flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 41
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Nothing about the pregnancy.”“Or they’re doling out bombshells a little at a time.”Boney and Gilpin had already heard my wife was pregnant and decided to make it astrategy. They clearly really believed I killed her.“Noelle will be on every cable broadcast for the next week, talking about how you’rea murderer and she’s Amy’s best friend out for justice.
Publicity whore. Publicity fuckingwhore.”I pressed my face against the window, slumped in my chair. Several news vansfollowed us. We drove silently, Go’s breath slowing down. I watched the river, a treebranch bobbing its way south.“Nick?” she finally said. “Is it—uh … Do you—”“I don’t know, Go. Amy didn’t say anything to me. If she was pregnant, why wouldshe tell Noelle and not tell me?”“Why would she try to get a gun and not tell you?” Go said. “None of this makessense.”We retreated to Go’s—the camera crews would be swarming my house—and as soonas I walked in the door my cell phone rang, the real one.
It was the Elliotts. I sucked insome air, ducked into my old bedroom, then answered.“I need to ask you this, Nick.” It was Rand, the TV burbling in the background. “Ineed you to tell me. Did you know Amy was pregnant?”I paused, trying to find the right way to phrase it, the unlikelihood of a pregnancy.“Answer me, goddammit!”Rand’s volume made me get quieter. I spoke in a soft, soothing voice, a voicewearing a cardigan. “Amy and I were not trying to get pregnant. She didn’t want to bepregnant, Rand, I don’t know if she ever was going to be. We weren’t even … weweren’t even having relations that often.
I’d be … very surprised if she was pregnant.”“Noelle said Amy visited the doctor to con rm the pregnancy. The police alreadysubmitted a subpoena for the records. We’ll know tonight.”I found Go in the living room, sitting with a cup of cold co ee at my mother’s cardtable. She turned toward me just enough to show she knew I was there, but she didn’t letme see her face.“Why do you keep lying, Nick?” she asked. “The Elliotts are not your enemy.Shouldn’t you at least tell them that it was you who didn’t want kids? Why make Amylook like the bad guy?”I swallowed the rage again. My stomach was hot with it. “I’m exhausted, Go.Goddamn.
We gotta do this now?”“We gonna find a time that’s better?”“I did want kids. We tried for a while, no luck. We even started looking into fertilitytreatments. But then Amy decided she didn’t want kids.”“You told me you didn’t.”“I was trying to put a good face on it.”“Oh, awesome, another lie,” Go said. “I didn’t realize you were such a … What you’resaying, Nick, it makes no sense. I was there, at the dinner to celebrate The Bar, andMom misunderstood, she thought you guys were announcing that you were pregnant,and it made Amy cry.”“Well, I can’t explain everything Amy ever did, Go.
I don’t know why, a fucking yearago, she cried like that. Okay?”Go sat quietly, the orange of the streetlight creating a rock-star halo around herpro le. “This is going to be a real test for you, Nick,” she murmured, not looking at me.“You’ve always had trouble with the truth—you always do the little b if you think itwill avoid a real argument. You’ve always gone the easy way. Tell Mom you went tobaseball practice when you really quit the team; tell Mom you went to church when youwere at a movie. It’s some weird compulsion.”“This is very different from baseball, Go.”“It’s a lot di erent. But you’re still bbing like a little boy.
You’re still desperate tohave everyone think you’re perfect. You never want to be the bad guy. So you tell Amy’sparents she didn’t want kids. You don’t tell me you’re cheating on your wife. You swearthe credit cards in your name aren’t yours, you swear you were hanging out at a beachwhen you hate the beach, you swear your marriage was happy. I just don’t know whatto believe right now.”“You’re kidding, right?”“Since Amy has disappeared, all you’ve done is lie. It makes me worry. About what’sgoing on.”Complete silence for a moment.“Go, are you saying what I think you’re saying? Because if you are, something hasfucking died between us.”“Remember that game you always played with Mom when we were little: Would youstill love me if? Would you still love me if I smacked Go? Would you still love me if I robbeda bank? Would you still love me if I killed someone?”I said nothing.
My breath was coming too fast.“I would still love you,” Go said.“Go, do you really need me to say it?”She stayed silent.“I did not kill Amy.”She stayed silent.“Do you believe me?” I asked.“I love you.”She put her hand on my shoulder and went to her bedroom, shut the door. I waited tosee the light go on in the room, but it stayed dark.Two seconds later, my cell phone rang. This time, it was the disposable cell that Ineeded to get rid of and couldn’t because I always, always, always had to pick up forAndie.
Once a day, Nick. We need to talk once a day.I realized I was grinding my teeth.I took a breath.Far out on the edge of town were the remains of an Old West fort that was now yetanother park that no one ever went to. All that was left was the two-story woodenwatchtower, surrounded by rusted swing sets and teeter-totters.
Andie and I had metthere once, groping each other inside the shade of the watchtower.I did three long loops around town in my mom’s old car to be sure I was not tracked.It was madness to go—it wasn’t yet ten o’clock—but I had no say in our rendezvousanymore. I need to see you, Nick, tonight, right now, or I swear to you, I will lose it. As Ipulled up to the fort, I was hit by the remoteness of it and what it meant: Andie was stillwilling to meet me in a lonely, unlit place, me the pregnant-wife killer. As I walkedtoward the tower through the thick, scratchy grass, I could just see her outline in the tinywindow of the wooden watchtower.She is going to undo you, Nick. I quick-stepped the rest of the way.An hour later I was huddled in my paparazzi-infested house, waiting. Rand saidthey’d know before midnight whether my wife was pregnant.
When the phone rang, Igrabbed it immediately only to nd it was goddamn Comfort Hill. My father was goneagain. The cops had been noti ed. As always, they made it sound as if I were thejackass. If this happens again, we are going to have to terminate your father’s stay with us. Ihad a sickening chill: My dad moving in with me—two pathetic, angry bastards—itwould surely make for the worst buddy comedy in the world. The ending would be amurder-suicide.
Ba-dum-dum! Cue the laff track.I was getting o the phone, peering out the back window at the river—stay calm,Nick—when I saw a huddled gure down by the boathouse. I thought it must be a strayreporter, but then I recognized something in those balled sts and tight shoulders.Comfort Hill was about a thirty-minute walk straight down River Road. He somehowremembered our house when he couldn’t remember me.I went outside into the darkness to see him dangling a foot over the bank, staringinto the river. Less bedraggled than before, although he smelled tangy with sweat.“Dad? What are you doing here? Everyone’s worried.”He looked at me with dark brown eyes, sharp eyes, not the glazed-milk color someelderly acquire. It would have been less disconcerting if they’d been milky.“She told me to come,” he snapped.
“She told me to come. This is my house, I cancome whenever I want.”“You walked all the way here?”“I can come here anytime. You may hate me, but she loves me.” I almost laughed.Even my father was reinventing a relationship with Amy.A few photographers on my front lawn began shooting. I had to get my dad back tothe home. I could picture the article they’d have to cook up to go along with thisexclusive footage: What kind of father was Bill Dunne, what kind of man did he raise?Good God, if my dad started in on one of his harangues against the bitches … I dialedComfort Hill, and after some nagling, they sent an orderly to retrieve him. I made adisplay of walking him gently to the sedan, murmuring reassuringly as thephotographers got their shots.My dad.
I smiled as he left. I tried to make it seem very proud-son. The reportersasked me if I killed my wife. I was retreating to the house when a cop car pulled up.It was Boney who came to my home, braving the paparazzi, to tell me. She did itkindly, in a gentle-fingertip voice.Amy was pregnant.My wife was gone with my baby inside her.
Boney watched me, waiting for myreaction—make it part of the police report—so I told myself, Act correctly, don’t blow it,act the way a man acts when he hears this news. I ducked my head into my hands andmuttered, Oh God, oh God, and while I was doing it, I saw my wife on the oor of ourkitchen, her hands around her belly and her head bashed in.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNEJUNE 26, 2012DIARY ENTRYI have never felt more alive in my life. It is a bright, blue-sky day, the birds arelunatic with the warmth, the river outside is gushing past, and I am utterly alive.
Scared,thrilled, but alive.This morning when I woke up, Nick was gone. I sat in bed staring at the ceiling,watching the sun golden it a foot at a time, the bluebirds singing right outside ourwindow, and I wanted to vomit. My throat was clenching and unclenching like a heart.I told myself I would not throw up, then I ran to the bathroom and threw up: bile andwarm water and one small bobbing pea. As my stomach was seizing and my eyes weretearing and I was gasping for breath, I started doing the only kind of math a womandoes, huddled over a toilet.
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