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

NICK DUNNE
SIX DAYS GONE
G
o pushed me into the car and peeled away from the park.
We flew past Noelle, who was walking with Boney and
Gilpin toward their cruiser, her carefully dressed triplets
bumping along behind her like kite ribbons. We screeched
past the mob: hundreds of faces, a fleshy pointillism of
anger aimed right at me. We ran away, basically.
Technically.
‘Wow, ambush,’ Go muttered.
‘Ambush?’ I repeated, brain-stunned.
‘You think that was an accident, Nick? Triplet Cunt
already made her statement to the police. 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 a strategy. They clearly
really believed I killed her.
‘Noelle will be on every cable broadcast for the next
week, talking about how you’re a murderer and she’s
Amy’s best friend out for justice. Publicity whore. Publicity
fucking 
whore
.’
I pressed my face against the window, slumped in my
seat. Several news vans followed us. We drove silently,
Go’s breath slowing down. I watched the river, a tree

---

branch 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 would she tell Noelle and not tell me?’
‘Why would she try to get a gun and not tell you?’ Go
said. ‘None of this makes sense.’
We retreated to Go’s – the camera crews would be
swarming my house – and as soon as I walked in the door
my cell phone rang, the real one. It was the Elliotts. I sucked
in some air, ducked into my old bedroom, then answered.
‘I need to ask you this, Nick.’ It was Rand, the TV
burbling in the background. ‘I need 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 voice wearing a cardigan. ‘Amy and I
were not trying to get pregnant. She didn’t want to be
pregnant, Rand, I don’t know if she ever was going to be.
We weren’t even … we weren’t even having relations that
often. I’d be … very surprised if she was pregnant.’
‘Noelle said Amy visited the doctor to confirm the
pregnancy. The police already submitted a subpoena for
the records. We’ll know tonight.’
I found Go in the living room, sitting with a cup of cold
coffee at my mother’s card table. She turned toward me just
enough to show she knew I was there, but she didn’t let me
see me 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 Amy look 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 fertility treatments. 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’re saying, Nick, it makes no
sense. I was there, at the dinner to celebrate The Bar, and
Mom 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 year ago, she cried like that.
Okay?’
Go sat quietly, the orange of the streetlight creating a
rock-star halo around her profile. ‘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 fib if you think it will avoid a real argument. You’ve
always gone the easy way. Tell Mom you went to baseball
practice when you really quit the team; tell Mom you went to
church when you were at a movie. It’s some weird
compulsion.’
‘This is very different from baseball, Go.’
‘It’s a lot different. But you’re still fibbing like a little boy.
You’re still desperate to have everyone think you’re perfect.

---

You never want to be the bad guy. So you tell Amy’s
parents she didn’t want kids. You 
don’t
tell me you’re
cheating on your wife. You swear the credit cards in your
name aren’t yours, you swear you were hanging out at a
beach when you hate the beach, you swear your marriage
was happy. I just don’t know what to believe right now.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Since Amy has disappeared, all you’ve done is lie. It
makes me worry. About what’s going on.’
Complete silence for a moment.
‘Go, are you saying what I think you’re saying?
Because if you are, something has fucking died between
us.’
‘Remember that game you always played with Mom
when we were little: