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

NICK DUNNE
FOUR DAYS GONE
S
he was standing there in the orange glow of the
streetlight, in a flimsy sundress, her hair wavy from the
humidity. Andie. She rushed through the doorway, her arms
splayed to hug me, and I hissed, ‘Wait, wait!’ and shut it just
before she wrapped herself around me. She pressed her
cheek against my chest, and I put my hand on her bare
back and closed my eyes. I felt a queasy mixture of relief
and horror: when you finally stop an itch and realize it’s
because you’ve ripped a hole in your skin.
I have a mistress. Now is the part where I have to tell
you I have a mistress and you stop liking me. If you liked me
to begin with. I have a pretty, young, very young mistress,
and her name is Andie.
I know. It’s bad.
‘Baby, why the 
fuck
haven’t you called me?’ she said,
her face still pressed against me.
‘I know, sweetheart, I know. You just can’t imagine. It’s
been a nightmare. How did you find me?’
She held onto me. ‘Your house was dark, so I figured
try Go’s.’
Andie knew my habits, knew my habitats. We’ve been
together a while. I have a pretty, very young mistress, and
we’ve been together a while.

---

‘I was worried about you, Nick. 
Frantic
. I’m sitting at
Madi’s house, and the TV is, like, just on, and all of a
sudden on the TV, I see this, like, 
guy
who looks like you
talking about his missing wife. And then I realize: It 
is
you.
Can you imagine how freaked out I was? And you didn’t
even try to reach me?’
‘I called you.’
‘
Don’t say anything, sit tight, don’t say anything till we
talk
. That’s an order, that’s not you trying to 
reach
me.’
‘I haven’t been alone much; people have been around
me all the time. Amy’s parents, Go, the police.’ I breathed
into her hair.
‘Amy’s just gone?’ she asked.
‘She’s just gone.’ I pulled myself from her and sat down
on the couch, and she sat beside me, her leg pressed
against mine, her arm brushing against mine. ‘Someone
took her.’
‘Nick? Are you okay?’
Her chocolatey hair fell in waves over her chin,
collarbone, breasts, and I watched one single strand shake
in the stream of her breathing.
‘No, not really.’ I gave her the shhh sign and pointed
toward the hallway. ‘My sister.’
We sat side by side, silent, the TV flickering the old
cop show, the men in fedoras making an arrest. I felt her
hand wriggle into mine. She leaned in to me as if we were
settling in for a movie night, some lazy, carefree couple,
and then she pulled my face toward her and kissed me.
‘Andie, no,’ I whispered.
‘Yes, I need you.’ She kissed me again and climbed
onto my lap, where she straddled me, her cotton dress

---

slipping up around her knees, one of her flip-flops falling to
the floor. ‘Nick, I’ve been so worried about you. I need to
feel your hands on me, that’s all I’ve been thinking about.
I’m scared.’
Andie was a physical girl, and that’s not code for 
It’s all
about the sex
. She was a hugger, a toucher, she was
prone to running her fingers through my hair or down my
back in a friendly scratch. She got reassurance and comfort
from touching. And yes, fine, she also liked sex.
With one quick tug, she yanked down the top of her
sundress and moved my hands onto her breasts. My
canine-loyal lust surfaced.
I want to fuck you
, I almost said aloud. 
You are
WARM
, my wife said in my ear. I lurched away. I was so
tired, the room was swimming.
‘Nick?’ Her bottom lip was wet with my spit. ‘What?
Are 
we
not okay? Is it because of Amy?’
Andie had always felt young – she was twenty-three, of
course she felt young – but right then I realized how
grotesquely young she was, how irresponsibly, disastrously
young she was. Ruinously young. Hearing my wife’s name
on her lips always jarred me. She said it a lot. She liked to
discuss Amy, as if Amy were the heroine on a nighttime
soap opera. Andie never made Amy the enemy; she made
her a character. She asked questions, all the time, about
our life together, about Amy: