Gone Girl

wishes?’
    ‘Against her wishes? No. We did what we had to do. I had no job, Amy had no job, my mom was sick. I’d do the same for Amy.’
    ‘That’s nice of you to say ,’ Boney muttered. And suddenly she reminded me exactly of Amy: the damning below-breath retorts uttered at the perfect level, so I was pretty sure I heard them but couldn’t swear to it. And if I asked what I was supposed to ask – What did you say ? – she’d always say the same: Nothing . I glared at Boney, my mouth tight, and then I thought: Maybe this is part of the plan, to see how you act toward angry, dissatisfied women . I tried to make myself smile, but it only seemed to repulse her more.
    ‘And you’re able to afford this, Amy working, not working, whatever, you could swing it financially?’ Gilpin asked.
    ‘We’ve had some money problems of late,’ I said. ‘When we first married, Amy was wealthy, like extremely wealthy.’
    ‘Right,’ said Boney, ‘those Amazing Amy books.’
    ‘Yeah, they made a ton of money in the eighties and nineties. But the publisher dropped them. Said Amy had run her course. And everything went south. Amy’s parents had to borrow money from us to stay afloat.’
    ‘From your wife, you mean?’
    ‘Right, fine. And then we used most of the last of Amy’s trust fund to buy the bar, and I’ve been supporting us since.’
    ‘So when you married Amy, she was very wealthy,’ Gilpin said. I nodded. I was thinking of the hero narrative: the husband who sticks by his wife through the horrible decline in her family’s circumstances.
    ‘So you had a very nice lifetstyle.’
    ‘Yeah, it was great, it was awesome.’
    ‘And now she’s near broke, and you’re dealing with a very different lifestyle than what you married into. What you signed on for.’
    I realized my narrative was completely wrong.
    ‘Because, okay, we’ve been going over your finances, Nick, and dang, they don’t look good,’ Gilpin started, almost turning the accusation into a concern, a worry.
    ‘The Bar is doing decent,’ I said. ‘It usually takes a new business three or four years to get out of the red.’
    ‘It’s those credit cards that got my attention,’ Boney said. ‘Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars in credit-card debt. I mean, it took my breath away.’ She fanned a stack of red-ink statements at me.
    My parents were fanatics about credit cards – used only forspecial purposes, paid off every month. We don’t buy what we can’t pay for ; it was the Dunne family motto.
    ‘We don’t – I don’t, at least – but I don’t think Amy would—Can I see those?’ I stuttered, just as a low-flying bomber rattled the windowpanes. A plant on the mantel promptly lost five pretty purple leaves. Forced into silence for ten brain-shaking seconds, we all watched the leaves flutter to the ground.
    ‘Yet this great brawl we’re supposed to believe happened in here, and not a petal was on the floor then,’ Gilpin muttered disgustedly.
    I took the papers from Boney and saw my name, only my name, versions of it – Nick Dunne, Lance Dunne, Lance N. Dunne, Lance Nicholas Dunne, on a dozen different credit cards, balances from $62.78 to $45,602.33, all in various states of lateness, terse threats printed in ominous lettering across the top: pay now.
    ‘Holy fuck! This is, like, identity theft or something!’ I said. ‘They’re not mine. I mean, freakin’ look at some of this stuff: I don’t even golf.’ Someone had paid over seven thousand dollars for a set of clubs. ‘Anyone can tell you: I really don’t golf.’ I tried to make it sound self-effacing – yet another thing I’m not good at – but the detectives weren’t biting.
    ‘You know Noelle Hawthorne?’ Boney asked. ‘The friend of Amy’s you told us to check out?’
    ‘Wait, I want to talk about the bills, because they are not mine,’ I said. ‘I mean, please, seriously, we need to track this down.’
    ‘We’ll track it down, no problem,’ Boney said, expressionless. ‘Noelle Hawthorne?’
    ‘Right. I told you to check her out because she’s been all over town, wailing about Amy.’
    Boney arched an eyebrow. ‘You seem angry about that.’
    ‘No, like I told you, she seems a little too broken up, like in a fake way. Ostentatious. Attention-seeking. A little obsessed.’
    ‘We talked to Noelle,’ Boney said. ‘Says your wife was extremely troubled by the marriage, was upset about the money stuff, that she worried you’d