Gone Girl

does.’ She also had a deep phobia of blood, but I’d wait and let the brilliant detectives figure that out.
    ‘It seems extremely unlikely,’ Gilpin said. ‘If she were to wound herself that seriously, why would she mop it up?’
    ‘So really, let’s be honest, Nick,’ Boney said, leaning over on her knees so she could make eye contact with me as I stared at the floor. ‘How was your marriage currently? We’re on your side, but we need the truth. The only thing that makes you look bad is you holding out on us.’
    ‘We’ve had bumps.’ I saw Amy in the bedroom that last night, her face mottled with the red hivey splotches she got when she was angry. She was spitting out the words – mean, wild words – and I was listening to her, trying to accept the words because they were true, they were technically true, everything she said.
    ‘Describe the bumps for us,’ Boney said.
    ‘Nothing specific, just disagreements. I mean, Amy is a blowstack. She bottles up a bunch of little stuff and – whoom! – but then it’s over. We never went to bed angry.’
    ‘Not Wednesday night?’ Boney asked.
    ‘Never,’ I lied.
    ‘Is it money, what you mostly argue about?’
    ‘I can’t even think what we’d argue about. Just stuff.’
    ‘What stuff was it the night she went missing?’ Gilpin said it with a sideways grin, like he’d uttered the most unbelievable gotcha .
    ‘Like I told you, there was the lobster.’
    ‘What else? I’m sure you didn’t scream about the lobster for a whole hour.’
    At that point Bleecker waddled partway down the stairs and peered through the railings.
    ‘Other household stuff, too. Married-couple stuff. The cat box,’ I said. ‘Who would clean the cat box.’
    ‘You were in a screaming argument about a cat box,’ Boney said.
    ‘You know, the principle of the thing. I work a lot of hours, andAmy doesn’t, and I think it would be good for her if she did some basic home maintenance. Just basic upkeep.’
    Gilpin jolted like an invalid woken from an afternoon nap. ‘You’re an old-fashioned guy, right? I’m the same way. I tell my wife all the time, “I don’t know how to iron, I don’t know how to do the dishes. I can’t cook. So, sweetheart, I’ll catch the bad guys, that I can do, and you throw some clothes in the washer now and then.” Rhonda, you were married, did you do the domestic stuff at home?’
    Boney looked believably annoyed. ‘I catch bad guys too, idiot.’
    Gilpin rolled his eyes toward me; I almost expected him to make a joke – sounds like someone’s on the rag – the guy was laying it on so thick.
    Gilpin rubbed his vulpine jaw. ‘So you just wanted a housewife,’ he said to me, making the proposition seem reasonable.
    ‘I wanted – I wanted whatever Amy wanted. I really didn’t care.’ I appealed to Boney now, Detective Rhonda Boney with the sympathetic air that seemed at least partly authentic. ( It’s not , I reminded myself.) ‘Amy couldn’t decide what to do here. She couldn’t find a job, and she wasn’t interested in The Bar. Which is fine, if you want to stay home, that’s fine, I said. But when she stayed home, she was unhappy too. And she’d wait for me to fix it. It was like I was in charge of her happiness.’
    Boney said nothing, gave me a face expressionless as water.
    ‘And, I mean, it’s fun to be hero for a while, be the white knight, but it doesn’t really work for long. I couldn’t make her be happy. She didn’t want to be happy. So I thought if she started taking charge of a few practical things—’
    ‘Like the cat box,’ said Boney.
    ‘Yeah, clean the cat box, get some groceries, call a plumber to fix the drip that drove her crazy.’
    ‘Wow, that sounds like a real happiness plan there. Lotta yuks.’
    ‘But my point was, do something . Whatever it is, do something. Make the most of the situation. Don’t sit and wait for me to fix everything for you.’ I was speaking loudly, I realized, and I sounded almost angry, certainly righteous, but it was such a relief. I’d started with a lie – the cat box – and turned that into a surprising burst of pure truth, and I realized why criminals talked too much, because it feels so good to tell your story to a stranger, someone who won’t call bullshit, someone forced to listen to your side. (Someone pretending to listen to your side, I corrected.)
    ‘So the move back to Missouri?’ Boney said. ‘You moved Amy here against her