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

NICK DUNNE
THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN
I
went to the station to fetch my wife and was greeted by
the press like a rock star – landslide president – first
moonwalker all in one. I had to resist raising clasped hands
above my head in the universal victory shake. 
I see
, I
thought, 
we’re all pretending to be friends now
.
I entered a scene that felt like a holiday party gone
awry – a few bottles of champagne rested on one desk,
surrounded by tiny paper cups. Backslapping and cheers
for all the cops, and then more cheers for me, as if these
people hadn’t been my persecutors a day before. But I had
to play along. Present the back for slapping. 
Oh yes, we’re
all buddies now
.
All that matters is that Amy is safe. I’d been practicing
that line over and over. I had to look like the relieved, doting
husband until I knew which way things were going to go.
Until I was sure the police had sawed through all her sticky
cobwebby lies. 
Until she is arrested
– I’d get that far, 
until
she is arrested
, and then I could feel my brain expand and
deflate simultaneously – my own cerebral Hitchcock zoom
– and I’d think: 
My wife
murdered 
a man
.
‘Stabbed him,’ said the young police officer assigned
as the family liaison. (I hoped never to be liaisoned again,
with anyone, for any reason.) He was the same kid who’d

---

yammered on to Go about his horse and torn labrum and
peanut allergy. ‘Cut him right through the jugular. Cut like
that, he bleeds out in, like, sixty seconds.’
Sixty seconds is a long time to know you are dying. I
could picture Desi wrapping his hands around his neck, the
feel of his own blood spurting between his fingers with each
pulse, and Desi getting more frightened and the pulsing
only quickening … and then slowing, and Desi knowing the
slowing was worse. And all the time Amy standing just out
of reach, studying him with the blameful, disgusted look of a
high school biology student confronted with a dripping pig
fetus. Her little scalpel still in hand.
‘Cut him with a big ole butcher knife,’ the kid was
saying. ‘Guy used to sit right next to her on the bed, cut up
her meat for her, and 
feed
her.’ He sounded more
disgusted by this than by the stabbing. ‘One day the knife
slips off the plate, he never notices—’
‘How’d she use the knife if she was always tied up?’ I
asked.
The kid looked at me as if I’d just told a joke about his
mother. ‘I don’t know, Mr Dunne, I’m sure they’re getting the
details right now. The point is, your wife is safe.’
Hurray. Kid stole my line.
I spotted Rand and Marybeth through the doorway of
the room where we’d given our first press conference six
weeks ago. They were leaning in to each other, as always,
Rand kissing the top of Marybeth’s head, Marybeth nuzzling
him back, and I felt such a keen sense of outrage that I
almost threw a stapler at them. 
You two worshipful, adoring
assholes created that
thing 
down the hall and set her
loose on the world
. Lo, how jolly, what a perfect monster!

---

And do they get punished? No, not a single person had
come forth to question their characters; they’d experienced
nothing but an outpouring of love and support, and Amy
would be restored to them and everyone would love her
more.
My wife was an insatiable sociopath before. What
would she become now?
Step carefully, Nick, step very carefully
.
Rand caught my eye and motioned me to join them. He
shook my hand for a few exclusive reporters who’d been
granted an audience. Marybeth held her ground: I was still
the man who’d cheated on her daughter. She gave a curt
nod and turned away.
Rand leaned in close to me so I could smell his
spearmint gum. ‘I tell you, Nick, we are so relieved to have
Amy back. We owe you an apology too. Big one. We’ll let
Amy decide how she feels about your marriage, but I want
to at least apologize for where things went. You’ve got to
understand—’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘I understand everything.’
Before Rand could apologize or engage further,
Tanner and Betsy arrived together, looking like a 
Vogue
spread – crisp slacks and jewel-toned shirts and gleaming
gold watches and rings – and Tanner leaned toward my ear
and whispered, 
Let me see where we are
, and then Go was
rushing in, all alarmed eyes and questions: 
What does this
mean? What happened to Desi? She just showed up on
your doorstep? What does this mean? Are you okay?
What happens next?
It was a bizarre gathering – the feel of it: not quite
reunion, not quite hospital waiting room, celebratory yet

---

anxious, like some parlor game where no one had all the
rules. Meanwhile, the two reporters the Elliotts had allowed
into the inner sanctum kept snapping questions at me: How
great does it feel to have Amy back? How wonderful do you
feel right now? How relieved are you, Nick, that Amy has
returned?
I’m extremely relieved and very happy
, I was saying,
crafting my own bland PR statement, when the doors