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

me
who pushed her. Hold
on. ‘
Go back downstairs now. Go. Down. Stairs. Goooo
downstairs
. Sorry, I’m back. Never have kids. So Amy said
you pushed her?’
‘Yeah, because I was 
craaaazy
. I was obsessed with
her, and I wanted to be Suzy, and then being Suzy wasn’t
enough – I had to be Amy. And she had all this evidence
that she’d had me create over the past few 
months
. Her
parents, obviously, had seen me 
lurking
around the house. I
theoretically accosted her mom. My hair dyed blond and the

---

clothes I’d bought that matched Amy’s – clothes I bought
while shopping 
with
her, but I couldn’t prove that. All her
friends came in, explained how Amy for the past month had
been so frightened of me. All this shit. I looked 
totally
insane
. Completely insane. Her parents got a restraining
order on me. And I kept swearing it wasn’t me, but by then I
was so miserable that I wanted to leave school anyway. So
we didn’t fight the expulsion. I wanted to get away from her
by that time. I mean, the girl 
cracked her own ribs
. I was
scared – this little fifteen-year-old, she’d pulled this off.
Fooled friends, parents, teachers.’
‘And this was all because of a boy and some grades
and a Thanksgiving invitation?’
‘About a month after I moved back to Memphis, I got a
letter. It wasn’t signed, it was typed, but it was obviously
Amy. It was a list of all the ways I’d let her down. Crazy stuff:
Forgot to wait for me after English, twice. Forgot I am
allergic to strawberries, twice
.’
‘Jesus.’
‘But I feel like the real reason wasn’t even on there.’
‘What was the real reason?’
‘I feel like Amy wanted people to believe she really
was perfect. And as we got to be friends, I got to know her.
And she wasn’t perfect. You know? She was brilliant and
charming and all that, but she was also controlling and
OCD and a drama queen and a bit of a liar. Which was fine
by me. It just wasn’t fine by her. She got rid of me because I
knew she wasn’t perfect. It made me wonder about you.’
‘About me? Why?’
‘Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see
every awful last bit. If she punished a friend of a few months

---

by throwing herself down a flight of stairs, what would she
do to a man who was dumb enough to marry her?’
I hung up as one of Hilary’s kids picked up the second
extension and began singing a nursery rhyme. I
immediately phoned Tanner and relayed my conversations
with Hilary and Tommy.
‘So we have a couple of stories, great,’ Tanner said,
‘this’ll really be great!’ in a way that told me it wasn’t that
great. ‘Have you heard from Andie?’
I hadn’t.
‘I have one of my people waiting for her at her
apartment building,’ he said. ‘Discreet.’
‘I didn’t know you had people.’
‘What we really need is to 
find Amy
,’ he said, ignoring
me. ‘Girl like that, I can’t imagine she’d be able to stay
hidden for too long. You have any thoughts?’
I kept picturing her on a posh hotel balcony near the
ocean, wrapped in a white robe thick as a rug, sipping a
very good Montrachet, while she tracked my ruin on the
Internet, on cable, in the tabloids. While she enjoyed the
endless coverage and exultation of Amy Elliott Dunne.
Attending her own funeral. I wondered if she was self-aware
enough to realize: She’d stolen a page from Mark Twain.
‘I picture her near the ocean,’ I said. Then I stopped,
feeling like a boardwalk psychic. ‘No. I have no ideas. She
could literally be anywhere. I don’t think we’ll see her unless
she decides to come back.’
‘That seems unlikely,’ Tanner breathed, annoyed. ‘So
let’s try to find Andie and see where her head is. We’re
running out of wiggle room here.’

---

Then it was dinnertime, and then the sun set, and I was
alone again in my haunted house. I was thinking about all of
Amy’s lies and whether the pregnancy was one of them. I’d
done the math. Amy and I had sex sporadically enough it
was possible. But then she would know I’d do the math.
Truth or lie? If it was a lie, it was designed to gut me.
I’d always assumed that Amy and I would have
children. It was one of the reasons I knew I would marry
Amy, because I pictured us having kids together. I
remember the first time I imagined it, not two months after
we began dating: I was walking from my apartment in Kips
Bay to a favorite pocket park along the East River, a path
that took me past the giant LEGO block of the United
Nations headquarters, the flags of myriad countries
fluttering in the wind.