Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

“Coincidence.” Boney shrugged. “I mean, weird coincidence, but … it’s not impressive enough to move forward. Not in this climate. You need to get your wife to tell you something useful, Nick. You’re our only chance here.”

Go slammed down her coffee. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” she said. “Nick, I don’t want you in that house anymore. You’re not an undercover cop, you know. It’s not your job. You are living with a murderer. Fucking leave. I’m sorry, but who gives a shit that she killed Desi? I don’t want her to kill you . I mean, someday you burn her grilled cheese, and the next thing you know, my phone’s ringing and you’ve taken an awful fall from the roof or some shit. Leave .”

“I can’t. Not yet. She’ll never really let me go. She likes the game too much.”

“Then stop playing it.”

I can’t. I’m getting so much better at it. I will stay close to her until I can bring her down. I’m the only one left who can do it. Someday she’ll slip and tell me something I can use. A week ago I moved into our bedroom. We don’t have sex, we barely touch, but we are husband and wife in a marital bed, which appeases Amy for now. I stroke her hair. I take a strand between my finger and thumb, and I pull it to the end and tug, like I’m ringing a bell, and we both like that. Which is a problem.

We pretend to be in love, and we do the things we like to do when we’re in love, and it feels almost like love sometimes, because we are so perfectly putting ourselves through the paces. Reviving the muscle memory of early romance. When I forget—I can sometimes briefly forget who my wife is—I actually like hanging out with her. Or the her she is pretending to be. The fact is, my wife is a murderess who is sometimes really fun. May I give one example? One night I flew in lobster like the old days, and she pretended to chase me with it, and I pretended to hide, and then we both at the same time made an Annie Hall joke, and it was so perfect, so the way it was supposed to be, that I had to leave the room for a second. My heart was beating in my ears. I had to repeat my mantra: Amy killed a man, and she will kill you if you are not very, very careful . My wife, the very fun, beautiful murderess, will do me harm if I displease her. I find myself jittery in my own house: I will be making a sandwich, standing in the kitchen midday, licking the peanut butter off the knife, and I will turn and find Amy in the same room with me—those quiet little cat feet—and I will quiver. Me, Nick Dunne, the man who used to forget so many details, is now the guy who replays conversations to make sure I didn’t offend, to make sure I never hurt her feelings. I write down everything about her day, her likes and dislikes, in case she quizzes me. I am a great husband because I am very afraid she may kill me.

We’ve never had a conversation about my paranoia, because we’re pretending to be in love and I’m pretending not to be frightened of her. But she’s made glancing mentions of it: You know, Nick, you can sleep in bed with me, like, actually sleep. It will be okay. I promise. What happened with Desi was an isolated incident. Close your eyes and sleep .

But I know I’ll never sleep again. I can’t close my eyes when I’m next to her. It’s like sleeping with a spider.

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

EIGHT WEEKS AFTER THE RETURN

No one has arrested me. The police have stopped questioning. I feel safe. I will be even safer very soon.

This is how good I feel: Yesterday I came downstairs for breakfast, and the jar that held my vomit was sitting on the kitchen counter, empty. Nick—the scrounger—had gotten rid of that little bit of leverage. I blinked an eye, and then I tossed out the jar.

It hardly matters now.

Good things are happening.

I have a book deal: I am officially in control of our story. It feels wonderfully symbolic. Isn’t that what every marriage is, anyway? Just a lengthy game of he-said, she-said? Well, she is saying, and the world will listen, and Nick will have to smile and agree. I will write him the way I want him to be: romantic and thoughtful and very very repentant—about the credit cards and the purchases and the woodshed. If I can’t get him to say it out loud, he’ll say it in my book. Then he’ll come on tour with me and smile and smile.

I’m calling the book simply: Amazing . Causing great wonder or surprise; astounding. That sums up my story, I think.

NICK DUNNE

NINE WEEKS AFTER THE RETURN

I found the vomit. She’d hidden it in the back of the freezer in a jar, inside a box of Brussels sprouts. The box was covered in icicles; it must have been sitting there for months. I know it was her own joke with herself: Nick won’t eat his vegetables, Nick never cleans out the fridge, Nick won’t think to look here .

But Nick did.

Nick knows how to clean out the refrigerator, it turns out, and Nick even knows how to defrost: I poured all that sick down the drain, and I left the jar on the counter so she’d know.

She tossed it in the garbage. She never said a word about it.

Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is, but something’s very wrong.

My life has begun to feel like an epilogue. Tanner picked up a new case: A Nashville singer discovered his wife was cheating, and her body was found the next day in a Hardee’s trash bin near their house, a hammer covered with his fingerprints beside her. Tanner is using me as a defense. I know it looks bad, but it also looked bad for Nick Dunne, and you know how that turned out . I could almost feel him winking at me through the camera lens. He sent the occasional text: U OK? Or: Anything? No, nothing.

Boney and Go and I hung out in secret at the Pancake House, where we sifted the dirty sand of Amy’s story, trying to find something we could use. We scoured the diary, an elaborate anachronism hunt. It came down to desperate nitpickings like: “She makes a comment here about Darfur, was that on the radar in 2010?” (Yes, we found a 2006 newsclip with George Clooney discussing it.) Or my own best worst: “Amy makes a joke in the July 2008 entry about killing a hobo, but I feel like dead-hobo jokes weren’t big until 2009.” To which Boney replied: “Pass the syrup, freakshow.”

People peeled away, went on with their lives. Boney stayed. Go stayed.

Then something happened. My father finally died. At night, in his sleep. A woman spooned his last meal into his mouth, a woman settled him into bed for his last rest, a woman cleaned him up after he died, and a woman phoned to give me the news.

“He was a good man,” she said, dullness with an obligatory injection of empathy.

“No, he wasn’t,” I said, and she laughed like she clearly hadn’t in a month.

I thought it would make me feel better to have the man vanished from the earth, but I actually felt a massive, frightening hollowness open up in my chest. I had spent my life comparing myself to my father, and now he was gone, and there was only Amy left to bat against. After the small, dusty, lonely service, I didn’t leave with Go, I went home with Amy, and I clutched her to me. That’s right, I went home with my wife.

I have to get out of this house , I thought. I have to be done with Amy once and for all . Burn us down, so I couldn’t ever go back.

Who would I be without you?

I had to find out. I had to tell my own story. It was all so clear.

The next morning, as Amy was in her study clicking away at the keys, telling the world her Amazing story, I took my laptop downstairs and stared at the glowing white screen.