Gone Girl

the time. I know I’m already too old for my husband’s tastes. Because I used to be his ideal, six years ago, and so I’ve heard his ruthless comments about women nearing forty: how pathetic he finds them, overdressed, out at bars, oblivious to their lack of appeal. He’d come back from a night out drinking, and I’d ask him how the bar was, whatever bar, and he’d so often say: ‘Totally inundated by Lost Causes,’ his code for women my age. At the time, a girl barely in her thirties, I’d smirked along with him as if that would never happen to me. Now I am his Lost Cause, and he’s trapped with me, and maybe that’s why he’s so angry.
    I’ve been indulging in toddler therapy. I walk over to Noelle’s every day and I let her triplets paw at me. The little plump hands in my hair, the sticky breath on my neck. You can understand why women always threaten to devour children: She is just to eat! I could eat him with a spoon! Although watching her three children toddle to her, sleep-stained from their nap, rubbing their eyes while they make their way to Mama, little hands touching her knee or arm as if she were home base, as if they knew they were safe … it hurts me sometimes to watch.
    Yesterday I had a particularly needful afternoon at Noelle’s, so maybe that’s why I did something stupid.
    Nick comes home and finds me in the bedroom, fresh from a shower, and pretty soon he is pushing me against the wall, pushing himself inside me. When he is done and releases me, I can see the wet kiss of my mouth against the blue paint. As he sits on the edge of the bed, panting, he says, ‘Sorry about that. I just needed you.’
    Not looking at me.
    I go to him and put my arms around him, pretending what we’d just done was normal, a pleasant marital ritual, and I say, ‘I’ve been thinking.’
    ‘Yeah, what’s that?’
    ‘Well, now might be the right time. To start a family. Try to get pregnant.’ I know it’s crazy even as I say it, but I can’t help myself – I have become the crazy woman who wants to get pregnant because it will save her marriage.
    It’s humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.
    He jerks away from me. ‘Now? Now is about the worst time to start a family, Amy. You have no job—’
    ‘I know, but I’d want to stay home with the baby anyway at first—’
    ‘My mom just died, Amy.’
    ‘And this would be new life, a new start.’
    He grips me by both arms and looks me right in the eye for the first time in a week. ‘Amy, I think you think that now that my mom is dead, we’ll just frolic back to New York and have some babies, and you’ll get your old life back. But we don’t have enough money . We barely have enough money for the two of us to live here . You can’t imagine how much pressure I feel, every day, to fix this mess we’re in. To fucking provide . I can’t handle you and me and a few kids. You’ll want to give them everything you had growing up, and I can’t . No private schools for the little Dunnes, no tennis and violin lessons, no summer homes. You’d hate how poor we’d be. You’d hate it.’
    ‘I’m not that shallow, Nick—’
    ‘You really think we’re in a great place right now, to have kids?’
    It is the closest we’ve gotten to discussing our marriage, and I can see he already regrets saying something.
    ‘We’re under a lot of pressure, baby,’ I say. ‘We’ve had a few bumps, and I know a lot of it is my fault. I just feel so at loose ends here …’
    ‘So we’re going to be one of those couples who has a kid to fix their marriage? Because that always works out so well.’
    ‘We’ll have a baby because—’
    His eyes go dark, canine, and he grabs me by the arms again.
    ‘Just … No, Amy. Not right now. I can’t take one more bit of stress. I can’t handle one more thing to worry about. I am cracking under the pressure. I will snap.’
    For once I know he’s telling the truth.

NICK DUNNE
    SIX DAYS GONE
    T he first forty-eight hours are key in any investigation. Amy had been gone, now, almost a week. A candlelight vigil would be held this evening in Tom Sawyer Park, which, according to the press, was ‘a favorite place of Amy Elliott Dunne’s.’ (I’d never known Amy to set foot in the park; despite the name, it is not remotely quaint. Generic, bereft of trees, with a sandbox that’s always full of animal feces; it is utterly un-Twainy.) In the last twenty-four hours, the story had gone national – it was