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

NICK DUNNE
SEVEN DAYS GONE
I
had to phone Tanner, my brand-new lawyer, mere hours
after I’d hired him, and say the words that would make him
regret taking my money: 
I think my wife is framing me
. I
couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine it – the eye roll,
the grimace, the weariness of a man who hears nothing but
lies for a living.
‘Well,’ he finally said after a gaping pause, ‘I’ll be there
first thing tomorrow morning, and we will sort this out –
everything on the table – and in the meantime, sit tight,
okay? Go to sleep and sit tight.’
Go took his advice, she popped two sleeping pills and
left me just before eleven, while I literally sat tight, in an
angry ball on her couch. Every so often I’d go outside and
glare at the woodshed, my hands on my hips, as if it were a
predator I could scare off. I’m not sure what I thought I was
accomplishing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I could stay
seated for five minutes, tops, before I’d have to go back
outside and stare.
I had just come back inside when a knock rattled the
back door. Fucking Christ. Not quite midnight. Cops would
come to the front – right? – and reporters had yet to stake
out Go’s (this would change, a matter of days, hours). I was
standing, unnerved, undecided, in the living room when the

---

banging came again, louder, and I cursed under my breath,
tried to get myself angry instead of scared. 
Deal with it,
Dunne
.
I flung open the door. It was Andie. It was goddamn
Andie, pretty as a picture, dressed up for the occasion, still
not getting it – that she was going to put my neck right in the
noose.
‘Right in the noose, Andie.’ I yanked her inside, and
she stared at my hand on her arm. ‘You are going to put my
neck right in the fucking noose.’
‘I came to the back door,’ she said. When I stared her
down, she didn’t apologize, she steeled herself. I could
literally see her features harden. ‘I needed to see you, Nick.
I told you. I told you I had to see you or talk to you every day,
and today you disappeared. Straight to voice mail, straight
to voice mail, straight to voice mail.’
‘If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I can’t talk,
Andie. Jesus, I was in New York, getting a lawyer. He’ll be
here first thing tomorrow.’
‘You got a lawyer. That was what kept you so busy that
you couldn’t call me for ten seconds?’
I wanted to smack her. I took a breath. I had to cut
things off with Andie. It wasn’t just Tanner’s warning I had in
mind. My wife knew me: She knew I’d do almost anything to
avoid dealing with confrontation. Amy was depending on
me to be stupid, to let the relationship linger – and to
ultimately be caught. I had to end it. But I had to do it
perfectly. 
Make her believe that this was the decent thing
.
‘He’s actually given me some important advice,’ I
began. ‘Advice I can’t ignore.’
I’d been so sweet and doting just last night, at my

---

mandatory meeting in our pretend fort. I’d made so many
promises, trying to calm her down. She wouldn’t see this
coming. She wouldn’t take this well.
‘Advice? Good. Is it to stop being such an asshole to
me?’
I felt the rage rise up; that this was already turning into
a high school fight. A thirty-four-year-old man in the middle
of the worst night of my life, and I was having a 
meet me by
the lockers!
squabble with a pissed-off girl. I shook her
once, hard, a tiny droplet of spit landing on her lower lip.
‘I—You don’t get it, Andie. This isn’t some joke, this is
my life.’
‘I just … I need you,’ she said, looking down at her
hands. ‘I know I keep saying that, but I do. I can’t do it, Nick.
I can’t go on like this. I’m falling apart. I’m so scared all the
time.’
She
was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and
here I was with a girl I’d been fucking the morning my wife
went missing. I’d sought her out that day – I had never gone
to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there
that morning, because I’d spent hours with my heart
pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the
words to Amy: