Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
FIVE DAYS AFTER THE RETURN
I
know, I know for sure now, that I need to be more careful
about Nick. He’s not as tame as he used to be. Something
in him is electric; a switch has turned on. I like it. But I need
to take precautions.
I need one more spectacular precaution.
It will take some time to put in place, this precaution.
But I’ve done it before, the planning. In the meantime, we
can work on our rebuilding. Start with the facade. We will
have a happy marriage if it kills him.
‘You’re going to have to try again to love me,’ I told
him. The morning after he almost killed me. It happened to
be Nick’s thirty-fifth birthday, but he didn’t mention it. My
husband has had enough of my gifts.
‘I forgive you for last night,’ I said. ‘We were both under
a lot of stress. But now you’re going to have to try again.’
‘I know.’
‘Things will have to be different,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he said.
He doesn’t really know. But he will.
My parents have visited daily. Rand and Marybeth and
Nick lavish me with attention. Pillows. Everyone wants to
offer me pillows: We are all laboring under a mass
psychosis that my rape and miscarriage have left me

---

forever achy and delicate. I have a permanent case of
sparrow’s bones – I must be held gently in the palm, lest I
break. So I prop my feet on the infamous ottoman, and I
tread delicately over the kitchen floor where I bled. We must
take good care of me.
Yet I find it strangely tense to watch Nick with anyone
but me. He seems on the edge of blurting all the time – as if
his lungs are bursting with words about me, damning
words.
I need Nick, I realize. I actually need him to back my
story. To stop his accusations and denials and admit that it
was him: the credit cards, the goodies in the woodshed, the
bump in insurance. Otherwise I will carry that waft of
uncertainty forever. I have only a few loose ends, and those
loose ends are people. The police, the FBI, they are sifting
through my story. Boney, I know, would love to arrest me.
But they botched everything so badly before – they look like
such fools – that they can’t touch me unless they have proof.
And they don’t have proof. They have Nick, who swears he
didn’t do the things I swear he did, and that’s not much, but
it’s more than I’d like.
I’ve even prepared in case my Ozarks friends Jeff and
Greta show up, nosing around for acclaim or cash. I’ve
already told the police: Desi didn’t drive us straight to his
home. He kept me blindfolded and gagged and drugged
for several days – I 
think
it was several days – in some
room, maybe a motel room? Maybe an apartment? I can’t
be sure, it’s all such a blur. I was so frightened, you know,
and the sleeping pills. If Jeff and Greta show their pointy,
lowdown faces and somehow convince the cops to send a
tech team down to the Hide-A-Way, and one of my

---

fingerprints or a hair is found, that simply solves part of the
puzzle. The rest is them telling lies.
So Nick is really the only issue, and soon I’ll return him
to my side. I was smart, I left no other evidence. The police
may not entirely believe me, but they won’t do anything. I
know from the petulant tone in Boney’s voice – she will live
in permanent exasperation from now on, and the more
annoyed she gets, the more people will dismiss her. She
already has the righteous, eye-rolling cadence of a
conspiracy crackpot. She might as well wrap her head in
foil.
Yes, the investigation is winding down. But for Amazing
Amy, it’s quite the opposite. My parents’ publisher placed
an abashed plea for another 
Amazing Amy
book, and they
acquiesced for a lovely fat sum. Once again they are
squatting on my psyche, earning money for themselves.
They left Carthage this morning. They say it’s important for
Nick and me (the correct grammar) to have some time
alone and heal. But I know the truth. They want to get to
work. They tell me they are trying to ‘find the right tone.’ A
tone that says: 
Our daughter was kidnapped and
repeatedly raped by a monster she had to stab in the
neck … but this is in no way a cash grab
.
I don’t care about the rebuilding of their pathetic
empire, because every day I get calls to tell 
my
story. My
story: mine, mine, mine. I just need to pick the very best
deal and start writing. I just need to get Nick on the same
page so that we both agree how this story will end. Happily.
I know Nick isn’t in love with me yet, but he will be. I do
have faith in that. Fake it until you make it, isn’t that an

---

expression? For now he acts like the old Nick, and I act like
the old Amy. Back when we were happy. When we didn’t
know each other as well as we do now. Yesterday I stood
on the back porch and watched the sun come up over the
river, a strangely cool August morning, and when I turned
around, Nick was studying me from the kitchen window,
and he held up a mug of coffee with a question: 
You want a
cup?
I nodded, and soon he was standing beside me, the
air smelling of grass, and we were drinking our coffee
together and watching the water, and it felt normal and
good.
He won’t sleep with me yet. He sleeps in the
downstairs guest room with the door locked. But one day I
will wear him down, I will catch him off guard, and he will
lose the energy for the nightly battle, and he will get in bed
with me. In the middle of the night, I’ll turn to face him and
press myself against him. I’ll hold myself to him like a
climbing, coiling vine until I have invaded every part of him
and made him mine.

---