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

NICK DUNNE
THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN
H
er pulse was finally throbbing beneath my fingers, the way
I’d imagined. I pressed tighter and brought her to the
ground. She made wet clucking noises and scratched at
my wrists. We were both kneeling, in face-to-face prayer for
ten seconds.
You fucking crazy bitch
.
A tear fell from my chin and hit the floor.
You murdering, mind-fucking, evil, crazy bitch
.
Amy’s bright blue eyes were staring into mine,
unblinking.
And then the strangest thought of all clattered
drunkenly from the back of my brain to the front and blinded
me: 
If I kill Amy, who will I be?
I saw a bright white flash. I dropped my wife as if she
were burning iron.
She sat hard on the ground, gasped, coughed. When
her breath came back, it was in jagged rasps, with a
strange, almost erotic squeak at the end.
Who will I be then?
The question wasn’t recriminatory.
It wasn’t like the answer was the pious: 
Then you’ll be a
killer, Nick. You’ll be as bad as Amy. You’ll be what
everyone thought you were
. No. The question was
frighteningly soulful and literal: Who would I be without Amy

---

to react to? Because she was right: As a man, I had been
my most impressive when I loved her – and I was my next
best self when I hated her. I had known Amy only seven
years, but I couldn’t go back to life without her. Because
she was right: I couldn’t return to an average life. I’d known
it before she’d said a word. I’d already pictured myself with
a regular woman – a sweet, normal girl next door – and I’d
already pictured telling this regular woman the story of Amy,
the lengths she had gone to – to punish me and to return to
me. I already pictured this sweet and mediocre girl saying
something uninteresting like 
Oh, nooooo, oh my God
, and I
already knew part of me would be looking at her and
thinking: 
You’ve never murdered for me. You’ve never
framed me. You wouldn’t even know how to begin to do
what Amy did. You could never possibly care that much
.
The indulged mama’s boy in me wouldn’t be able to find
peace with this normal woman, and pretty soon she
wouldn’t just be normal, she’d be substandard, and then my
father’s voice – 
dumb bitch
– would rise up and take it from
there.
Amy was exactly right.
So maybe there was no good end for me.
Amy was toxic, yet I couldn’t imagine a world without
her entirely. Who would I be with Amy just gone? There
were no options that interested me anymore. But she had
to be brought to heel. Amy in prison, that was a good
ending for her. Tucked away in a box where she couldn’t
inflict herself on me but where I could visit her from time to
time. Or at least imagine her. A pulse, my pulse, left out
there somewhere.
It had to be me who put her there. It was my

---

responsibility. Just as Amy took the credit for making me
my best self, I had to take the blame for bringing the
madness to bloom in Amy. There were a million men who
would have loved, honored, and obeyed Amy and
considered themselves lucky to do so. Confident, self-
assured, real men who wouldn’t have forced her to pretend
to be anything but her own perfect, rigid, demanding,
brilliant, creative, fascinating, rapacious, megalomaniac
self.
Men capable of being uxorious.
Men capable of keeping her sane.
Amy’s story could have gone a million other ways, but
she met me, and bad things happened. So it was up to me
to stop her.
Not kill her but stop her.
Put her in one of her boxes.

---