Gone Girl

favorite ice cream parlor, and we have the place to ourselves in the morning, the air all sticky with sweets. He kisses me and says this place is where he stuttered and suffered through so many dates, and he wishes he could have told his high school self that he would be back here with the girl of his dreams someday. We eat ice cream until we have to roll home and get under the covers. His hand on my belly, an accidental nap.
    The neurotic in me, of course, is asking: Where’s the catch? Nick’s turnaround is so sudden and so grandiose, it feels like … it feels like he must want something. Or he’s already done something and he is being preemptively sweet for when I find out. I worry. I caught him last week shuffling through my thick file box marked THE DUNNES! (written in my best cursive in happier days), a boxfilled with all the strange paperwork that makes up a marriage, a combined life. I worry that he is going to ask me for a second mortgage on The Bar, or to borrow against our life insurance, or to sell off some not-to-be-touched-for-thirty-years stock. He said he just wanted to make sure everything was in order, but he said it in a fluster. My heart would break, it really would, if, midbite of bubblegum ice cream, he turned to me and said: You know, the interesting thing about a second mortgage is …
    I had to write that, I had to let that out. And just seeing it, I know it sounds crazy. Neurotic and insecure and suspicious.
    I will not let my worst self ruin my marriage. My husband loves me. He loves me and he has come back to me and that is why the only reason.
    Just like that: Here is my life. It’s finally returned .

NICK DUNNE
    FIVE DAYS GONE
    I sat in the billowing heat of my car outside Desi’s house, the windows rolled down, and checked my phone. A message from Gilpin: ‘Hi, Nick. We need to touch base today, update you on a few things, go over a few questions. Meet us at four at your house, okay? Uh … thanks.’
    It was the first time I’d been ordered. Not Could we, we’d love to, if you don’t mind . But We need to. Meet us …
    I glanced at my watch. Three o’clock. Best not be late.
    The summer air show – a parade of jets and prop planes spinning loops up and down the Mississippi, buzzing the tourist steamboats, rattling teeth – was three days off, and the practice runs were in high gear by the time Gilpin and Rhonda arrived. We were all back in my living room for the first time since The Day Of.
    My home was right on a flight path; the noise was somewhere between jackhammer and avalanche. My cop buddies and I tried to jam a conversation in the spaces between the blasts. Rhonda looked more birdlike than usual – favoring one leg, then another, her head moving all around the room as her gaze alighted on different objects, angles – a magpie looking to line her nest. Gilpin hovered next to her, chewing his lip, tapping a foot. Even the room felt restive: The afternoon sun lit up an atomic flurry of dust motes. A jet shot over the house, that awful sky-rip noise.
    ‘Okay, couple of things here,’ Rhonda said when the silence returned. She and Gilpin sat down as if they both had suddenly decided to stay awhile. ‘Some stuff to get clear on, some stuff to tell you. All very routine. And as always, if you want a lawyer—’
    But I knew from my TV shows, my movies, that only guilty guys lawyered up. Real, grieving, worried, innocent husbands did not.
    ‘I don’t, thanks,’ I said. ‘I actually have some information to sharewith you. About Amy’s former stalker, the guy she dated back in high school.’
    ‘Desi – uh, Collins,’ began Gilpin.
    ‘Collings. I know you all talked to him, I know you for some reason aren’t that interested in him, so I went to visit him myself today. To make sure he seemed … okay. And I don’t think he is okay. I think he’s someone you all should look into. Really look into. I mean, he moves to St. Louis—’
    ‘He was living in St. Louis three years before you all moved back,’ Gilpin said.
    ‘Fine, but he’s in St. Louis. Easy drive. Amy bought a gun because she was afraid—’
    ‘Desi’s okay, Nick. Nice guy,’ Rhonda said. ‘Don’t you think? He reminds me of you, actually. Real golden boy, baby of the family.’
    ‘I’m a twin. Not the baby. I’m actually three minutes older.’
    Rhonda was clearly trying to nip at me, see if she could get a rise, but even knowing this didn’t prevent the angry blood flush to my