predatory smile.
    ‘Hello, I’m Jacqueline Collings.’
    ‘Mother, this is Amy’s husband, Nick,’ Desi said.
    ‘Amy.’ The woman smiled again. She had a bottom-of-a-well voice, deep and strangely resonant. ‘We’ve been quite interested in that story around here. Yes, very interested.’ She turned coldly to her son. ‘We can never stop thinking about the superb Amy Elliott, can we?’
    ‘Amy Dunne now,’ I said.
    ‘Of course,’ Jacqueline agreed. ‘I’m so sorry, Nick, for what you’re going through.’ She stared at me a moment. ‘I’m sorry, I must … I didn’t picture Amy with such an … American boy.’ She seemed to be speaking neither to me nor to Desi. ‘Good God, he even has a cleft chin.’
    ‘I came over to see if your son had any information,’ I said. ‘I know he’s written my wife a lot of letters over the years.’
    ‘Oh, the letters !’ Jacqueline smiled angrily. ‘Such an interesting way to spend one’s time, don’t you think?’
    ‘Amy shared them with you?’ Desi asked. ‘I’m surprised.’
    ‘No,’ I said, turning to him. ‘She threw them away unopened, always.’
    ‘All of them? Always? You know that?’ Desi said, still smiling.
    ‘Once I went through the trash to read one.’ I turned back to Jacqueline. ‘Just to see what exactly was going on.’
    ‘Good for you,’ Jacqueline said, purring at me. ‘I’d expect nothing less of my husband.’
    ‘Amy and I always wrote each other letters,’ Desi said. He had his mother’s cadence, the delivery that indicated everything he said was something you’d want to hear. ‘It was our thing. I find e-mail so … cheap. And no one saves them. No one saves an e-mail, because it’s so inherently impersonal. I worry about posterity in general. All the great love letters – from Simone de Beauvoir toSartre, from Samuel Clemens to his wife, Olivia – I don’t know, I always think about what will be lost—’
    ‘Have you kept all my letters?’ Jacqueline asked. She was standing at the fireplace, looking down on us, one long sinewy arm trailing along the mantelpiece.
    ‘Of